Quick Reviews - 8/25/2010

How hard is it to read and enjoy comics while having a randomly screaming 2 week old baby around? Quite. Our daughter, Victoria Charlotte, has arrived finally and our lives have been changed. Mostly for the better, but some things take some getting used to. Although, it does take me much longer to actually read my comics now so I feel like I'm getting much more entertainment for my dollar.  Here she is with her picks for the best books of last week which I never got around to writing reviews for :

But here are some quick thoughts on books for this week. Click below for more.



Batman #702 – I enjoyed this two-part RIP / Final Crisis tie-in story, but I can see that those who did not read Final Crisis will be fairly lost. This story seems like it contains the stuff that Morrison had in his head but wasn’t sharing with us…you know, the stuff that actually helped Final Crisis and RIP make a little more sense. Either that or it’s just a massive re-tooling of the story to fix some glaring issues. Either way, I enjoyed it.  Now let's get on with the return of Bruce Wayne!


Action Comics #892 – Action is really close to making it back to my regular list, but we’ll see what happens after this interesting Luthor-centric story is done with. I love the new portable battlesuit. It looks more like Iron Man armor than the huge bulky suit that Luthor typically wears. Lex is really just being Lex in this story and that’s never a bad thing.  This issue also made me realize that early next year, Action Comics will celebrate it's 900th issue.  So that means, if I calculated correctly, sometime in 2018 we will celebrate Action Comics #1000!  Good stuff.  Just around the time that my daughter will really despise my wife and I, we can be happy that Action has 1000 issues under it's belt.


Punisher Max : Happy Ending – This issue made it onto my pile solely on the strength of the artist. If you are not familiar with Juan Jose Ryp’s work, I recommend checking out the Avatar mini-series Black Summer about a superhero who snaps and takes out the American government by force. His hyper-detailed style is full of depth and intricate linework that is just plain stunning. This story isn’t bad for a quick one-shot but if you were expecting tons of Punisher you will be disappointed. The book focuses on the unlikely team-up between a married accountant and a Korean massage parlor worker, with the man in black just showing up every so often to say Punisher-esque things. Decent read though and the art by Ryp is unbelievable.


Wonder Woman #602 – I’m one of the defenders of the new direction for Wonder Woman, and someone asked me the other day how the new story was going. My main thought was that, at the moment, it’s not exactly action packed but more intriguing. What I mean is that it’s not a total page-turner like Walking Dead or Green Lantern, but I’m really interested in where they are going to take our favorite Amazon princess in the future.  By the way, the new costume is much better without the leather jacket

The action does get ramped up a bit here and we seem to be through all of the intro to Diana’s new status quo so maybe we’re getting somewhere. I’m definitely on board for the foreseeable future, but this is a year-long story and I’ve seen them fall apart before.


Salem’s Daughter #5 – OK, I’ll admit that I picked this book up because of the sexy Liefeld cover. Yes, I like Liefeld’s work. Not all of it, but I do have a soft spot for sexy, extreme-style comic women. I’ve never read Salem’s Daughter before and I honestly did not plan on reading this one because I do pick up comics occasionally just for the cover art.  Although I have enjoyed Raven Gregory's stories before so I'll get around to it one of these days.  Did I just review a comic and only talk about the cover?  Yes.  Yes I did.


Fantastic Four #582 - Jonathan Hickman has completely sold me on the Fantastic Four. This book is the perfect vehicle for him to introduce some pretty deep concepts in similar fashion as other great conceptual creators like Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis. The art in the last arc has been decent but I have missed Dale Eaglesham who went over to Steve Rogers : Super Soldier. Next arc begins Steve Eptings run on the book and I am most definitely looking forward to that.

What else is going on?  Well, I'm in the midlle of a big project to catch up on The Walking Dead by RObert Kirkman.  In the past week I've tackled about 48 issues and I think the book is just under 80 issues at the moment.  If you haven't read the story, it is well worth the massive amount of catch-up required.  I haven't read a story that is this engaging and emotional in a long time.