Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 #2 (Comics Review)

 Dark Horse brought back its mainline Buffyverse titles for their tenth “season” last month with the first issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel & Faith. Both issues were excellent, with some fantastic art and some great writing, so going into this month, I was looking for more of the same. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 #1 in particular was a really fun ride and it did a great job of reconnecting me with all these characters that I’d lost contact with after going through all seven seasons of the television series back in college, which was quite a while ago! But they are all back now and I have a good feeling about all of this.

Released today, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 #2 picks up from right where the first issue left off and it does a lot of things. Writer Christos Gage jampacks this issue with all sorts of things, most notable of which is all the character development in the second half, especially as far as the newly-resurrected Giles is concerned. And the artwork by Rebekah Isaacs and Dan Jackson is just as good here as it was in the first issue, if not better. Great vibe to the whole issue.

Original Sin #0 (Comics Review)

Last year Marvel went on a roll with their events, doing no less than four, and giving start to another. And this year it looks like things are following suit and that Marvel is once again doubling down with events. A while back Marvel announced that its next big event would be about the death of the Watcher also known as Uatu. He is a mysterious galactic presence that sees all, hears all, notices all, but never interferes. He is merely a… silent guardian of events as they happen. And its just any old death, it is a murder, the murder of a being of cosmic proportions and power and it all starts today in Original Sin #0.

The issue, written by Mark Waid and drawn by Jim Cheung and Paco Medina, tells the origin of Uatu and how he came to be the Watcher. Through the current human Nova Sam Alexander, we get a great introduction to this silent guardian and see what motivates him and there are some excellent scenes where the two characters bond, although such bonding is fleeting at best. While Mark Waid’s story is suitably cosmic and grandiose, Jim Cheung and Paco Medina’s art is not too far behind either and they turn out some gorgeous artwork along with the other artists involved on the issue (series?).

Agents of SHIELD Season 1 Ep 19 (TV Show Review)

So the last two episodes of the show have been something else. In the wake of the revelations made in the recent Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier movie, that HYDRA is still alive and kicking and has even infiltrated SHIELD at its highest levels, the nature and direction of the show has shifted significantly. The current team of heroes, already suffering from trust issues with the establishment, has more cause than ever to trust anyone but themselves, and even that isn’t saying much since there have been several betrayals on that front already. Despite some conflict over whether last week’s episode was good or not, I gave it the benefit of doubt and tuned in this week, only to be disappointed, again.

The new episode basically maintains the status quo. All the fun action and weirdness of the previous episode is pretty much gone and this one is, as a friend put it to me when we discussed the episode, just setting the pieces for the finale, which is going to be very soon. The thing that gets me is that the characters still act as if they can do whatever the hell they want (looking at you, Coulson) without any regard for anything else. And the story doesn’t really move forward any, nor do we have even a hint of any appearance from two of SHIELD’s biggest names: Nick Fury and Maria Hill.

Comics Picks For 16.04.2014

I was intending this week to be another big week, but since I was involved with the preps for a friend’s wedding (and the wedding itself of course), I found myself with less time than I wanted. In particular I was meaning to read some back-issues for the already-released new titles that Marvel has put out under the All-New Marvel NOW! banner that I’ve either skipped or stopped reading, but that didn’t happen unfortunately.

Still, I managed to move through quite a few comics, and even reconnected with some favourite titles like Warlord of Mars from Dynamite Entertainment and Transformers: Windblade from IDW Publishing. It has been quite a fun week in that regard, and as you can see from the reviews, lots of good times were had. Still, the pile of unread comics grows ever bigger and there’s no end in sight for that.

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Warlord of Mars #100 (Comics Review)

Dynamite Entertainment’s Warlord of Wars is one of the very first comics I started reading back in 2012 when I returning to the medium. I’d managed to get a review copy of the first volumes of both Warlord of Mars and Warlords of Mars: Dejah Thoris, both of which proved to be surprisingly great reads and got me started on my John Carter/Dejah Thoris kick. Fast-forward to today, and I’m a huge fan of John Carter (especially the movie). I haven’t really kept up with the comics, but these are characters that I love reading about, and when I heard that Warlord of Mars was going to be hitting its 100th issue this month, I was pretty damn excited.

The momentous 100th issue features three stories, each by a different creative team, and the first two of these tell a rather interesting story about how Barsoom’s past affects its future, whereas the third story is all about John Carter’s calot pet Woola and is rather emotional. Before, whenever I’ve read a Robert Place Napton story in the pages of Warlords of Mars, I’ve never really liked it. But this time things are different. Which was great. And Arvid Nelson, well, I love his work any time of the day so it was great to see him return to these comics as well. And the final story by Mark Rahner was equally excellent, if not more so. And the best part is that the artwork all throughout was fairly good as well.

The Blacklist Season 1 Eps 7-10 (TV Show Review)

Staying current on more than three concurrent ongoing television shows is a humongous task, especially if you have other things to occupy your time as well, like me with my reading and writing. I didn’t have a problem staying current with Arrow and Agents of SHIELD but with Intelligence, The Blacklist, Black Sails and Dracula thrown in the mix, I found it progressively harder. Thankfully, The Blacklist has been an extremely good show packed with great acting and great story/characters, as the first six episodes of the show’s debut season have proven to be. Elizabeth Keen, Raymond Reddington and others are characters I love to tune in for, and I recently finished watching episodes 7 through 10 in an effort to catch up to the show before the season finale next month.

Much as I expected, the show really amped up the tension in these episodes. The previous episodes served to introduce us to the characters and establish where they all are in the grand scheme of things, but with these episodes things go further. Now it is not about introductions but sustaining and maintaining the viewer’s interest. Chemical attacks, potential economic disasters and assassinations, it is a heady mix indeed and Team Keen is right in the middle of it all, as always.