Reviews

Hellboy: The Crooked Man #2 (of 3) — Story: Mike Mignola;  Art: Richard Corben That last panel’s absolutely chilling;  the comic, even just two-thirds through the run, is a candidate for story of the year — and you don’t have to know a thing about the characters going in to be able to follow it easily, either. Action #868 — Writer: Geoff Johns;  Penciller: Gary Frank;  Inker: Jon Sibal Another book with a chilling last panel; Frank’s been getting better and better on this title, and now it’s just a pleasure to look at.  The characters in this episode spend … Continue reading →

Mercy Sparx #0 — Writer: Josh Blaylock; Art: Matt Merhoff Lord help us, we’re seeing the return of the early-’90s Bad Girl craze, with cute Gothy demon chicks who are bad because, you know, they have red skin and horns and, like, smoke cigarettes and have tattoos. Such characters stir the loins of your average comic book geek, who figures he could never get their real-life equivalents to look at him, and so he’s ready to forgive the cookie-cutter plots and pedestrian art (for a time, anyway) in favor of the mild fantasy jolt they provide. Points here for making … Continue reading →

Crossed #0 — Writer: Garth Ennis; Art: Jacen Burrows Avatar’s an interesting publisher — they get a lot of series from writers like Ennis and Warren Ellis, often quick-moving, B-movie-type tales, not as polished as the stuff they write for the mainstream publishers, but guilty pleasures nonetheless. This one’s no different; it’s a zombie riff, with a plague turning people into psychopaths and a small group of survivors that we follow as they struggle to fight off the murderous hordes, etc. Burrows is good at delivering the violence (a typical requirement for Ennis artists), and his gleeful, infected bad guys … Continue reading →

Wolverine: Killing Made Simple #1 (of 1) — (First story):  Writer: Christopher Yost;  Penciler: Koi Turnbull;  Inker: Sal Regla   (Second story):  Writer: Todd Dezago;  Pencils: Steve Kurth;  Inks: Serge LaPointe One of those inexplicable, occasional one-shots Marvel does with this character; here, it seems to be a couple of inventory stories they had lying around, the first involving Trance (formerly of the New X-Men) and Nanny, certainly one of the most annoying X-Family villains in the repertoire. The second story is a Wolvy-against-an-alien-virus deal, involving an Antarctic research station. None of it’s horrible, but it’s all mediocre and predictable enough … Continue reading →

Thor #10 — Writer: J. Michael Straczynski;  Penciler: Olivier Coipel;  Inkers: Mark Morales, Crimelab Studios, allen Martinez and Victor Olazaba This has been agonizingly slow to build, but the current set-up offers Asgard hovering in the American Southwest, and the locals interacting with it, and an eyebrowless female Loki stirring up subtle trouble (gullibility in the face of gods of mischief apparently being an inbred Norse trait), and is a well-constructed basis for storytelling.  May its arc turn out to be less predictable than it appears:  Straczynski’s a big one for examining the serpents in the Garden of Eden, but … Continue reading →