Previews of the books coming out this week that are piquing our pointy ears.

ROOTING AGAINST THE BIG GUY IN "Flash Rebirth #3". Geoff Johns has a knack for revitalizing interest in long-neglected characters, and now he's writing the return of Barry Allen as the Flash, with this issue promising a race between the Allen, the Fastest Man Alive, and Superman, the Man of Steel. Who also happens to be the man of super speed. And the man of flight, and x-ray vision, and freezing breath, and super hearing, and several other things I'm most likely forgetting at the moment. So you've got the Flash, doing his own thing, and then in walks Superman, going "Oh hey, Flash, saw you running really fast there. I love that power; that's, like, the third or fourth best superpower I've got. But, hey, I'm sure you've got other great powers too. Wait, what's that, you don't? You're just the fast guy? That's cool, I guess. So, wanna race or something?" For the sake of all the superheroes out there who only got one power, I'll be smiling when the Flash leaves the big blue guy back in the distance tripping over his cape.


LOOKING BACK TO THE FUTURE OF "Buck Rogers #1." Dynamite Entertainment's had a few successes with the launch of other classic hero lines like "The Lone Ranger" and "Sherlock Holmes," and now it's creating a new series based on the very first comics sci-fi hero. Buck Rogers first appeared in a comic strip in 1929, launching spinoffs to radio, television, film, and even a Looney Tunes parody that's been popular for decades. And while the idea of a 21st century vision of the future based on stories thought up in the 1920s and set in the 25th century might seem a little bit of a roundabout path to take, who doesn't love a good jet pack/ray gun space opera every now and then?


WILL PROBABLY TAKE FOREVER MAKING MY MIND UP ABOUT "Pride and Prejudice #3." When I first saw this book under Marvel's list of releases for the week, I thought, "Wow, that's a terrible pun to use for a Kitty Pryde miniseries." Then I looked closer and realized, that, no, this was an actual retelling of the Jane Austen book. So if you've ever wanted to read Austen's novel but felt that five hundred pages of prose about British people being exceedingly indecisive about their personal lives was too much to deal with, now you can get it all in five issues. Plus they kind of look like the X-Men. Who, come to think of it, spend a lot of time being exceedingly indecisive about their personal lives. This may be a better match than I originally thought.


OVERWHELMED WITH CHOICES BY "Anna Mercury Volume 2: Ultraspacial Dreadnought Vanaheim #1". Volume two of Warren Ellis' pulp sci-fi series is getting the full treatment from its publisher, with four different versions of the cover for the first issue. Why are they doing this? In the writer's own words, "because people keep ordering variant covers... I can't talk Avatar out of making them." This leaves you, the reader, with the ability to choose whichever minute variation on the heroine's improbable black bodysuit/improbable red hairdo combo suits your particular taste. Volume one of "Anna Mercury" was an intriguing introduction to the series' retro-futuristic parallel universes. And while it wasn't an example of Ellis' best work, his past series have all taken a little time to establish their characters and settings before taking off, so keep an eye on this one.