Incoming... 03/11/2010

New comics are released Wednesday (in the States at least; we have to wait until Thursday in the UK!). Here's a brief look at our expectations for the books we're picking up this week.


Stewart R: Wow, it really is a bit like a ghost town out there in comic world for me this week. If the tumbleweeds had gotten too bad I would have thought about picking up a copy of Archie but thank goodness there are four titles out there that have presented themselves in timely fashion and so I don’t have to plumb to those depths for a comic fix. Har-de-har.

(Insert the mock tones of Tom Baker here please) Sooo, who doesn’t like to see Hitler in a comic??! Recent meetings of the Paradox Comics Group have noted that old Adolph and his facist followers turn up with quite some regularity in comic media and Marvel in particular seem to have Nazis of various flavours appearing as villainous hordes on an almost monthly basis. Well it seems that Fred Van Lente is going to go all out this month and top everyone in this game of one-upmanU-boat... by whisking us and Taskmaster off to a South American village populated entirely with Hitlers!! Yes siree Bob, Taskmaster #3 sounds absolutely frackin’ nuts and I think I probably speak for many people when I say that the edge of the crazy and bizarre has seen this series turn into a bit of a hit. The cover alone can’t help but raise hopes of a belly-laugh or two and I’d really like to know what artist Jefte Palo thought when he first saw the script.

In all honesty the first two issues have been great and I know that a few people out there have jumped on based purely on the absurdity of this coming issue alone but I believe they’ve been impressed with what Van Lente and Palo have put together so far and maybe it’s time that you, the reader, gave it a chance as well!

The recommendation wagon has been in overdrive for the past 14 issues of Jeff Lemire’s post apocalyptic effort so I’ll refrain from gushing over it too much and simply inform you that Sweet Tooth #15 is out this week. The story is starting to gather a bit of pace once again following a well timed and measured lull which allowed Lemire to cast his vision wider and give us a more in depth view on this world left in ruin. We’re starting to see some real growth in Gus’s character and I’m looking forward to seeing whether he and Jeppard are likely to run into each other any time soon; I’ll bet some sparks will fly when they do!

And then there were two...

Brian Michael Bendis is a writer whose work I have a love/hate relationship with. On the one hand the man seems to have great difficulty in differentiating the various members of a superhero team from each other and books like Avengers just reek of hive mind speech bubbles. Then to flip things round and shake them about the man can truly excel himself with engrossing character pieces of the highest quality with the likes of Spiderwoman. I’d like to say that when he and Alex Maleev work together things usually turn out really well - see Spiderwoman once again for evidence in support of that statement - but then I’m dragged back to reality with flashbacks of the terrible pish that was the Halo: Uprising series. I’ll be in receipt of the third chapter of the duos’ latest collaboration this week and I really do have my fingers crossed that Scarlet #3 shows off both creators talents and comes good on the early promise that it has shown.

The idea of a fairly average girl whose life has been turned upside down by circumstance and then decides that the world needs to change as a result, be it willingly or with the beating of a hard painful stick, is a delicious concept and I really do want it to be as good as it sounds. I’m sure that when Sunday rolls around there might be a fair few of us reviewers with a thing or two to say about it.

And so here we are with my final comic of the week and it’s a title that I haven’t mentioned much in a while despite my belligerent support of it through good and bad in recent years and it seems a suitable juncture to start writing about it once more. Amazing Spider-Man #647 marks the end of an era as the Brand New Day draws to a final close and the Spidey ‘Brain Trust’ dissolves into the ether. Marvel are marking this moment with a triple sized issue which of course means a $4.99 price point, a good fistful of writing talent and a matching hand-sized dollop of artistic contribution from various corners. Now we have seen these big Spider-Man editions every now and then in the not-so-distant past and they’ve always been a mixed bag and rarely worth the extra couple of bucks slapped on the price. That said with Marc Guggenheim, Joe Kelly, Mark Waid and Max Fiumara all getting a chance to shine once more we should be in for a decent enough send off to a controversial period of Peter Parker’s life.