Capsule Reviews for Comics I Bought on 7/15/06Ratings system, go!
Yeah! - A great comic all around. Definitely worth buying.
Heh. - Pretty entertaining. Give it a read if you have a chance.
Eh? - Confusing. I'm not really sure if it's bad or good, honestly.
Meh. - Not particularly exciting.
Bleh. - Terrible.
Squadron Supreme #5
So let's see here. Supreme Power was good. Like, really good. So why, then, is this comic so horribly mediocre? All the interesting conflict from the previous title is essentially gone, and characters who before had motivations that would logically keep them from working with the others in the group (like Blur and Hyperion) just seem to have arbitrarily abandoned them. The only marginally interesting character left is Emil Burbank, the supposed smartest man on Earth, who loses any and all respectability due to the fact that he can't stop repeating that this is the case. Rating: Bleh.
Detective Comics #821
Here's a novel idea: A Batman comic that's actually worth reading. Paul Dini gives it to us in spades here, and I can pretty safely say this is the best Batman comic I've read since Greg Rucka's run on Detective a few years back. Here we get a self-contained story that really shows us Batman as detective (my favorite of the Batman personas) but that doesn't skimp on superhero action either. It's almost as if Dini just took a script from Batman: The Animated Series and made it into a comic, which really, is the best thing he could possibly give us. Rating: Yeah!
Civil War Front Line #3
This comic has been completely hit and miss for all three issues. The stories about the embedded reporters has had its highs and lows but for the most part has been pretty readable, the story about Speedball's imprisonment has been the best story by far, the historical analogies at the ends have all been kind of outrageous stretches of logic, and the other stories have been pretty forgettable. That every issue follows this same formula means I could really have written this review for just each one of them. I guess that makes my job easy, then. Rating: Eh?
Ultimate Fantastic Four #31
This issue is all setup, setup, setup. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The FF Zombies' method of tricking the guards to let them out of their holding cell is pretty ingeniously simple and hilarious, and the story with Doom and Reed that covers the last half of the issue is really true to the characters, if somewhat hackneyed. All in all, not a bad story by any means, but really it's all just buildup to Millar's last run at the title next month. Rating: Heh.
Iron Man #10
Four issues into their run, it looks like the Knaufs have finally gotten the hang of this. The dialogue is a lot less clunky and the characterization of Tony Stark as The Great Engineer really works. Too bad that the whole story just completely clashes with just about everything else Marvel is doing right now (so apparently the guy leading an entire side – the government side, no less – in Civil War is also killing a bunch of people?). Still, this story is finally getting to be quite interesting, and I'm probably going to stick with it. Rating: Heh.
Ultimate Spider-Man #97
Maybe I'm just burned out on Bendis. This title really hasn't done anything for me over the past several issues, and this one's no different. Maybe the big last-page reveal would have more impact if they didn't give it away right there in the story title, I don't know, but I definitely can say I saw it coming. I still have hope that this title can get better, but for now I have to give it a Rating: Meh.
100 Bullets #74
I'm not really sure what happened here, but I'm pretty sure I liked it. There's definitely a palpable feeling that we're building up to a last act in this title, with Graves consolidating power and the remaining members of the Trust fettering out alliances. I'm thinking by the time this thing is through, we'll have one hell of a story on our hands, even if it's been confusing as hell on the way there. Rating: Heh.
Fables #51
Make no mistake about it: This is the best comic on the shelves right now. It doesn't matter what issue or what storyarc, Fables is consistently, unyieldingly awesome. This issue gives us a one-shot caper story starring Cinderella, who has been tasked with doing some diplomacy in the skies. Bill Willingham hits every note perfectly and delivers a story that assuredly lives up to the Fables standard. Rating: Yeah!
Superman #654
Kurt Busiek knows how to write superhero stories, and he does a pretty good job of giving us a story about Superman the almighty hero and Clark Kent the reporter – and how those two lives coincide – here. Too bad that the two basic premises of the story (a special anniversary with Lois and a Garfield-like distaste for Mondays) left a bad taste in my mouth. Take out some of the clichés and inherent sappiness and you've got some of the most enjoyable Superman of the past decade. As it is, you've got a story that's merely Rating: Eh?
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