Category Archives: Reviews
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 4/25/15
By this time next week, I will have seen Avengers: Age of Ultron. I can’t wait! The anticipation is nearly overwhelming! What am I supposed to do until then? Read comics?! Are you mad? Well, there were some pretty great comics this week.
Not only do we have the headline-making issue of All-New X-Men where Iceman comes out as gay, but we’ve also got the unlikely buddy comedy of Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt in the latest issue of Star Wars! This week also brings us, hands down, the funniest comic book I may have ever read in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #4.
This comic is pure spun gold.
I have no way to explain why I find Squirrel Girl hilarious but Deadpool flat. I guess that’s just the way my brain is wired. But from the cover to the final page, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is a laugh riot! And it’s Comic Book of the Week!
This week also brings us a double dip of Valiant Comics! That’s always a hoot.
Comic Reviews: All-New X-Men #40, Divinity #3, Ninjak #2, Star Wars #4 and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #4.
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 4/18/15
With DC Comics still mired in the murk of Convergence, I get the chance to go outside my wheelhouse this week! Alongside a couple of outstanding Marvel titles, we’ve got the latest issue of Lumberjanes, a series I have been ignoring for too darn long, as well as the first issue of Bloodshot Reborn from Valiant Comics. Valiant has been doing their best to make waves, recently, and I say more power to them.
Though Comic Book of the Week goes to Ms. Marvel #14 for continuing what may be my favorite storyline of the fledgling series so far!
Secret Wars is going to be a real slog at Marvel if we don’t get our monthly Ms. Marvel fix!
Over at Word of the Nerd, you can check out my review of Uncanny X-Men #33. Normally I’d be all over that comic in this column, but Bendis takes a break from his ongoing Cyclops strolling for a filler issue. So no harm done.
Also, only two more weeks until Avengers: Age of Ultron! The anticipation grows stronger with every passing day.
Comic Reviews: Bloodshot Reborn #1, Lumberjanes #13, Ms. Marvel #14 and Thor #7.
Review: Saga #27
Now this is more like it! For the past several issues, Saga has been largely fine. It has never stopped being an enjoyable and entertaining comic, full of great characters, interesting twists and more emotional depth than 10 comics. But it’s also just kind of been…’business as usual’? Is that a good way to put it? I honestly don’t know, because I don’t know what I’m whining about. All I know is that Saga #27 is one of the richest, most enjoyable issues we’ve had in a good long while.
Saga #27
Writer Brian K. Vaughn focuses on just one of his many ongoing plots with this issue, and the attention to detail and to the characters raises this issue to great heights. Prince Robot IV and Ghus the Seal Boy just because the breakout stars of this volume.
Comic Review: 9/10 – Great.
Granted, Ghus has always been pretty amazing, but up until this issue, I always kind of viewed him as a tagalong. He had a great introduction back in the day, but he just seemed like a cute side character thrown in for fun. But with Marko overdosing on crazy space drugs, Ghus steps up in several big ways while he and Robot try and figure out how to save our horn-headed hero.
I’ve said in the past that I don’t really care for drug sequences in fiction. They’re just not my thing. Fortunately, Vaughn and artist Fiona Staples instead take Marko on a series of flashbacks, as if his life was flashing before his eyes. Not only do we learn a bit more about Marko’s troubled past, but these sequences also help to clarify and focus the character going forward. His marriage was falling apart, his family has been kidnapped to parts unknown, and Marko himself has been an emotional wreck. But all of that is settled now, and what comes next should be pure Saga bliss.
As if we should expect anything else.
Join me after the jump for the full synopsis and more review!
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 4/11/15
I’m sorry, DC fans, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to tackle Convergence. I’d considered it, and I read a few of the issues this week, but I have even less interest in covering this beast than I do Batman Eternal Year Two. Now, I am nothing if not easily persuadable, so if there is a Convergence comic you’d like me to review, let me know in the comments. But on my own, these reviews are going to be few and far between.
Such as this week’s Question #1. Greg Rucka returning to Renee Montoya is a dream come true.
In the rest of the comic book world, we’ve got some great books! I highly recommend Kaijumax over at Oni Press, it’s a lot of fun. New issues of Ant-Man and Spider-Woman impressed. And Darth Vader #4 easily won Comic Book of the Week for being one of the most action-packed comics of the year so far. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at Darth Vader the same way again.
Elsewhere in the world, you can check out my review of SHIELD #4 over at Word of the Nerd. That series continues to delight.
This is also the first week in a year when I don’t have an issue of Batman Eternal clogging up my reviews! It’s a good feeling.
Comic Reviews: Ant-Man #4, Convergence: Question #1, Darth Vader #4, Kaijumax #1 and Spider-Woman #6.
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 4/4/15
I come to you now at the turn of the tides. For the next two months, DC Comics is going to be doing a big Convergence crossover, taking their entire line of comics and doing a bunch of weird alternate reality things that I have simply not kept up with. I have no idea if I’m going to review any DC Comics for the next two months. I might check a few of them out individually, maybe haphazardly and randomly, but I just don’t know for sure.
(Although Greg Rucka’s Renee Montoya comic is an absolute must!)
So we’re going to spend this week saying goodbye to a few of DC’s regular releases. Not only do we (finally!) have the last issue of Batman Eternal, but Batman and Robin comes to an end with a rather amazing Annual issue. It won’t be back after Convergence. And Harley Quinn delivers a pretty fun cliffhanger in advance of the break.
Out of all of them, I’m going to have to give Comic Book of the Week to Batman and Robin Annual #3. You’re going to have to read this one to believe it!
This is a thing that happens in the comic!
Over at Word of the Nerd this week, I reviewed the prologue issue for the new Uncanny Inhumans series. Black Bolt is the star of Uncanny Inhumans #0, and the issue shows why he could easily carry a comic book all on his own.
I am also super pleased to announce the launching of www.GamerGirlandVixen.com, a new site for my own self-published comic! We bought the domain name and are gearing up for our Kickstarter coming next month! Visit the site and follow along with the production!
Comic Reviews: Amazing Spider-Man #17, Batman Eternal #52, Batman and Robin Annual #3, Doctor Who: The 9th Doctor #1, and Harley Quinn #16.
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