reviews

Back Issue Review: Lumberjanes, DC Comics Titans, & Unstoppable Wasp

February 18, 2018 by krisis

I haven’t been doing much back-issue reading this week, which means this Back Issue Review isn’t as sprawling as its been in past weeks.

I did manage to knock out four volumes worth of youthful titles. None of the were major standouts, but they all presented nuanced looks at the meaning of friendship and identity.

Lumberjanes (2014) #25-28(AKA Vol. 7 – A Bird’s-Eye View), Boom! Entertainment, Inc
Titans (2016) Rebirth & #1-6 (AKA Vol. 1 – The Return of Wally West), DC Comics
Titans (2016) #7-10 & Annual 1 (AKA Vol. 2 – Made In Manhattan), DC Comics
Titans (2016) #12-18 (AKA Vol. 3 – A Judas Among Us), DC Comics
The Unstoppable Wasp #1-4 (AKA Vol. 1 – Unstoppable), Marvel Comics

The Pull List: Avengers, Death of Love, Detective Comics, The Flash, Paradiso, Sideways, & more!

February 16, 2018 by krisis

I’ve managed to one-up last week’s edition of The Pull List! This week, the list is a whopping 27 issues deep – one more than last week. However, its also a tick worse, with an aggregate rating of 3.055 compared to 3.17.

What did I pull this week? I caught up with Birds of Prey, Flash, and Titans to add to my DC pull list, sampled four new number ones, and dropped a pair of weak books. Here’s what I reviewed in brief:

DC Comics
- Batgirl and The Birds of Prey (2016) #19
- Detective Comics (2016) #974
- The Flash (2016) #40
- Sideways (2017) #1
- Titans (2016) #20
- Wonder Woman (2016) #40
Image Comics
- Dark Fang (2017) #4
- Death of Love (2018) #1
- Paradiso (2017) #3
- Port of Earth (2017) #4
- Sleepless (2018) #3
- Slots (2017) #5
- Twisted Romance (2018) #2
Marvel Comics
- Avengers (2017) #680
- Cable (2017) #154
- Captain America (2017) #698
- Marvel Two-in-One (2018) #3
- Old Man Logan (2016) #35
- Weapon X (2017) #14
- X-Men: Blue (2017) #21
Smaller Publishers: Aftershock, Boom! Studios, Dark Horse, Dynamite, & Zenescope
- Babyteeth (2017) #8, Aftershock Comics
- Barbarella (2017) #3, Dynamite Entertainment
- Black Sable (2017) #4, Zenescope Entertainment
- Cold War (2018) #1, Aftershock Comics
- Giants (2018) #3, Dark Horse
- Judas (2017) #3, Boom! Studios
- Xena (2018) #1, Dynamite Entertainment

Pick of the Pull

Big Two (Marvel/DC) Issue of the Week: The Flash (2016) #40, DC Comics

I have never before been so viscerally scared of Grodd. He is utterly terrifying here, and I was really concerned that we could be seeing the end of Flash at multiple points – and, in a way, we did.

Joshua Williamson is proving that he is one of the best writers in the business with this constantly thrumming plot that has been building non-stop rising action for 40 straight issues. While you could easily jump right one with every arc, each of them builds off of everything that came before. That means this run has notched itself as the third or fourth best extended Flash run of all time in under two years, and it shows no immediate signs of stopping.

Carmine Di Giandomenico continues to stun on artwork with vivid coloring from
Ivan Plascencia. This issue includes some of the most inventive action paneling I can think of reading in recent memory. The paneling of Avery catching the lighting rod is breathtaking.

An A+ book through and through, with a thrilling final moment.

Best Small-Pub Issue of the Week: Giants (2018) #3, Dark Horse Comics

There’s no denying the craft, power, and charm of Giants. For a third issue in a row The Valderrama Brothers. turn in a beautiful, action-packed comic full of heart.

We begin our story with Zedo, the boy left for dead who is now making a cavalier power-play to control the gangs of the underworld. Only a child could see things as so black and white, yet both in the last issue and here he is making vicious choices that he can’t take back.

In stark contrast, Gogi has found a group of other children who are necessarily tough but still enduringly kind. Their acceptance and willingness to give without asking anything in return is alien to Gogi. At first he resists it, then he resents it, but finally he understand that’s it’s easier to live openly then be on guard and full of distrust.

Gogi’s journey from underground child to hero in the wider wider stands in stark contrast to Zedo’s dark turn at the end of this issue. Neither boy can entirely blame fate, nor can he say that the choices were all his own. That makes Giants a powerful allegory for the role of environment on our lot in life.

We might not all be fighting giant monsters, but we’re frequently either the child who ran away or the child that was left behind. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Avengers, Death of Love, Detective Comics, The Flash, Paradiso, Sideways, & more!

