Comic Reviews – 9/4

Quick review round-up of the titles I came home with from the comic store this week. I must admit I did fly in the face of my personal beliefs and pick up a variant cover this week, much as I hate the concept. In my defence, it WAS a Darwyn Cooke cover and I’m a total mark for his work. (Read Parker – The Hunter, it’s excellent) As always; spoilers lie within…

Invincible Returns 1



Robert Kirkman gives us a one-shot that serves as an introduction and a quick synopsis to his much-lauded superhero series. Invincible is very much a personal favourite of mine, almost like a modern day Spider-Man. It started with a familiar premise (Teenager gets powers, also responsibility. Wacky hi-jinks ensue) but rapidly moved into arguably the best pure super-hero book Image publish.

While this is a one-shot, the story is very much in continuity and essentially a recap issue of the regular series, it reads as if it IS the latest issue of the ongoing series. (All be it with more pages, a couple of guest stars and variant covers. Look, see the Darwyn Cooke prettiness. Isn’t it shiny?) Between the discussions of the story so far, Invincible finds time to tussle with super-powered mobsters and a giant dragon. This book’s great. Setting up the current state of the Invinci-verse, showing us the main players and giving us hints of what’s to come in the next year or two, Invincible Returns 1 is a good, very packed, issue.

S.H.I.E.L.D. 1



Well, this is definitely the curio of the week. Coming from rising star Jonathan Hickman, current Fantastic Four and Secret Warriors scribe, this series will supposedly reveal the secret history behind the Marvel Universe’s legendary spy outfit, SHIELD.

While I would expect the first issue of a series to include a fair bit of set-up, I think there’s too much in this. We open with a teenager called Leonid (We’re not told his surname yet) in the 50’s being collected by Agents Stark & Richards (Hmmm, those names sound familiar) and taken to Rome where he is lectured by not-the-Illuminati while they wear buckets on their heads. While Not-The-Illuminati tell him that their organisation has protected earth for thousands of years, we are shown flashbacks of an Egyptian warrior defeating a Brood invasion (Wikipedia if you don’t know who they are, basically Giger’s Alien but more insectoid), a Chinese Emperor facing a Celestial (Female no less, with appropriate lumps and bumps), Leonardo Da Vinci realising there’s something wrong with the sun and only he, his jetpack and his mysterious gold ball (leave it…) can save the world. Oh, and Gallileo points his telescope at Galactus.

Back in the present day of the series (1961) Leonid is approached by his father, the Night Machine, and taken to a locked room in the Not-The-Illuminati’s hidden city. His father seems to be an enemy of the NTI and kills the Swiss Guard-alikes facing off against Agents Stark & Richards while Leonid meets Leonardo Da Vinci.

For a first issue, there’s a LOT to take in and little explanation of what it all means. I get the impression that this series will read much better in one sitting rather than i monthly chunks.

The art is by Dustin Weaver, not someone I’d seen before but I like his style. He successfully marries highly detailed art with a sketchy quality that keeps it looking free-flowing and comfortably loose. A promising start but a little too much too soon.

JSA All Stars 5



Matt Sturges’ JSA Spin-off is heading towards the end of its’ first storyarc. Stargirl has been forced by the villain of the piece, Johnny Sorrow, to destroy her weapons and been transported to the extra-dimensional Subtle Realms. As she tries to find a way home, she meets fellow JSA Member Atom-Smasher with whom she has a mutual attraction. Their journey through the Subtle Realms causes them to admit their feelings to one another. just as they declare their love, a door opens and there is an un-shown shocker in the room before them.

Meanwhile, back on earth (I love how phrases like that seem totally acceptable in comics) the rest of the JSA and Johnny Sorrow’s Injustice Society fight a demon summoned by Johnny when he betrayed his team. The Icicle, 2nd generation supervillain, has some interesting exchanges with the JSA harking back to Geoff John’s work with the character. It’s suggested that he’s not really a villain with a capital V and could some day switch to the side of the angels. Nice subplot to keep simmering away for another day. Someone who looks like Indiana Jone’s magician daughter turns up, doesn’t really explain who she is, or even give her name, and things escalate as the demon gets out of control. Well, more so.

Freddie Williams recently switched from traditional pencil and paper art to working entirely on computer. I think you can tell, as his art is somehow not as crisp as his earlier efforts on Robin. In fact even his work of The Flash was sharper than this. There’s just too much going on in his art now, too many lines and extraneous detail that makes it feel cluttered rather than appropriately detailed. That’s not to say it looks bad, it’s just not as nice as his earlier work (Similar to John Byrne’s early 80’s work for Marvel compared to his stuff these days) although the back-up strip suffers from some very basic art that seems phoned in by Travis Moore.

It’s an adequate issue, but so little happens, I feel this suffers from the ubiquitous “writing for the trade” mentality of insisting all storyarcs last 6 issues for ease of packaging into a trade paperback. The arc could have been kept tighter and two issues shorter.

The Astounding Wolf-Man 22



My second Kirkman book of the week; Astounding Wolf-Man continues towards its’ conclusion at issue 25 and this issue has the same fast-paced feel as the last. Gary Hampton’s hairy alter-ego apprehends one of the recurring criminals from the series, has a moment with Mecha-Maid (although not quite the way the cover suggests) and heads off to do battle with his nemesis, the vampire Zechariah. While he fails to finish off the haemovoracious one, he has bigger things to worry about as an entire brood of werewolves attack him in his home. We’re left with a pretty intense final image suggesting things might still get worse, before they get better, for our hero.

Jason Howard’s art has been consistently good onthe title, his action sequences convey motion well and everyone has a very distinct look and manner. I hoep he’ll continue to get work after this series ends. His style might be deemed a tad too cartoony for DC or Marvel but  I’m sure he’d make a hit of the right book. 3 issues remaining and not everyone’s going to make it out alive…


Turf 1




Jonathan Ross, TV host, award show compere, radio DJ and general bon vivant, has finally channelled his love of comics into his own title. Generally, celebrity comics have the stink of desperation from the publisher and misplaced confidence that talent in one medium lends itself to another. Gerard Way’s Umbrella Academy series from Dark Horse was a notable exception to this rule.

So; is Turf, Wossy’s first foray into the genre, accompanied by Tommy Lee Edwards on art chores,  another Umbrella Academy or a Tyrese Gibson Mayhem?

Oh, where to begin… Firstly, Tommy Lee Edwards, you should know better. You’re a great artist, why are you working on a book where the vampires speech is spelt with V instead of W and double S to emphasise their vampiric, eastern-European accents? Oh yes and the text is in a different clipped font too, just in case you didn’t realise they speak all funny.

Prohibtion era New York and the vampires have moved in on the tradtional gangsters’ turf. [sarcasm] Wow, vampires, what a great idea, that’s a theme that’s not played out and outstayed its’ welcome. [/sarcasm] An alien crash lands too, but by the time we meet him for the first time, I was wondering if I had a misprinted page in the middle of my book.

There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before and nothing really to recommend it beyond the art. The dialogue reads stilted, clichéd and forced. I know it’s his first attempt and I should be more generous but I just didn’t enjoy the issue. if it’d come from any other writer and had a less capable artist on it, this book would disappear.

I think a book inspired by his wife, Kick-Ass script writer Jane Goldman, called Pneumatica would be a far easier sell, maybe with Adam Hughes or Frank Cho drawing it?…