QUICK REVIEWS FOR COMICS DUE 07-16-08

QUICK REVIEWS FOR COMICS DUE 07-16-08
“Why so serious?”
By John Judy

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #566 by Marc Gugenheim and Phil Jimenez. Spidey needs a little help from Daredevil to rescue his roommate from Kraven’s daughter or whoever she is. Not sure why exactly but Phil Jimenez draws everything pretty so who cares?

ASTRO CITY: THE DARK AGE BOOK 1 HC by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson. Collecting the first eight issues of “The Dark Age”, the story of Astro City in the seventies when the Silver Agent got whacked. Great stuff, too infrequently seen on the racks. Recommended.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #40 by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. Crazy 1950s Cap vs. Tortured Cyborg Bucky-Cap! For da title! And the Red Skull’s daughter does A Bad Thing.

CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #1 by Tim Truman, Tomas Giorello and Richard Corben. Conan learns you can’t go home again unless you’re willing to kill dozens of people with swords, axes, your bare hands and some ornate, twisty thing I don’t really know the name of. Great fun.

EC ARCHIVES: WEIRD SCIENCE VOL. 3 HC by The Geniuses of Their Age. Yeah, you know you want this!

FINAL CRISIS: ROGUES REVENGE #1 of 3 by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins. The Flash rogues must answer for the murder of Bart Allen. So should the guys who wrote his FLASH series but we can’t have everything. It’s Geoff Johns and he writes good Flash comics. Recommended.

GHOST RIDER #25 by Jason Aaron and Tan Eng Huat. Ghost Rider in Prison by the guy who writes SCALPED! As good as this title can get! Recommended!

HELLBLAZER #246 by Jason Aaron and Sean Murphy. It’s “Constantine Meets Blair Witch” as a bunch of hapless documentary film-makers blunder into Newcastle. A very bad place to look for Constantinalia… Highly recommended.

HOUDINI THE HANDCUFF KING SC by Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi. An informative episode from the life of the world’s most famous magician/escape artist. Recommended.

HOW TO DRAW STUPID SC by Kyle Baker. Sadly there is nothing in here about how to get the next issue of SPECIAL FORCES on the rack. Still recommended because Baker is a gol-darn genius!

HOWARD THE DUCK OMNIBUS HC by Steve Gerber and Many Worthy Collaborators. Great. Like Marvel couldn’t have done this while Gerber was still alive… Recommended anyway because this is really great stuff. As close to the subversion of the underground comix as mainstream super companies ever got. Very worth having.

MARVEL 1985 #3 of 6 by Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edwards. On the basis of how badly the movie “Wanted” sucked I could justify never reading another Mark Millar book again. But everyone’s entitled to a mistake now and then and this book is actually sort of fun. Worth a look.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #16 by Brian Michael Bendis and Khoi Pham. The secret origin of “Skrullectra.” At this point you’re either into it or you’re not. Gotta look.

PUNISHER #59 by Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov. They should kill Frank or cancel the title when Ennis leaves but they won’t. Amazing run. Bravo. Highly recommended.

SCALPED #19 by Jason Aaron and David Furno. Lots of The Sexy in this issue but being SCALPED it’s gonna have a dark twist. Why is everyone in the world not buying this title? Does it not suck enough to be popular? Highly recommended.

SPIKE: AFTER THE FALL #1 of 4 by Brian Lynch and Franco Urru. Hey, I’ll bet this is as good as ANGEL: AFTER THE FALL! What?

TOO COOL TO BE FORGOTTEN HC written and drawn by Alex Robinson. A really fun fantasy about a grown man sent back in time via hypnosis to the 1980s to relive high school. Hey, it worked for Batman in the fifties! Recommended.

UNIVERSAL WAR #1 of 3 written and drawn by Denis Bajram. Some f’reign sci-fi space opera done up in proper American, the way the Lord intended. Yee-haw!

WAR IS HELL: FIRST FLIGHT OF HE PHANTOM EAGLE #5 of 5 by Garth Ennis and Howard Chaykin. The final issue in which we learn whether the PE has gone nuts. Or if he always was… If you like Ennis war comics you’ll like this.

X-FACTOR #33 by Peter David and Larry Stroman. Lotta cross-over stuff in this issue which Peter David handles better than most.

Enjoy “Dark Knight” everybody! - JJ

www.johnjudy.net