Secret Six #2 (Comics Review)

In December of last year, DC kicked off its New 52 version of the Secret Six with a new series by Gail Simone and Ken Lashley. The first issue introduced Catman to us in detail while also covering the other members of the team roster, and it ended up being one hell of a story combined with some equally great art. As a fan of Gail’s work in general, and having read a previous Secret Six graphic novel, this was definitely one of my highly-anticipated titles of the Fall’14 season, and the book did not disappoint.

This past week’s Secret Six #2 carries on directly from where the first issue left off some 2 months back. We continue to get some great background information on Thomas Blake aka Catman, while at the same time also coming to understand the group of misfits assembled together by some mysterious character for some so-far-unexplained objective. Gail Simone continues to delve rather fantastically into what makes each of these characters tick, especially Catman, while on the other side Ken Lashley and the other artists also turn out some magic.

Conan/Red Sonja #2 (Comics Review)

Last month Dark Horse and Dynamite finally launched their collaborative new series, Conan/Red Sonja, which brings two of the biggest swords-and-sorcery heroes together once again. The first issue detailed the first meeting between the two of them, and it proved to be all-out fun, beating my expectations of the title, whether we talk about the story or the art. Collaborative projects can’t be easy to pull off but if Conan/Red Sonja is any indication, then things are going to go great for this series, which is great as far as I’m concerned.

Conan/Red Sonja #2 is the second meeting between the two titular heroes, and an interesting meet-up it is too. And more than just the titular heroes, we also have two of their greatest allies as well, Belit for Conan and Annisia for Sonja. The two sides meet together in a naval battle, and the story involves some really hard-hitting action from both sides while the art portrays that to the fullest. This issue is another example of the finest that you can expect from a creative team that includes the likes of Gail Simone, Jim Zub, Dan Panosian and Dave Stewart.

Red Sonja: Vulture’s Circle #2 (Comics Review)

As part of the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of Dynamite publishing Red Sonja comics, the publisher last month launched a new series with the character, Red Sonja: Vulture’s Circle, which explores the character when she is way past the prime of her life and has taken to opening an academy where young women are given weapons training and are prepared for war. The first issue was excellent, with Nancy A. Collins and Luke Lieberman displaying a great grasp of what makes the character who she is while artists Fritz Casas and Adriano Lucas nailing the visual feel of the book.

Red Sonja: Vulture’s Circle #2 from this past week carries on from where the first issue left off and it deals with Sonja and her students bringing the priest Sefkh back to the Academy to question and interrogate him about the demon Sonja dealt with back in the city. Set’s son Sutekh has been let loose in the world and he has made war on the entire world, intent on bringing it all down and then offering it to his god-father. The writing here was even better than it had been in the first issue, and the art is pretty much on par, so I had a blast reading this issue as well.

Comics Picks For 21.01.2015

Another week of a “Magic 40”, though no graphic novels.

This week’s surprise hits were Ivar, Timewalker #1 from Valiant, Mortal Kombat X #4 from DC, and Twilight Zone: Shadow And Substance #1 from Dynamite. The disappointments of the week were Spider-Woman #3 from Dynamite and Spider-Verse #2 and The Amazing Spider-Man #13 from Marvel and Vampirella: Feary Tales #4 from Dynamite. Ongoing greats were Wonder Woman ’77 #3 , The Flash: Season Zero #11 and Supergirl #38 from DC, Black Widow #14 and Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #4 from Marvel, and, Grimm Fairy Tales: Realm War #6 from Zenescope among others.

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.

Tomb Raider #12 (Comics Review)

Last month saw the start of a new arc on Dark Horse’s Tomb Raider. Lara is currently starring in a small stage production of Pride & Prejudice by her friend Jonah, a character carried over from the Tomb Raider game. In the midst of it all we also got to see some more fallout from the previous arc, something that earned her a major nemesis, a man with a real drive to find her and destroy her, someone who is as afraid of her as he wants to kill her. It was a fairly good issue in most respects, and I definitely liked the overall change in pace as well.

Tomb Raider #11 picks up a bit after the previous issue left off, and we see that Lara is back in London and working with her friend Jonah in a theatre production, Pride and Prejudice no less unless I’m mistaken, and things are not working so well for her since she’s a terrible actor. All of this sets in motion some new stuff for the character, which brings in another villain in her orbit, and it remains to be seen whether this new villain is going to be the all-out crazy variety or something else.

Red Sonja #14 (Comics Review)

With two solid arcs behind them, writer Gail Simone and artist Walter Geovani kicked off their third arc on Red Sonja last November in a story that revisited the character’s roots and also shed some light on the most defining moment of her life, the murder of her family and the rest of her village. Of course, going back to the roots doesn’t mean that it is all a song and dance because there’s actually a dark twist to things here, and that’s where Red Sonja #13 really excelled. It paved the way forward for yet another superb engrossing story and I’ve been waiting for the second installment ever since.

In Red Sonja #14, coming some two months after the release of the previous issue, we see what is happening to Sonja with the curse that has been placed upon her by a dying necromancer, the curse to never be able to forgive anyone and to take serious offense at the lightest insult, even a perceived one. Suffice to say, things are tough, and as the big baddy of the arc makes his own appearance, it is clear that with all that the character has faced recently, her true troubles are just getting started.

Comics Picks For 14.01.2015

Another week going by without a “Magic 40”, but still managed to read a fair number, albeit absent any graphic novels.

