Thursday, March 22, 2007

Wednesday's Loot - 21 March 2007

52 Week 46
When the first line is delivered by a walking egg-man on an island of mad scientists you have the feeling this issue will be great. When the first line is actually “He survived Dr. Death’s Acid Rainstorm” you pretty much expect this to be the best issue of 52. Then the next character to speak says “The most dangerous living being on the planet is now mere miles away from my soft, vulnerable guts” you’re pretty sure those two speech balloons are better than most entire superhero comics. Or at least that’s what I thought. Okay, I could pretty much just quote the first three panels here and you’d agree with me. This issue started out very strong and had a bit of a twist going into the whole World War 3 business that I didn’t see coming. Well, I wasn’t really looking for anything to begin with really. I’m exceptionally happy with these mad-scientist set pieces, let alone the great Clark Kent moment and JSA bit.
I rate this comic: Super-flammable liquid plastic plus thermo-breath awesome, with a side of insectron.

The Spirit #4
The washed out colours instantly set the mood for this issue. And this is the second comic I read that has me sold on how good it is with the first line. Four issues in and I’m still impressed with how Darwyn Cooke manages to create such a great comic from the moment it starts. His ability to create characters with minimal dialogue is stunning. This comic really does have everything you could ask for – heroes chained together with a bit of sexual tension, a car chase, a funny villain, witty dialogue, stunning art, beautiful and competent women, and tough guys. If you’re not, you’re really missing out.
I rate this comic: Four issues in and my new favourite.

Marvel Adventures: Avengers #11
I totally meant to buy the everybody is MODOC issue but forgot. Regardless I added this to my pull list and I’m really happy I did. Jeff Parker is writing the kind of comics I like – good action, great dialogue, and a love and understanding of the characters he’s writing. This issue has sarcastically unconfident cult leaders, a snakes on a plane joke, Spider-man doing a zombie impression as well as reminding everyone he’s actually a smart science guy. Then Storm uses Wolverine as a lightning rod to smash up the world domination pyramid scheme.
I rate this comic: Way better than I expected.

Detective Comics #830
And with that The Siege ends. This was a decent Batman and Robin story but I think it could have been reduced to one book. This issue felt really light and I think it could have been wrapped up sooner with a bit of editing.
I rate this comic: An okay conclusion.

All in all this was a pretty good week in the comics I bought. So far I'm quite happy with my subscription list.

2 comments:

Jason said...

Your list almost perfectly matches mine, though I get MA: Avengers in digest. If you like that, I highly recommend The Brave and the Bold. The first two issues are nothing but fun old-school superheroics. It's managed to push The Spirit out of the #1 spot on my favorites list.

joncormier said...

Ooh, the digest thing is extremely appealling to me Jason. But the thing is, I want to encourage Marvel to print better stuff now, and I'm thinking by bumping the numbers of titles like this, it could work. They never shut up about their numbers so lets beat them at their own game.

Maybe I should start an online "buy out" day where we organize to buy out some random comic to slap some sense into Marvel - like Marvel Adventures: The Avengers or X-factor, I'm told it's good.