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New Avengers 16.1

The presence of these two superb artists is enough to persuade me to pick up this extra issue of Marvel’s most frustrating super-team. Frustrating? I reckon that’s a fair way to describe a group containing some of Marvel’s most powerful, experienced and charismatic characters, which never hits the heights it should.

Darwin’s Diaries: The Eye of the Celts

The concept is off-the-wall great: Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist turned not-so-mild-mannered monster hunter is investigating a series of grisly murders of railroad workers and their horses deep in 1860s Yorkshire woods. So far so good. He has been hired by the British Prime Minister for the case because of his little-known interest in the Sasquatch, Almas, and other clawed cryptids. Even better. But somehow the great idea and occasionally terrific artwork doesn’t quite gel.

Catwoman 1

Can we get a little more face time? No, seriously, it’s around page 4 before we get a good look at our heroine’s face, though we see plenty of the rest of her, predominantly boobs and butt as she throws together a few valued possessions before fleeing her home pursued by criminals whom she’s managed to piss off.

Red Hood and the Outlaws 1

I was blindsided by this. Wonder Woman was the comic I fully expected to hate this week. But Red Hood I didn’t expect much of, and demanded less; I could handle Roy Harper being without a daughter as long as he had both arms and didn’t have the stupid and implausible relationship with the murderess, and this promised that, so I went in with low expectations.

ALTER EGO vol.3, no.104

When I was a little lad, reading Mighty World of Marvel in the 1970s, I thought Roy Thomas must be the coolest man alive, Stan Lee’s hep & groovy young assistant & since then, it’s Thomas’s work that has made him one of my fave comics writers, & subsequently, one of my favourite editors.

Obsolete

You don’t get many pamphlet comics from the indie publishers these days, but Nobrow press are attempting to resuscitate the format with 17 x 23, a series of 24 page single story booklets from a variety of up and coming artists. Mikkel Sommer’s Obsolete is part of the 17 x 23 series, and presents the […]

Hawk & Dove 1

Presumably whatever DC was hoping for with this slightly demented line-wide relaunch, it wasn’t to instil a feeling of dread in the reader. Yet that’s exactly what welled up within when gazing upon the first page of Hawk and Dove 1. In fact I had to put it down, make a cup of tea and try again later.

DC Super Friends: Potty Time Power

Sam, our young protagonist, is deemed old enough now to step out of diapers and into the world of big-boy pants, but first he must master the skills of potty-training, and who better to teach him than the Super Friends?

Everything We Miss

Breaking up is never easy y’know and Luke Pearson’s extremely gloomy meditation on a relationship on the rocks doesn’t go too easy on the reader either.

Chimo

He wears his artistic influences on his sleeve, Crumb being far and away the most pronounced. This manifests in a familiar first person delivery and copious cross-hatching, but instead of the confessional canon of the Crumb copiers Collier produces what he calls “comic strip essays” – usually self-narrated documentaries where the author’s reflections and musings are woven into and around a true story.