Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion collects the six-issue mini series of the same name. Both written and drawn by Bill Tucci, it’s a story about iconic DC war character, Sgt. Frank Rock of Pittsburgh, Pa., and his men in Easy Company. But it goes far beyond a typical war comic.

It might be appropriate that I had a bit of a fever when I was reading Luna Park, the new hardcover graphic novel from Vertigo/DC written by Kevin Baker and illustrated by Danijel Zezelj.

Brian Azzarello’s Filthy Rich, one of the first two releases from the new hardcover, black-and-white, “sub-imprint” Vertigo Crime (along with Ian Rankin’s Dark Entries featuring John Constantine) is full of tough cookies, conniving broads, and just the right amount of violence and nudity to keep readers begging for more.

Scott Ian is a guitarist for the band Anthrax. Sam Kieth is the brilliant, unique comic book artist/creator behind such properties as The Maxx, My Inner Bimbo, and Zero Girl. Lobo is a character created by Keith Giffen, a feral, space-faring, tough-talking, motorcycle-riding bad-ass bounty hunter that’s often played for laughs, notably in a couple of ‘90s books written by Alan Grant and superbly illustrated by Simon Bisley.

Many times, I’ve heard creators (usually writers) interviewed on the difference between writing for film and writing for comics. Comics, they’ve said, are truer to the original vision. Film has so many cooks in the kitchen, the essence of the script often gets lost.

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters is an original graphic novel that adapts Neil Gaiman’s text piece of the same name. P. Craig Russell referenced that original story, and the original art by Yoshitaka Amano, to create a more traditional comic narrative. It’s an unqualified success.

In the world of Fables, Cinderella is secretly a high-action, kick-ass spy in the service of Fabletown’s community of storybook outcasts. This book, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Shawn McManus, vaults Cindy into an adventure that’s part James Bond, part The Devil Wears Prada, and all Fables.

House of Mystery is an ongoing series by DC/Vertigo that’s half an anthology as it is. As Kyle Lemmon recapped in his review of the second trade collection, HoM is about “a group of five strangers trapped within a supernatural tavern where strange patrons pass the time regaling each other in outlandish yarns.”

The quick and dirty critique for DC’s very seasonal paperback, Batman: Monsters, is that it’s an underwhelming string of fright fiction. The trade collects Legends of the Dark Knight #71-73, 83, 84, 89, and 90 and finds Batman investigating murders that seem to have been perpetrated by a werewolf, fighting bio-engineered soldiers (with a gun!?) and being caught up in a tragic retelling of archfiend Clayface’s origin.