Comics

Titans: Villains For Hire

Spinning out of the pages of Brightest Day, Deathstroke leads a team of “Titans” turned assassins that are hired to kill Ryan Choi aka The Atom. The group consists of: Deathstroke, The Tattoo Man, Cheshire, Sun Girl, and the recently resurrected Osiris. The addition of Osiris to the team, makes this line up even more bizarre. Osiris is one of the featured twelve that were resurrected in Blackest Night.

Some Titans fans are upset by the book. Over at DC’s own message board, several fans have already started boycotting the title. The feeling is that the Titans are heroes, never villains. Other fans have pointed out the fact that other than Deathstroke and Osiris briefly, the team has no real tie to the Titans. Seems more like a marketing ploy then an actual Titans tie-in.

First Wave – The Spirit #1

The Spirit is the second spin-off series under the First Wave banner from DC comics. Will Eisner’s The Spirit is a comic classic with a long and robust history. Fortunately, this newest issue doesn’t try to shovel in all of those years and alienate new readers. Thankfully, they tell a simple story and give the Spirit a simple past, thus making for an accessible story and good continuation from the First Wave mini-series.

Denny Colt is the Spirit. He was once dead but he got better. He’s the lone guardian of Central City against the Octopus and his crime families. Our story begins with the Spirit destroying a drug shipment that the Octopus is bringing into the city. This forces the Octopus to call a summit between the families and ends with the announcement of a professional assassin being brought in to deal with the Spirit once and for all.

Marvel Teases Shadowland

Hitting comic shelves this July from Marvel, comes Shadowland: Battle For The Soul of New York. Written by Andy Diggle (Losers) the current writer of Daredevil and drawn by Billy Tan (Darkness). The story focuses around the Shadowland, which is a prison/temple built on the aftermath in Hell’s Kitchen from Bullseye during Dark Reign.

The five issue series will take place in part with Daredevil #507-511, and will focus on Daredevil’s newfound roll as the leader of the Hand. Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, has eliminated crime in Hell’s Kitchen but using the international ninja crime group as a “force of justice.” Members of the super-human community get themselves involved and Daredevil finds unlikely allies and enemies as he crosses lines he’s never been forced to cross before. Marvel guarantees the story will change the way Daredevil is look upon in the Marvel Universe.

The Flash #1 – Review

Dear fans of Wally West… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that Wally has a wife and two kids and was never as interesting as Barry Allen. I’m sorry that with one issue, Geoff Johns (Blackest Night and anything else good at DC) has made Flash a better character than the “Big Three” or that Wally could ever be. And for that,… well, I shouldn’t say I’m sorry if I don’t mean, should I? 

The first page of this book sets the tone for the entire issue, “New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Central City is the city always on the run.” It’s almost silly to say that this book reads fast, but it does.  Once the story starts, it never stops. It pushes the reader forward all the way to the last page. Barry Allen is returning to his job as a forensic scientist for the Central City Police Department, and his life as the Flash. He begins his day by taking out the new Trickster, who has decided to make traffic in the city worse than it usually is. He shows up late to work and is introduced to rest of the “Lab Rats”, and is sent to his first homicide case: Mirror Master.

Cold Space #1 – Review

The best way to summarize Cold Space is to say that it’s about Samuel L. Jackson playing a Riddick-Pitch-Black-type character that crash-lands in a western space town. Really, there is nothing else to the story besides a lot of Samuel L. Jackson-esc dialog and a whole lot of ego-stroking. Usually, Boom! Studios are able to produce comics that feel like movies, but that’s not the case here.

X-Men: Second Coming #1

In the blink of an eye the Scarlett Witch whispered “No more mutants”, grammatically, a horrible sentence that has since haunted the mutants of the Marvel Universe. This was after Grant Morrison had increased the mutant population to an annoying amount. Think Avengers Initiative only with the X-Men: too many forgettable characters with dumb and/or lame powers. Scarlett Witch changed that. She knocked the X-Men down to a staggering 198 in total population.  The stories could have been real interesting and act as a restart to the X-Men, taking it back to the days when new mutants were a rarity. Instead, Marvel focused on them being an endangered species.

In Messiah Complex, Cable takes the first mutant born since, again M-Day (No More Mutants), and runs away with her to the future. Now with my summary, you can actually read this issue. I have done what Marvel failed to do and recap the events leading up to this cross-over event. I remember when Messiah Complex came out Marvel said they wanted to do an X-Men cross-over because they, “hadn’t “done one in a while.” Apparently, they wanted to make up for lost time and have slammed one cross-over event after the other.

Second Coming is the return of the mutant messiah, Hope (Jean Grey reborn, just my guess), who has been raised in the future by Cable. They’re past being chased by Bishop, who desperately wanted to kill her so he’d never exist. I guess he didn’t know what a time paradox was.  Short version he could never do that. So they’ve returned. The X-Men are on Utopia, an artificial island off the coast of San Francisco. Cyclops is having a group meeting discussing the most recent mutant death and how it’s the equivalent of one million humans dying. Then, he informs the gathered team that they have work to do. At this point, it is not explained what the X-Men need to really work on, or what they even do all day. Just that there’s work to be done. Right on cue, Cerebra, the mutant detecting computer, picks up Cables return. Cyclops then strategically places teams in what’s sure to become story set pieces and moves out to get the story rolling.

Codebreakers #1 – Review

Codebreakers delivers a solid government spy thriller that appeals to your nerdy intellect and your smarter-than-you-complex, all in one story.

Boom! Studio’s seems to have the uncanny ability to make a comic book feel like something more.  This comic could have easily been a pilot episode of a new TV series or even the newest thriller hitting theaters.  That’s how good this comic is and how well it reads.  Carey Malloy, the writer, crafts an intelligent, fast paced story that leaves you waiting for issue two. The characters in the story are just that, characters, each with their own unique voice and mannerisms that define them throughout each act.  The story follows Stanley Grouse, the youngest cryptanalyst in F.B.I. history.  Stan represents the future of code breaking, and strives to be the best.  He’s apart of the alpha team, headed up by Donald Foster.  Foster is the experienced leader, the best around and perhaps a little hardened from his experiences.  Lindsay Abbott is smart and beautiful, she sees the code in people’s patterns and habits.   Closing out the team is Malcolm Whiteweather, the oldest member of the team.  Malcolm represents the early days of code breaking and rounds out the personalities on the team.