Quick-Hit Reviews – Week of August 31, 2011

Quick-Hits has been on “vacation” for awhile, but is back this week as there are a number of comics for which there wasn’t time to do a full review.  Most were pretty good…

Vescell #1 – I didn’t count the pages in this first issue from Image, but it felt like it was ~40 pages and took a long time to read.  And, it was a hell of a lot of fun.  The action revolves around an agent of the Vescell Corporation.  Vescell specializes if transferring the consciousness of a person into a new body, so it’s handy for wives looking to leave husbands, criminals on the run, etc., and this agent is charge of spiriting them away to Vescell’s labs unseen so they can begin their new lives.  That part was kinda cool, but also the fact that this agent has a HOT girlfriend who is stuck in some demon-realm, but can be channeled into the bodies of the living– that was neat too.  And the agent has a tinkerbell like fairy helper/partner who he shoots out of a gun at the bad guys.  Lots of R-rated sexual content too, if that’s your thing.  Very enjoyable.  Can’t wait for the next issue.  Grade: B+

Rocketeer Adventures #4 – Here’s a candidate for miniseries of the year!  This was another strong entry in this series featuring short Rockteer stories told and drawn by some of the best in the business.  This issue features (among others): Dave Gibbons, Tony Harris (wow!), John Arcudi, Brendan McCarthy & Ashley Wood.  These are great fun stories and I wish IDW would keep it rolling because I’ve loved every minute of it.  Grade: B+

The Vault #2 – I usually hate comics that read like movie pitches in comic form, but I don’t care. The Vault is fun stuff.  Even though I don’t think there is much original going on here, I really enjoyed this issue that featured a treasure hunting team that dug up something that should have been left in the ground.  Bad things are happening how!  If you’ve enjoyed Mummy movies or The Thing from Another World, you’ll probably get a kick out of this comic.  And, it’s only 3 issues, so there isn’t much to stop you.  Grade: B

Skull Kickers #10 – This series is just flat fun.  I think we might have learned the names of our dwarf and his hulking buddy, but given who gave us the names, I’m not sure they can be trusted.  The plot in this cycle has to do with our duo running afoul of a bunch of nasty pixies in the best swords and sandals fashion.  The high-point in this issue was when the dwarf got shot with an arrow and is bleeding all over the place (the sounds effects say, “Squirt, Squirt, Squirt”) and he urges his companion to plug the wound with a dead squirrel.  If that sounds like your kind of humor, you should read Skull Kickers.  I really like the art by Edwin Huang too.  Grade: B

Fear Itself: The Deep #3 – Boy have these Fear Itself tie-in series sucked!  But, The Deep has been a bright spot.  This isn’t a groundbreaking issue that changes the universe or anything, but it is well written by Cullen Bunn and nicely drawn by Lee Garbett.  It features characters who I enjoy like Lyra, the Savage She-Hulk and Loa (from the X-Men), but also manages to redeem a few characters I don’t usually like (Dr. Strange, Namor & Silver Surfer) as they battle the Fear Itselfed minions of Attuma.  As I said, most of the Fear Itself miniseries have been shit, but this is worth buying. Grade: B

Last Mortal #4 – This wasn’t bad, but it does warrant a big “meh.”  I guess the black and white art was kinda catchy, but there was never anything about the story that captured or held my interest as we came to the conclusion of this series.  The young loser who can’t die is on a mission to get answers and retribution for the death of his loser buddy.  I think I just don’t want to read stories about losers, perhaps?  Main characters need to be a little more likable than this kid because I just can’t root for a protagonist who is such a waste of skin.   Grade: C

Epoch #1 – Your enjoyment of this is going to depend largely on how much you groove on stories of Biblical angels and demons walking among us.  I really don’t care for that type of story, so it just came off as really pretentious seeing this cop who is realizing that he has powers that he wasn’t previously aware of and that his father, Gabriel (hint, hint), might not be quite the old douchebag he’d thought.  If you like angels and demons, you might like this, but I probably should have read the solicitation text more closely.  Even the art didn’t quite click with me.  It looked like it kinda wanted to be Capullo-like, and I love Capullo, but this just left me cold.  Grade: C-

– Dean Stell

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Quick-Hit Reviews – Week of May 25, 2011

A whole LOT of very solid comics last week.  We can’t review everything in-depth, so the least we can do is give you a quick-hit letting you know what we thought of an issue and whether it is worth picking up.

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #6 – Talk about not being what I expected!  I was honestly starting to lose the narrative in issues #4 and #5 of this series once Spider/Wolvie ran into that Luke Cage-looking guy with the diamond-encrusted baseball bat.  So, I really wasn’t looking forward to this issue at all, but it really came together nicely.  Silly me, how could I doubt Jason Aaron?  The guy still hasn’t told me a bad story.  This issue dispenses with the diamond-encrusted baseball bats and Mojo and finds Peter and Logan stranded in the Wild West where Peter finds love and Logan comes to realize how much he likes Peter.  I’ll need to reread this entire series, but I think it might just be one of those modern classics that you could just hand to people as a good Spider-Man/Wolverine story.  Really nice art by Adam Kubert.  Grade: A-

Uncanny X-Men #537 – Kieron Gillen has got a nice little story going on in Uncanny and it is making me very optimistic about how his run on Uncanny might turn out.  The story in this issue follows the deposed Powerlord Kruun from Breakworld as he attempts to exact revenge upon the X-Men who caused him to lose power during Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run.  What makes this story work so nicely is that Gillen is only playing with a few of the X-Men at one time.  Less is always more when doing an X-Men story!  Most of the action in this issue is Kitty-centric as she has to find a way to get help when no one can hear her.  Her solution is pretty darn clever.  I wish the Dodson’s could do all the art on Uncanny and it should be a law that every issue that the Dodson’s do illustrate feature Kitty and Emma Frost because they draw the hell out of those two characters.  Grade: B

