X-Factor #237

By: Peter David (story), Neil Edwards (pencils), Karl Kesel (inks), Rachelle Rosenberg (colors)

The Story: So, Rahne isn’t exactly feeling her best, having vomited up the child of a wolf-god and disowned it (the merry things that happen in X-Factor). To try and get her to feel better, Polaris and Banshee take her to see John Maddox, the priestly dupe of Jamie. You know…it’s one of those light and fun issues!

The Good: In all seriousness, yes, Peter David can bring very lighthearted and fun issues of X-Factor to us when the moment calls for it. He can give us high octane awesomeness with grand fights, when the moment calls for it. Sometimes, the moment is not about seeing the team beat the crap out of something, or go to Vegas to save a troll (now THAT was fun!). Sometimes you need to get serious, and that’s what #237 does–it gets serious.

The Joker’s Asylum: Killer Croc – Review

By Mike Raicht (writer), David Yardin and Cliff Richards (art), Rodney Ramos (inks, pg. 21), Joe Villarrubia (colors), Patrick Brosseau (letters)

The Story: Another tale spun by the Clown Prince of Crime, this one dealing with Killer Croc’s escape from Arkham and his adoption by a severely dysfunctional criminal family.

What’s Good: Although I’m a pretty big Bat-fan, Killer Croc has never really been my favorite villain (aside from his very cool appearance in the Arkham Asylum video game.) I don’t dislike him, mind, I guess I just prefer seeing Batman take on the slightly more humanoid side of his rogue’s gallery. (Of course, since Batman is only peripheral in this book anyway, that’s not really an issue.)

Speaking of human, though, that’s one thing this book does quite well: humanizing the monster that is Killer Croc. He’s still not as sympathetic as his Marvel counterpart, the Lizard, but this story goes a long way towards parting the curtain and letting us see a little bit of the man behind the beast. The whole “beauty and the beast” angle, while Raicht overplays it a bit for my taste, is still effective, and helps the story more than it hurts.

I particularly enjoyed the artwork in this book. It’s not overly photo referenced, but it doesn’t fall into the “cartoony” trap either; in other words, it fits my definition of a very well drawn comic. It’s not perfect—facial expressions get sloppy when they aren’t in the foreground, and the detailing of the scales on Croc’s skin tends to come and go—but overall, it’s very solid indeed.