The Vault, #1-2
Written by Sam Sankar
Art by Garrie Gastonny, Sakti Yuwono
Covers by Garrie Gastonny, Bagus Hutomo
Image Comics
Release Date: August 31, 2011
Cover Price: $3.50

The Vault opens with a team of high tech treasure hunters exploring treasure chambers and traps off on Oak Island, 150 kilometers off the coast of Nova Scotia. The area is famous for hosting a whole network of tunnels and burrows that have baffled treasure hunters and archaeologists alike and this team believes they have found access to a treasure chamber through a hidden access tunnel. However, when they discover that the treasure they found won’t even cover their expenses, they keep digging.

What they find as they go deeper isn’t treasure, but rather a giant stone sarcophagus, with an unknown skeletal creature inside. The team debates whether or not to open it, but when they do, they find the skeleton inside to be not as quite as dead as they thought…

Criminal Macabre: No Peace For Dead Men
One-Shot
Written by Steve Niles
Art by Christopher Mitten
Colors by Michelle Madsen
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 14, 2011
Cover Price: $3.99

Full disclosure: I’m a big Steve Niles fan. I loved 30 Days of Night and Wake The Dead, as well as his work on Batman, Spawn, and JSA. His reinvention of one of my favorite characters in the DC universe in The Creeper: Welcome to Creepsville is still one of my comic treasures. So I have to say I was worried when I heard about his Criminal Macabre project. The supernatural private dick angle has been played before, and masterfully so with Hellblazer.

That being said, I’ve always been pleasantly surprised with Criminal Macabre. While Cal McDonald does have certain classic noir elements that would remind you of John Constantine, in place of Constantine’s Cockney con artist and wiseass is a bitter, depressed, and extremely violent detective with little in the way of pathos.

On Thursday, June 2nd, Konami held simultaneous events in Toronto, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles for the video game media and their die-hard fans to give them a preview of what they could expect from Konami in the up-coming year. I happened to be fortunate enough to attend the preview that was held in Toronto at the Real Sports Bar and catch a glimpse of what’s new. Here’s the run-down, game-facers.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater

Available for the Nintendo 3DS, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater is will feature a return to the feel of the original and is designed to highlight the features of the 3DS gaming platform. Set outdoors in a jungle environment with a Special Forces style of play, Snake Eater will have a few cool new features:

Photo-Cammo: The new photo-cammo feature will allow players to take a snap shot of anything using the 3DS camera and use the colors to customize their own unique camouflage for their characters in play. I myself am looking forward to creating a “dog-shit brown” Snake Eater character.

Skullkickers #7
Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood, Part 1
Story by Jim Zub
Art by Edwin Huang, Misty Coates
Cover by Chris Stevens
Variant cover by Steven Cummings and Espen Grundetjern
Image Comics
Price: $2.99
Street Date: May 25, 2011

How could you not love a comic book with a name like Skullkickers? It does bring up images of thick, steel-toed boots bashing in brains, splattering them onto the pavement, doesn’t it?

Well, if that’s what you’re expecting, it’s not what you’re going to get.

Skullkickers is a fantasy series, obviously heavily influenced visually and creatively by World of Warcraft and the Final Fantasy video game series. The story revolves around a pair of monster hunters: an alcoholic dwarf with an axe and a stoic bald warrior with a revolver. In the first six issues, the good Skullkickers are forced to travel from the village of Mudwich to do battle with necromancers, demons, living corpses, and giant primordial demon lords. As Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood Part 1 opens in Skullkickers #7, the Skullkickers return to Mudwich celebrated heroes only to become wanted fugitives, embroiled in an assassination plot against the city’s nobility by a pointy-eared elfin killer and a pair of murderous fairies.

Are you excited for the release of Marvel Studios’ Thor on Friday, but you don’t know your Baldr from your Bilfrost? Well, the good folks at Geeks of Doom have got you covered!

Marvel Comics delved deep into traditional Norse mythology to create the backdrop for Thor, pulling gods, monsters, giants, and exotic locations to populate their modern take on the old legend. Few people realize this, but Norse Mythology is the manliest thing to ever exist; even manlier then an Ultimate Klingon Fighting League. We’re talking Dungeons & Dragons on steroids. We’re talking honey mead-swilling, giant axe-swinging, buxom maiden-screwing, giant troll-wrestling hurricane of 100 percent, grade-A he-beef. Why do you think Power Metal loves it so much?

In honor of Thor, Geeks of Doom jumps two skullcrushing boots first into the world of Viking gods. So grab a stein of mead, a side of boar, and enjoy Geeks of Doom’s NORSE MYTHOLOGY A-Z (Or At Least Y Anyway).