That doesn’t necessarily mean that other wholesalers or their customers are ready to embrace graphic novels, even at a lower price point. “It’s still so early,” acknowledged Diamond sales manager John Shableski, who will do a presentation at the show to help educate booksellers that there’s more to the graphic novel genre than just superheroes.

When struggling Hollywood actor Alex Martin rescues a woman from a mysterious, almost fatal accident, he becomes an instant star—and also finds that a murderous cabal is out to kill him, too. His studio assigns some high- powered bodyguards, most notably this book's title character: wiseacre Rachel Dodd, who looks like arm candy and shoots like James Bond. If you imagine that the two of them will despise each other at first, then bond through a series of action-comedy escapades (in the course of which Rachel will wear skimpy outfits and fire big guns) until romance blossoms between them, you are almost entirely right. It's unabashedly an odd-couple comedy pasted onto an action flick, and self-aware about it. Still, Cosby and Church get in some clever jabs at the movie business and its cults of personality, and the frothy script has the sort of densely packed badinage beloved by readers of Church's online comic strip, the Rack. Santolouco's artwork is at the cruder, cartoonier end of the generic mainstream continuum—he sometimes favors dramatic angles to make up for his dodgy grasp of anatomy—but the story zips along as amusingly as the B-movies it parodies and pastiches. (Mar.)

This March, critically acclaimed comic book writer Garth Ennis will end his four-year run on the series Punisher MAX, a violent, unflinching take on the skull-suited Marvel vigilante, and debut a new title for Marvel called War is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle. Published under the Marvel MAX imprint, which is intended for adults and permits more mature content, Punisher MAX featured a noted absence of superheroes and a more graphic approach to the murderous anti-hero.

• Catwoman: Catwoman's Dead (DC)
• Loners: Secret Lives of Super Heroes (Marvel)
• Fear Agent Vol. 3: Last Goodbye (Dark Horse)
• Order Vol. 1: Next Right Thing (Marvel)
• Maakies with the Wrinkled Knees (Fantagraphics)
• Lions, Tigers & Bears Vol. 2 (Image)
• Boneyard Vol. 3 (NBM)
• Alive: The Final Evolution Vol.3 (Del Ray)
• Be With You (Viz Media)
• Everlasting Love (Digital Manga Publishing)
• Mushishi Vol. 3 (Del Ray)
• Drifting Classroom Vol. 10 (Viz Media)

• Toon Books Moved Up
• NYCC News
• Viz News
• Bluewater to Publish Pistolfist
• New U.K. Kids Comic