Comic reviews

I'm a little behind.  Well, I'm about 3 weeks behind I think.  This will be a rapid run through.

Spoilers ahead for Hawkeye 17, Revival 18, She-Hulk 2, Sex Criminals 5, Harley Quinn 4, X-Men 12, Hawkeye 18, Supergirl 29, Red Lanterns 29, Larfleeze 9, Wonder Woman 29, Adventures of Superman 11, Forever Evil: Rogues Rebellion 6.

Comic reviews!

Hell I haven't done these in a long time.  Here goes nothing.
Spoilers ahead for the following:

Comic reviews - only 1 week old!

Reviews and spoilers for Wonder Woman 23, Supergirl 23. Animal Man 23, Justice League Dark 23, X-Men 3, Revival 13,Adventures of Superman 3.

Comic reviews for weeks 18/25th July

Spoilers ahead for Hawkeye annual, Supergirl 22, He-man 4, Wonder Woman 22,  Justice League Dark 21, Justice League Dark 22, Justice league America 6, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man 24 (I think), Wolverine 7 (I think), Thor (can't remember the number), Animal Man 22, Larfleeze 2, Revival 12, Batman/Superman 2.

Whew that's a lot. I'm behind again. Onwards.

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Hawkeye annual  - So we discussed this on Radio Bamf on Sunday, but technical problems meant that the recording didn’t go so well. Pox.  Anyway I wish I’d read this before the show because it turned out to be pretty good fun. It leads on from earlier issues – 4 and 5 I think, which I hadn’t read.  Which I think I’m happy about, otherwise the cover might have given the plot away, since it’s all about Madame Masque getting revenge on Kate Bishop.  As I didn’t know the context I found it delightfully slashy and i honestly thought they were going to jump into bed.  At least I did till it was revealed that Kate knew Masque wasn’t so sincere.  But hey, I have my dreams.

Supergirl 22 – Cyborg Superman shows up and has plans for Kara. Kara is not impressed.  Mahmud Asrar is no longer on interiors and his replacement is just not that great.  I didn’t particularly enjoy this.

He-man 4 – A friend who visited the shop with me bought me this.  She-ra is short haired, scarred in the face, and working for the bad guys.    She doesn’t know she is He-man’s sister.  He-man doens’t even know he has a sister.

It wasn’t bad, but I don’t quite understand why a property that was originally created for children, and is rather ridiculous in concept, has been revived and written for adults.*  Why not revive it as a children’s comic?  Why not come up with a brand new idea for adults?

 

*I do know why, it’s to cash in on the nostalgia market. Doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.

 

Wonder woman 22 – this has a wonderful soviet styled arty cover.  Inside it gets better. Wondy and her group are New Genesis, meeting the Highfather et al for the first time.  Highfather wants to take Zola’s child, Zeke, but Orion tricks him.  The best thing about this book is that Diana comes across as a leader.  It feels like she is the title character in the issue.  She makes the tough decisions, stands up to the Highfather and is generally reminiscent of the Wonder Woman from before the new 52.  This was a satisfying read.

 

Justice League Dark 21 – This was an impulse buy.  From what I recall, Xanadu is haunted by visions of the future, particularly a future romance with Deadman.  She tries to turn her back on all this.

 

Justice League Dark 22 and Justice League America 6 – I can't remember the details of these too well.  I know Green Arrow wasn't quite as Ollie-like as I'd wish, and Wonder Woman was far more Diana-like than I;d hoped for.  There was a lot of fighting and panic.  Hephaestus was in it and it made me think how talented the artist for Wonder Woman is, and how these new gods don't look right when someone else draws them.  Overall I enjoyed these two installments in the Trinity War story.

 

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man – Gwen complains about Miles not being Spider-Man to Aunt May. There’s more Cloak and Dagger stuff.  Spider-woman visits Miles and begs him to put the suit on again.  Spider-Woman reveals she is clone of Peter Parker.  This is stupid.

 

Wolverine – Logan no longer has a healing factor and now has to come to terms with the fact he’ll die.  Blimey :o  I did not see that coming.  Having just finished my epic X-Men run I feel that this is quite  a godo time for me to jump into a Wolvie title.. whether I will or not remains to be seen.  Anyway, good work Paul Cornell.

 

Thor – The three Thors and their granddaughters are still alive, hooray!  And they are fighting back, hooray!  Gorr kills his wife for calling him godlike, so Gorr’s son betrays him and sides with the Thors.  Cor.  This is still nice epic stuff, but I doubt it’s a long term keeper.  When the Gorr plotline is over (I assume it will finish soon) I’ll flog the issues on ebay.  They are well worth reading but not quite of high enough quality for me to keep them forever and ever.

 

Animal Man 22 – This was twee yet gross.  Maxine is in the Red and as she’s the new avatar (?) of the Red it responds to her consciousness and remolds itself around her thoughts.  So it’s all twee and full of baby and mother animals and it’s got rolling hills and it looks like a child’s story.  But the fundamental nature of the Red and it’s purpose can’t change so the organ fields are still there – these are literally fields where organs are grown. Brains and stomachs and lungs etc.  That’s the gross part. Maxine finds these and decides to grow her dead brother, Cliff.  The problem is, without a soul it’s just a simulacrum.  A fleshy, squishy, floppy, gross simulacrum.  Maxine realises this and gets rather upset.  She’s not given up on her plan to hunt for Cliff’s soul though.  She will get him back!

