Comic book reviews for the week of September 1, 2010

Here they are.....from best to worst.....

Scarlet #2 - (Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev) - For those who were wondering if Bendis had lost his fastball in the years since he had launched a creator-owned project, wonder no more. He still has it. Scarlet is a very compelling story of a young lady who is out for revenge against a corrupt system. I've seen some outcry that this book is demonizing police officers, but anyone who has gotten screwed over for a speeding ticket by a lying cop knows that not all cops are decent. I think this is going to be an awesome tale of revenge and war against the establishment (Fight Club style, perhaps?). Of course, Maleev shows how photo-reference should be done. You know photo-reference must be hard to do, because Maleev is about the only artist who I think does a nice job with it. 8.8/10

Taskmaster #1 - (Fred Van Lente & Jefte Palo) - This was really good. It tells a quick story of how the Organization has put out a hit on Taskmaster for turning into a quasi good guy. That would be fun enough, but the thing that pushes it to another level is that (a) he manages to sweep a diner waitress up into the action and (b) van Lente trots out a who's who of evil organizations out to collect the bounty: AIM, Hydra, Secret Empire, etc. and a few of them are new. Great stuff. Love Palo's art too as the fight scenes are really well done. 8.2/10

I, Zombie #5 - (Chris Roberson & Michael Allred) - Here is a great example of a series needing a little time to grow up. A lot of folks (myself included) were not blown away by the first couple issues of I, Zombie, but after 5 issues we have a neat little story going here with zombies, vampires, were-animals, etc. and they're all being pursued by monster hunters. Fun stuff. Plus, Allred's art is always good and his soft style is perfect for these characters. 7.8/10

Secret Six #25 - (Gail Simone & J. Calafiore) - "Another strong issue of Secret Six".....I should just program a hotkey for that phrase because this series has never been worse than "strong" since it's launch and this issue was fun as we see the two Secret Six teams start to come into conflict. I also like that it seems like we're going to see the Secret Six morph into more of a Suicide Squad where they are government sponsored. That figured to happen because for the reader to be able to root for mercenary bad guys, the "bad guy" has to be just despicable and Ms. Simone may have run out of child molester and slave traders to feed to the Six. I'm not the biggest Calafiore fan (funny looking faces sometimes), but his art works. 7.5/10

Curse of the Mutants: Smoke and Blood #1 - (Simon Spurrier & Gabriel Hernandez Walta) - Even without being an X-Men completist, I would have picked this up for Walta's art. He did a short story in one of the recent X-Men anthologies (Nation X, I think) with Armor and Danger and I really liked his fuzzy style a LOT. I didn't think the art in this was quite as crisp (slipped a little too far into fuzzy), but he is still an artist that I'm keeping my eyes out for. As for the story, it is a one-shot of the X-Men's Science Club's problems with the vampires and that means more Dr. Nemesis. I hope they keep doing a Nemesis one-shot for every X-Men story. I love the guy because he is written as a really funny smart ass. For example, when Emma is trying to boss his Science Club around, he tells he that he knows she knows nothing of science, but would believe that she is very knowledgeable about "bedroom ceilings of the world". LOL! 7.3/10

Incredible Hulks #612 - (Greg Pak, Scott Reed, Tom Raney & Brian Chang) - This was a tale of two stories. I'm jumping into the Hulk books and I really enjoyed part 1 of this issue that showed Banner, Skaar, A-Bomb, Kord and the two She-Hulks hanging out with the emphasis of the story showing Bruce Banner trying to make nice with is ex-wife (Red She Hulk). That was great. The second story about about Hulk's other son, Hiro Kala, and I just can't stand that dude. He's boring as hell. Hard to get a really high score when half of the book stinks. 7.2/10

Avengers: The Children's Crusade #2 - (Heinberg & Cheung) - I mostly liked this story because I love the Young Avengers and I like the overall story of Wiccan and Speed trying to find the Scarlet Witch (with Magneto's help). Love Cheung's art too! The only bad marks on this were Wolverine being written as a little too bloodthirsty (kinda like he was written in 1982) and the surprise appearance of Doom at the end. I like Doom, but he is becoming a little deux ex machina for my tastes. Got a problem that you can't figure out......Doom must be behind it. 7.1/10

Nancy in Hell #2 - (El Torres & Juan Jose Ryp) - I really, really enjoyed the first issue of this Image miniseries with awesome art by Ryp. This wasn't bad, but it got more into the story (in an almost Biblical sense) of why Hell is the way it is and what Lucifer's role is (as a fallen angel). There was a lot less of scantily clad Nancy slaughtering hellhounds with her chainsaw and the comic suffered for that lack. 7.0/10

Wolverine #1 - (Jason Aaron & Renato Guedes) - I actually didn't like this whole "Wolverine in Hell" part of this story. The rest was pretty fun: the visit with John Wraith and seeing the bad guys after Logan's girlfriend (from Wolverine Weapon X). But, I just don't get the whole thing of why he is in Hell. Weird.... The Silver Samurai backup was awesome and the overall art by Guedes was good (he draws a very nice Mystique.....if you're into blue ladies, that is). I'll hang in there on this one because I've never failed to enjoy Jason Aaron's writing, but this didn't grab me. 7.0/10

Shadowland #3 - (Andy Diggle and Billy Tan) - So, this isn't a GREAT EVENT and I know that has been disappointing to a lot of people, especially considering the way Marvel hyped this puppy. But, it is still entertaining as we get to see evil Daredevil throw down (with help from the Hand) against a collection of good guys: Spider-Man, Luke Cake, Iron Fist, Misty Knight, Moon Knight, etc. The big highlight of this was seeing Punisher save the day (which made a little more sense after reading Franken-Castle). Big surprise about who Daredevil is getting to be his top lieutenant! 7.0/10

Franken-Castle #20 - (Rick Remender & various) - Franken-Castle comes to an end (I think) and we should give Remender a round of applause for doing something cool with the character over the last 9 months. I'm pretty sure after this showdown with Daken and Wolverine that we'll see Frank Castle back to his old self, but I think they are implying that he'll be somewhat metapowered by his exposure to the Bloodstone. I don't want to see them overdue that angle, but a little bit of extra strength and speed to offset the fact that Frank is an old dude (he was in Vietnam) would help him stay believable in the Marvel Universe. This whole issue was a fun throwdown as we see that no one likes Daken, even if Logan won't let Daken get killed. The problem was the riot of artists who changed styles every few pages. 7.0/10

Wolverine: Road to Hell #1 - (by Various) - This is another of those teaser one-shots that Marvel is putting out to hype new series. This one hypes Wolverine, Daken, X-23 and Uncanny X-Force. Of those four series, I was already sold on everything but Daken and I don't think anything could change my mind on buying a series about that d-bag unless the series just revolved around him getting stomped by the rest of the Marvel U. The star of this issue was probably the Uncanny X-Force teaser which showed the rest of the mutants having to deal with Deadpool. 6.8/10

Choker #4 - (Ben McCool & Ben Templesmith) - I have to admit that I kinda lost the narrative on this one due to the publication delay. I always hate to bash a book for that because I know that the creators are NOT getting rich on these creator-owned projects. Frankly, they usually lose money...... But still, I've lost a lot of the story on this title. I do still like Templesmith's art, but we've lost some of the whacky cool visual elements from earlier in the story too like the corpse vacuum and the tough lady cop with her ex-boyfriend's nut-sack hanging from her rear-view mirror. I don't NOT enjoy this title and I am looking forward to the last two issues, but I want it to get its whacky mojo back. 6.7/10