If you needed proof that we’ve reached the dog days of August, look no further than this week’s shipping list: just twelve new volumes will be arriving at your local comic book store on Wednesday. The lion’s share are such long-running VIZ titles as Flame of Recca, InuYasha, and O-Parts Hunter, though you’ll find the latest volumes of Black Lagoon and Dogs: Bullets and Carnage gracing shelves as well. This week’s new debuts include 10 Beautiful Assassins (Seven Seas), an OEL about a cat burglar who’s so inept with women that he’s still a virgin, despite his rugged good looks; and Battle of Genryu Origin (CMX), a shonen title about a gifted teen who can only use his super-strength one day each month.

Your best bet is volume two of Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (VIZ), a smart, thought-provoking science fiction series with a chilling premise:

In an unnamed country, all citizens receive an injection at the age of five. A small percentage of the shots contain a poisonous capsule that will burst on a predetermined date between the subject’s eighteenth and twenty-fourth birthdays, stopping his heart. Twenty four hours before the victim is scheduled to die, the Ministry of Health and Welfare dispatches an “ikigami,” or death messenger, to notify the victim of his fate so that he may decide how to spend his final hours.

Each volume profiles two or three victims, showing us how they react to the news. The common denominator in every story is the messenger, Fujimoto, a government agent who begins his career a true believer but becomes a skeptic after witnessing the program’s devastating impact on victims’ families. Though Ikigami has a dark premise — OK, a really, really morbid premise — the series is engrossing and weirdly life-affirming, a welcome antidote to the brainless shoot-em-ups that pass for seinen here in the US.

NEW SERIES/ONE-SHOTS

• 10 Beautiful Assassins, Vol. 1 (Seven Seas)
• Battle of Genryu Origin, Vol. 1 (CMX)

CONTINUING SERIES

• Black Lagoon, Vol. 7 (VIZ)
• Dogs: Bullets and Carnage, Vol. 1 (VIZ)
• Flame of Recca, Vol. 32 (VIZ)
• Gimmick!, Vol. 8 (VIZ)
• Hayate the Combat Butler, Vol. 12 (VIZ)
• Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit, Vol. 2 (VIZ)
• InuYasha, Vol. 39 (VIZ)
• O-Parts Hunter, Vol. 17 (VIZ)
• Record of a Fallen Vampire, Vol. 6 (VIZ)
• Yumekui Kenbun: Nightmare Inspector, Vol. 9 (VIZ)