Sunny Days Indoors 12/05/08

Well, no reviews last week because my motivation ebbs when I've nothing new to tell the world. Last week I picked up the excellent B.P.R.D Killing Ground collection which has no surprise in the sense that it's excellent. However, it does contain plenty of twists with the characters, the whole story taking place at 'home' in Colorado. If you're reading it already, there's nothing to tell as you know it's great, and if you're not picking it up, you're missing one of the best monthly books currently published. Guy Davis' art just gets creepier and creepier and the freaky monsters just get freakier. On a side note I picked up his own series the Marquis a little while back which he wrote and drew: black, white and lots of great zipper tone... and cracked-out monsters too. It's collected by Oni in two books but tricky to find.

The only floppy comic I picked up was Action Comics 864, which I must have ordered based on how much I was enjoying the previous run with Gary Frank. While I'm now much more up to speed on the Legion Of Superheroes, this issue left me lost with a big reveal of a villain who I don't know but suspect I'm supposed to. Also leads into the Legion of Superheroes Crisis thingy which I won't be reading. Art-wise, nothing to show, and I’m feeling that if I've nothing nice to scan then don't scan anything at all. I feel used...

This week, however, I had comics to buy! First up, to show no hard feelings, Action Comics Annual 11 which I believe we've waited a year for. Though I don't know what happened to Adam Kubert to make him run SO late on this, I don't overly care. There've been plenty of good Action Comics and Busiek Superman(s) in the meantime and some iffy fill-ins which I just skipped :) Although Dave Stewart's not on the colours, Edgar Delgado fills in fine, mostly matching the style and maintaining the unique finish. Also fun is that Richard Donner and Geoff Johns manage to surprise with the story, but I don't do spoilers. A great read that, if you've not been keeping up, will stand alone happily as a trade paperback.

The softcover of New Avengers Illuminati came out, which I'd been waiting a while for. I really like Jimmy Cheung, and have done since Iron Man and Maverick, back before he was a "Marvel Young Gun". There's something straight but fun about his art that I can't put my finger on. I sometimes feel he makes everyone look like a teenager, but that’s not really true (see the collection's cover). It did make him the perfect choice for Young Avengers where, with great inker John Dell and perfectly suited colourist Justin Posner, I decided to keep my eye on what he was up to in the future. I wouldn't pick up everything he does...but this series fits.

It's a retrofitted Marvel history telling of how a few key Marvel players have manipulated things from behind the scenes. Secret Wars and the Kree Skrull War are good, but my personal fave was that they put a punctuation mark at the end of Morrison's Marvel Boy run, which was a great cosmic trilogy cut short by Bill Jemas worrying that he couldn't make a movie of it. The book also coincided with an all-Skrull, Secret Invasion tie-in that follows on from Illuminati.

The third part of Risso and Vaughan's Logan mini came out and while overall the series was a little light, it was good fun that didn't stray from the character, though perhaps featuring a slightly dated version of him. Risso's art is superb as always and the last page almost justifies the series alone. I imagine there's a hardcover coming of it but for three issues, I'd be careful...

Following my last post I found out that the Hellboy Golden Army preview comic I got for free was perhaps not very liberally distributed so I've taken the liberty of scanning the thing. My logic, and I hope it'd stand up in court, is that 1) the comic was free and 2) it was meant to be read by the masses to promote the movie and comic. It's at the end of this post at its original location here. Low-res so you can't print it but complete so you can enjoy it. So: enjoy it!

- Billy