Rocketeer Adventures is a great collection of new stories set in the world of the Rocketeer. There is no continuity to worry about, no origin story to fuss with, just good stories from some of comics top creators. There’s three stories total and frankly they’re all really good and very different from each other. Some of the talent in this issue: John Cassaday, Mike and Laura Allred and Kurt Busiek. With pin-ups by: Mike Mignola with Dave Stewart and Jim Silke.
The great thing about this issue is that it’s hard to tell if it’s part of a six issue story or if it’s just a part of something bigger happening in the series. So often in comics from Marvel and DC the writers write for the trade paperback meaning they have six issues to tell their story. With the second issue of Herc there is a real conclusion to the first part of the story. Elements of that story will continue, but there was real resolution in this issue which is rare in modern comics.
Undying Love has gone back to being a bit better than the first
issue was, with some of the same and different reasons as to why. The story’s events begin before the
first two issues and tell the story of how John met Mei during his service as a
soldier and how John decides to protect Mei and travel with her. Tomm Coker and Daniel Freedman are putting their creativity
to good use in this latest issue of Undying Love.
Mei’s character, one that seemed nothing more than a simple
damsel-in-distress an issue ago, has proven to have a lot more bite in
this
issue – and in deceptive amounts.
Coker and Freedman really outline Mei’s insatiable blood lust in this
issue with great results and make Mei seem both deceptively innocent and
deadly, a great combination with a vampire that really makes you wonder
if she
will ever turn on her GI Joe-model boyfriend. Hopefully this is
intentional, otherwise Mei’s rapid mood
swings throughout the issue are just examples of inconsistent writing.
If planned, this tactic is a great one. It gives her character depth
and makes
me even more curious to learn about her origins and the very first time
she
ever became a vampire, which will hopefully be answered in future
issues.
This double-sized issue has two stories with two chances to impress. The first is a great story that’s enjoyable for surprising reasons, and the second is a story that seems out of place but is still pretty good. Both have flaws, but a lot of positive qualities that make up for these flaws… for the most part.
The cover story, simply entitled “Tinkerbelle,” opens with Tinkerbelle running away from a group of fairies in hot pursuit of her to find out what happened to the Fairy Queen’s daughter. She is forced to relive a frightening tale of killer mermaids and is banished from Neverland.
Junis had done it; he had avenged his family and slain the
mighty Caligula. Or so he thought. Despite
having a dagger thrust through his skull, Caligula carries on like nothing has
happened. He also acknowledges Junis as Felix and has dubbed him a good luck
charm. In doing this, Caligula demands that Junis joins him at the races, which
consists of warriors racing laps in chariots. Perplexed on how Caligula had
survived and desperate for another attempt, Junis plays along with the emperor
and honors his request.
As Senior Writer for the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG from Bioware, Alexander Freed was a natural choice to lead the comic as well. A five part companion series, The Lost Suns unfolds concurrently with the events of the video game. If you’re not familiar with the Old Republic era of the Star Wars mythos, its stories take place thousands of years before the original films. Jedi number in the hundreds and protect a peaceful and massive Republic. In The Lost Suns, a young spy named Theron is tasked with finding the seasoned Jedi Master Ngani Zho who lived and walked behind enemy lines. His information could prove vital to the Republic, as well as give the fledging new espionage division a chance to prove its usefulness to the government. The only problem is a Sith Lord by the name of Darth Mekhis is looking for Zho as well and she seems pretty serious about it.
Netherworld number one, was an excellent first issue, that tricked me into thinking this was a noir bounty hunter, crime book, set in real world fiction. Everything was great until the end of the issue, when a monster appeared and what I thought was a normal crime fiction, transformed into a kind of Blade meets Buffy set in another “monster” comic book. Mind you, this comic could have been a great crime book. You know those great books, creators like Ed Brubaker and Brian Michael Bendis got their start. But now a days everything is about monsters. Feeling that this trend is already overplay my expectations for issue two were a bit low.
The Devastator is a quarterly comedy magazine that is loosely inspired by other comedy zines such as: National Lampoon, Mad and Cracked magazine. Where the Devastator succeeds is where the, afore mentioned magazines all fail. It has the sophistication of the Onion, but with the geek culture references from ones youth that can be found on any vintage T-Shirt website. What it also does different is that each issue has a theme selected by the editorial team. The first issue was cartoons; the second issue had an all Sci-Fi theme to it and the third issue… Cats. That’s right natures “laid off boyfriend” gets its time to shine as the Devastator proves once and for all that there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Adam Warren’s newest issue of Empowered is here and as usual, this gem is still as funny and risqué as the first time I read the book. In this newest volume we are given two stories that at the end link up really well. The first story is a look into the mind of probably one of the most jacked up and bad-ass heroes in the Empowered universe… the Maidman. In the second story, Warren gives us The Boy Who Cried Wolf, but Empowered stars as the little boy, and Warren shows us the consequences of her actions. The two stories are cleverly mixed and make up one whole story just like the Simpson’s television episodes do every week.
If you’ve been following Morning Glories then you should have figured out that each issue is following one of the six main characters. I can’t say that they’ve all been very interesting, but there have been stand out moments like Hunter’s issue. Issue #10 follows Jade, who is having a hard time adjusting since being freed from the Nurses office. She continues to have strange horrific dreams that wake her in the night screaming. Screams so loud that the night security arrives and lingers in the girls rooms. After the guards threaten to take Jade, Casey tells them to politely piss off since she’s sure they would have already taken her if they could.
