Quick Hit Reviews – Week of February 23, 2011

Sometimes there are soooo many comics published in a given week (ahem….I’m looking at you Marvel) that despite the heroic efforts of the WCBR writing staff, we simply can’t give every comic a complete review.  Thus, the Quick Hit Reviews…

New York Five #2 – Wow is Ryan Kelly a great artist!  The story here is solid, slice of life stuff as we follow our four college freshmen as they adapt to life in NYC, but the star of this issue is Kelly’s art.  His character work is really strong as young ladies are all cute and express appropriate emotion, but his attention to the city around them in just incredible.  The city just feels alive. I really need to track down New York Four and I encourage everyone to check out this Vertigo series.  Kelly and Tommy Lee Edwards (on Turf) made a LOT of artist’s backgrounds look like dog food this week.  Grade: A-  — Dean Stell

X-Men: To Serve and Protect #4 – All I ask of an anthology series is to give me one really memorable story.  I almost don’t care if 3/4 of the issue is crap as long as I get that one stellar tale.  This issue has a BIG mission accomplished for Jed MacKay and Sheldon Vella’s story of Dazzler, Misty Knight & Colleen Wing engaged in roller derby death match involved a really wacky version of MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for Roller Derby!!).  Vella’s art and colors are just amazing.  Toss in a good finale to the Rockslide/Anole story that has woven through this anthology series and you’ve got a winner.  I love the X-office continues to publish these anthologies.  Grade: B+  — Dean Stell

Echoes #3 – The creep-fest that Echoes has been chills out a little bit in this issue and that’s to be expected because it is the middle issue of a 5-issue series.  Basically, this issue consists of the cop we met in the last issue being onto our main character over the disappearance of the little girl.  Rahsan Ekedal has a couple of just killer pages in this issue and I love that this artwork is all black and white (which sells the creepiness much better).  I am very excited to see how Fialkov brings the action home because you just know that the conclusion won’t be anything straight forward.  Grade: B    — Dean Stell

Turf #4 – Tommy Lee Edwards is a beast!  Between this issue and Ryan Kelly’s art in New York Five, it was GREAT to see two artists who show such dedication to drawing all the little stuff that makes a scene.  I love all of Edwards’ drawing of architecture and other things in the environment.  My only hang-up is the story.  I can keep the basic plot organized: Vampires are trying to take over the world and are being opposed by a bunch of gangsters and an alien in Prohibition Era New York.  But, I just can’t keep the minutiae of the plot straight due to the time between issues.   This will definitely be worth a re-read after it is done as I’ll bet the story will be tighter.  Grade: B   — Dean Stell

The Mission #1 – Lots of mystery in this first issue.  The basic set up is that an everyman character is approached by a strange dude who tells him that he has 48 hours to kill a stranger and that his very life depends on it.  The issue is well written and this series is going to sink or swim based on the plot twists.  I enjoyed the first issue, but the only problem is that when you are expecting plot twists, they just don’t hit you quite as hard.  Needless to say, our protagonist has some standard navel gazing after getting some bad medical news and then wonders why he should kill this innocent man.  Clearly, not all is as it seems and this series could go either up or down from here.  Grade: C+  — Dean Stell

Uncanny X-Men #533 – The writing in this issue took a big turn for the better.  All the dialog and banter seemed a LOT crisper and more humorous than the first few issues of this arc.  The story itself is pretty standard interstitial fare for the X-Men, and that’s fine as the X-franchise surfs from Second Coming last summer to MMXI this summer.  My only quibble with the story (entrepreneur patents the mutant genome so that he can sell mutant pills over-the-counter) is that when you try to make your story contemporary, hip and “grounded in today’s headlines” it lowers the reader’s sense of wonder for the whole story and you start to question all sorts of things that don’t even enter your mind during a more fantastical story.  There’s also the problem that what is contemporary and hip to the general public is old and dated to people in the know.  And, Marvel really needs to move Greg Land to another family of titles.  We X-fans have seen these exact same faces for several years now.  It isn’t that his women have ugly faces, it’s that Emma Frost, the new/fake Angel lady from this arc and Chimera from the Sisterhood arc (~#508), and countless other women over the last couple years all have the same face. Bonus points for snappy dialog.  Negative points for the art.  Grade: C+  — Dean Stell

X-23 #6 – I kinda enjoyed, but didn’t love the resolution to this story that shows X-23 and Gambit doing battle with a kinda-Mr. Sinister in an underground lair.  The good thing is that it is continuing to showcase the evolution of X-23 as she struggles with her status as a clone and whether she has a soul.  The bad thing is that it had to incorporate Gambit and his Mr. Sinister baggage.  Conrad’s art is pretty tight.  This story also didn’t need to be 6 issues long.  Grade: C+  — Dean Stell

Punisher: In the Blood #4 – We’re getting close to the end of Rick Remender’s run on Punisher and I wish he was going out a little stronger.  I’m not an old time Punisher fan, so I spent a LOT of the issue thoroughly confused by the two bad guys who both have sliced up faces.  One is Jigsaw, but I really didn’t know which one.  And there is this weirdness with Frank’s reincarnated wife who is running around in S&M leather gear.  It just didn’t seem very street-level to me.  Maybe this is just an example of how the Punisher has a hard time working in the Marvel U.  I just want to see the guy kill drug dealers.  Grade: C-  — Dean Stell

Iron Man / Thor #4 – This wasn’t a bad miniseries, but it is still one I’m sorry I bought.  The story was fun as we ran into the High Evolutionary and Diablo who were trying to create a new God for the 21st century and the art by Scott Eaton was very good.  But, I need my Marvel comics to “matter” a little more than this one.  There might be a little bit of carry over with the High Evolutionary into the Silver Surfer series, but unless you are a huge High Evolutionary fan, that’s going to be pretty hollow take-away.  My general problem with this miniseries comes down to what I expect from Marvel comics.  I want them to matter and advance the soap opera in some/any direction, but I’ve read more than enough Iron Man and Thor stories in my life and don’t need one more good story with these characters.  If I just want “good story”, I’d rather read something wholly new.  Grade: C  — Dean Stell

Power Man and Iron Fist #2 – They say that there are no bad characters and that if you don’t like a character, it is only because the right writer/story hasn’t come along yet.  Well, I seriously doubt that is true in the case of the new Power Man because if Fred Van Lente can’t make this punk kid enjoyable, I don’t think anyone can (unless they give him a personality transplant).  I’ve heard people compare Power Man to Damian Wayne, but he has none of Damian’s charm and spunk.  He’s all hostility, false-bravado and annoyance.  And, he’s dragging a great character like Iron Fist down with him.  Danny Rand has much better things to do than hang out with this kid.  Character issues aside, the story is well written and it is well drawn, it is just very hard to get past the dislike of the central character.  Grade: C-  — Dean Stell