22.4.11

Comics reviews 4/20/11

Running a bit late this week. Pull had a nice mixture of books this week; a bunch of books with dinosaurs, a few books I've come back to after dropping off for a while, surprisingly a couple of books full of interview scenes.

Comics for 4/20
Avengers Academy #12
Doctor Who: A Fairytale Life #1 (of 4)
Mass Effect: Evolution #4 (of 4)
Power Girl #23
Iron Man 2.0 #4
Hulk #32
Super Dinosaur #1
Fables #104
Thunderbolts #156
Black Dynamite: Slave Island

18.4.11

Issue Forth - Week of 4/13/11

No true #1 issues in my pull this week, but a new event kicked off over at IDW, a couple new story-arcs started over at Marvel, both helmed by Kieron Gillen and one of which with a freshly re-re-branded title, and there were a couple of excellent one-shots starring two of comics' greatest Nazi-punchers.



15.4.11

Comics reviews 4/13/11

Ten reviews. Three (horribly run-on) sentences each. GO!

Comics for 4/13:

Cobra Civil War #0
Carnage #4 (of 5)
Batman and Robin #22
Uncanny X-Men #535
Captain America: The Fighting Avenger one-shot
Journey Into Mystery #622
Batgirl #20
Iron Man 2.0 #3
Hellboy: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish
Amazing Spider-Man #658


12.4.11

A Few Space-Dollars More

Perhaps I'm a bit biased as a fan of both western and space stories, but the space-western is a genre that I think has been woefully underdeveloped. That's why I'm always thankful when iTunes starts downloading a fresh episode of Sparks Nevada, Marshal On Mars.


Since 2005, the Thrilling Adventure Hour (formerly Thrilling Adventure And Supernatural Suspense Hour) is a monthly comedy show currently performing at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles. The show consists of a series of scripted sketches done in the style of old-timey radio serials, such as paranormal dectives/lushes Frank and Sadie Doyle (Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster) in Beyond Belief and The Adventures Of Captain Laserbeam featuring John DiMaggio as the eponymous hero, with a rotating cast of regulars, and a crazy-impressive list of guest stars. Being stuck on the east coast, I've missed out on the live shows, but thankfully, starting this past January they've begun posting a weekly podcast of rotating episodes, available on iTunes and through SoundCloud. Easily my favorite of these is the two(-robot)-fisted pulp tale of Sparks Nevada (Mark Evan Jackson) and his somewhat-loyal sidekick, the native Martian Croach (Mark Gagliardi).

Playing the western pastiche to the extreme, America has expanded "ever westward to the wildest west all, outer space", and Sparks roams the Martian wasteland, righting wrongs and wrangling hyper-cattle. Featuring guest stars such as Samm Levine, Chris Hardwick and Comedy Death-Ray's Scott Aukerman, the episodes so far have been telling one-off stories of Spark and onus-bound Croach's adventures in the Martian frontier, encountering aliens, robots, rustlers and mad preachers, as well as competing for the affection of the Martian-raised vigilante, the Red Plains Rider (Busy Phillips), and an over-arcing story of an impending doom coming to Mars in the tail of Haley's Comet.

The first episode, recorded at the Thrilling Adventure Hour's first show at the Largo, is available here, along with all their other currently-released episodes. The series is fun, with dry wit and over-the-top stories, a great play on the old serial tropes, and every episode opens with a damn-addictive theme song by Eban Schletter and Andy Paley. I think Sparks himself put it best: "I'm from Earth."

9.4.11

Maybe I'm just being Space Paranoids but...

Whether we admit it or not, I think a lot of us were worried how Marvel getting gobbled up by Disney would affect things. I think at this point we can admit it's been fairly negligible so far, other than, say, the quarterly deaths for sales thing. So I imagine some eyebrows were raised back in December when Spider-Man debuted this outfit the same week Disney's Tron Legacy opened:

Art by Humberto Ramos, colors by Edgar Delgado
Now, even though that costume was discarded a couple of issues later, it's been said that this was a coincidence, and I'm willing to believe it, especially since Marvel was already openly promoting Tron with a series of variant covers around the same time. And this could just as easily be a coincidence like the Spider-Man thing, but seriously, this is the grand villain reveal you debut the day after Tron Legacy comes out on DVD?

Left: Fear Itself #1, Art by Stuart Immonen, colors by Laura Martin, Right: The Worthy concept art by Marko Djurdjevic
Granted the Worthy concept art has been circulating for a while longer now but c'mon, that's just pushing it. However, for the time being I'll remain skeptical of any underhanded cross-promotion, at least until May brings us the X-Pirates.