This week’s surprise hits were Ares & Aphrodite #2 from Oni Press, Lady Killer #1 from Dark Horse, Wolverines #2 from Marvel and Lazarus #14 from Image. The disappointments of the week were Battlestar Galactica: The Death of Apollo #2 from Dynamite and Spider-Verse #2 from Marvel. Ongoing greats were Vampirella #100 from Dynamite, Grayson #6 from DC, S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 from Marvel and Hexed #6 from Boom Studios among others.

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.

Conan/Red Sonja #1 (Comics Review)

When it comes to swords and sorcery fantasy, there are no bigger icons than Conan and Red Sonja I must say. Sure, there might be some other heroes out there as well, but the creations of Robert E. Howard and Roy Thomas have well-stood the test of time and are very popular today in the comics world with the recent ongoings from Dark Horse and Dynamite Entertainment respectively. So it only stands to reason that there would be a crossover between the two properties, given that they are both set in the same world.

Conan/Red Sonja was meant to come out last year, around February/March, but for whatever reason it got pushed back to almost a year, and the wait has certainly been a long one. Jim Zub and Gail Simone have been given the task of shepherding this series, and I think that they did a splendid job here. This story chronicles the first meeting of these two heroes and it is well-paced with some great dialogue. The art by Dan Panosian and Dave Stewart is also excellent, being a bit stylized but also very action-packed and free-flowing. For me, who has been waiting for it for so long, Conan/Red Sonja #1 is pretty much what I wanted it to be, and then some.

Comics Picks For 07.01.2015

No “Magic 40” in the first week of the new year, but the second week definitely sees me hit that landmark number, and with graphic novels mixed in to boot!

This week’s surprise hits were Angry Birds/Transformers #2 from IDW Publishing, Ares & Aphrodite #1 from Oni Press, Operation: S.I.N. #1 and Wolverines #1 from Marvel. The disappointments of the week were Angela: Asgard’s Assassin #2 and Ant-Man #1 from Marvel and Future’s End #36 from DC. Ongoing greats like Swamp Thing #38 and Detective Comics #38 from DC, Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #3 from Marvel, and John Carter: Warlord of Mars #3 from Dynamite to name a few were just as I expected them to be: superb.

As mentioned above, the graphic novels for the week were Legends of Red Sonja Volume 1 from Dynamite and Quest: Age of Darkness Volume 1 from Zenescope. The former was a fun book where Gail Simone brought together several different female prose writers, paired them with different artists, and wrote a grand, sweeping Red Sonja story. The latter was part of the publisher’s Age of Darkness event and was more a prequel story.

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.

Best of 2014: New Comics Series

Last year I did a small roundup over at The Founding Fields with fellow reviewer Bane of Kings which contained a list of the best new comics to have come out in 2013. It was a rather small list with only 10 entries each from the two of us, reflecting our reading for the year and the consequent small pool to pick from. But in 2014, I greatly expanded my weekly reading, and so for the round-up of the best new comics to have come out in 2014, whether as mini-series or ongoings, I have decided to go much bigger.

There were a ton of new comics to come out last year and many of them started off well enough but unfortunately well by wayside since subsequent issues were nowhere near as good. That however, is a call to make on any new comic and you have to have a wait-and-see attitude for the most part. For this embiggened round-up, I have some mini-series here and some ongoing titles. Some have had multiple issues come out in 2014, while some have had less than three.

Irrespective of that, these are all the most promising new series of 2014, and I think that they are all well worth the read in 2015.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!

Red Sonja: Vulture’s Circle #1 (Comics Review)

2015 is the tenth anniversary of Dynamite Entertainment publishing Red Sonja comics. It has been a long and successful ten years by all accounts, especially with 2013’s reboot of the line under Gail Simone and Walter Geovani, which has taken the character to new heights and made her even more popular than before. Of course, as anniversaries go, this is a pretty big one and so Dynamite is going to be celebrating it in as grand a way as possible, with some new mini-series and the like coming out this year. I love Gail and Walter’s ongoing and many of the mini-series and one-shots of the last 3 years have also been fairy good, so I’m always ready to check out more Red Sonja.

The first mini-series to be released is Red Sonja: Vulture’s Circle. The first issue of this came out this week, and in this we get a look at Sonja’s future. After all her years of fighting and looting and ruling and everything, Sonja has taken to a very peaceful life. She has built herself a school of arms for young women and has become a teacher. That’s the setting going into this first issue, which also brings back one of the main god-like villains of the setting, Set, in a really neat way. Nancy A. Collins, who also writes Vampirella for Dynamite, does a great job at depicting an older and wiser Sonja who still has some strong ties to her past with fellow writer Luke Lieberman, while the art by Fritz Casas and Adriano Lucas is also outstanding.

Comics Picks For 31.12.2014

The first Comics Picks of the new year, and while I of course wished for a Magic 40 to kick off 2015, I’m happy with the fact that I didn’t go overboard much and read only a few measly 10 comics, two of which were graphic novels.

For the first week of 2015, the top hits were SHIELD #1 from Marvel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes from Boom Studios, Legends of Red Sonja Volume 1 from Dynamite, and Star Trek/Planet of the Apes from IDW/Boom Studios. The disappointing reads of the week were both from Zenescope unfortunate, Dark Shaman #3 and Quest: Age of Darkness Volume 1. The others… they were decent, nothing major.

As mentioned above, the graphic novels for the week were Legends of Red Sonja Volume 1 from Dynamite and Quest: Age of Darkness Volume 1 from Zenescope. The former was a fun book where Gail Simone brought together several different female prose writers, paired them with different artists, and wrote a grand, sweeping Red Sonja story. The latter was part of the publisher’s Age of Darkness event and was more a prequel story.

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.