1. AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #692
To celebrate the 50th Anniversay of Spider-Man, Peter Parker is getting a sidekick in the form of "Alpha", a teenager who is granted powers when an experiment of Peter's goes wrong at Horizon Labs. This is either a genius move by writer Dan Slott or one of the worst ideas since the Clone Saga, but the writer has crafted some of the best Spidey stories ever since the beginning of "Brand New Day", so it doesn't seem unfair to say that it will more than likely fall into the former category. With pencils from the brilliant Humberto Ramos, it should be very interesting to see how this storyline develops from here in the build-up to the release of the landmark
Amazing Spider-Man #700 later this year.
2. PUNISHER #14
Greg Rucka's run on
Punisher will seemingly be coming to an end in November with the release of "War Zone", meaning that we will be losing the title considered by the majority as being up there with
Daredevil as Marvel's best. Regardless, Rachel Cole Alves' story continues to develop here as she grows closer to becoming a female Punisher following the tragic murder of her friends and family. This collides with Frank Castle's own plans to take out the 'Exchange', and it's hard to escape the feeling that it's all leading somewhere very, very dark (after all, there must be a reason why The Avengers decide it's time to take The Punisher down once and for all). You should definitely be reading this!
3. BEFORE WATCHMEN: DR. MANHATTAN #1
The
Before Watchmen prequels have been featured on this list repeatedly over the last few months, and this week sees the release of the first instalment of the final series. Dr. Manhattan is one of the most complex characters from the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons series, and so it should be interesting to see what writer J. Michael Straczynski (
Amazing Spider-Man) and artist Adam Hughes (
Justice League of America) come up with here. Manhattan's background was covered fairly well in the original series, so hopefully they'll be able to find plenty of new ground as they explore his early years. "I watch as a box containing a mystery is lowered into the soil," reads the solicitation.
4. SUPERCROOKS #4
Mark Millar and Leinil Yu's
Supercrooks has made for a fantastic read, and this week sees the release of the final issue in the first volume. After three issues of build-up, the heist is finally taking place, but don't expect it to all go smoothly! "The Bastard" knows exactly what Johnny Bolt and his gang of ex-supervillains are up to and there are sure to be plenty of twists and turns from here. Nacho Vigalondo (
Timecrimes) co-plotted the series and is currently hard at work on bringing it to the big screen so there's no way you should miss this one. Here at CBM, we've awarded each of the previous issues a 5* rating (as you may have seen on the back covers - click
HERE to check that out).
5. BATMAN INCORPORATED #3
The release of
Batman Incorporated #3 was delayed after the tragic shooting during a midnight screening of
The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado last month. It is thought that it contains material which may have been seen as being in bad taste at the time. Well, it finally goes on sale this week, and despite that controversy, Batman fans should definitely look forward to this one. Matches Malone will make his "The New 52" debut here as Bruce Wayne continues to hunt the assassins who are attempting to take out Damian. Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham have been doing stellar work on the series up until this point and with the former set to leave DC next year, he will be wrapping his run up with this arc.
THE BEST OF THE REST...
6. AMERICA'S GOT POWERS #3
7. INVINCIBLE #94
8. THE FLASH #12
9. WOLVERINE #312
10. UNCANNY X-MEN #17