The Tattered Man – This one-shot from Image by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray is a very straightforward.  It’s Halloween and some druggie kids take advantage of the holiday to get an old man to open his door, they bust in wanting drug money and get a little more than they bargained for.  There are some parts of this story that are a little familiar, but the execution is really tight and the creators bring it home by not being afraid to kill a few characters who you would usually think are “safe”.  The highlight of the issue was probably the old man recounting his background as a Holocaust survivor (just going to show that you can tread familiar ground if you do it well).  Nice art, especially on the design of the supernatural force of vengeance that shows up.  Palmiotti & Gray could have a nice creator-owned winner with this and this could easily become an ongoing series.  Grade: B

The Incredible Hulks #629 – This was a very good conclusion to a pretty good story arc that teamed up Bruce Banner/Hulk his ex-wife Betty/Red She Hulk.  The story has lots of good Hulk moments.  What Pak does really well is sell the “Oh no!  Now you’ve made him mad!” moment.  You know, the scene where the bad guy whacks the hell out of the Hulk, Hulk goes flying 15 miles through the air and smashes into the ground, but when Hulk climbs out of the crater you just know that the other dude is in HUGE trouble.  It’s hard to capture that moment, but Pak does it really well.  We also get some really good Banner/Betty stuff in this issue.  Betty wants to be with Bruce, but as Red She Hulk, she has other plans.  The only downer in this issue is that I don’t see how the ending jibes at all with what happened in Fear Itself #2 where Banner and Betty are working out their issues in a rain forest.  Is there a writer who cares less about that sort of contemporaneous action than Matt Fraction?  Great art by Tom Grummett too.  Grade: B

Spider-Girl #7 – There are some good elements in this issue, but the negatives kinda balance things out.  The good is seeing Spider-Girl teaming up with Spider-Man to take down some bad guys.  We’re so used to Spider-Man being “the kid” who is always the one being childish and inappropriate and annoying the piss out of the other heroes, that it is kinda fun to see the role reversal and Tobin handles that really well.  There is also a very creative moment when Spider-Girl overwrites the code of a murderous robot’s AI with the game Angry Birds to keep the robot from attacking (unless someone acts like a pig, of course).  But, the downsides are here too.  For one, I don’t want Spider-Man in this book.  Nothing screams, “This character cannot carry his/her own title!” like having Wolverine or Spider-Man co-star.  The other problem I’m having is that this issue is full of Spider-Girl punching out room’s full of commando guys.  Spider-Girl has no powers and is a ~80 pound teenage girl.  I don’t care if she was “trained by Captain America”, she just can’t hit hard enough to have her main attack being punching and kicking 230-pound guys.  Watch some MMA and get creative with how these undersized characters can take down a bigger dude!  And we have a classic Marvel cover fail that shows Spider-Girl punching Screwball (who isn’t even mentioned in the issue).  Grade: C  

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of May 18, 2011

Try as we might, there are always a few comics that slither through the cracks and don’t get the full review treatment here at WCBR.  Still, it probably makes sense to tell you whether we generally liked the issue or not.  Thus, the Quick Hit Reviews….

X-Men: Prelude to Schism #2  – In the category of “blatant money grabs” we have Prelude to Schism.  The Schism event itself should be pretty hot (written by Jason Aaron and a host of A-list artists), but clearly someone at Marvel figured that if they published a title like Prelude, the hardcore X-fans would buy it even if it wasn’t telling a necessary story.  We are now two issues into Prelude and we still don’t know what is really going on any more than we did at the end of issue #1.  All we know is that something horrible is coming to Utopia and there is a question of whether they should evacuate and that somehow Cyclops and Wolverine will fight over it (although we only “know” that last part for promotional materials/interviews).  It seems that this series will consist of Cyclops getting counseled by his various chief advisors.  Last issue, he got advised by Xavier.  This issue we get Magneto’s advice which comes wrapped in a pretty good story about Magneto’s origins as a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany.  Not bad, but we already knew that.  Art is not great as the wonderful Roberto de la Torre (who drew issue #1) is replaced by Andrea Mutti who I just personally don’t like as much.  Grade: D+ 

Generation Hope #7 – After a really shaky beginning (due to odd publishing decisions), Generation Hope has kinda found its footing as a series.  This second story arc was pretty solid as we saw Hope and her “lights” (with Kitty Pryde along as chaperone) head off on a mission to find yet another new mutant.  If you like stories about new characters, you’ll like this series because we’re still learning who these kids are, how they behave, what their powers can do, etc.  Also, from a sheer conceptual standpoint, there were some winner ideas.  For example, the new mutant is an unborn baby who is so afraid of being born that he is using his power to turn everyone around him into mindless attack drones.  Or you can look at how the good guys avoid this power: by having Kenji extend a meat-tentacle and “plug in” to each of their brains via the back of their heads.  Freaky.  It also led to a moment when they wanted to plug into the unborn baby’s head and my brain quickly said, “NOOOOOO!  They’re not going to show that are they?”  Thank goodness the meat tentacle just plugs into the back of the mother’s head.  Whew!  I thought some tentacle porn was coming!  So, the story in this issue was good and solid.  I still question whether we really need more mutants when there are so many who don’t get enough time in the main X-books.  Salvador Espin’s art is very solid from a storytelling standpoint, but isn’t otherwise good or bad enough to spend much time on.  Grade: B-

