Reviews For 2/27

[Guest raptor]

There's a lot, so lets start

 

eXiles #10- Perfect, Everything a Superhero should be. Action, tragedy, Galactus. Life Is Good. (4/4)

 

X-Treme X-Men: Savage Land #4(of 4)- Bleh. I love X-Treme, but this was just a horrible cast-off story not good enough for the main title. It gets a star because it's OVER. (1/4)

 

Ultimate Spider-Man #s 18/19- Finally, Bendis gives us some action to go with his perty soundin' words. Great arc to re-introduce Doc Ock and Kraven. (4/4)

 

Uncanny X-Men #402- Casey gets bumped off just as he was hitting his stride. X-Corps is pretty much the best from the X-Men in a while. (4/4)

 

New X-Men #123- Last issue was pretty dissapointing, but this one did a lot of good. It should have been the first part of Imperial. I HATE the new Angel, though. She's crap. (3/4)

 

Ultimate X-Men #15- Now this is how you right a exposition/filler issue. It gives us a lot of character depth, and the way in which Millar uses Professor Xavier's article as the main text was interesting. (4/4)

 

Daredevil #30- Bendis' Memento-esque storyline is comic excellence. Silke is coming off as a very dangerous villain. That's a tough thing in this era. (4/4)

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #42: Ugly Little Monsters Part 3(of 3)- Excellent ish. The last part was pretty horrible, but this redeemed it. Plus, Spike gets to play the hero AND make Buffy feel like crap. (4/4)

 

Green Arrow #12: Man, I feel like I'm handing out too many 4's. This gets one too. Crap. Well, it's more Kevin Smith goodness PLUS Hawkman! And GA getting it on with Black Canary! Whooo! (4/4)

 

Howard the Duck #2(of 6)- This is the last 4, I swear. Howard the Mouse gets in a helluva a lot of trouble and it's funny. What more do you want. At least George Lucas had nothing to do with it. (4/4)

 

X-Men Icons: Nightcrawler #4(of 4): I hate the completest in me. I knew from issue one that this would be crap (like XMI: Rogue), but I couldn't bring myself to stop getting it. Maybe I wanted to know hoe it would suck. C'est la vie. (1/4)

 

The Ultimates #2: On the whole, I'm pretty dissapointed so far. Far too much exposition, and not enough action. I'm sure it'll get better, though. (2.5/4)

 

Wolverine/Hulk #1: Convoluted. Crappy. Boring. Hulk is a horrible character. Bleh. (1/4)

 

X-Men Evolution #3: It introuduces some of the better characters, but this has so many mistakes, that it makes the entire story seem that much more horrible. (1/4)

[Guest starvenger]

>eXiles #10- Perfect, Everything a Superhero should be. Action, tragedy, Galactus. Life Is Good. (4/4)

 

Exiles v3 is a fun book.  I still don't like Morph though.  And that's quite the cop-out "death" that they did with one of the characters.  The new character (Can't say who it is, as it gives away who "dies") seems to be taken from the "What If (v2)...  Captain America formed the Avengers?" but I'm sure Winick is doing something else.

 

Last thing: Do we really need another pregnancy angle?

Rating: 3 out of 4 - Buy!

 

>Uncanny X-Men #402- Casey gets bumped off just as he was hitting his stride. X-Corps is pretty much the best from the X-Men in a while. (4/4)

 

Picked this one up just for the hell of it, and to find out why the hell the GenX girls were on the squad.

Rating: 2.5 out of 4 - Read

 

>The Ultimates #2: On the whole, I'm pretty dissapointed so far. Far too much exposition, and not enough action. I'm sure it'll get better, though. (2.5/4)

 

This book feels like a novel so far.  We had the flashback in #1, and an introduction to the other main characters (except Thor) in #2.  By #4, all hell should probably break loose, but getting there is a bit of a pain (kinda like the beginning of LotR).  Still, Hitch's art continues to impress me.  Compare it to some of his old X-stuff, and even his StormWatch stuff, and see how much he's improved since then.  We'll see how it is when we get to 6.

