Comic book reviews for the week of September 22, 2010

A lot of solid books this week.....

Velocity #2 - (Ron Marz & Kenneth Rocafort) - Nice, simple and enjoyable story for this one: clock is ticking for Velocity to save her teammates. But, the star here is Kenneth Rocafort. Shoosh is this guy good and someone to keep an eye on. He is now in the tier where anything he draws.....I will buy it. 9.0/10

The Walking Dead #77 - (Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard) - Another super-solid issue of this great series. I'm amazed at how fresh and new everything seems in this series after 77 issues. From the look of teaser/promotions online, there are big happenings for this series starting around issue #80, so Kirkman is kinda checking in with many of our characters before anything big happens. Just great stuff.... 8.4/10

Hulk #25 - (Jeff Parker & Gabriel Hardman) - I'm buying this pretty much solely for Gabriel Hardman's art (since Atlas is cancelled) and this issue didn't disappoint. I really have not cared at all about Hulks (red or green), but Parker actually cranked out a pretty good story for this issue too as they are setting about to redeem Red Hulk. 8.3/10

Fantastic Four #583 - (Jonathan Hickman & Steve Epting) - Nice art change on this book as we pick up Epting. Yeah! But (changing the theme up), the star here is Hickman's neat little story showing Val Richards being her precocious self and running into Doom. What I love is that she is never awed by this stuff and proceeds to deal with Doom as if they are peers. Love Val! 8.2/10

Nemesis #3 - (Mark Millar & Steve McNiven) - Gotta love that Mark Millar..... Dude is not afraid to go for it and doesn't really care who he offends along the way. In this issue we get to see Nemesis go on a one-man wrecking crew mission that leaves about 100 cops dead and then run the cop-hero of this book through the emotional wringer (and show that Millar isn't afraid to go there with kids). 8.0/10

Secret Avengers #5 - (Ed Brubaker & David Aja) - This book was really sucking wind and was close to hitting the "drop pile", but then it gets a save by letting Brubaker tell a moody tale of Nick Fury's alternate self (via a weird LMD) and teaming Brubaker with the wonderful David Aja. I'll buy more of this, but the jury is still out on Brubaker's "normal" story. 7.9/10

Avengers Academy #4 - (Christos Gage and McKone) - I'm really enjoying this little number. This month we shift our focus to Mettle, who is probably the young Avenger I was least interested in......but this issue fixes a lot of that as we see what happened to make him the way he is. Plus, we get to see more of the Academy kids facing off with Osborne and learn why they chose to let him go. Compelling stuff and I'm eager for next issue. 7.8/10

Avengers #5 - (Brian Michael Bendis & John Romita, Jr.) - This issue has high potential to be an epic issue IF, IF they stick with the roadmap that Bendis and JR, Jr. show half-way through the issue where they show that future Marvel events have already been planned. I'll be curious to see how much they adhere to this plan. The story itself is pretty good on its own though and I'm excited to see what role Ultron plays. He's a great villain. A few sketchy panels from Romita mar what is otherwise another great artistic effort for him. 7.8/10

Thor #615 - (Matt Fraction & Pasqual Ferry) - I am so glad Fraction has finally taken over this title because I really was not enjoying what was going on over the last few arcs. He starts out with a very promising story that seems to be headed toward explaining what will happen to Asgard now that it has been destroyed while on Earth. Fraction tosses out some very interesting theories about nature abhorring a vacuum. 7.6/10

Uncanny X-Men #528 - (Matt Fraction & Whilce Portacio) - This story is getting a little dull: X-Men go to find new putative mutant, Hope touches them and they transform into a mutant. We've seen three months of this and I'm ready to get on with the story now. Tossed into this we have some not very interesting B-story of what is going on between Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw. And Portacio's art is just not good in this issue. Everyone is drawn all sinewy.....even Emma. She's in shape, but here she's drawn like a bodybuilder. Weird. 7.1/10

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #3 - (Warren Ellis & Kaare Andrews) - This is a fun story, but that's about it. It almost seems like Ellis is just bored and that perhaps his enjoyment in doing X-Men was smushed by the delays on Astonishing X-Men proper: Now he's just finishing his story out so he can go back to doing creator-owned projects where he is calling the shots and not waiting for an artist that Marvel assigned to him. 6.9/10

Skullkickers #1 - (Jim Zubkavich & Edwin Hang) - This was the IT book this week as copies were selling on eBay for many times face value before it even hit the shelves. So....with trembling hands I opened my copy and found that it's just a pretty good buddy-mercenary, medieval story. Nothing wrong with it, but I'm surprised that it was getting hype like this. 6.8/10

Batman: Streets of Gotham #16 - (Paul Dini & Dustin Nguyen) - This was kinda a "taking out the trash" issue for Dini. He introduced the idea of having Hush live in place of Bruce Wayne while Bruce is "dead" and it is almost like DC editorial said, "Ummmm......Paul, you might be aware that Grant Morrison is bringing Bruce Wayne back this fall and Hush is kinda in the way." I will be interested to see what happens to Hush, but don't know if I care that much either way. Nice Ivan Brandon written back up about Two-Face. 6.6/10

Elephantmen #27 - (Richard Starkings & Axel Medellin) - This was something I thought I'd never find....a boring Elephantmen comic. This story is just taking a little too long to come together and when you combine that with some publication delays (that I understand come with the territory) it leads to a title that has lost some momentum. But, the good news is that Starkings seems to have found a new "regular" artists in Medellin and he is really good. 6.5/10