Alpha Flight #0.1 – How’s that for stupid numbering?  In theory, the whole point of Marvel’s .1 initiative was to create jumping on points for fans who were maybe afraid of jumping into the middle of a series.  Why you need a .1 issue when #1 is coming out in a few weeks is beyond me.  And, I’m giving the creative team a bit of a pass because this issue stinks of “publishing gimmick”.  The story really isn’t that compelling because I don’t think what we got in this issue is “the story” that we’ll get in the true #1 issue and it doesn’t even do that great of a job of showing new fans who these Alpha Flight characters are and what they can do, nor does it do lots of things to appeal to fans of the original John Byrne Alpha Flight from the early 1980’s.  If I had to guess, Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak had a really cool story for the “real” Alpha Flight series and someone in editorial or publishing said, “Hey!  The fanboys are positively salivating for this series.  Let’s come up with a quick .1 issue because they’ll buy it.”  I didn’t think the art got the job done either.  Alpha Flight needs old-school, superhero art.  Someone like Tom Grummet would be perfect; or Dale Eaglesham who will draw the regular series.  So, this issue wasn’t great, but I still think the regular series is worth checking out.  Grade: C

Astonishing X-Men #38 – Another creative change on this series after we got the much-delayed issue #37 last week.  Now we have Christos Gage writing and Juan Bobillo on art.  The summary is that the story is pretty good: The Astonishing X-Men go into space to rescue Agent Brand from a research facility overrun by the Brood.  It’s fun and jaunty and I LOVE the Brood and they will always have a soft spot in my heart because my first issue of Uncanny X-Men was #162 which was kinda the beginning of the original Brood story.  [God that was a great story!]  The thing holding this issue back from a higher score was the art, so we’re ending up with a pretty average issue.  I generally like stylized art, but this was just not working for me as a lot of faces (especially Beast) just looked bizarre and detracted from my enjoyment of the whole issue.  Nice job on Storm, though.  Grade: C

-Dean Stell

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Quick Hits Reviews – Week of May 11, 2011

Try as we might, there are always a few titles that don’t get the full review treatment here at WCBR.  What can we say…  Those guys publish a LOT of comics and it’s hard to get to them all.

 

The Incredible Hulks #628 – If you’ve followed the news, you’ve probably seen that Greg Pak is ending his LONG run on this title around issue #635 or so.  And, he is really going out with a bang.  This has been a very fun story arc that follows Bruce and Betty Banner as they try to retrieve Pandora’s Box from a bunch of bad guys in a flying fortress.  The Banner’s aren’t getting along all that well, so there is lots of fun, biting banter between the two.  Sometimes it even plays into the story as in one place where Hulk needs to get angrier and she starts telling him that he stinks and when that doesn’t work, she starts telling him about her sexual activities with other men since they broke up. It’s pretty funny, and great superhero action abounds.  It certainly doesn’t hurt to have Tom Grummett drawing the comic.  His classic superhero style doesn’t really have a bad panel in the whole issue and he really nails those scenes when Hulk-action happens and you can almost feel the ground shaking.  Great stuff.  Grade:  A-   

 

X-Men Legacy #248  – A lot happens in this issue as we see the X-Men recovering from Age of X.  Ironically, this mop-up issue ended up being stronger than the actual Age of X story was.  The first part of the issue deals with Emma offering mind-wipes to X-Men who want them, and as you can imagine, not everyone wants the same service: Cannonball wants it all gone, but Frenzy wants to keep her memories of her relationship with Cyclops.  We also dig into Legion a bit and Xavier and Nemesis’s new plan for helping him cope with his personalities.  I’m (personally) not that excited about Legion being a part of ongoing stories, but we’ll see what we get.  There also looks to be some more Rogue/Magneto/Gambit love-triangle stuff going on.   Yawn… But….the big news is that it looks like the X-Men are finally going to go find Rachel, Polaris and Havok who have been missing in space for ~5 years (since the Brubaker run on UXM).  THAT is a story I’m looking forward to seeing.  The art is a bit of a mixed bag.  Jorge Molina has some great panels and some others where characters look funny, but the storytelling is always solid.  Grade: B-

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of April 27, 2011

The last Wednesday of the month is also know as “The Week When Marvel Tries to Kill Us” by releasing everything they possibly can so that we can all throw our backs out as we leave the comic shop.

New York Five #4 – Here is an early contender for “miniseries of the year” and I’m going to be highly pissed when it gets left off those lists in favor of a bunch of miniseries that end in December because comic fans have the attention span of a mosquito.  This whole series has been a really touching slice-of-life drama as we follow these young ladies in the spring semester of their freshman year at NYU.  This issue brought things home in a major way.  For one thing, someone dies and the characters are left to ponder on the transitory nature of their lives: They’re all moving on in life and the little group of friends is moving apart.  We’ve all been there and had friends who seemed like the most important things in our lives before something changed because someone took a new job or moved or signed up for classes at a different time of day from you, and you just drift apart.  That’s life and Brian Wood really nails that sentiment.  I’ve gushed on Ryan Kelly’s art before (and own an original page from issue #1), but not only does he do a tremendous job on the young ladies who are the center of this book, but he also makes “The City” a co-starring character itself.  This is a “must read” for everyone and especially so for anyone with any affinity for New York.  Grade: A 

Velocity #4 – Oh la la!  Kenneth Rocafort is a beast!  This series wraps up a very good and straightforward tale of Velocity racing against the clock to save her Cyberforce teammates from a deadly virus.  Every panel that Rocafort draws of Velocity just oozes energy.  She just looks fast even when she is standing still.  He’s got a really powerful understanding of human anatomy and muscle groups.  Sunny Gho does a pretty nice job of coloring too.  Even though the story was really simple, I think Ron Marz deserves some credit.  It’s almost like he knew that this series would take almost a year to come out and kept it simple so that each time all you had to remember was “race against the clock to save teammates.”  If you’re an art fan, this is a must-buy in collected form.  Grade: B+

