Super Zombies #2 — Writers: Marc Guggenheim and Vince Gonzales; Art: Mel Rubi
A zombie plague infects Earth’s population, including the superheroes, and bad things happen. Stop me if you’ve heard this before…. At least with Marvel Zombies, there was the elicit thrill of seeing your childhood heroes chowing down on their friends and family — and Kirkwood and Phillps made a great team, and took the story in unexpected directions. Here, it’s a generic superhero world, with generic characters you’ve never heard of, and the whole thing is so cynical, so slapdash and hacked-out, that the only sensations generated are depression and a faint nausea.
Rampaging Wolverine #1 (of 1) — (First story): Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov; Art: Paco Diaz Luque; (Second story): Writer: Chris Yost; Art: Mateus Santolouca; (Third story): Writer/Artist: Ted McKeever
Your $4 gets you 48 black-and-white pages, presented in comic size, but it’s actually a takeoff on Rampaging Hulk #1, and imagines what a similarly-styled Wolverine magazine might have looked like back in the day. The first story is utterly generic (and morally dubious); the second is 11 pages of Logan coming after a sniper, and also goes exactly where you think it will (the art is a little more interesting than in the lead story: its use of a stippled art board made me think of the word “Zipatone” for the first time in about 20 years). The 11-page McKeever solo effort is, of course, the most original — and best — thing here (monkeys!); standard superhero fans will mutter “What the hell?”, but indie-comics readers might find it worth the price of the book by itself.
100 Bullets #100 — Writer: Brian Azzarello; Art: Eduardo Rizzo
I’m noting this since it’s the final issue, and because Azarello and Rizzo deserve a lot of credit for maintaining a consistent vision throughout an almost-nine-year run, but this book was never quite my cup of tea; after about the first 20 issues, I lost interest, because although every episode had a couple of good set pieces, the stories never seemed to gel into a satisfying narrative or theme: it was like it was trying desperately to be noirish, but was too derivative to ever quite pull it off. Rizzo’s art is always worth a look, though, even if he tends to overuse the same five or six tricks (I think of his signature effect as the face in deep shadow, except for the luminous eyes — usually just before something horrible is about to happen to the character in question).
Overlook #1 (of 3) — Writer: Joshua Williamson; Art: Alejandro Aragon
Speaking of noirish: an ex-cop, now a not-very-good minor-league fighter, accepts a job from a gangster whose wife has run off to a small town with his brother: go there, kill her and bring him back. Everyone’s motives are murky, and nothing is as it seems, so it’s hard to tell where this is going — especially since this first issue is all setup, and now there are only two issues left to actually cover the plot. Aragon’s art is reminiscent of Dean Haspiel’s, at least in the fight scenes, but there are only a few pages of those, and $3.50 for a standard-size black-and-white comic seems to be pushing it.
The Strange Adventures of H. P. Lovecraft #1 (of 4) — Writer: Mac Carter; Art: Tony Salmons
Lovecraft, early in his career, is in Providence suffering from writer’s block and a failed love life, but an ancient book has arrived in town, strange things are stirring in the ocean just beyond the harbor, and his dreams of elder gods and revenge are starting to come true…. This actually sounds better in summary than in execution, at least so far; it seems to be going in exactly the direction that you’d expect, and Salmons’s art, other than a few good panels of jazz-age revelry and flappers, doesn’t yet have that much to do except for hints and shadows. At $5, this is probably of interest only to fans who can already spell “Cthulhu,” and put the apostrophe in the right place, without having to look it up.
Sub-Mariner Comics #1 (of 1) — (First story): Writer: Roy Thomas; Art: Mitch Breitweiser; (Second story): Writer: Mark Schultz; Art: Al Williamson
Thomas, the Golden-Age expert and former Invaders scribe, is a logical choice to write the main story, set in 1940; he delivers a competent-enough look at an early turning point in Namor’s career, with serviceable art by Breitweiser. If “competent” and “serviceable” don’t excite you, the 11-page backup story with Al Williamson art might do beter. There’s also an 8-page reprint of Subby’s origin — unfortunately, it’s the same one that’s always reprinted, and the only Bill Everett art in the entire issue. At 48 pages for $4, this isn’t a bad bargain, but more Everett reprints would have been needed to seal the deal for me.
Phil Mateer
