New Comics

It Came From the Back Room #17

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Phil

Dwayne McDuffie died last week, on February 21. He was a co-founder of Milestone Comics, and animation producer of Static Shock, Justice League Unlimited and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, but in addition he was an admirable writer of comic books. This week, instead of the usual back-room letter-J stuff, I pulled some of his best work for the cover-price racks. Damage Control McDuffie was working as an assistant editor at Marvel in the late ’80s when he came up with this concept: a comic focusing on the guys who clean up after superhero fights, repairing all the damage, sweeping up the … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews — Stuff I Bought #190

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Phil

Jennifer Blood #1 (of 5?) — Writer: Garth Ennis;  Art: Adriana Batista A suburban housewife is also the Punisher — that’s the premise of this mini-series, one that Ennis says, in an interview in the back, is meant to be less “bleak,” and lighter in tone, than a lot of his recent work. Of course, as an example of “lighter,” he mentions Hitman, which had a body count higher than most W.W.II movies — so, too, with this book, which features our heroine going to the docks at night (after spiking her husband’s and kids’ bedtime drinks with Valium) to blow … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews — Stuff I Bought #189

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Phil

Knights of the Dinner Table #170 — Creators: Jolly Blackburn, Steve Johansson, David Kenzer and Brian Jelke I have nothing new to say about this comic, except that I still like it — but if you didn’t see Community this week, go to your cable box and its “On Demand” channel, and see it right now: the gang play Advanced D&D, with Abed as DM and Pierce as scorned, gleeful personification of evil (Chevy Chase does his best work of the series), and it’s… just perfect; you can tell the creators spent a lot of their high school time with twenty-sided … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews — Stuff I Bought #188

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Phil

Iron Man #500 — Writer: Matt Fraction;  Art: Salvador Larroca and Frank D’Armata; Kano; Nathan Fox and Javier Rodriguez; Carmine Di Giandomenico and Matthew Wilson One of those start-the-original-numbering-over anniversary issues, complete with a five-page gallery of all 500 covers. Fraction proved with last year’s Iron Man Annual that’s he’s good at these big-event comics, and he doesn’t disappoint here, providing a 56-page story that guest-stars Spider-Man and roams from the present to the year 2052 (where the Mandarin, who was handled so well by Fraction in that annual, has taken over the world) and back; the varying time periods … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews — Stuff I Bought #187

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Phil

Jonah Hex #63 — Writers: Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti;  Art: Jordi Bernet In a week without a lot of must-buy items, let’s start with an old reliable: as I’ve said here before, Jonah Hex stands or falls on its artists, and Bernet is the best among them; like a lot of European artists, his pleasure at getting to draw the Old West and its quirky, craggy characters and scenery is infectious, and the more terrible their actions (and the retribution that Hex rains down upon them), the more inspired his art becomes. Palmiotti and Gray give him a lot … Continue reading →

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