CCW 3.97: LAST RANTS (PART ONE) BRIAN BENDIS VERSUS THE COMICS MEDIA

CCW 3.93: Wolverine #1 and Scarlet #2 REVIEWED

CCW 3.84: LAST RANTS (CONCLUSION) – FANBOYS & COMIC-BOOK CONTINUITY

CCW 3.77: LAST RANTS! The return of classic Brian Bendis?

CCW 3.68: LAST RANTS! AVENGERS #2 REVIEW & How it can kill comic shops!

CCW 3.62: FIRST RANTS! Meet the NEW “New Avengers” (Same as the OLD “New” Avengers?)

CCW 3.55: Avengers #1 & Secret Avengers #1 REVIEWED

CCW 3.51: The Siege #4 & New Avengers Finale REVIEW

How About Some Capsule Reviews for Your Consumption?

Rating System:
**** : Excellent
*** : Good
** : Fair
* : Poor
Zero : Horseshit

Title: Power Girl #10
By: Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Amanda Conner

Comics do not get more fun or much better than Power Girl. Lots of action, lots of humor and lots of great character moments. This book has not faltered once. But if it’s one thing that I learned from the last episode of Star Trek: TNG it’s that all good things…something, something. Really, just go buy this damn book already if you haven’t. The current creative team who have been with the book from the beginning will be leaving after issue #12 so enjoy it why it lasts. Can Power Girl haz an Eizner Pleez?

Rating: ****

Title: Secret Warriors #14
By: Jonathan Hickman and Sefano Caselli

I have been having some problems with this title as of late. For one, since Caselli’s return to art chores on this book he has changed up his style a bit and not for the better imo. The coloring isn’t helping any either. My biggest problem though comes in the form of the story. Hickman can usually do no wrong in my eyes but this last storyline has been taking forever to get anywhere. There have been too many flashbacks as of late that are focusing on way too many characters. Having it be SHIELD vs. HYDRA is one thing but when you also throw in LEVIATHAN it almost becomes too much for this title to handle. I’ll give credit to Hickman though. His Overall story is very ambitious but having this book only come out once a month is not going to cut it. If there was a way for this comic to come out biweekly during the summer (like Marvel Comics used to do with some titles) to help quicken up the pace of the story I think that would help out tremendously. Unfortunately that probably won’t happen. I’ll give this title a couple more issues to get something going before I decide whether or not to drop it.

Rating: **½

Title: Green Lantern #52
By: Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke

This issue is basically Blackest Night #7.5. Lot of stuff thrown into this issue: The origins of Ion and Parallax are revealed, the rainbow lantern corps try to defend Coast City while attempting to take the planet Xanshi off the playing board and then you have the “rebirth” of Thaal Sinestro. One thing that hasn’t been doing it for me in these last few stories of Blackest Night is that Nekron is really turning out to be nothing special. He is the equivalent of Nero (from the latest Star Trek film) and I think we can all agree that that is not a good thing. Doug Mahnke continues to kill on art in this book and helps it gain an extra star rating.

Rating: ***

Title: Uncanny X-Men #522
By: Matt Fraction and Whilce Portacio

I haven’t read an issue of Uncanny since the whole Utopia storyline and I really have no idea what had been going on in this book lately (so I was kinda lost). All I DO know is that this issue marked the return of Kitty Pryde so I figured I would give it a go. Blerg…how can Matt Fraction write Iron Man so right while his writing on Uncanny is almost unbearable. This was a pretty tough book to get through and I didn’t even bother with the Phil Jimenez back up story since the combination of shitty art with craptastic writing would have surely done me in. But everyone rejoice! Magneto has brought back our precious Kitty Pryde and all is good…except for the writing…and the characterizations…and the art. This book gets one star alone for it NOT being drawn by Greg Land.

Rating: *½

Title: Thunderbolts #142
By: Jeff Parker and Wellinton Alves

Ah, time to cleanse the palette with a Jeff Parker comic. I must say that out of all of the Siege tie-ins I am enjoying this one the most. You have the T-Bolts breaking into the Asgardian’s weapon vault trying to get their hands on the Spear of Odin for Osborn. You then have the Mighty Avengers showing up to stop them. And then you have Amadeus Cho taking out Mr. X in brilliant fashion while you have the U.S. Agent kicking some major buttocks and out Captain America-ing Captain America. On top of all that the T-Bolts start getting their shit together and come off quite bad ass. This was every bit an awesome issue of Mighty Avengers as it was the Thunderbolts. What’s it going to take to get Jeff Parker on an Avengers book already? Get Bendis out of there. Oh and speaking of which…

Rating: ***

Title: New Avengers #63
By: Brian Bendis and Mike McKone

THE ONLY saving grace of this title has been Stuart Immonen’s art. You take that away and replace him with the boring, static art of Mike McKone and there is no longer a reason to torture yourself reading it. This issue’s “cool and witty” dialog is suicide inducing. Bendis is the master of writing pages upon pages of dialogue with little to no substance all the while not moving the story forward. This issue is a perfect example of “sideways” storytelling (much like Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk). The only thing worse than reading this comic would be reading CBR’s review for it (and other Bendis titles). Praising mediocrity seems to be their specialty.

Rating: ½*

Title: Nemesis #1
By: Mark Millar and Steve McNiven

What do you get when you mix an uninspiring idea with passable art while adding a story that seems to be written by a 15 year old sociopath? Well, you get a comic that makes Kick-Ass look like shit. Spoiler: Kick-Ass didn’t really need any help to look like shit…and neither did this comic.

Rating: Zero