Weekly Comic Review for 2/8/12
Time to catch up before I head off to pick up this week’s comics.
Demon Knights #6 – The battle ramps up as the big buns go running in in the form of an assault rhino and dragons. The Horsewoman takes off to get reinforcements leading to some more revelations about her odd situation. The bad guys end up breaking through the walls and hopefully that means the end of this battle will be coming up soon. With all the background on characters (including a little information on Madame Xanadu’s name), this storyline is dragging on way too long.
Green Lantern #6 – This is an interesting issue as Hal and Carol get some private time and Hal shows that he can still be a hero without his ring. Meanwhile, Sinestro turns to a formerly unheard of alien hero to to try take down Lyssa Drak which leads to him getting a peek into the future thanks to the Book of Black. This makes Sinestro turn back to Hal and drag him back to the Green Lanterns again. Talk about a yo-yo situation for poor Hal. He’s just Sinestro’s play toy right now which is kinda sad.
Kevin Keller #1 – Yes, this time it’s really his own title. They toss in a little bit of back story for those just getting introduced to the character. The issue revolved around Kevin’s first date in a while and the comical events related to his last date and the lead up to this one. It’s a fluff title but it’s fun and I’ll be picking it up for now.
Legion Lost #6 – With the help of the Martian Manhunter (who can’t figure out how the Legionnaires know who he is), the team pulls together for the first time since issue #1. Alastor escapes and J’onn informs the teams that time travel is one way so they are stuck there. (Given they’ve traveled back and forth before, hopefully they won’t believe that.) No news on what happened to Gates but hopefully we’ll find that out soon. We could use more information about them being in the Flashpoint Event too and how long before everyone gets outside of it.
Resurrection Man #6 – Mitch Shelly is trapped in Arkham Asylum and he needs to die to get the power he needs to get out. Telling people in a psych facility that you want to die is not the smartest thing in the world though. To make matters worse, a corrupt cop is setting inmates loose. And to really complicate things, the background check on Mitch shows that he has no fingerprints and all the people named Mitch Shelly are accounted for. So, who is he? The questions keep piling up.
Scarlet Spider #2 – Kaine is still struggling over whether he is a hero or not. For the first time, he dons his costume… and of course gets mistaken for Spider-Man. It looks like he may have found a home in Houston too because, as the police tell him, they don’t have any super-heroes there to save the day. This, and everything he’s seen lately about how others react and live, is leading him in the direction of being a hero after all. This book is interesting because Kaine is trying so hard to get out of Spider-Man’s shadow that it causes a lot of conflicts between doing what he know he should and doing something different than Peter would. It’ll be interesting to see how he becomes his own person separate from Spider-Man with so much in common. As the header on the cover says though, “All of the Power. None of the Responsibility.”
Secret Avengers #22 – Hawkeye (one of my favorite Avengers) takes over running the covert team as Captain Britain comes on board. Their first mission has them tracking down a woman who appears to be part of a group of adaptoids but she has no clue who they are. (Given they have names like The Ideal, The Origin, The Urn, and The Swine, I’m not sure I’d want to remember them either.) The team gets their asses handed to them but there will be another battle next issue I’m sure. On top of it, from the Next Issue page, it looks like Venom is joining the team. Not quite sure what to expect of the book right now. Not too fond of the art and we’ll see how the writing and new directions go.
Vertigo Preview 2012 – With so much of the old Vertigo folded into the regular DC universe now, I guess they need to beef things up. The new books include an New Orleans voodoo comic, a post-Victorian era story crossing zombies and vampires (Don’t they each take up enough stories on their own?), an alien abduction/politcal book, and another Fables spin-off. They are really stretching for it this year.
Overall, it’s a pretty average week. Nothing spectacularly great. If I had to pick 3 books based purely on art and story, I would go with Green Lantern, Resurrection Man, and Scarlet Spider. I’d still say pick up Kevin Keller #1 though since it is a first issue and we need to support as much positive gay influences in comics as we can get. It’s good to see more and more mainstream gay characters in comic books, especially when they get their own.