 

Larfleeze 2 – Fun. Larfleez eis always fun.  The voices of all the characters are fun.  The situation is fun. The fight scenes are fun.  This is just all fun. Fun fun fun fun fun fun.

 

Revival 12 – This wasn’t fun. It’s a great read and it’s entirely different to the other comics on my pull list, but it’s not fun.  It’s grim and thoughtful.  I liked it a lot.

 

Batman/Superman 2 - This is just fabulous.  The art is gorgeous.  It's all gothic sillouhettes and moody stuff.  It's a really mature read, not mature like for adults, for complex and thoughtful.  It feels like the creators are really into the story and really care about what they are doing.  I loved it.   One panel made me tear up.  You should all be buying this.  It's great.

Reviews! Of absolutely nothing recent!

Several weeks ago I won some comics in a London Super Comic Con twitter competition. Hurrah.  I have finally read them and so here come the reviews.  They are all pretty old so there's no real danger of spoilers.

The Walking Dead 100

This was surprisingly good.  Given that I enjoyed volume 1 of The Walking Dead, and thought vols 2 and 3 were extremely boring and by the numbers, I'm quite pleased with this.  However it is far more violent, in feeling as well as action, than I expected.  I guess part of that it that is the 100th issue, and events are ramped up for 100th issues, but man alive, this was a bit shocking.  One of the characters gets his head mashed (I mean literally mashed) with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.  There's very little zombies in this, it's all human led violence.  The build up to the scene gave it a greater sense of inevitability and horror.  It kind of reminded me of the way that George R R Martin kills of his characters.  So it's well written and well delivered, but I don't want to read it again.

The Waking 1

Utter shit. Absolute dross.  Published by Zenescope so the cover is all zombie tits and ass and the inside is all moody crap.  With a sex crazed wife who insists on sex every hour.  Her husband is clearly traumatised by this but of course 'the man who doesn't want sex' is just a joke.  Ugh. Absolute crap.  This deserves burning.

Bedlam 1

This is written by Nick Spencer, who I only knew from that one Supergirl issue he was involved in. This is a 44 page comic and the quality of the pages is superb.  It's a bit of a confused comic, but confused in a deliberate sense. The reader is meant to be as mixed up as the events, I think.  The villain is Madder Red, a batshit crazy serial killer.  Then there's a dude who I think is meant to think he's Madder Red, but may not be.  There's a hostage situation, an arrest, threats of suicide and murder and some street muggings.  It is incredibly well put together, very well written, and the art is something else.  Half of the pages are reds and greys.  The rest are muted and everyone looks a little ill.

This is a really great comic and has made me reconsider Image's reputation. If the rest of their books are like this then I get why they are such a big deal and I am now very tempted to check out the rest of their offerings.

Shuddertown 1
This is another crime comic. Again, really great art.  Our hero is a cop with 4 dead people on his hands.  All appear to have been killed by someone who died at least 2 days previously.  There is a long monologue about truth and about how the hero sets people free from lies.  It's a good comic, possibly a great comic, but it's not for me.   I just don't like crime stories that much.

Revival 1
I don't like crime stories except for the occasional times when I do, and then they blow my socks off.  Like Revival.  Man, this is a-mazing.  I will be buying the rest of this series.  There's a town in America where dead people keep coming back to life.  There's a cop and her sister and an old lady who keeps pulling out her teeth but they keep growing back.  There's an FBI investigation into biological terrorism and there's an old pensioner who keeps hitting on women half his age.  This book is amazing and I will be adding it to my pull list.

Star Trek/Dr Who crossover 7
This was pretty crap.  I'm not really a fan of spin off comics, or Dr Who this really isn't for me.  The art is pretty - it's painted and everyone looks like the actors.  But I do not care for it.  Not one jot.


Criminal 1
It's another crime comic, this time with a corrupt cop.  The main villain is looking after one of his dad's mates, who is a heroin addict and has Alzheimer's.  I didn't really care for it.

Valiant 2013 sampler
Utter shit.  I don't like any of Valiant's stuff, and in fact we reviewed Harbinger on the last episode of Radio Bamf and I explained why I thought that series was dross.  None of the other offerings in this sampler make me more impressed with the publisher.

Marvel Zombies 5
I loved this!  I thought I'd hate it, I thought it would be a gimmick, but no, I loved it.  It is really good fun.  It has the robot from nextwave calling people fleshy ones. It's set in the old midwest.  There are adverts for a Dazzler ongoing in it.  I liked all of this.  I will be tracking the rest of the series down.

Avengers 1
This is dated July 2010.  It's issue 1 in yet formation of an Avengers team.  It's pretty bog standard.  OK for what it is, but really suited towards current readers who are familiar with the characters.  I'm not fussed.