Category Archives: Comics
DC Comics is Doing Something Fancy
In the Spring, DC Comics will be moving their corporate offices from New York to California for business reasons (business, business, business, numbers!). For reasons I don’t quite understand, this is going to disrupt comic book production for about two months. Rather than not publish anything, DC is putting together a special weekly event called Convergence, revealed today for the first official time by USA Today.
Convergence is going to be about a bunch of different alternate realities coming together to fight Brainiac and a new villain!
Behold the terror of Random Guy!
How this differs from Multiversity, I don’t know. Marvel is also doing a new Secret Wars event with all of their alternate realities at about the same time. But that’s comics for you.
The plot is that Brianiac has been bottling whole worlds instead of just cities, and in Convergence, he’s going to just smash ’em all together to see what happens. So various versions of a whole bunch of DC characters, from classic, to modern, to alternate, are going to fight…maybe. Or they’ll team up to fight Brainiac, probably.
They’re also going to have to contend with new villain, Telos, which is a pretty terrible name.
I believe there’s going to be a main Convergence mini-series, which will come out weekly, and then a bunch of 2-part tie-in comics to fill the months. Writer Jeff King will be making his comics debut on Convergence, with help from Dan Jurgens and Scott Lobdell, which doesn’t fill me with glee.
Basically, I have no idea what to really think about this event. I’ve been slowly abandoning DC Comics for awhile now, and this event just doesn’t sound very interesting. But I wish them all the luck in the world in pulling it off. Maybe they’ll have some fun and sell some comics!
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 11/1/14
Happy Day-After-Halloween, henchies! Or better yet, Happy All Saints Day! I wonder if anybody in the world actually celebrates All Saints Day. I know I had to Google it to remember what November 1 was actually called. No worries if you don’t celebrate, but hopefully you have plenty of candy to tide you over.
This week was very light on new comics because it’s a Fifth Wednesday week. Comic publishers usually only plan for 4 Wednesdays a month, so when a fifth week comes along, they usually throw out some minor comics. DC put out a couple of annuals that I didn’t bother to read. But I did pick up All-New X-Men and Batman Eternal.
The week’s crowning jewel, however, is the final issue of Brian Azzarello’s Wonder Woman! He’s been telling one ongoing, epic saga since the start of the New 52, and it all comes to an end with this issue, the Comic Book of the Week!
Meanwhile, Marvel put out the first issue of their new Deathlok series. I wrote a pretty thorough review at Word of the Nerd that you can check out.
Comic Reviews: All-New X-Men #33, Batman Eternal #30 and Wonder Woman #35.
Review: Saga #24
When all is said and done, and we’re looking back at Saga in the big picture, this volume is going to be seen as one of transition. People in the future who read Saga in one sitting are going to breeze through this chapter to get to the really good stuff. And that makes this volume – and this issue in particular – kind of an odd duckling. Better literary critics than I will probably be able to explain it better, but for me, this was all just a nice visit with some good friends.
Saga #24
Saga #24 ends the current volume by looking ahead to the future, underlining this whole volume as a tiny bit unnecessary.
Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.
Not that I would ever consider a single issue of Saga ‘unnecessary’ – unless, of course, it got really bad somehow. But after reading this issue, and it’s wild departure from every other issue in this volume, I find myself slightly confused by the whole experience. Writer Brian K. Vaughn shocked us at the end of issue #18 with a jump forward in time, giving us Hazel as a toddler and her family changed. That could have been the start of a great new status quo, and for a little while, it was. But with this issue, everything has changed once again.
Vaughn spent the majority of this volume establishing that new status quo only to rip us away from it at the end. This volume didn’t really take us from Point A to Point B because, like I said, Vaughn pretty much created Point A out of thin air.
But I suppose there’s no real reason to complain. We got some good drama, we met some new characters, and toddler Hazel was something spectacular. Maybe I’m just looking at this from the wrong perspective. Alana and her family are obviously the stars of the book, but the plot in this volume was all about the Robot Kingdom. A lot happened on that front. So it’s possible I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.
I think Saga really should be read all at once, whenever it’s completed, even if it would mean waiting years.
At least Vaughn brought back Lying Cat in this issue, and effortlessly reminded us why she is Saga‘s breakout character. There is some great Lying Cat in Saga #24!
The 6 Most Heroic Comic Book Witches
It’s that time of year again, the spookiest time of year! Happy Halloween, my henchies! Welcome to my favorite holiday, which calls for a holiday-themed List of Six! In the past, I’ve done lists on comic book ghosts and classic movie monsters, and this year I’ve decided to focus on everyone’s favorite green-skinned, wart-covered cacklers: witches!
Nothing but a stereotype
Though witches haven’t been gross and scary for years, thanks to the likes of Willow, Hermione Granger and the ladies of Charmed! Witches are actually kind of cute, and a lot of them are heroes. But not every magic-user can be a witch. It takes a special sort of warrior woman to earn this important rank – though I’ll admit, it helps if they have ‘witch’ in their name.
Join me after the jump for some of the coolest, most badass witches in comics!
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 10/25/14
Whatever happened to holiday theme comics? Next week is Halloween, but I don’t know if there are any Halloween comics coming out! Whatever happened to those great comics about fighting giant pumpkin monsters? Or meeting demonic hell spirits? Or what about the greatest Halloween superhero adventure of all time? You henchies remember that one, right? Whatever the case may be, there isn’t nary a Halloween reference in any of this week’s haul!
But we’ve still got a pretty good haul. I picked up new issues of Aquaman and Harley Quinn, while also checking in with the ongoing craziness happening in Axis and Multiversity. One is a little more crazy than the other. I also picked up the first issue of the new Arkham Manor series…but I doubt I’ll be picking up any more. Fortunately, the latest issue in Jonathan Hickman’s ongoing Avengers saga is amazing! Avengers #37 easily scoops of Comic Book of the Week for the high quality, character-based drama!
Some day they’ll laugh about this
You can also check out my coverage of the soon-to-be cancelled She-Hulk over at Word of the Nerd. That title should have survived for the Matt Rocks cameo alone!
Comic Reviews: Aquaman #35, Arkham Manor #1, Avengers #37, Axis #3, Batman Eternal #29, Harley Quinn #11, and Multiversity #3.
Henchman-4-Hire 