Reviews

Something that may have gotten lost in the shuffle of Comicon was the release of Bloodshot #1, the third title from Valiant's relaunch. Valiant went raiding Marvel again for the creative team: Duane Swierczynski (Iron Fist, Cable, and more recently Birds of Prey) is the writer, Manuel Garcia (probably best known for runs on Raven and Checkmate) is penciling with Arturo Lozzi, Stefano Gaudiano (all sorts of Marvel titles... plus X-O Manowar) is inking.

Does the first issue of Matt Fraction and David Aja's new Hawkeye series... sigh.... hit the target?

If you are one of the last souls who has yet to buy WANDER or DRACULA THE UNCONQUERED #2, allow me to convince you. Put away that latte money for I have something better for you to enjoy.

Marvel's newly eponymous Captain jumps into a new solo title. But does Carol Danvers soar in the new role... or crash and burn?

Debuting this week, concurrent with Comicon, is the Secret Agent Poyo special from Image. Poyo is a rooster. A fighting rooster. The deadliest fighting rooster in the world. So yes, this comic has it's roots in cockfighting, but Poyo will basically kill anything that moves. Yes, Poyo is an angry bird. Poyo first turned up in Chew a couple years back and was an instant hit. This is the character's close up and it almost defies description.

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!"