Morning Glories #9 – This title continues to be confusing, but in a very good way.  Sometimes I get highly annoyed by books that are being mysterious and opaque (see: Batman, Inc.), but I think Nick Spencer is pulling off the confusion because we actually have a hope of learning some answers.  In this issue, we follow one of the students, Jun, and see his back story, how the Morning Glories Academy became interested in him and what lengths they were willing to go to in order to get him as a student.  Yikes!  Once again, I can’t wait for next month.  I’ve heard a lot of folks complain about the art in Morning Glories, but I really don’t get it.  It’s true that it isn’t JH Williams or Mike Kaluta, but I think Eisma is doing a wonderful job with telling the story in terms of his panels and layouts.  Grade: B+

FF #2 – The story here is pretty top notch as the FF has to fix Doom’s brain damage and it has all the moralistic tropes where there are opportunities to kill Doom that are passed upon.  Fortunately, Hickman doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the morals because the idea of the FF seriously killing Doom is just preposterous.  And, we get a pretty cool cliffhanger ending featuring Valeria who is having a really nice run as a character under Hickman’s pen.  The only thing holding this back for me is Epting’s art.  It isn’t that I think Epting is a poor artist, but I just don’t think his realistic style is suited for FF.  I’d rather see Epting illustrate a crime story and let us have an artist who is more cartoonist on FF.  It doesn’t have to be outlandish cartooning. Let’s just have someone like Dale Eaglesham.  Grade: B

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of April 20, 2011

Sheesh….we can’t review everything in full…..  🙂

Wolverine and Jubilee #4 – So, this n

ice little miniseries written by Kathryn Immonen wraps up and it is a must read if you are a Jubilee fan because this arc really establishes where she will be going forward.  Kudos to the X-creative team for taking an interesting direction with Jubilee.  I know there are some folks out there who feel vampired out, but I’d much rather have characters cast into a new status quo and then see what various creators do with the new toys than allowing characters to languish.  Besides being important for Jubilee, this was a good story if you enjoy seeing the fatherly side of Logan too.  And, of course, for the art snobs out there, it just doesn’t get much prettier than Phil Noto.  If you can find an artist who draws prettier eyes on female characters, I would like to see it.  He also get’s bonus points for drawing women who look like actual women as opposed to back-arched, DDD-boob porn creations.  Very nice issue.  Grade: B

Avengers Academy #12 – Why aren’t more people reading this series?  Every single issue by Christos Gage & Co. has been pretty good and this one continues the string.  This issue picks up the Academy kids’ battle with Korvac where the kids have had their consciousnesses placed into their future selves, giving them access to their adult-level powers so they can beat Korvac.  Not only is it fun seeing what these kids could become, but it’s fun seeing some of them (Mettle & Hazmat) being quite disappointed that they still face limitations in the future!  Great story and the Raney/Hanna art combo does a great job of telling the story.  Grade: B  

Twilight Guardian #4  – I actually kinda liked this series about a slightly mentally ill (or maybe not) female comic fan who goes out on some really uneventful patrols in her neighborhood.  This issue she runs into her long-lost daddy which is kinda cool.  This comic really has a lot of potential because Troy Hickman did the hard thing: he made me care about his central character a lot.  That isn’t easy to do.  Now, he just needs to punch up the pace of the story a little bit.  I don’t know any of the circumstances behind this story’s creation, but this smacks of a story that could’ve used a ‘laying on of hands’ by a good editor.  Still, it is a good story and I’ll be keeping an eye out for Hickman’s future work because he knows how to do the hard stuff.  The art isn’t too shabby either.  Grade: B-

’68 #1 – It’s another zombie book and while it was nice to read and had pretty good art, it didn’t seem to have a lot novel to offer beyond a unique setting (to me, at least): the Vietnam War.  The story is that of an isolated firebase in Vietnam that is about to have the shit hit the fan in a much worse way than the Tet Offensive!  This issue actually represents one of my favorite parts of any zombie story: The early stages where no one really knows what the hell is going on.  The art is nice and crisp too.  If you like zombies, this seems like a solid series but I don’t see anything stunningly unique about it yet.  Grade: C+

Iron Man 2.0 #4 – I really like Nick Spencer and I wanted this series to be good, but it just isn’t and I honestly couldn’t even make it through this issue.  For me the problem is really on the side of the art.  I hate to pee on artists because I can’t even draw a stick figure very well, but Spencer is trying to tell a deliberately paced story and this story needs the art to do a little more to help it along.  This issue features page after page of people talking about Palmer Addley in debriefing rooms.  I question that a little bit as a story-telling device because LOTS of people are going to struggle to read it, but the art doesn’t help at all.  Some of it is due to choices that Olivetti makes (boring poses and really boring backgrounds) and some of it is the choice of Olivetti for this issue at all.  Olivetti’s art is very pretty, but this uninked, straight-to-painted-colors style just isn’t vital enough to hold the reader’s attention.  Talking heads needn’t be this dull (see Spencer’s Infinite Vacation #2 where the girl in the story discusses her aversion to the technology of the story).  Why Marvel hampers these C-list titles (like War Machine 2.0) by screwing around with the art — by making odd art assignments and then switching the artists around — is beyond me.  Grade: D

-Dean Stell

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Quick Hit Reviews – Week of April 13, 2011

Try as we might, we can’t always do full reviews for every comic on the stands.  Thus, the Quick Hit Reviews….

