Let’s just keep this Art Day here at Stately Beat Manor. Here’s a preview of Marvel’s STRANGE TALES #3, on sale TOMORROW, with an EXCLUSIVE page from Jeffrey Brown and two pages from Paul Hornschemeier’s Nightcrawler tale.

Courtesy of Jody LeHeup and Arune Singh at Marvel, here’s an EXCLUSIVE preview of some pages from STRANGE TALES #2, the second issue of Marvel’s anthology of Marvel’s greatest heroes as drawn by indie comics’ greatest stars.

This time out we’ve got Max Cannon’s “Unfortunate Three” and Jim Rugg’s marvel-loa-s “Brother Voodoo”!

STRANGE TALES #2 goes on sale tomorrow. Contributors include Peter Bagge, Jacob Chabot, R. Kikuo Johnson, Jim Rugg, Jonathan Hickman, Max Cannon, Matt Kindt, Michael Kupperman and Tony Millionaire.

The Beat is thrilled to present an EXCLUSIVE preview of two more stories from Marvel’s STRANGE TALES anthology — in which indie comics stars take on Marvel’s greatest characters. WE’ve seen Jason’s Spider-Man and Dash Shaw’s Dr. Strange, but here are two more epic x-overs: Nick Bertozzi’s Modok and Matt Kindt’s Black Widow. Click to enlarge.

You’ll recall that STRANGE TALES is a planned 3-issue MAX series chock full of indie comics’ greatest stars, including Paul Pope, Peter Bagge, Molly Crabapple & John Leavitt, Junko Mizuno, Dash Shaw, James Kochalka, Johnny Ryan, Michael Kupperman, Nick Bertozzi, Nicholas Gurewitch, Jason, and more. The first issue comes out in September.

Writer Thomas Hall dropped us a note to promote the debut of ROBOT 13 by himself and artist Daniel Bradford at MoCCA, describing it thusly:

On the surface, the Robot 13 is about a skull headed robot who fights giant monsters from Greek Mythology. From a storytelling standpoint, however, it’s somewhat a reworking of Frankenstein meeting Homer’s Odyssey- it’s the story of a thing created by Science who goes on a Hero’s journey of sorts to find out who he really is…

We took a peek at the first issue, and it’s a very stylish steampunk fantasy; very much in a Mignolan vein, to be sure, but continuing our fascination with giant octopii, we’re posting the preview pages here.

More information here and here.

All pages above ©2009 Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford

It seems that comics stuff — illustrations and reviews and previews — are EVERYwhere now. The usual places and the UNusual places. For instance, we don’t remember Time Out New York running comics previews before, but here’s a nice preview of R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics, forthcoming from D&Q. (One such comic above.) The piece excerpted involves Mary Worth nosing her way into Macbeth’s business as he plots to kill the king and…oh, you just have to read it.

A more usual place for comics is the Village Voice — but not in the comics section, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog lately. Despite the dearth of weekly comics, there is still a cartoon presence. Ward Sutton has a comic about the new Star Trek movie (above), and does the cover. (Don’t worry, we didn’t spoil the joke — the whole thing is funny.) Sutton also sent us a link to his cartoon in The New Yorker. (Shannon Wheeler has also been spotted in the pages of The New Yorker lately, along with regular contributors like Chris Ware, Michael Kupperman and Adrian Tomine. Chris Mautner has more.)

Sutton ALSO has a piece on Star Trek in The Huffington Post, which brings us to our NEXT unlikely spot for comics — the Huffington Post! On Tuesday, cartoonist Bob Fingerman had an essay about his upcoming FROM THE ASHES, which we previewed only a few days ago:

So, memoirs. Memoirs in prose. Memoirs in graphic form. During the run-up to the 2008 election I was filled with guarded optimism and deep-rooted pessimism. As I alternated between pondering our potential collective fate and figuring out what my next project would be, a phrase popped into my head: “speculative memoir.” Why be limited, I thought, to recounting what’s already happened? Granted, true depictions of actual real life aren’t necessary in doing a memoir (James Frey, J.T. LeRoy and Margaret B. Jones, anyone?), but how liberating would it be to create a memoir of events yet to happen?

Good for Bob on the exposure — because we’re often told that The Huffington Post is the future of journalism…except that in a piece on a comic book, they couldn’t even run ONE PIECE OF ART? Come on now, people. You are the FUTURE. Don’t take a page from OLD MEDIA’S playbook. It’s all about the picture. Unless The Huffington Post is trying to be the place that is all about…not the picture? Hm.

As for more traditional previews, ICv2 has a preview of Jason’s LOW MOON, so you know it’s awesome, and Flog has a list of all kinds of LOW MOON goodies. Plenty to keep you busy on a Friday afternoon.

Is there anyone who doesn’t like post-apocalyptic fiction?

Looking back at the past decade in comics, there haven’t been a surplus of successful ongoing comics series. In fact we can think of only a handful. Of that handful, perhaps the two most durable and entertaining are THE WALKING DEAD and Y: THE LAST MAN. (Yes, Y was a maxiseries, but it ran more or less monthly for a long time and its collections continue to sell at an astonishing pace.) What do both these books share? Why, survival in a post-apocalyptic landscape of gruesome clarity, of course. It’s an old yarn, but one that clearly resonates with readers, as they came back month after month for both series — and THE WALKING DEAD has become Image’s cash cow.

To the comics bookshelf of ruined worlds, we can now add another, highly unusual entrant, one which, we think, amplifies and examines the whole genre. In Bob Fingerman’s FROM THE ASHES, we see the personal story of two people — based on Fingerman himself and his wife, Michele — as they traverse the landscape of a ruined New York City. It’s savage, it’s narcissistic, it’s scary and it’s also very, very human. You may have seen a similar situation before, but trust me, you’ve never seen it like this. If Woody Allen and George Romero teamed up, you might get something like FROM THE ASHES…

FROM THE ASHES #1 (of six) debuts May 13th from IDW. You can read Fingerman’s blog on the series here, with background info and even more on the joys of destroying the world.
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