Category Archives: Reviews
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 3/9/13
This week kicks off Marvel’s new Big Event comic the Age of Ultron…but it’s kind of a slow build so far. We’ll have to see if it picks up in the second issue, which comes out next week. Talk about accelerated shipping. Beyond the big stuff, we’ve got a good collection of quality comics. I think I liked every single issue I read this week, everything from the important titles like Avengers and All-New X-Men down to the smaller stuff like Green Arrow and Winter Soldier. Though now that I think about it, I need to buy more independent titles. Seriously, can anyone recommend any good comics that aren’t Marvel or DC?
But until then, I’m going to stick with the big guns, and it actually surprises me to say that Comic Book of the Week goes to Avengers #7! Where did that come from? I have really had it in for this series since issue #1, but Jonathan Hickman really knocked it out of the park this week. He actually made me interested in the New Universe.
They look just as surprised as I am
Let’s hope he can finally write a solid superhero story.
Comic Reviews: Age of Ultron #1, All-New X-Men #8, Avengers #7, Green Arrow #18, Green Lantern #18, Superior Spider-Man #5, Winter Soldier #16.
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 3/2/13
Robin Week comes to a close with my official review of Batman Incorporated #8. It’s actually a very good comic, so it’s great to see Damian go out at the height of his awesomeness and popularity; kind of like Seinfeld or Calvin & Hobbes. I would even be tempted to give Damian’s demise the Comic Book of the Week, but that award has to go to Hawkeye #8. Writer Matt Fraction had an amazing week, delivering the one-two romantic punch of Hawkeye and FF, two amazing comics that reinforce why I love the medium in the first place. If you’re not reading either book then you’re definitely missing out.
Who would have thought that coming out of the big The Avengers movie last summer, the two characters with the best comics would be Hawkeye and Thor? Speaking of which, why doesn’t the Black Widow have her own comic series? That seems like it would be a no-brainer, especially for Marvel NOW! Oh well, this is why Marvel is not paying me the big bucks.
Comic Reviews: Aquaman #17, Batman Incorporated #8, FF #4, Hawkeye #8, Talon #5, Uncanny Avengers #4, Uncanny X-Force #2, Uncanny X-Men #2 and Young Avengers #2.
Review: Teen Titans #17
Teen Titans #17 was very close to being one of the best issues in the entire series so far. Even with Lobdell’s horrible habit of introducing villains in cutaway scenes that are apropos of nothing, this was still a good comic for the actual Teen Titans themselves. But then he goes and blows it with a pretty lame final page surprise. For the first 2/3rds of this comic, it actually looked like Lobdell and co-writer Fabian Nicieza were going to do a good job in treating the Titans as real people. They even managed to surprise me by injecting some really cool drama into the group. I thought they were actually on to something new and meaningful.
Teen Titans #17
NOPE! What I thought was meaningful, character-based drama turned out to be just the start of another stupid storyline. Dammit, Teen Titans, why must you continually shoot yourself in the foot?
Comic Rating: 3/5: Alright.
Since the very beginning of this series, I have said time and again that the best way to make Teen Titans work is to treat the characters like real people. We need to see the Titans interacting like real friends and teenagers more than we need to see them thrown up against the latest, lamest super-villain. And for the first part of this book, Lobdell and Nicieza actually do that. We’re introduced to their new headquarters, they talk about what the attack by Joker has done to the team and we get a lot of really good scenes between the individual characters. The scenes don’t go as far as I think they should go in terms of establishing these characters, but it’s leaps and bounds above what we’ve seen before.
And if there’s one thing I can say Lobdell has done well, it has been keeping Tim Drake at the center of the comic. He’s the most fleshed out of all the Titans (though that’s not saying much), and Tim goes a long way in keeping the series from being unreadable. And for most of the book, Tim is even better than he’s been before. Lobdell and Nicieza use him really well.
But then they mess it up. And they do it on purpose. The twist ending is almost painful to read in just how badly they screw up a good thing.
Review: Saga #10
I was disappointed with the last issue of Saga because writer Brian K. Vaughn took us away from the main characters at a very entertaining part of their story, choosing instead to focus on some of the side characters. And while I don’t take back my disappointment, I am definitely glad he did that, because Vaughn set up one of the most emotionally powerful scenes in the series yet. I cried out loud when I turned to the final page! Damn you, Brian K. Vaughn! Why must you hit us with all the feels? We’re only human. We can’t be put through an emotional wringer like this!
Saga #10
Saga #10 is absolutely perfect in every conceivable way. Vaughn brings together both groups of characters in an issue that brings to a head the various plot threads we’ve been reading over the past several issues. He does this by first showing us true love and then later breaking our damn hearts.
Comic Rating: 5/5: Great!
Vaughn should be teaching some kind of class on creative writing. The man is a master of building up characters and putting them together in highly entertaining and emotionally fulfilling ways. We only met Marko’s parents a few issues ago, but I love them already, and I love how they have quickly become such a warm and important part of the cast. A writer should be able to tell he’s got good characters when all I want to do is read them sitting around and talking about their lives. We get some of that in this issue, as well as some more parenting advice from Barr, but there’s also a lot of action, which is good too. If you can’t tell by the cover, we finally get Izabel back into the cast and everyone returns to the spaceship tree. Those are some very entertaining scenes.
The art by Fiona Staples is, of course, absolutely top notch. I can only hope she becomes one of the greatest artists in the industry after this series. The characters all look great, and she brings a real coziness to their confines. Staples also draws one incredible splash page that I’ll post later that is simply stunning. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that she is perfect for this series after seeing that page.
And then when it comes time to break our hearts on the last page, Staples is more than up for the challenge.
Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more review!
Crysis 3 review
In my mind, Crysis is one of the most underrated first person shooters that I know of.
Released in 2007, the first Crysis went virtually unnoticed against such competition as Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War. It was a treasure waiting to be excavated by gamers like myself.
The protagonist was a member of a special unit of highly-trained soldiers wearing experimental “nanosuits” like the one shown above. The nanosuit offer a range of special abilities to be activated in-game, including super-speed, super-strength, a cloaking device, and armour-plating which added a refreshing new dynamic to the old “Supersoldier kills hordes of aliens” trope made popular by Halo.
Your unit in Crysis was sent to a remote island to fight a North Korean threat. The short version of the story is that the North Koreans in Crysis woke an ancient, hibernating alien race beneath the earth. Picking up where the first Crysis left off, Crysis 2 began with an alien plague that had wiped out much of Manhattan’s population and brought the city under marshal law. A new main character found himself in command of one of the aforementioned nanosuits, and the fate of New York City (and by extension, the world) rested on his shoulders as the Big Apple found itself being invaded by the alien threat unleashed in the first game: called The Ceph. He defeats the Ceph hivemind, and the world is saved…until now.
Henchman-4-Hire 