June
25 Super Review Catchup Omnibus, Part 1

It’s been far too long since I’ve done reviews, so this week I'm going to try to catch up on the many books that are stacked high in my office so I can at the very least make room for new ones as Comic-Con approaches …

Satan’s Sodomy Baby #1 (Eric Powell, creator; Dark Horse; 32 pages; color; $3.50) is actually an issue of The Goon, albeit one that goes a bit further with its humor and imagery than usual. While there’s plenty in here to offend those people warned on the cover not to read it, the actual points of the humor, such as hillbillies having sex with farm animals and priests molesting children, are well-trod to the point of not being terribly funny or outrageous. Here’s hoping Powell got this out of his system and can get back to his usual imaginative and original work on The Goon. Grade: C

The Boys returns with issue #7, now published by Dynamite Entertainment (color, 32 pages, $2.99) after DC/Wildstorm pulled the plug. The book looks and feels pretty much exactly the same, with Ennis continuing to take the piss out of superheroes (you’d think he’d get bored with that after all these years … ) to good effect. Fans of the series will be pleased, and the new character – a nameless bald man who knows all the dirt on all the superheroes and lives in the basement of a comics shop – is damn funny, although perhaps a bit too reminiscent of Starr from Preacher. Still, a fun read with great dialogue and art from the underrated Darick Robertson. Grade: B

Geoff Darrow’s The Shaolin Cowboy #7 (Burlyman Entertainment, 32 pages, color, $3.50) made a recent, rare appearance on the stands and is up to its usual standards — meaning the art is gorgeous, the plot confusing, the dialogue witting to the point of whiny, and the ink on the pages for some reason still smells bad. Grade: B-

Avengers Classic #1 (Marvel; 32 pages, 48 pages, color, $3.99) revives a fairly cool format first used two decades ago for Classic X-Men. This issue features a complete reprint of Avengers #1, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby way back in 1963. Rounding out the package are two comedic new backup tales — one about the team fighting over who deserves to chair their meetings, by Dwayne McDuffie and Michael Avon Oeming; and a story in which Stan Lee reveals the “real” origin of the team, written by Lee himself and drawn by Kevin Maguire. Both have their charms, but even with Avengers having dethroned X-Men as Marvel’s top franchise these days, a reprint title seems a bit off given the number of books out there right now that reprint this very issue. Grade: A-

The Homeless Channel (Matt Silady, writer and artist; AiT-PlanetLar; 168 pages; black and white, $12.95) tells the tale of a smart and savvy woman named Darcy Shaw, who creates a cable channel devoted to the lives of the homeless that manages to turn a profit while ostensibly improving the lives of those it covers. The book is less about the homeless issue and more about Shaw, who’s doing the 21st century of having it all by having a practical plan for saving the world without sacrificing her own pursuit of success and personal happiness. This book casts an increasingly common, easy-to-fall-for fantasy that everything will be OK if we’re all just smart enough about using technology to circumvent the corruption of the old world. Silady writes smoothly and his model-based art is attractive, but the cool premise doesn’t translate into an innovative story and by the end there’s a definite feeling that there could have been much more to this. Grade: B-

The Highwaymen #1 (Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman, writers; Lee Garbett, artist; Wildstorm; 32 pages; color, $2.99) is a satisfying chunk of action fiction. Story set in the future sees a “I’m-too-old-for-this-shit” cop-like agents called back to duty by a message from a past president to find a long-lost “package” and deliver it to the Centers for Disease Control. Of course, the package is a person, who’s most likely in Mexico. The plot at this point is less important than the action. The centerpiece of this issue is a chase involving a bus that manages the trick of being well-staged and very cool without pushing the boundaries of believability too much (aside, that is, from the idea that there are buses in Scottsdale, Ariz.) Serious and tough, this is a cool book. Grade: B+

Coming from a very similar spot is the new book from Teenagers from Mars creators Rick Spears and Rob G, Repo #1 (Image, 32 pages, color, $3.50). This one also features two tough guys who drive around in cars a lot, though in this vision of the future, foreclosures on car loans are calculated to the minute and it takes skilled pros to recover them with no delay. Rob G’s art retains its manga influence, but the color in this book is particularly effective, using simple but bright yellows, magentas and cyans. This book has a wicked sense of humor and does a fine job of delineating its characters quickly. Again, there’s a hot case that will draw the heroes, K.T. and Emil, into competition with some cutthroat colleagues. It’s kind of a shame that both Repo and Highwaymen came out the same week; both are examples of the kind of comics it would be nice to have more of, but it also may be easy for one to get lost in the shuffle. Grade: B+