Comic Roundup: July 13, 2011

• Every so often, I check out a new comic book on a whim. Out of everything I've bought for the last couple weeks, only one was a premeditated purchase. Everything else was me taking a flyer and hoping for the best. Lucky for me, most of these turned out pretty good.


• Robert E. Howard's Savage Sword issues 1 & 2 - I'm usually not a big fan of anthology books. I usually don't want to pay a higher price for all the dross just for the few good bits. In the first two issues of Savage Sword it is all good bits. Each issue bundles stories of different Howard creations, several that I wasn't aware of. And each issue has included a recolored old Marvel comic. This may be the one instance where the anthology format is actually worth the price.


• Danger Girl and the Army of Darkness issue 2 - The one series (if you can call it that) that I picked up today. Ash finally makes an appearance and Danger Girl does their best to track them down. The plot is pretty silly, what that what I want from a Danger Girl book. And the art continues to be the best the series has see since J. Scott Campbell's initial run. For DG fans only, but thankfully that includes me.


• Kirby: Genesis issue 1 - So although this came out a couple weeks ago, I picked this up off the large pile of left over issues. The story follows a college student named Kirby who, along with the girl he has a life-long crush on, witness the emergence of super powers into their ordinary world. The art is very nice and the story is very reminiscent of Kurt Busiek's Marvels. Like that series, this book is dense with characters. But since they are all new, there is no context that helps keep them straight. So it feels like the creators tried to jam as much into the pages for fear of being cancelled before the second issue. Hard to decide if I'll come back, but it was pretty for me to consider.


• The Red Wing issue 1 - After hearing Jonathan Hickman on the Word Balloons podcast, I decided to keep my eyes open for his new book. The Red Wing is not an easy comic to read. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable in the way that good science fiction does best. The premise of the story, about a war that takes place between two time travelling factions, was so unsettling to me that I had to put the book down and return to it the next day. I'm glad that I overcame the mental dissonance because there is an interesting story in here. And the art evokes a European/Heavy Metal look that does not appear in American comics often. I'm not sure what direction the story is going in, either deeply philosophical, really dumb, or pretty dang cool. But I'm an interested enough to find out.


• Captain America issue 1 - When you are reading a series in trades, it is almost never a good idea to just into the singles unless there is a seamless transition. So when I picked up Captain America #1, I discovered that Steve Rogers is Cap again, SHIELD has been dissolved, and Bucky Barnes is nowhere to be seen. Huh. In this issue, a former WWII ally of Cap returns in the present to menace our hero with the aid of a major villain. The plot will be very familiar to fans of Ed Brubaker's run on the series: that's how the Winter Solder and the Red Skull several years ago. It's not a bad start, but it was not very special either. That's what I get for skipping ahead.


• Loose Ends issue 1 - Whenever a comic comes along that seems even vaguely crime related, I like to give it a shot. The oversized cover of Loose Ends immediately grabbed my eye. The first issue revolves around the various people in a bar in the American South. The series is labeled as "A 4 Issue Souther Crime Romance", and story is driven by the interactions of the customers and waitresses. The issue ends violently (as you might hope) and left me wondering what would happen next.


• Terry Moore's How To Draw Women - Okay, I haven't read this yet. But how could you not buy this book?

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