Steve Rogers: Super Soldier Annual #1 – Leaving aside the awkwardness of having an Annual for a title that was a 4-issue miniseries that wrapped up ~6 months ago (silly editors!), this was a pretty hot issue.  This is Part 2 of the Escape from the Negative Zone that is mostly an X-Men story.  In the Uncanny X-Men Annual a couple weeks ago, we saw Cyclops, Hope, Namor and Dr. Nemesis get sucked into the Negative Zone and come into conflict with Blastaar.  As you might guess, in this issue Steve Rodgers goes in to save them and fun ensues.  This issue (written by James Asmus) is just packed full of Steve kicking ass, Cyclops and Hope kicking ass, Namor being really well written (not too haughty) and Nemesis being 100% smart-ass fun.   Ibraim Roberson & Jim Charalampidis combine to give the book a very pretty, painted look.  I (personally) like to see a little more inking in my comic art, but I know some people just go bat shit for this painted stuff and this issue is really well done and beautiful.  Grade: A-

Incredible Hulks #626 – Even though I dropped Incredible Hulks during that boring Dark Son story arc ~8 issues ago, I had recently reread the Planet Hulk story and said, “THAT was awesome.  Maybe I should be reading Incredible Hulks again!?!”  This is a fun story that sends Banner off to track down Betsy.  Betsy and he aren’t getting along and she has fallen in with a bad crowd, but the real problem is that her continual use of her Hulk powers is threatening to get her stuck in Hulk form.  OH NO!!!   Banner wants to stop that, but to find her he has to go to a black-tie affair in Italy.  Of course, not everything goes smoothly and thanks to some unstable molecules, you get to see Banner transform into the Hulk without ripping up his tuxedo (which was pretty awesome).  This is a worthwhile Hulk story and Grummett’s art is very much the old-school, superhero art that I like.  Looks like I’m back on Hulk for a while!  Grade: B

Black Panther #517 – It is not a good thing when you sit down to do the Quick Hit Reviews, look at Black Panther #517 and think, “What was that about?  I remember that Francesco Francavilla’s art was gorgeous, but other than the title nominally being about Black Panther dealing with eastern European gangsters in Hell’s Kitchen, I don’t remember anything about the plot.”  While that is surely a sign that Dean gets too many comics, it also means that this story has run its course.  Like many Marvel story-arcs: It would make a snappy 3-4 issues story, but just doesn’t have the meat to be 6 issues.  Never really understand stretching out stories so that they make better trade paperbacks.  BP is probably selling ~30K units in the direct market, so Marvel will mess up a good story (by stretching it out) only  to have 6 issues to collect into a trade paperback that will probably sell a combined 1,000 units between the direct market and everywhere else.  That’s smart right there! </sarcasm>  I usually don’t pick on covers, but I will here: The cover text promises Black Panther vs. Luke Cage (because we all know that the kiddies love black-on-black fights), yet the cover seems to show Black Panther with his hands around the throat of some white guy.  Bad coloring!  Oh….and SPOILERS….there really isn’t that much to the BP vs. LC fight anyway.  Grade: C (good art, story getting long in the tooth)

Quick Hits Reviews – Week of April 6, 2011

 

Is there ever going to be a “light week” of comics again?  Seriously, have these companies see the sales numbers?  Try as we might, sometimes we cannot get to everything for a full review, thus….the Quick Hits Reviews….

Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #5 – This was my “pick of the week” and it really came out of the blue because you usually don’t expect a middle issue (i.e. 5 out of 9) to be anything too special.  But, this issue had great action as the Young Avengers (and a few “old” Avengers) tangle with Dr. Doom, some neat time-hopping courtesy of Iron Lad and the return of an iconic character to the Marvel Universe.  So, it get’s “full credit” for story.  And Jim Cheung’s art is just incredible.  Sure, this comic only ships every other month, but it looks like Cheung is doing twice as much work and I’ve had zero trouble keeping the story straight in my head during the wait between issues.  This is really worth jumping on, folks!  Just go get the back issues and ride along from here.  Grade: A

Who is Jake Ellis #3 – This is a good example of how to maintain momentum in a story as the creators hit issue 3 out of 5.  Because they sprinkled their mysteries with a lot of Jason Borne-action in issues #1 and #2, the reader isn’t bored by now with the titular mystery.  I’m still legitimately curious about who Jake is…..and who Jon is for that matter.  I also really like that there seem to be only two plausible explanations for Jake (that he is a figment of Jon’s imagination OR he is some other ghostly agent somehow grafted to Jon), but that both seem equally plausible.  This is just a really tight series and I love the art.  Nice job guys!  Also very happy to see that this has sold well enough that it’ll we’ll be getting more than just the five originally planned issues!  Grade: B+

Sweet Tooth #20 – Here’s a tip (and a minor SPOILER)….. if you are a character in a post-Apocalyptic story and you stumble across some kind of underground sanctuary that offers copious food and shelter AND it is only being occupied by a singular caretaker, you should probably run away, right?  Do you think you’re the first people that he has brought into his trap….ooopppps…..I mean “HOME”.  Again with this issue, Lemire is setting up another story that is probably going to have a kinda grim ending because….well…..it’s Sweet Tooth.  But, you just know it’ll be told with style and will tug at your emotions in a way that very few comics will.  I’m also loving seeing Sweet Tooth himself begin to asset himself a little more in his dealings with Jepperd.  He’s come a long way from his days in the woods.  Great art!  Grade: B+

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of March 30, 2011

What a strong week for comics!  Almost everything last week was at least “pretty good” and that makes us happy at WCBR.  Even though we’ll do out duty and tell you when a comic SUCKS, we don’t take any pleasure in doing so and it’s a LOT more fun to talk about what was good.  However, even though we review a TON of books in-full, there are always a few stragglers that get lost in the shuffle.  Thus, the Quick Hit Reviews….

