Saturday, January 7, 2012

Comics Roundup for 1/4/12

Uncanny X-Men #4 - Man, I really wanted to dislike this, as I'm looking to drop some titles.  However, it turned out to be a real page-turner.  I'm not familiar with the villain Phalanx, but that didn't stop me from being able to follow the story just fine.  The new artist, Brandon Peterson, did a good job as well.

The Flash #4 - While the story isn't bad, the primary appeal to this comic is the art.  Francis Manapul makes each issue stand out with creative layouts and dynamic storytelling.  I'm not sure that the story would be enough of a draw to keep me reading if there was a lesser artist on board, but I'm still going to stick around.

Action Comics #5 - This issue takes a pretty sharp turn as we also get a new artist with Andy Kubert.  With this installment, we flashback to the new, revised origin of the character, and we get that mixed up with some Grant Morrison nuttiness dealing with time travel and various supervillains.  I'm curious to see where it's all going to go from here, as I'm not entirely sure just what happened - but that's often the case with Grant Morrison's writing (although I'm able to figure it out later).

Fatale #1 - This is the new series from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips - the team behind Criminal and Incognito.  This was certainly an odd first installment, and I had to flip through it again once I was done in order to get it straight in my head who was who and what they were all doing.  Still, this creative team has given me some of my favorite comics over the past few years, so I'll at least get the next issue.

Detective Comics #4 - Meh.  It's not bad, but considering how many great Bat-books that are out there right now, it looks like this is the one I'm going to drop.

The Avengers - Annual #1 - While this was a better read than its lead-in, New Avengers #1, it all felt like it was not much more than a set-up for a bigger story to come.  Hopefully that will be a bit more compelling.  Maybe it's the final phase of Brian Bendis's Avengers work, as I hear he plans on leaving the titles.

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