Friday, March 21, 2008

Weekly Comic Reviews for March 19, 2008 -- SPOILERS

So let's just get down to business shall we:

Angel: After the Fall #5 -- Yet again, I see solid story with less than solid artwork. Though it's not quite so bad here or perhaps I'm just getting used to it. The last page bugged me a bit though. It just looked like an odd pose job. More of a cover shot than a final story page. And as for the Fred issue, I'm a little confused. When Illyria took over they made a point of mentioning over and over again that they weren't able to bring Fred back as her soul was consumed/destroyed when Illyria took over. But here we have Lorne saying she was the lucky one because she was in "heaven" (unless that's just his way of saying she's gone) and the big finale at the end. Now Illyria did say that part of Fred remained in her via Fred's memories but I thought that was just talk. So I'm really curious to see how this plays out. So overall, I'm still digging the story, I'm just not digging the art and some of the storytelling. If you're an Angel fan though I still recommend it.

World War Hulk: Warbound #4 -- I have mixed feelings about this issue. On the one hand, I was actually really liking this story. The Warbound are an interesting mix of characters all of whom I find intriguing. But I just felt this issue was rather weak on several fronts. First up, it took me a little while to figure out what was going on between Hiroim and Korg. I just felt the art could have been slightly better there. Then Hiroim's sacrifice seemed kinda weak in that he just reassembles himself in the next panel. Then really, what was the point? So in the end, the issue answered a bit about the Leader but seemed kinda pointless beyond that. And now we have the last issue coming up and this issue ends off with SHIELD's killer robots appearing. That just seemed out of nowhere and really, I feel the teaser for the last issue should be a standoff between the Leader and the Warbound, not some SHIELD robots that weren't even involved in the story up until this point. So yeah, unfortunately I don't think this issue was strong enough to warrant being on my recommended reading list. I still think the series has some potential though and I hope it ends well. As for the little story in the end, I'm still really enjoying those flashbacks to the Warbound member's backstories. This one was also solid but not really worth the price of the issue on its own.

Incredible Hercules #115 -- We get the showdown between Herc and Aries here. Unfortunately, I didn't care for it. One scene in particular really rubbed me the wrong way, the scene where Herc pulls up the metal flooring and makes a wave in it sending Aries flying. That just seemed silly to me and took me right out of the moment. Also, I didn't think the art conveyed the story well. I had no idea what was going on when they were fighting on the wing as it seemed choppy and out of order in some way. Also, in the last few pages they use the trick of duplicating the exact same panel (once three times and the time twice). I generally don't like seeing the exact same panel with no change used but I didn't think it fit either time here. So overall, yet again I dig the story but the execution I felt was off. For Herc fans though, it's great to see a decent book for the character so they'll most likely want to check it out. For me, this is my jumping off point. With the Hulk not returning to this book and me not being the biggest Herc fan around there's not really much incentive for me to buy this book.

So that's it for this week. On the TPB front, I decided to pick up the first two volumes of Invincible. Great storytelling with a slightly different art style. I'm enjoying it so far and I'm interested to see where they're going with it. I'm not solid on it entirely but it's something you may want to check out. And thanks to Newsarama you can read most (and eventually all) of volume 1 online for free.
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/comics.html

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