Well I promised to start review­ing comics start­ing with last week’s haul. I guess run­ning 6 days late counts as a failure.

But not to worry. I’m going to push on regard­less. I promised reviews and reviews I shall deliver.

Thun­der­bolts #126

The first post-Secret inva­sion comic released by Mar­vel is also one the the best comics they’ve released in months. The issue doesn’t give much of the SI sto­ry­line away. It reads much like one of the “down­time” issues from the 90’s era X-Men. Except instead of play­ing base­ball, Song­bird and Swords­man are mop­ing around and burn­ing their dead, the really evil char­ac­ters are busy being evil and Nor­man Osbourne faces up to a gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee hear­ing on his role dur­ing the Skrull invasion.

This issue marks a new cre­ative team: Andy Dig­gle on words and Roberto De La Torre on pen­cils. I’d never read any of their pre­vi­ous work so I came in sans pre­con­cep­tions. It’s a credit to this team that I didn’t actu­ally notice the change in ros­ter until well after I’d fin­ished read­ing the book. Pro­vided they keep to a reg­u­lar sched­ule (some­thing War­ren Ellis wasn’t able to do) then this should become a top 20 book.

Uncanny X-Men #504

I’ll say one thing about Matt Frac­tion. Dude has cre­ated some of the best “ohmy­god” moments I’ve read in comic form this year. Nikola Telsa fight­ing a demonic JP Mor­gan, Iron Fist explod­ing a train with one punch, and, with this issue, rein­tro­duc­ing the eccen­tric Dr Neme­sis to the Mar­vel Uni­verse. He of the guns that fire science!

Half the issue con­sists of Beast and Angel try­ing to con­vince Dr Neme­sis to join the X-Men, in between fight­ing off tube-grown super­nazis. The rest of the issue has Emma Frost tak­ing a psy­chic stroll through Cylops’…well, I guess you’d call it his spank bank. A hotel full of X-Women, both past and present. Psy­locke; Rogue and two Storms, both clas­sic and mohawked. But strangely no red-heads.

The art, by Terry Dod­son, moves along at a crack­ing pace. Had the issue being “drawn” by Greg Land (the other pen­ciller in the Uncanny X-Men sta­ble, then a lot of the great kinetic inter­ac­tion between Beast, Angel and Dr Neme­sis would’ve been lost.

Com­plete pull list:

Angel: After the Fall #14
Ex Machina #39
The Flash #246
Trin­ity #25
Thun­der­bolts #126
Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four #58
Uncanny X-Men #504
X-Factor #37
X-Men: Legacy #218

It’s the lit­tle things that make you happy. Like a girl­friend wak­ing you up one Sat­ur­day morn­ing ago to show you the USB stick she found buried deep in a pile of junk under the stairs.

Now that I’ve got it back I thought I’d show you my effort from this year’s Script Frenzy. I’d orig­i­nally set out to write three sep­a­rate sto­ries totally 100 pages, but only ended up get­ting one out. An episode of Heroes set in an alter­na­tive sea­son three.

About halfway through I started get­ting a bit wor­ried about how I was por­tray­ing some of the char­ac­ters. After see­ing how badly they’re all being por­trayed in the real sea­son three I’m happy I at least man­aged to keep them consistent.

Had I read a few scripts before hand I would’ve seen that most scripts are bulked up with large blocks of notes from the writer(s) to who­ever is direct­ing the piece of dis­trac­tion. Every­thing from what colour a car should be to the num­ber of clouds in the sky. My script doesn’t have a lot of that, so comes off a bit anorexic. Les­son learned for next year I guess.

Have a read of the script and tell me what you think. Any com­ments and/or crit­i­cisms are wel­come (but keep it con­struc­tive, please).

Heroes — “Fifty”

1. Take my time set­ting every­thing up. When I’m not allowed to touch any­thing in the house I start get­ting “cre­ative” with my time, Like turn­ing the court­yard into a chapel.
2. Don’t drink more than the guests.
3. Cater­ing ser­vices kick ass. They prep, cook and then clean the entire kitchen. All we had to do was eat.
4. If I’m going to be stand­ing out in the sun for 5 hours I really need to drink water every now and then.
5. There’s some things that peo­ple just don’t need to hear.
6. There’s only so much liq­uid that a tod­dler can drink before “spill over” occurs.
7. When some­one pours me a drink that begins with four shots of bour­bon I should men­tion something.
8. Wear sun­screen.

I’m think­ing about revamp­ing this reg­u­lar post. Half the time I’m review­ing the pre­vi­ous issue or just ram­bling about the comic as a whole. Maybe I should be review­ing the issues after I’ve read them. If any­one is actu­ally read­ing these, what would you prefer?

Booster Gold #14

This isn’t the cover orig­i­nally solicited. I’m not sure why they changed it, but I do pre­fer this one. I’m also happy that this is the last issue writ­ten by Rick Remender. Sure he’s a decent enough writer, but he just doesn’t fit into Booster Gold’s style.

Green Lantern Corps #30

There’s been a lot of hate on the inter­net about this whole “War of the Light” thing, but you know what? I’m really dig­ging it. I guess I’m just a sucker for Geoff Johns’ Sil­ver Age stuff.

Trin­ity #24

Trin­ity has been a weird book to talk about here. When I men­tion that I really like an issue, the next one is invari­ably bor­ing. When I point that out the fol­low­ing issue improves greatly. Despite these oscil­la­tions the books — at it’s worst — is still far, far bet­ter than Count­down at it’s best. How­ever it’s still nowhere near the level of 52.

I’ve picked up my books one day early this week. I’m hav­ing a long week­end to sort out Ange’s birth­day, so I prob­a­bly won’t have the time to read the comics. Despite it being a small­ish pile.

Final Cri­sis: Resist #1

I didn’t mind Sub­mit all that much. It was a nice lit­tle dis­trac­tion that tied into the greater FC story the way Rage of the Red Lanterns didn’t. This book being the counter point to Sub­mit I’m sure it’ll read just fine.

Secret Six #3

Quickly becom­ing one of my favourite DC books. Except for Green Lantern that is.

Trin­ity #23

They’ve spent a few issues now estab­lish­ing the new “rules” of this world, but haven’t done that much with it. We seem to have hit a slump story-wise. and we’re not even at the mid­point of the series.

Avengers: Ini­tia­tive Special

I don’t know why they didn’t label this and the Ms Mar­vel book below ‘Annu­als’. The Ulti­mate Cap­tain Amer­ica book last week was an Annual and that char­ac­ter doesn’t even have his own book.

Ms. Mar­vel Spe­cial: Storyteller

Should be a decent enough book. From the sounds of it it revolves around a minor char­ac­ter who only appeared very briefly at the  begin­ning of the Ms. Mar­vel series. Could be good. Could be bad.

Ulti­ma­tum #1 (of 5)

With any luck this’ll be the last Jeph Loeb series I ever read. While he was a good­ish writer in the past (the 90’s X-Force title notwith­stand­ing) some­thing seems to have snapped. He seems to have ignored any pre­vi­ously estab­lished per­son­al­ity traits in favour of dri­ving a story for­ward.  See Ulti­mates 3 and the lat­est sea­son of Heroes.