Comic Roundup: May 7, 2008

• I ended up picking up my books two days late this week. Thank goodness I don't read anything too popular.


• Buffy The Vampire Slayer issue 14: Part three of the Buffy and Dracula go to Japan story line and we get a huge, very Whedonesque, shocker. I have to remind myself that no one ever gets to be happy in the Buffyverse. Man, I'm so annoyed but at the bad guys, not the writers. Sign of a good comic, I suppose. Looking forward to next issue.


• Conan issue 50: Wrapping up this first series, Conan hits with a slab of comic, essentially a double issue plus an old Conan comic in the back. I picked this up on a whim, just to see how the story is coming along. I was surprised how many of the plot threads I had remember came up again here. Timothy Truman's writing is almost as effective as Kurt Busiek's before him. But I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about the art in comparison to Cary Nord's. It was a good issue, though Conan's heyday seems to have past.


• The Invincible Iron Man issue 1: What with all the Iron Man hype, and based on how much I enjoyed the movie, I thought I'd pick up the relaunched comic and see if any of that carried over. Salvador Larocca's art is just as amazing as his work on the very good Newuniversal. The writing is good and dense, just how I like a comic. But Iron Man as a comic character is just limp for me and I'm not sure I'll pick up a second issue.


• Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas issue 1: See above, just not quite as interesting.


• Secret Invasion issue 2: So, last issue a bunch of old school superheroes show up to confuse the situation, which was really interesting. This issue, it turns out that most, if not all of them are Skrulls. Really? Feels like a cop out. Lots of good action and Hawkeye got to really shine, but this was just an okay issue.