Scarlet #5 – I can see people having two very different sets of thoughts on this title.  If you’re a police officer or otherwise a general believer of the benevolence of the government, you’re going to really hate this comic.  On the other hand, if you’re a more of a free will, distrust of the “man” type of person I can’t see how this doesn’t scratch a Libertarian itch.  I’m in the latter camp and just love Scarlet.  This issue represents the ending of the first story arc that has seen the titular Scarlet go from meting out some justice against dirty cops, to being the sudden leader of a political movements.  All of a sudden she’s Che Guevara, but she isn’t sure that’s what she wants to be OR if she even can be the leader her “people” want.  Meanwhile we are also introduced to some possibly sympathetic heroes within the power structure and that’s good too.  I know some people decry Alex Maleev’s art as “tracing”, but I don’t care.  Even if he is tracing (and he swears he isn’t in interviews), I like the way he’s using it.  He’s just creating art differently than more traditional artists and it is hard to argue with the stylish results.  Grade: A-   — Dean Stell

Captain America #616 – Well, here’s a comic that’ll earn your $4.99, with a main feature and no less than five back-ups.  Better still, for the most part, it’s all pretty good stuff and there are absolutely no reprints or picture galleries to bulk out the package.  This meaty package is all story content and that immediately earns it some points.  The main feature, written by Brubaker and featuring Bucky in a nasty Russian prison, is really dark stuff and a surprising component to an anniversary issue.  That said, if anything, it functions as an effective teaser for what’s to come.  Dark and nasty as it is, it lets Brubaker shine, somehow melding gritty prison drama with giant killer bear deathmatches.  It’s desperate, dire stuff but also a lot of fun and it brings the hard-hitting drama and excitement back to Bucky after a couple of fairly ho-hum arcs.  I hope the actual Gulag story arc keeps this up.  With five back-up features, you know you’re going to get a mixed bag, but Cap #616 actually delivers the goods for the most part.  While the stories by Kyle Higgins/Alec Siegel and Mike Benson/Paul Grist are fairly forgettable, they have the decency to at least look good.  Meanwhile, the Howard Chaykin and Frank Tieri/Paul Azeceta stories are rock solid, really effectively ruminating upon, and making use of, the sense of “history” that is such a big part of who and what Captain America is.  The real barn-burner, however, is the masterpiece delivered by Cullen Bunn and Jason LaTour.  Tremendous artwork and writing deliver a story that not only focuses upon the importance of Captain America, but does so in a manner that relates it to contemporary times and issues in a manner that doesn’t feel preachy or forced.  Bunn and LaTour paint a picture of a troubled modern America that needs a Captain America more than ever.  And it still finds room for AIM spider robots.  It’s the kind of story that has me very intrigued regarding Bunn’s future Marvel work.  Grade: B+   — Alex Evans

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of March 23, 2011

Amazing what a sneaky heavy week of comics last week was, eh?  But, we here at WCBR endeavor to bring you the broadest coverage possible, even when we can’t get a full review up for every comic on the stands….

Daredevil Reborn #3 – Ugh.  This is really not good!  I hate to be flip at the expense of something that a comic creator put his effort into, but if Diggle’s run on DD were a boxing match, the referee would be stopping the fight and sparing us the final issue of this miniseries.  Let’s just skip ahead to the Mark Waid series coming in a few months and be done with it.  Here we continue seeing Matt Murdock (and his well groomed neck beard….Where does Matt shave btw?) locked into his battle against small-town cops from hell.  The story just isn’t that compelling.  Matt/Daredevil isn’t a creature of the desert…….he’s a man of the shadows and that’s the only place I want to see him.  Did you know he can drive a truck?  Well, he can provided that he kicks out the windshield first so his echolocation works…..  Did you know while driving said truck, he can also tell when he has cars catching up behind the truck?  Don’t know how that one works…..  Grade: D-

Kick Drum Comix #1 – Now this was some electric stuff!  Holy cow did I love this issue that was actually the very LAST off the pile due to his non-standard format (kinda Golden Age height, but not Golden Age width).  Brought to us by Jim Mahfood, Kick Drum Comix offers two stories of urban action that will be loved by anyone with an affinity for 80’s/90’s R&B/Urban/Punk music.  The first story follows the saga of the Popmaster from his roots in early hip-hop music to becoming a take NO prisoners, hard-core music mogul and his eventual struggle with his estranged daughter.  The second story is revolves around two urban youths with a love for Johnny Coltrane.  Mahfood illustrates the whole issue in a crazy style that is really hard to explain.  His panels are SO content-filled that you can just stare at them and continue to notice great new elements.  Just be sure to buy this.  You’ll love it! Grade: A

Echoes #4 – The psychological creepfest keeps chugging into a strong 4th issue.  As if the basic premise of the series wasn’t disturbing enough (whether a 30-ish man has “inherited” from his father a predilection for killing small girls and making tiny dollies out of their skin, bones & hair), now we are teased with a couple of double-reverses to the story that makes me wonder if it is all in the main character’s head.  Joshua Hale Fialkov is really bringing the plot twists in this one!  And Rahsan Ekedal is contributing great B&W art by being the one thing that this series really needs: creepy!  Grade: B+

Marineman #4 – So what if it is a little derivative of Aquaman?  We all wish Aquaman could be this interesting of a character!  Steve Ocean (a.k.a. Marineman) is a really fun character that seems to have all of Aquaman’s abilities, but he isn’t a dick!  In fact, he’s so incredibly likable that you spend most of the issue cheering for him to succeed.  Ian Churchill is doing career-best artwork on this series too.  Everything about his Marineman just screams “larger than life” and I’ve rarely seen more compelling underwater scenes due to the outstanding coloring.  Grade: B+

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of March 16, 2011

We try our best to review all the new comics that come out every week, but despite our best efforts…that just isn’t going to happen.  But, some comics still deserve a mention (for better or for ill).  Thus, we bring you the Quick Hit Reviews….

