Greetings and salutations, comic lovers! I’m back with another couple of reviews. I can only hope people are actually reading. And speaking of reading comics, check out some of the new Gamer Girl & Vixen mini-comics at Global Comix, written by me, with a variety of artists! We’re adding three new comics for Pride Month!

Comic Book of the Week goes to Absolute Flash #4 for a nice little issue that moves the story along. Getting real Ultimate Spider-Man (original) vibes.

Meanwhile, I was on vacation this week and did a ton of relaxing at home. I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and very much enjoyed that game. Started playing Balatro and it’s as fun as everybody said last year. Finished 20th Century men and it was fine. Read Mark Russell’s Superman: Space Age and it was fine. Watched the final season of The Umbrella Academy and it was, you guessed it, fine.

Comic Reviews: Absolute Flash #4, G.I. Joe #8 and X-Men #18.

Absolute Flash #4
Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: A.L. Kaplan
Colorist: Chris Sotomayor
Lettering: Tom Napolitano

The first, brief storyline is out of the way and now it’s time to get down to business. I’ve never read any ongoing Flash comics, so I can’t really compare this series to one of those. Based on this issue, Absolute Flash feels like classic Ultimate Spider-Man from the original Bendis/Bagley era.

Wally West makes his way to the city of Iron Heights, where he and his pal, Grodd, immediately get hooked up with Ralph and Sue Dibney, who run a shelter for seemingly homeless or runaway youth. Wally also immediately meets Linda Park, and they all have some brief introductory scenes. Meanwhile, Wally’s dad starts digging into Barry Allen’s work to find out what has happened to his son, and Barry’s lab partner, Elenore Thawne, reveals that a bunch of experiments escaped the night of the incident: Heat Wave, Wizard, Firestorm and Project XXXX. She also reveals that Grodd is leading Wally to these escaped projects, and the first one is Heat Wave in the sewers.

Comic Rating: 8/10 – Very Good.

Solid, enjoyable continuation of events. We don’t get an explanation for why Wally thought it was a good idea to strip Barry’s corpse of his outfit. We don’t even get any super speed shenanigans. This is just a good set-up issue for what comes next. And we get a ton of name and character dropping. The Dibneys come out of nowhere but are always welcome. Linda Park is an obvious choice. A bunch of new villains are name-dropped, including a new Thawne. As mentioned before, I’m no Flash fanatic, so these things only really matter as far as I recognize the names and potential for Absolute versions of certain characters. I wonder what they’ll do with Absolute Firestorm…

So the issue itself is good because of the nice character work. Wally settles into his new life on the run as best he can, and we get a lot of chances for him to interact with other interesting people. Relationships begin to found. Foundations are laid. Between the bad guys as well. And it’s pretty much all fun to read. You can feel the world building as it happens. And like I said, there’s a very real sense of Ultimate Spider-Man here. Young kid with weird powers tries his best, surrounded by a bunch of fun and familiar characters. I think that’s a very good direction for Absolute Flash to take to make it stand out from the rest.

Also, I’m usually loathe to mention art because I’m bad at discussing it, but the art this issue felt rather rushed and sloppy in a lot of places. Those Rogues scenes are real iffy.

TL;DR: Real sense of youthful superhero energy, which is a good place to put Absolute Flash at this point in its lifecycle.

G.I. Joe #8
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Artist: Andrea Milana
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Rus Wooton

I still haven’t fully decided whether or not I’m going to keep up with the Energon Universe. I gave up on Transformers because I got so lost. And I’m even behind on Void Rivals, which I enjoy. And G.I.Joe still largely knows what it’s doing.

Baroness demands 48 hours off-base, which she’s normally not allowed, because she’s technically still an international war criminal. But she’s granted her leave, as long as she takes Cover Girl. They get some bonding time as they fly to Paris so that Baroness can spy on her parents (she doesn’t want them to see her, but she does want to see them). Baroness and Cover Girl are then attacked by Raptor.

Comic Rating: 8/10 – Very Good.

This issue works due to some excellent character writing. Female characters still aren’t as prominent as they should be in fiction, so it’s nice to see G.I.Joe pass the Bechdel Test. If we’re going to keep Baroness on the Joes for now, I rather like the idea of her developing a friendship with Cover Girl. And I rather like the idea of actually developing Cover Girl. She didn’t get a proper introduction in this series. She just appeared. So I’m very much in favor of fleshing her out through this friendship. And the issue handles it nicely. I love the idea of Baroness viewing her parents from afar. She is an international war criminal, so she can’t just pay them a visit, and this issue had a nice little scene of everybody in Paris.

The rest of the issue is just general world-building. We get some scenes with the other Joes, including Clutch and his new Transformer friend. We get some scenes with Destro and Cobra Commander. It’s all just generally nice material. And the artwork remains strong. I just really like the potential for character development that this issue presents.

Also, it’s a shame I didn’t review last issue, because that one introduced Beachhead and the black ops side of G.I.Joe! That was a fun issue.

TL;DR: Some real nice character developing and potential at the heart of a nice little issue.

X-Men #18
Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Emilio Laiso
Colorist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles

For a moment in this issue, it looked like MacKay might killed my favorite new mutant of this era, and at that point this comic would have made an enemy for life!

With their leader defeated, the 3K X-Men start infighting, and Cyclops and his team use that to mop the floor with them. Beast gets approached by Wyre with an invite to join 3K, but Jennifer shows up to stop him (and get beaten up). Wyre leaves his card and an open invitation to Beast. Ben brings the mutant kid’s mother to face her and explain that she didn’t know the kid was still ‘alive’ inside Piper. She reveals the kid’s would-be name — ‘Robin’ — and that’s enough to get her to leave her giant monster body. But Cassandra Nova is still in her head, and she — and all the bad guys — are teleported away.

Comic Rating: 8/10 – Very Good.

Thankfully, Jennifer Starkey isn’t immediately killed by Wyre and we can all move on.

Enjoyable action issue as a lot of different plot lines are dealt with in entertaining ways. I really, really enjoyed Ben and Robin’s mom getting her to calm down. That was all very well done and was a great wrap up to that event, even as Cassandra Nova ensures Robin will remain a danger. I really liked Cyclops’ showing his leadership chops. They took down those janky new X-Men with panache. Hopefully they’re not gone for good and can become worthwhile villains in the long run. I’m a big fan of Juice already. This whole outfit of 3K make for fine villains, even if they have no greater depth or intrigue. Just a bunch of bad people doing bad things, like always.

I’m yet to be sold on Wyre as a villain. He’s got a mean case of ‘I’m the best, smartest dude ever’, even though he’s been dredged up from, like, a single appearance in the 90s? And he’s got all those wires sticking out of him. So he’s yet to prove himself as more than just talk. I like that he offered Beast a job instead of doing the typical thing and killing Beast and/or Jennifer back at base. Having this be a younger Beast is still weird, so perhaps something interesting will come of it. Until then, 3K provide a fine adversary, even if they mostly just sit around talking themselves to death.

TL;DR: Story moves along nicely in this fairly standard issue of X-Men.

The comics I review in my Hench-Sized reviews are just the usual comics I grab from Comixology any given week, along with a few impulse buys I might try on a whim. So if there are any comics or series you’d like me to review each week, let me know in the comments.

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