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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Dean’s Drive-by Reviews…

My pull list is way too long, so it seems like every week there are a few comics that neither I (nor any of my WCBR colleagues) has time to review thoroughly, but it still seems fair to give them the praise (or scorn) they deserve.

Skull-Kickers #3 – I was a little hard on the first issue of Skull-Kickers.  I didn’t think it was remotely “bad”, but didn’t see why all the fuss, why it was selling out, why people were able to sell their #1 issues on eBay at a profit before the book even hit shelves, etc.  It just seemed nutty that there would be so much fuss about a book that I thought was fine, but nothing special.  But, guess what…the 2nd issue was better than the first and the 3rd issue is the best yet.  This comic is really about a buddy-pair: rascally dwarf + huge, deadpan, contemplative dude.  There is lots of funny dialog between the pair and that almost makes the overall plot irrelevant.  It’s just fun.  The artwork is gotten better too, going from “fine, but nothing special” to “pretty good”.  If you haven’t been reading this, it might be worth checking out the trade in a few months.  Grade: B

Scalped #43 – THE WORST ISSUE OF SCALPED IN A LONG TIME!!!  Of course, that means it still gets a “B” and shows just how incredible Jason Aaron’s series is.  This seems to be kinda a one-shot with guest artist Jason LaTour and the story focuses on the all-hat, no-saddle Sheriff in the next town over from our beloved (?) reservation.  It’s just a solid story about humanity and heroism and how heroism portrays itself.  LaTour’s art is outstanding and fits with the look of the series, even if he did kinda mess up one climatic panel that shows how the bad guy took down the good guy (I stared at it for ~5 minutes total and am still unclear what happened).  Also, this issue’s story could be an important story element in a coming story arc.  We’ll have to see, but it is certainly worth reading this issue and series.  Grade: B

New Mutants #19 – The good news: I enjoyed this issue, which wraps up the “Fall of the New Mutants” storyline.  The bad news: I had a hard time remembering the events 5 days after reading it.  The title of the storyline is probably overly dramatic, but this story had a neat hook: An army expedition that went to Limbo for years and established a forward base there.  If you like the New Mutants, you’ll enjoy this issue, but it’s probably only for the mutant obsessed.  Grade: C+

Incredible Hulks #617 – I don’t like Hulk’s other son Hiro-Kala so that’s kinda affected my enjoyment of this issue.  And I just didn’t like the dramatic point of this story-arc: Hiro-Kala is flying an entire planet at Earth.  Established bad guys like Doom get to threaten the entire planet, but not newbies like Hiro-Kala.  The story is competently told, well written and the art is good, but I just didn’t enjoy this story arc at all.  Pretty sure I’m dropping this title.  Grade: C

– Dean Stell

 

Skull-Kickers #2 – Review

By: Jim Zubkavich (writer), Edwin Huang (art), Misty Coats (colors) & Marshall Dillon (letters)

The Story: The big-bald-dude/rampaging-dwarf continue their adventure to recover the body of a murdered noble.

What’s Good: “Romp…”  That is the word that best describes this comic.  The first issue of Skull-kickers was a little hard to review because of the hype surrounding it (with the first issue getting bid up on eBay before it even shipped).  In reading #1, there was a tendency to have a, “Well, it’s good, but it isn’t all that.” And some of that reaction was probably just blowback against the hype-train because (in a vacuum) issue #1 was just fine.

Ironically, this second issue is much better than issue #1, yet it is getting no hype.  There were no breathless pantings on message boards about how “Wednesday is the big day for issue #2!!!!”

What makes this issue such fun is that it just keeps bouncing along and alternating between action and humor.  First we get a big fight scene of our duo trying to reclaim the corpse they’re looking for from a troll and horde of bad guys. Then we see them interrogating a survivor for information about the bad guy’s hideout by pretending to eat him (trust me, it’s funny), then there’s a battle with orcs and we wrap up with the comical image of these two guys sharing a horse.  The action is pretty good, but the humor is really this comic’s calling card.