Weekly Comic Review for 10/31/13
OK. I officially need an assistant to keep me on track and getting posts up. I’m blaming Nintendo though. I’ve been spending way too much time playing Pokemon Y. (Yes, that’s another post I need to write up.) I wish I could make my living doing this so I could spend the time I do on the job hunt doing this instead.
Damian, Son of Batman #1 of 4 – At first when I saw this title coming out, I wondered if they were really bringing Damian back already. As it turns out, it’s actually an alternate reality book. Or, as a friend put it, can we just call these Elseworlds again? In this world, Damian is still around. He and Batman are following the trail of the Joker when one of the Joker’s traps kill the Batman. This leads him to start a series of ruthless attacks again the villains of Gotham. That is until Bruce Wayne shows up… (WTF?!?) I normally don’t follow Batman but I needed to see what was up. It’s a bit extreme so I’ll have to think about whether it’s worth the money to buy the rest.
The Fox #1 – Red Circle is back with another title based on the old MLJ characters. One interesting thing was to see that Mark Waid did the scripting for the book. Unlike the Mighty Crusaders title, this book doesn’t take itself very seriously. At the start, you see the character (out of costume) counting out the different ways that he could stop the guys who had him captured. Then we have the villainess named Madam Satan whose name (or alias) is Ms. Lucy Fur. (Lucifer? Really??) The very simple looking art harkens back the old days of comics just as the goofy humor does. At first I didn’t think I was going to like the book but as I got into it, my interest in vintage comics came out.
Green Lantern Annual #2 – Lights Out part 5 – And finally, this all comes to an end. The green, red, and indigo lanterns (along with Kyle and Carol) meet up at the Source wall to deal with Relic. (Blue is gone except for Saint Walker whose battery is gone. Yellow and Orange are nowhere to be seen. I have no idea where the other Star Sapphires have been.) It’s been cool to see the Source Wall in the New 52. (Normally, it was only seen around the New Gods.) In the end, Kyle and the entities force Relic into the force wall. The Indigo Lanterns send the others to their home locations with Hal and his lanterns going to Mogo which will be their new base. A new central power battery has already been created. In the end, Kyle escapes the wall, leaving behind the entities who refilled the emotional energy that was drained. Now to see where it all goes from here.
Sandman Overture #1 – This is supposed to be a prequel to Neil Gaiman’s original Sandman series. We start out with what seems like Dream dying. Death has a whole different look than what we’ve seen before. Instead of a goth little girl, she is very Victorian like Dream and some other characters. (The fact that you seen Morpheus after she says she’s taken him is confusing. Dream gets called into a meeting with the others of the Endless. There is a double fold-out page showing them all, with each drawn in a totally different style. The color quality of them differs so much, it’s like an art form of a ransom note. Part of me likes it and part doesn’t. There’s a lot going on in the first issue and it seems pretty confusing. I didn’t read the original series but I don’t know that it would make this much less confusing to me.
Scarlet Spider #23 – Kaine is trapped between a rock and a hard place. Kill Kraven in front of his friends or try to save them with Kraven trying to stop him. Since Kaine won’t kill, Kraven tells his daughter to kill one of them. She pics the doctor. Kaine stops Kraven’s heart with a hit and then goes to try to save Donald who is pretty much gutted. After he frees everyone to try to save the doctor, he restarts Kraven’s heart saying that he did kill him and to leave them alone. In the end, Donald is in the hospital waiting to see if he’ll survive and Wally starts looking into Kaine’s past. Things are really getting messy and Kaine is having to make some hard choices.
Teen Titans Annual #2 – This was actually a really disappointing annual. I expected more of a culmination of everything. There is still more time jumping with possible futures. The Titans end up in the future where most of the heroes were killed by Superman’s son. Gar is one of the few left. He’s green now (with no explanation why) and is stuck in the middle of a few transformation including him having a bird leg. Rose is training a new group of Titans including a female Red Devil. (I miss him!) Superboy takes on Superman’s son. He just about kills him when he gets drawn off into whatever’s going in Action Comics. Rose and Gar End up dressing up the killer son as Superboy to send him back with the Titans. I’m not sure what is going on there unless he’s meant to solve the problem with Raven. Though once there’s 2 Superboys at the same time, someone’s going to know what’s up. It seems like a lot of pages were used for very little progress.
Thor: Crown of Fools #1 – Although I don’t read it now, I’ve been a fan of Thor as well as the Warriors Three. Sif gets the guys to look into why the animals are all acting so crazy. The 5 Olympians find a castle that isn’t supposed to be there. As they investigate, they all get caught up in their own desires. It leads to a frost giant who has found a long lost artifact called the Crown of Fools which caused all this mess. It was an interesting story seeing them all caught up in their desires. The problem is that the second half of the book is a reprint of Thor #344 which doesn’t seem to have anything in common with the main story. It was still only a $3.99 issue though so I didn’t mind much.
X-Men: Battle of the Atom #2 of 2 – Battle of the Atom chapter 10 – More fighting. The helicarrier is revealed to have Sentinels on it which the X-Men have to take down. There’s an interesting homage to X-Men #1 inside but with the original team attacking Xorn/Jean Grey instead. Colossus gets killed (and supposedly so does Xorn). Xavier escapes and while most of the future X-Men go back, it looks like 1 or 2 are sticking around to deal with this. Kitty Pryde isn’t though. She even calls in Illyana to pick up her and the time-displaced team. It should be interesting to see what’s going on with All-New X-Men after this.
There’s some interesting stuff going on this week (as well as the stuff that just came out from what I’ve read so far). My top 3 has to go to The Fox, Scarlet Spider, and Thor: Crown of Fools.
