Book of the Week 1/30/08 Black Adam #6

Written by Peter Tomasi
Pencils by Doug Mahnke
Inks by Christian Alamy and Rodney Ramos
Colors by Rob Leigh


Damn, this was excellent. I really wish that other writers in DC would strive for the kind of storytelling achieved through this 6 part storyline which concludes this week. With a few notable exceptions, DC stories seem to rely too hard on the high concept blockbusters. "Black Adam" has proven that small, character driven stories can be equal parts action and emotion.


This is primarily a story of lost love. Black Adam is by no means a hero or even an anti-hero. Yet throughout this series, I have become more and more interested in the continuation of a character that is actually a mass murderer. Tomasi gives Adams every action a reason. There is no insanity here, just the dire lengths that Adam will go to to be reunited with his lost wife. Tomasi also has given us a complete bridge from where we left Adam at the end of 52 to the beginning of Countdown. While this story was plenty dark, there were several little moments that made me chuckle such as Adam finally discovering his magic word again.


Much of the credit of this series needs to go to Mahnke's pencils. This book is graphic and quite honestly, I'm surprised it was not labeled as a mature title. Mahnke seems to have a soft spot for horror books and movies as he continually finds new and disturbing ways to animate corpses and dismemberment. Almost everything in this book is the stuff of nightmares. Ex. Faust's eyes.


This series has proven to be a great "under the radar" book. While not garnering much attention, it has proved consistently entertaining. While there was one other series which came to an end this week that I really wanted to skip ahead to (I'm reading it in trades) I figured I'd give a little attention to this mini-series that should be an example to the rest of DC. Their characters are capable of great depth but can also kick ass at the same time.

Weekly Review Podcast Episode 26- Young Avengers Presents #1

Young Avengers Presents #1 took the book of the week because it was freshing to see a Young Avengers book out and it was really well done! We also discuss X-men #207 the end of the Messiah Complex crossover and give our final thoughts. We cycle through Astonishing X-men #24, Teen Titans #55 and more. After Amazing Spider-man #548 I finally decide if I'm going to continue reading Spider-man and we finish off the show with our picks for our top 5 Superhero teams.

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X-men writer Mike Carey discusses the future of Marvel's Mutants in a post Messiah complex world

Messiah Complex is now over and while it answered some questions, many were left opened and even more questions were raised.

Mike Carey, current writer of X-MEN(which will be changing to X-MEN:Legacy) talked to newsarama.com and discusses the twists and turns of Messiah Complex and what we can expect in the future.


Check out the interview here

Book of the week 1/23/08 Young Avengers Presents #1: Patriot

Written by Ed Brubaker
Pencils by Paco Medina
Inks by Juan Viasco
Colors by Nathan Fairbairn
Letters by Cory Petit

I've been pretty vocal about how much I loved Young Avengers and that it's something that Marvel really needs to address. Allan Heinberg came out with one of the best books in the past few years and in my opinion he took the Teen Titans formula and greatly expended on it.

But that was years ago and we still haven't seen a new Young Avengers book. We've been teased with appearances in The Initiative and Civil War tie-ins but we still haven't received an on-going title and hopefully this new mini series will lead into that.

This new take of Young Avengers is a six issue mini that focuses on the individual characters and we're first given a closer look at the team leader Patriot. Brubaker goes back through Patriot's origin story and gives us a little more depth of the character and if this is something that we'll see throughout this series then I have no doubt that it will be something special

Something that I really loved about this issue in particular is that it basically is the hero's quest tale. Eli is a young boy with so many conflicting emotions and he doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing, much less what he should be feeling. There are also a lot of racial undertones in this book and as an african-american male I can really relate to what the character was feeling and it brought me into the story in a very profound way.

I've always gushed on Paco Medina's art and this issue is now exception. I'm a huge fan of team books, especially younger teams and Medina's bright and vibrant art works well in that context.

I'm happy to have anything Young Avengers right now and I hope we get the series back soon, but until then I'm looking forward to getting to know these characters better on an individual basis.

Book of the week 1/16/08 New X-men #46

Written by Craig Kyle and Chris Yost
Pencils by Humberto Ramos
Inks by Carlos Cuervas & Dave Meikis
Coloring by Edgar Delgado
Letters by Dave Sharpe

Well I hate to start off this way but this was a pretty mediocre week for comics for me. I've loved Messiah Complex and I've picked it a lot for the book of the week so i was hoping something else would jump out at me today but New X-men was the best book I read this week hands down.

I've become huge fans of Craig and Kyle and I've mentioned them various times on the podcast, they're done something that I didn't think was possible anymore and that's make a new generation of X-men likable.....very likable. And it was great to see then take on the whole X-universe in this issue

We only have one issue left and there are still twists and turns abound and the main reason that I love this story so much is that is truly feels epic. We still don't know everything about this baby but you can feel how important this event is.

We saw some great battle scenes in this book and there is a great undertone of desperation for this characters that really makes the reader engage in this story and I've been very impressed so far.

I do have some concerns about how this is going to wrap up with only one issue left but the Messiah Complex team has done a great job so far so I'm going to put my trust in them.

And the scene with Rogue and the baby......just who is this kid?

Weekly Review Podcast Episode 25 Green Arrow/Black Canary #4

Eric picked Green Arrow/Black Canary #4 as the book of the week because of how powerfully emotional it was and gives credit to Winick and Chiang for the great work they're doing on the book. We also discuss Green Lantern Corps, Nightwing, Countdown and more. We give you guys an in-depth review of Amazing Spider-man #546 the first issue of Brand New Day and finish the podcast off with the top 5 comic events we're looking forward to in 2008

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More Brand New Day info

Newsarama.com has posted new info about Brand New Day.

They have an interview with Amazing Spider-man writer Dan Slott on the new status quo of Spidey and what we can expect from the book

And they also have some very interesting interviews with Comic Book retailers and how the Spider-man changes have affected sales.

Check out the Dan Slott interview here

And if you're a comic fan I really suggest checking out the interview with the retailers here