Friday, March 24, 2006

On 22 March, 2006

--Warning: Possible Spoilers--

Marvel

Okay, I admit, I picked up BLACK PANTHER #14 mostly for the cover. The previews looked good too, though, and they didn't lie. This is a fun, fast read, and Storm is quite spectacular. Not much of a cliffhanger, though. What will Ororo's answer be? That question has pretty much been answered, hasn't it?

Make no mistake, SHE-HULK 2 #6 is a dramedy. Dan Slott is taking a fairly serious tone with this arc (appropriate, given the subject matter). There's a lot of romancing, and nothing has been resolved in terms of the two love triangles. I really don't want to spoil this book for anyone, so... no plot details. But this is an awesome book, and this issue would be a great place for new readers to jump in, what with the new arc and new artist.

Wow. Quite a bit of courtroom drama this week. I never quite expected to see more of it in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #530 than in SHE-HULK.

So it goes. This wasn't a high-excitement issue, and the subject matter is again serious. The arc should finish off with a bang, though, given the cliffhanger.

Thankfully, they quit with the Editors' notes after the third page...

Loved the first page Q & A section of NEXTWAVE: AGENTS OF H.A.T.E. #3. Hopefully they'll make the primers a habit. Started a little slow what with the uberdirty cop, but it did pick up. As expected. The giant gun contraption tops the giant telephone contraption. And Dirk Anger kind of reminds me of the boss in The Office, if Michael Scott were completely psychotic.

"Beware of Skrulls bearing gifts" is good advice any day, I'd wager. Thank you, ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #28, for the tip.

DC

Can it be? Have I found not one but two DC comics I actually... enjoy? Wow. Good week, this. (On a side note, I seem to be gravitating towards the female solo titles. Odd.)

I think HAWKGIRL #50 is actually my favorite so far. At the moment, it's more horror mystery than superhero.

CATWOMAN #53 was nifty, too. Very dark. Gotham is always dark, isn't it?

IDW Publishing

SUPERMARKET #2: The story just keeps getting better, the mystery deeper. The humour is great, too, between a "Grill Bill vol. 2" restaurant (complete with red-splattered yellow color scheme) and an Aryan Nation-style Swedish porno gang. Wow.

Notes and Rankings (Best to Worst)
*Time and place have stayed pretty much constant, so from now on, no more redundancy. Music this week was the Liz Carroll & John Doyle album In Play, which I, regrettably, never got signed.

It was very hard to rank these, given that I rather liked all of them!

1. NEXTWAVE: AGENTS OF H.A.T.E. #3
2. SUPERMARKET #2
3. SHE-HULK 2 #6
4. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #530
5. HAWKGIRL #53
6. CATWOMAN #50
7. BLACK PANTHER #14
8. ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #28

Not rated: ALL NEW OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE A TO Z #3

Panel(s) of the Week: A tie between this panel from NEXTWAVE #3 (and proof that Chris Sims apparently has way too much influence)...



...and this panel from CATWOMAN #50 (because who can resist Batman wielding a teddy bear?)

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