Weekly Comic Book Review’s Top Picks

Dean’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Bulletproof Coffin #6 – What a great ending to a creator-owned series!  What started out as a send-up of the pre-comics code era finished with a biting satire of creator’s selling out the intellectual property rights to their characters for a paycheck.  Just awesome.  Runner-up: Detective Comics #872

Most Anticipated: The Walking Dead #80 – It looks like the wait is over.  The zombies haven’t gotten to munch on humans for a couple of years in TWD, but that looks to change in this issue.  It should be intense and I kinda wonder if any of my favorite characters is going to end up as zombie poo.

Other Picks: I, Zombie #9, Doc Macabre #2, 27 #2, Marineman #2, Who is Jake Ellis #1, She-Hulks #3

 

DS’ Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Batman: The Dark Knight #1 – David Finch, on both art and story made Batman: The Dark Knight #1 my favorite comic of last week. Art was beautiful. The story worked well. I’ve in for issue #2.

Most Anticipated: Brightest Day #17. Are you kidding me? The Hawkman and Hawkgirl subplots is one of my favorite ones in Brightest Day, not just for the artwork. I’m digging the eternal lovers and their immortal enemy and am anxious (although it won’t happen in this issue) to see how all this fits together with Blackest Night and Brightest Day.

Other Picks: Adventure Comics #522, Secret Six #29, Avenger Prime #5, Captain America: Hail Hydra #1, X-Factor #213, Heroes for Hire #2

27 #2 – Advance Review

By: Charles Soule (writer), Renzo Podesta (art), Shawn DePasquale (letters) & Kristen Simon (editor)

The Story: Having regained (briefly) the use of his hand via a demonic ceremony performed by a nude mad scientist, a guitarist tries to figure out what has happened to him.

What’s Good: The weirdness just keeps rolling for this title.  I tend to get almost everything new that Image puts out, but I honestly had a few reservations about this title when pre-ordering it because it seemed like it might be about music and bands.  There are people who are into bands and live music, but that isn’t me.  So, I was gleefully surprised with the first issue of 27.  There was no angst, no heroin addicted girlfriend, no struggles to pay the rent and book the next gig (BORING), it just ripped into a scene were a mad scientist is sacrificing cats to give a guitarist his hands back.  I LOVE that kind of weirdness because it leaves you no idea what will happen next.  For a new(er) comic writer, Charles Soule is having no trouble figuring out how to pace a comic book.  He’s a really talented writer.

I don’t want to spoil too much (this being an advance review), but the story moves forward on several fronts.  For one thing, Garland gets more information about what supernatural thing may have happened to him and how the magic works.  The concept plays completely on numerology and is very neat.  It also illustrates some of my words to live by: Don’t EVER just start randomly pushing buttons!!!  We also see Garland try to get some professional help (from an unusual source) and reconnect with his old manager.  Surprise!  She’s an attractive woman.

Oh yeah…There is another complete “WTF?” moment in the middle of this issue that involves a dead pigeon and a parking deck.