Back Issue Review: Barbarella, Black Sable, Giants, Grass Kings, Shade The Changing Girl, and Slots

February 11, 2018 by krisis

This week in Back Issue Review I catch up with five indie series that have new issues out this week, plus one DC series that feels pretty indie. Between feminist explorers, giant monsters, recursive mean girls, backstabbing space pirates, and lucky retired boxers, I bet you’ll never guess what my favorites were!

This post contains reviews of the following six runs:

Barbarella (2017) #1-2
Black Sable (2017) #1-3
Giants (2018) #1-2
Grass Kings (2017) #1-6 (AKA Volume 1)
Shade, The Changing Girl (2016) #1-6
Slots (2017 #1-4

Keep reading for capsule reviews of all six runs. [Read more…] about Back Issue Review: Barbarella, Black Sable, Giants, Grass Kings, Shade The Changing Girl, and Slots

Back Issue Review: Hawkeye’s reunion, Justice League’s identity crisis, Mech Cadet Yu’s charm, & Runaways’s revival

February 4, 2018 by krisis

This week’s Back Issue Review is hyper-focused on four really amazing recent runs that would get me caught up on comics coming up on this week’s pull-list.

Seriously, these were some of the best comics out in 2017 and I didn’t even know it! They really put into perspective how energizing a well-made big and adventurous comic can be.

Join me in falling in love with these four excellent comics ahead of their new issues out this week:

Hawkeye (2017) #12-14
Justice League (2016) #34-37
Mech Cadet Yu (2017) #1-5
Runaways (2017) #1-5

The Pull List, Jan. 31, 2018: Dark Ark, Detective Comics, Moon Knight, Reactor, The Realm, and more!

February 2, 2018 by krisis

My pull list keeps growing in size as I get caught up with more current comic books! I read 21 new comics released earlier this week on January 31 – and I would have read even more if I managed to catch up on my Superman reading in time for these reviews!

Here’s The Pull List for the week, as broken out by publisher (though they’re reviewed in alpha order, below).

Aftershock Comics: Dark Ark (2017) #5
Amigo Comics: Call of the Suicide Forest (2018)
Dark Horse Comics: Hungry Ghosts (2018) #1
DC Comics: Dark Nights: Metal #5, Detective Comics (2016) Annual 1, Milk Wars (2018) JLA/Doom Patrol Special, Mystik U (2018) #2, The Silencer (2018)
IDW Publishing: Dread Gods (2017) #3
Image Comics: Bonehead (2018) #2, God Complex: Dogma (2017) #4, The Realm (2017) #5, Void Trip (2017) #3
Marvel Comics: Avengers (2017) #678, All-New Wolverine (2016) #30, Captain Marvel (2017) #128, Jean Grey (2017) #11, Moon Knight (2017) #191, Old Man Logan (2016) #34, Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey (2018) #5
Vault Comics: Maxwell’s Demons (2017) #2, Reactor (2017) #2, Songs For The Dead (2018) #1

As you will discover below, I am not shy about giving low ratings to comic books. A lot of sites shy away from covering comics they think are weak or bad, but I think that does the fans and industry a disservice. We can’t only talk about comics that are brilliant or at least better-than-average – that signals a death of critical discourse!

I’m just as interested in the weak books as the strong ones, because they help set the standard of what’s great in comics and the tough reviews might still help those books find fans.

Enough chatter – let’s take a look at my top Big Two and Indie books of the week before getting to the full list.

Top Marvel/DC Comic of The Week

Detective Comics (2016) Annual 1, DC Comics

A stunningly good tragic origin story for Clayface with the best artwork I’ve ever seen from Eddie Barrows, which is really saying something because I always love Eddie Barrows.

This is the kind of comic book single issue you can hand to a brand new fan who only vaguely knows the Batman mythos. Tom King has been knocking out terrific one-offs like that on Batman, but this James Tynion story is different in that it delves into the core of an existing character instead of inventing a new plot.

My understanding is that this departs a bit from the established Clayface original, which we’ve seen several times in the past – so, I appreciate if some regular Bat-readers aren’t into getting more of it. However, considering the events of the recently concluded story arc in Detective, this feels like the perfect time to reestablish Basil’s origin.

Top Indie Comic of the Week

The Realm (2017) #5, Image Comics

This comic is on fire!

The Realm has quickly become one of my favorite comics on the stands with its blend of post-apocalyptic terrain with fantastical monsters out of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. This issue has a downright wild amount of siege action coming from every which direction, which puts the central quest on hold while our protagonists fight for their lives. (They aren’t all successful in that fight.)

There are major shades of Helms Deep here, with the goblins trying to breech the wall of a make-shift city. The action was frantic, but never hard to follow. It even revealed some new information about our characters in the midst of the chaos. There was some wonderful panelling to build tension to a fever pitch during the battering ram portion, but it also gave us several moments to reveal things about our cast…

…the ones that survive, anyhow.

And now, on to the other 19 comics I read that were released on January 31, 2018!