Reviews

A month or so ago, I'd pulled Dracula: A Company of Monsters out of the library and found myself pleasantly surprised by it. Somebody in the comment section mentioned Daryl Gregory, co-writer on the Dracula book, was doing Planet of the Apes and it was worth checking out. Sure enough, the library had that, too. Daryl Gregory may be one to watch, because his Planet of the Apes is better than his Dracula, and he's two-for-two.

A couple months back, Dynamite starting publishing new adventures of two classic pulp magazine heroes: The Shadow and The Spider. Both characters have seen comic adaptions over the years, particularly The Shadow. With a couple month elapsed, its time to step back and see how these characters that predate comic book superheroes (and influenced the creation of Batman) are holding up.

Last month, Valiant had a pretty successful start, with X-O Manowar selling out 45K copies and going into a 2nd printing. This week, the second Valiant title dropped, in the form of Harbingers #1. Let's have a look at it.

The promised emergence of a Gay Green Lantern in the second issue of Earth 2 has been the big news for a couple weeks, except there's not actually a Green Lantern in this issue. Oh, hype machine, you were just a hair off-target. If you plan on reading the issue and haven't, spoiler space follows....

In which Peter Parker and Miles Morales have a bit of a meet-up.

With the recent release of Youngblood #71, the relaunch of Rob Liefeld's Extreme universe is in full swing. I looked at the amazing Prophet and surprising Glory when they came out. Now it's time for the rest of the batch.

Oh, Alexander Skarsgard. I could watch a whole movie of him standing on the bridge of a ship and giving tense orders. "Starboard!" "Aft!" "Hard to port!" "Fire when ready!"

After one of the most obtuse PR campaigns in recent history, Earth-2 has finally come out. So has its companion book Worlds' Finest. How were they? Let's have a look.

You remember Brian K. Vaughan? He used to write comics. Y:The Last Man. Ex Machina. The vastly under-appreciated Dr. Strange: The Oath. Then he left comics to write television. Some show called "Lost." Its not on anymore. Well, Vaughan is back. In style, no less. This Wednesday, his comeback project drops. Its called Saga. A double-sized issue for $2.99. And it's really, really good.

After debuting to encouraging ratings, the entire first episode of Kevin Smith's Comic Book Men reality show is now streaming, so you can catch up with all the inaction you missed.

Last night, I had occasion to take in a preview of Daniel Radcliffe's first adult film vehicle (no, I'm not counting "My Boy Jack" towards that). "The Lady in Black" is adapted (somewhat creatively, I gather) from the 1983 Susan Hill novel by director James Watkins and screenwriter Jane Goodman (who Beat readers will likely remember from Kick Ass, X-Men: First Class and Stardust). No more wizards and spells for Radcliffe as he finds himself in over his head dealing with a vengeful spirit.

One of the questions you ask when you hear about a new Shadow comic is "what kind of take are they doing?" Another is "how serious will it be?" And then there's "how faithful is it to the source material?" As it happens, I've had a chance to read the script for The Shadow #1. I can't speak to Aaron Campbell's art -- I haven't seen that yet. I can, however, tell you what the tone and the take are going to be.