8.4.11

Issue Forth - Week of 4/6/11

So I'm guessing this might get repetitive quick, especially on top of the reviews, but figured I'd try a feature of looking at the first books in a series that came out in a week, at least the ones I picked up. This week, my pile included the initial issues of Identity Wars and Fear Itself, and the first issue of Herc, all from Marvel, as well as the start of the new B.P.R.D. flashback story, The Dead Remembered.

Nothing Will Ever Be The Same: Infestation review

After ten issues and eleven weeks, IDW's crossover event, Infestation, came to a close this week. I originally saw some promotional stuff on it at NYCC last year, promising some zombie mayhem across a handful of mini-series. Unlike the Marvel/DC events that tend to dominate the market, the premise here saw several franchises of IDW's liscensed comics, not sharing a common continuity in the slightest, coming together; Star Trek, Transformers, Ghostbusters and GI Joe, along with original IDW properties Zombies Vs Robots and CVO (Covert Vampire Operations). In the end, the books delivered what was on the tin, and for the most part they were pretty fun, but in the end the detached nature of the separate stories may have hurt the series overall.

Infestation #2, IDW

7.4.11

Super-fast comic reviews for 4/6/11

A decent-sized pull of books this week (and maybe more over the weekend) and not particularly a lot to say, in the end, so going to do a batch of quick reviews again. This time I think I'll limit myself to three sentences, but on a couple books there'll be some things I want to expand on in seperate posts. Specifically, with Infestation ending this week, I'll take a look back at the entire series rather than issue by issue and due to my habit of buying first issues even if I don't intend to follow up with the rest of the series (or even if I do) I'll start taking a seperate look at First Issues of the week and how they are at getting new readers into the books.

Speaking of first issues, among the books on my pull I missed, I really wanted to grab Nonplayer #1 and be on top of these books every other critic, blogger and fan is telling me to read for once. Sadly, though, by the time I got down to the shop tonight there was a nice, big gap in the N section mocking me. If I'm around any other shops over my weekend, I'll try and grab it. In the meantime, I take a look at Doctor Who #3 from last week, which I missed then because I am an idiot and got fooled by variant covers.

Comics for 4/6:
Infestation #2 (of 2)
Nonplayer #1 Doctor Who Ongoing #3
B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered #1 (of 3)
Daomu #3
Ozma of Oz #5
Secret Six #32
Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #3 (of 5)
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #38
Herc #1
Chew #18
Fear Itself #1

4.4.11

The symbiosis of Venom and Rick Remender

When it comes to Marvel (and occasionally in DC), I have noticed a trend in my favorite characters: they all tend to be secondary versions of core Marvel heroes. Thor is fun, but Simonson's origins for Beta Ray Bill are the pinnacle of high-concept storytelling. She-Hulk stories may not have the same anguish and angst as her cousin Bruce, but she works great as standard character and even better when she used to break the fourth wall (well before Deadpool became the poster child). And personal favorite Man-Thing is, of course, the result of a failed attempt at recreating Cap's super-soldier serum (that one, admittedly, a more substantial deviation than the rest). However, growing up with Spider-Man in the late 80s and early 90s there is one who will always have a special place in my heart: Venom.


Well, not specifically Venom, and that's why I'm writing this post. Conceptually, I am a huge fan of the Black Costume/Symbiote, but the stories the character has been used in over the past 20 years have mostly been weak or laughable, a victim of the Extreme '90s dark ages. We're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, though, as Rick Remender takes over the character and gives him a chance at redemption.

In Brightest Day, In Highest Def

No trailer shall... escape... my... sef--fuck it, I ain't a poet.

My opinions on the Green Lantern movie have been pretty polarized, swinging back and forth erratically on each piece of information that drops on it and how much I read into them. I want to like it certainly, I'm a big fan of what Green Lantern used to be and I like a fair amount of the Johns-era stuff (wearing my Red Lantern ring as I type this). But, some of the semi-realistic takes on the Corps designs, the chitinous, organic-looking armor, and, while I didn't feel the vitriol everyone else seemed to towards it, that first trailer didn't do much to alleviate fears. Although I do have to concede I hated the suits substantially less (daresay I even liked them) actually seeing them in motion, as I'd hoped would be the case. As they showed new footage at Wondercon this past weekend, however, we also got a new, full HD trailer for the film...

1.4.11

Strange Tales II

The Strange Tales II hardcover dropped this week. Didn't mention it in the main reviews as I didn't pick up the actual collection, I had already grabbed the single issues as they came out. As such, I can't really comment on the hardcover itself and anything unique to that, but still wanted to extol the virtues of the series to anyone who hasn't checked it out yet.