Quick Hit Reviews – Week of March 2, 2011

Our reading lists are pretty extensive here at WCBR and sometimes a few titles don’t get the “full review treatment”.  Sometimes that means a real gem didn’t get the limelight it deserved and sometimes it means a turd didn’t get properly mocked.  Let’s find out what we have this week…

Avengers Academy #10 – This is turning out to be the sneaky star of the Post-Siege Avengers line-up as Christos Gage is telling a story that just builds week after week.  What is amazing to me is how cool of a comic this has become without having a real antagonist for the Academy kids.  Pretty much every other teenage superhero book has trotted out a Deathstroke or Magneto by this point, but Gage is keeping it entertaining by just exploring who these kids are.  This issue focuses on both Veil and Hazmat who are both really tragic heroes.  The “smile” of this issue was the use of Leech to neutralize Hazmat’s toxic powers and allow her to take a romp in the park without her suit.  The “serious” was brought by Speedball still dealing with the events that lead to Civil War.  This is a great comic series that you should be checking out.  Grade: B+  — Dean Stell

Heroes for Hire #4 – How much you enjoy this issue is going to depend 100% on how much you enjoy the character of Misty Knight because she is very much the focus of this issue.  If you are a big Misty fan, you’ll love seeing this trip through her memories as Puppetmaster tries to maintain control of her for reasons still unclear.  If you’re not, you’re going to get bored and that’s the camp I fell into because this issue has none of the fun of the first three issues (Moon Knight battling velociraptors??).  I’ve never been a HUGE Brad Walker fan, but I greatly missed him on this issue because I didn’t enjoy the art nearly as much in his absence.  Grade: C  — Dean Stell

Herculian #1 – This collection of short comic doodles and 24-hour-comic material by Erik Larson is pretty hard to grade.  On one hand, it is clearly of the doodle/sketchbook variety and shouldn’t be graded on the same scale as “finished” comic art.  On the other hand, they are charging $4.99 for the book, so you need to be accountable.  What you’re hoping for in a comic like this is one stellar story and we almost get that with Cheeseburgerhead which is a story of a man who wakes up to find that his head has turned into a big cheeseburger.  But, while Cheeseburger head is pretty fun and inventive, it isn’t stellar and the rest of the material is pretty “ok” including the LONG intro story of a man and his brother discussing the virtues of marriage while a super-powered battle is raging outside their restaurant.  I do like the oversized format though.  Grade: C-  — Dean Stell