Generation Hope #5 – This series has really turned the corner from its troubled start as a continuation of an Uncanny X-Men story arc (what a stupid way to launch a series, btw).  Now that Hope and the “5 lights” are back on Utopia, we can begin the process of getting to know these new mutants (including Hope) a little better.  This issue covers a lot of good ground by establishing that Cyclops accepts that Hope is not a newbie hero (by virtue of her lifetime of training under Cable), but that the Lights are not “field-ready”.  And, I also really liked the change in art this month to Jamie McKelvie.  The only negative for me in this issue was the depiction of Emma Frost.  This Emma is a little too angry and nasty.  I usually think of Emma as being haughty and aloof (or at least that is how I like to see her).  And, Emma is wearing…gasp…a dress in this issue.  I don’t mind the dress per se, but when you do a major change like that there should at least be some explanation since she fights villains in lingerie in all the other X-titles.  Grade: B

Hulk #30.1 – This was probably the truest of the .1 issues I’ve read from Marvel.  They were advertised as being “jumping on points”, but most have been nothing of the sort.  This issue does a nice job of recapping what has happened to date in Hulk and also setting the stage for the next phase of the Red Hulk’s stories.  Of course, Jeff Parker is such a good writer that he doesn’t need to waste the entire issue on this recap and table setting, he manages to squeeze an entire story into this issue too as the Red Hulk comes into conflict with one of Thunderbolt Ross’s former protégés.  The art is very strong, but not quite as good as when Gabriel Hardman inks his own work and Bettie Breitweiser colors it.  Grade: B

Red Robin #21 – Ugh.  This was really bad.  As in I-couldn’t-be-bothered-to-finish-reading-it bad.  This overly long story arc about the Unternet has been a real stinker; it has had little excitement and no cohesion with the rest of the Bat universe.  The other thing killing this title for me are the general delays on the Morrison and Finch Bat-books.  With those not coming out, I find that I’m generally less invested in the entire Bat-family and I start to consider dropping everything but Batgirl and Detective Comics (which are both stellar).  As I mentioned above, I made it about 10 pages into this trippy issue of Tim Drake fighting with various colored villains (where I couldn’t remember who they were) and where Tim kept manifesting other uniforms and stuff.  Was this in a computer program?  I just couldn’t remember.  Grade: D

-Dean Stell

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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

Quick Hit Reviews – Week of February 23, 2011

Sometimes there are soooo many comics published in a given week (ahem….I’m looking at you Marvel) that despite the heroic efforts of the WCBR writing staff, we simply can’t give every comic a complete review.  Thus, the Quick Hit Reviews…

New York Five #2 – Wow is Ryan Kelly a great artist!  The story here is solid, slice of life stuff as we follow our four college freshmen as they adapt to life in NYC, but the star of this issue is Kelly’s art.  His character work is really strong as young ladies are all cute and express appropriate emotion, but his attention to the city around them in just incredible.  The city just feels alive. I really need to track down New York Four and I encourage everyone to check out this Vertigo series.  Kelly and Tommy Lee Edwards (on Turf) made a LOT of artist’s backgrounds look like dog food this week.  Grade: A-  — Dean Stell

X-Men: To Serve and Protect #4 – All I ask of an anthology series is to give me one really memorable story.  I almost don’t care if 3/4 of the issue is crap as long as I get that one stellar tale.  This issue has a BIG mission accomplished for Jed MacKay and Sheldon Vella’s story of Dazzler, Misty Knight & Colleen Wing engaged in roller derby death match involved a really wacky version of MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for Roller Derby!!).  Vella’s art and colors are just amazing.  Toss in a good finale to the Rockslide/Anole story that has woven through this anthology series and you’ve got a winner.  I love the X-office continues to publish these anthologies.  Grade: B+  — Dean Stell

Quick Hit Reviews Week of Feb. 16, 2011

Some weeks it is just insane how many comics get published.  Despite the intrepid efforts of our writing staff here at WCBR, we simply can’t do a full review of every comic.  Thus, we bring you the quick-hit reviews where we say a few words about some comics that were pretty darn good and some others that are not so much…

Silver Surfer #1 – The story here is pretty good stuff.  It isn’t the best story ever regarding the Surfer, but a very solid story involving Earthly affairs with a surprising guest starring role from the High Evolutionary.  This action seems to dovetail with the High Evolutionary story occurring in the Iron Man – Thor miniseries from Abnett & Lanning.  What really puts this issue over the top is the art.  Stephen Segovia and Victor Olazaba do an awesome job drawing and inking (especially inking) the Surfer and Wil Quintana contributes great cosmic colors.  I am trying to pare down my “non-essential” Marvel titles, but this display of art will probably have me sticking around.  Grade: A-  — Dean Stell

