Review: Criminal: Last of the Innocent #2

Part of the genius of Criminal that I’ve always underplayed in my reviews is the art of longtime Brubaker collaborator Sean Phillips.  The two work together flawlessly, and there’s a reason most of Brubaker’s best work was done with Phillips, but for the most part I’ve always given the lion’s share of the credit to Brubaker.  I can’t do that in Criminal: The Last of the Innocent.

Review: Captain America: The First Avenger

 

 

 

 

Review: Captain America: The First Avenger.

Review: Tumor

What if you couldn’t trust your eyes, your ears, your memory?  What if your past became indistinguishable from your present?   In Tumor, Joshua Fialkov and Noel Tuazon deal with just those questions: when P.I. Frank Armstrong is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and basically sentenced to death, he’s given one last opportunity to redeem himself, one last case.   But the girl looks just a little bit too much like Frank’s late wife, a beautiful woman who haunts him when the tumor makes it too hard for Frank to separate the past from the present, reality from hallucination, and as he digs in deeper trying to protect her, he starts losing control of what’s left of his life.

Review: Daredevil #1

I think that what Bendis and Brubaker did with Daredevil was nothing short of brilliant.  Like Frank Miller once did, they revitalized and repopularized a character badly in need of both, making him relevant to a new era.  But the question remained: where do you go from there?  When he had lost so much, when he had lost everything that made him a hero… where does Matt Murdock go next?  How can you ever go darker?  Mark Waid and his sizable art team have an answer with Daredevil #1, and it’s a surprising – and extremely well-handled – one.

Review: Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #2 (of 3)

Ah, what might have been.  Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #2 gets at the heart of the conflict between monster hunter Maria Shrieve and our lovable Creatures of the Unknown, and it’s a fantastic idea: after the original Creatures were shut down and betrayed, Matthew Shrieve assembled a new team of monsters to find them, one that included Medusa and Solomon Grundy, among others.  These creatures betrayed Matthew and murdered him, leaving his daughter to seek revenge.

Review: The Red Wing #1 (of 4)

Two years ago, I’d never even heard of Jonathan Hickman, but now he’s unavoidable, creating and contributing to some of my favorite Marvel and Image titles.  He’s an immensely talented creator, and with books like The Nightly News and Secret Warriors, he’s joined the short list of creators whose work I’ll check out based almost exclusively on his name.  The most recent such title?  The Red Wing, a sci-fi time-travel war story with a somewhat retro aesthetic about a man lost in time and a son who set out to find him.  Hickman provides a lot of hooks but little idea of what shape the story to come will take.

Review: Flashpoint: Emperor Aquaman #2 (of 3)

 

Flashpoint‘s crossovers have been wildly uneven, ranging from the fantastic – Wonder Woman and the Furies – to the fairly terrible – Canterbury Cricket.  But throughout, one plot thread has held fairly strong, through three crossovers, and that is the war between Atlantis and Themyscira.  This trend continues this week with the excellent Emperor Aquaman #2.

Review: Fear Itself #3

Marvel’s summer event, Fear Itself, seems to be succeeding by sheer force of will… but succeeding it undeniably  is.  Where Flashpoint is continually tripping over itself trying to decide what it wants to be, Fear Itself has thus far proven to be a solid example of the apocalyptic action genre, and in this, it’s best issue to date, it continues that theme.  This is no stumbling block for Fraction and Co., but instead the issue that really puts Steve Rogers, Thor and Tony Stark against the grindstone.

One Shot 9: All-Star Superman #10

Just about every issue of Morrison’s All-Star Superman would probably be a good fit for this column.  With the exception of the Bizarro Earth two-parter and the two issue conclusion, every issue could stand alone as a fantastic single serving Superman story.  There are two stories in the book’s 12-issue run, however, that deserve special attention in this regard: “Neverending” and “Funeral in Smallville”.  For now, I’ll be focusing on All-Star Superman #10, “Neverending”, but believe me, I’ll come back for the other.

Review: Flashpoint #3

After Flashpoint #2, I was legitimately concerned for the series.  The last issue was scattered and uneven, trying to do a bunch of different things and failing at just about every single one of them.  The book was torn between being a big action book and a big ideas book, and it was failing at both.  Flashpoint #3, however, brings us right back on track, telling a clear, focused adventure story.  Spoilers below…

Review: Xombi #4

Everyone has one book they’ll miss most, post-relaunch.  For many of us, particularly at this blog, I think, it’s Gail Simone’s routinely excellent Secret Six.  And that’s up there for me, no doubt – Secret Six is like nothing else on the shelves on its best weeks, and it had an awful lot of best weeks.  But if I had to pick one book to make them carry over and only one, it would be John Rozum’s recent Xombi, a gorgeous, aggressively weird book that never found the audience it richly deserved.  Xombi #4 continues the book’s trend of excellence, giving us the back story on the book’s first (and now likely only) villain, Roland Finch, and the treacherous new addition to this bizarre team of heroes, Annie Palmer.

True Blood: Season 4, Episode 2 *spoilers*

 

 

 

 

 

True Blood: Season 4, Episode 2 *spoilers*.

DC Relaunch: Batman and Robin #1