 

Rating: 2.5 out of 4 - Buy...  for now

 

Now, for stuff that Raptor didn't cover:

 

The Legion #5 - I liked the post-Zero Hour Legion.  Now it's just kinda there, you know?  The art seemed erratic at first, and got better by the end.  I'll be dropping this title.

 

Rating: 1.5 out of 4 - Avoid!!

 

SI Swimsuit Issue 2002 - Hey, I've been collecting them since 1991, so I can't stop now.  Shitloads of bikinis.  I miss Stacey Williams though.  There are apparently some articles in there as well.

 

A good coffee table magazine to have, as long as you don't know any feminists, and you live on your own.  

 

Rating: 2.5 out of 4 - Buy if you like chicks in bikinis.

 

I haven't read the latest Maxim yet, but I'll get on that.

[Guest areacode212]

So I walked into the comic shop on Thursday evening, and none other than Alex Ross was standing there chatting with some people. He was there to do a signing for Paradise X, and it was weird, 'cause there are usually a TON of people there for signings, especially for a big name like Ross, but there was like nobody on line aside from a few stragglers who were talking to him. I guess it was late, and he had been there for a while. It's too bad that I had forgotten about it...I would've brought along Kingdom Come or something.

 

Anyway, I bought a lot of comics this week, but I've only read about half of them so far. Let's get this started:

 

New X-Men #123 : "Oh my stars and @%#*ing garters" Why couldn't Morrison write like this for DC? His JLA usually consisted of the team rushing off to fight the threat, with very little "downtime" devoted for character development, which often made for cool stories that contained interesting *stuff*, but felt a bit hollow because there was little interaction between the characters, other than some standard Batman/Superman scenes (yeah, I know Morrison's excuse was that all of the members had their own titles where they could do that stuff). This issue of New X-Men was a nearly complete 180 degree turn from his JLA style. It has some really good characterization, and he doesn't forget to move the story along, on several fronts, not to mention some AWESOME lines of dialogue. Ethan Van Sciver & Tom Derenick's pencils are very pretty & detailed. I wouldn't mind if they became Quitely's regular fill-ins. Good shit. 4/4.

 

Tangled Web #11 (Best of the Week (so far)): Valentine's Day at the Daily Bugle. This is easily my favorite issue of this series (yes, I liked it more than the ones by usual areacode212 blowjob recipients Ennis, Rucka and Milligan). As I've said before, and will say again (since my Catwoman review is coming up) Darwyn Cooke is a terrific artist, and now shows that he's a pretty good writer as well. He throws in a lot of fun little details and is really good at body language and facial expressions.  The pages that introduce Jill and Miss Kay are fucking CLASSIC (I especially love the contrast between their desks). The story itself is very, very funny, and there are some hilarious situations. What a great comic. I need to find out what else this guy has done. 4/4, and I won't be surprised if this gets nominated for some kind of Eisner (the Eisner people loved Kyle Baker's "Letitia Lerner" story, so this kind of thing is up their alley).

 

Batman #600: "Bruce Wayne: Fugitive" kicks off with this issue. According to Previews, the cover of each issue of Fugitive will contain "piece of the puzzle" and an "important clue" to solve Vesper's murder. In this issue, the Bat-crew gets to see just how changed their mentor has become, as Nightwing finally snaps. We also start to get into Bruce's head a bit, as we see a few flashbacks through his eyes. Since this is issue #600, we're treated to not 1, not 2, but 3 backup stories, all supposedly "lost stories from the vaults", but it's pretty obvious (for a number of reasons) that they're by contemporary writers & artists. They're still pretty entertaining, though, especially for the nostalgia factor. 3/4

 

I still have a bunch of comics to review, but it's 11:52 pm, and my boss is gonna yell at me if I come to work late tomorrow, so I'm going to call it a night.