Wolverine & Jubilee #2 – This is a great series so far that casts Wolverine in his best role: as mentor to a younger hero.  Not only is this my favorite role for Wolverine, but it has always been the best way to bring new members into the X-universe.  Jubilee isn’t new, but she is in a new “role” as she adapts to her vampiric powers (which we learn more about in this issue).  Kathryn Immonen even works in some very funny bits such as Wolverine’s revelation that one can apparently get one’s tongue stuck to Colossus if it is really cold outside.  I DEMAND that that story be in the next Strange Tales!  This issue is also telling a neat story that shows Logan and Jubilee finding zombies in Siberia and it would have gotten a better grade if not for a wholly confusing final page.  Seriously, the final page made me wonder if there was a printing error and I’d missed something.  Phil Noto’s art is again wonderfully pretty.  He draws such pretty eyes on his women.  Grade: B+  — Dean Stell

Venom/Deadpool #1 – No character but Deadpool could pull off a comic like this, and I highly doubt that many writers other than Remender could have written it. This fourth-wall slaughtering romp through the Marvel U is a great deal of fun, with in-jokes, creative references and absurdity to spare. The artwork is big and bold (as well it should be for this kind of a tale) and the story itself–Deadpool is on a quest to find the Continuity Cube, thus making himself the single most relevant character in the Marvel Universe–is a very funny concept that both Remender and Moll execute very well. I must admit, I’m glad I bought the single, $2.99 comic rather than trying to piece together the four mini-chapters that were spread out over four different books. The story is good enough, and fun enough, that $2.99 feels just about right. Any more cost–or effort–than that would be a little much though, even for a ‘Pool-addict like myself.  Grade: B    — SoldierHawk

Justice League of America #54 – What a difference new art makes!  Bagley’s time on this title was pretty drab, but I really, REALLY like the work that Brett Booth is doing in this issue.  Booth’s classic figures (with a beautiful fine line from inker Norm Rapmund) combines really well with Andrew Dalhouse’s understated colors.  I so enjoy this muted color scheme to brilliant and shiny colors.  The story is pretty good too showing Eclipso coming “back” and beginning to recruit shadow-powered villains.  Very little actual JLA in this issue, but that’s fine.  Hopefully this is the arc where James Robinson’s turn on the series finds its footing.  Very promising.  Grade: B  — Dean Stell

Captain America: Man Out of Time #4 – This series continues to be a wonderful character showcase for Steve, and a more overarching look at his current relevance to the Marvel Universe. I especially like Cap’s being forced to face the less-savory parts of American history he’s missed (rather breezily–or perhaps, very calculatingly–passed over by Tony Stark’s version of the temporal tour.) I am and always will be a huge Tony Stark fan, so the contrast we see between his America, and General Simon’s America, was fascinating, and a lot of fun to read. My only complaint is that, in this issue especially (and mostly for the sake of pushing the story along), Steve seems awfully naive. I understand that both he and the 40s are supposed to represent a more innocent and morally straightforward time, but…c’mon. Cap’s a soldier. He fought the Nazis for crying out loud. He’s seen the absolute worst of what humanity has to offer…and he’s really THAT shocked by the fact that, yes, crime and Bad Things still exist in America today? I do understand why he might be disappointed, but Waid and company spend far too much time milking that for the sake of a larger message.  Grade: B-   — SoldierHawk

Quick Hit Reviews: Week of February 9, 2011

 

Yeesh… What a lot of comics last week, huh?  Especially after the preceding week being so light that we didn’t even need to do a “quick hits” feature.  That’s randomness for you!  But, the upshot of this weekly feature is that all of the writing staff at WCBR have pretty extensive pull lists and despite our best efforts, some issues don’t get a full review.  Thus, we bring you “quick hit reviews”

Black Panther: Man without Fear #515 – Good and bad with this issue and story.  The good: Francesco Francavilla’s art is just incredibly good.  He’s a real master of dark, moody and atmospheric art.  A bonus is that he colors his own work, so there is a very clear sense of lighting.  I’m also enjoying the story by David Liss of a depowered Black Panther fighting eastern European gangsters.  My only quibbles are that the script is a little verbose and that I don’t understand why Marvel doesn’t just let Francavilla do the cover also.  Really?  A Simone Bianchi cover on a Francavilla book?  There is nothing similar about their styles.  Grade: B — Dean Stell

Osborn #3 – What a sneaky good book this is!!!  Ms. DeConnick writes a very creepy and chilling Norman Osborn: Composed and methodical one moment and a frenzied psycho the next.  This is basically the story of how Osborn busts out of federal custody where he has been since the days of Siege.  Emma Rios’ art is a show stealer.  She is really, really talented and gets to draw all sorts of cool detailed stuff in this issue (including a bad ass riot at the super-villain prison).  Grade: B — Dean Stell

Carnage #3 – Zeb Wells spins a really good symbiote story and Clayton Crain sells how creepy the Carnage symbiote is.  The whole story is just hopping along with the symbiote having taken a new host (that kinda made sense) and busted out of his holding cell before running across town to find a BIG SURPRISE!  This is a well-paced and enjoyable comic.  Even though I enjoyed it and am giving it a good grade, I’m going to throw a rock (or two).  Why does Carnage have to come back this way?  Why can’t a C-list character like him have a new chapter with the lady host?  That would have been more interesting (I think).  And I am really warming to Crain’s art, but wish that he wouldn’t darken the panel every time there is action.  I want to see what is going on!  Grade: B-   — Dean Stell

Tyrannosaurus Rex One-Shot – This was a fun romp.  Not much in the way of story: Caveman village getting repeatedly ruined by a T. Rex.  Village chieftain offers his comely daughter to any many brave enough to slay the beastie.  One randy young man decides to give it a try.  Lots of really good dinosaurs in this comic by Jeff Zornow (including adding the feathers that scientists are now pretty certain they possessed).  The only bummer is that it would have been nice to see a little more of the comely daughter.  Grade: C+ — Dean Stell