A Few Thoughts on Comics from This Week

Busy week, slow week. Really slow week. Slow enough that I talked myself into getting an older book from the rack. Let's talk about them all!

The Amazing Spider-Man #623: Electro breaks the new Vulture out of jail, we learn some of the background of this new version of an old character, and Spidey gets hit with pies. Nothing bad here, some tension and some interesting information, but nothing too exciting either. Perfectly Acceptable Comic-bookery.

The Mighty Avengers #34: Quicksilver gets mad, Loki gets kicked around, and Hank Pym does something crazy. This was a good book, solid writing and good art. The big entertainment is Loki and his long-term influence on this group. Loki offers the idea that everything may have been a lie, that he may have rigged every influence on them. As it's Loki, it's hard to believe anything he says. Is he speaking the truth now? If so, what does that mean to the team? This combined with Hank Pym's crazy act leads into the wind-up storyline to start next issue, the story that will lead to the end of the book as all the Avenger related books restart or change. The next story looks like it might be quite the whiz-bang ending.

The Invincible Iron Man #24: The reassembly of Tony Stark is complete, but at what cost? The ending to this book is obvious, in hindsight. I didn't see it coming and totally should have done. I don't want to spoil anything but I really enjoyed it. Good stuff.

Colt Noble and the Megalords is a one-shot book that I grabbed off the rack. It's written by Tim Seeley, who also writes Hack/Slash which I enjoy. The premise of the book is pretty simple - relaunch He-Man as a somewhat PG-13 parody of itself. It reads like an Adult Swim show waiting to happen. Story's solid as well as funny and the art is clean, not really as cartoony as it could be. If you grew up watching cartoons in the 1980s, this is definitely worth reading.

Tales of the TMNT #67 is interesting and is as cartoony in its art style that Colt Noble could have been. Our friends the Turtles appear more in sub-plots, at loose ends while they try to work out their directions in life. The focus of this story is on Casey Jones and April O'Neil as they work to get little Shadow into a kindergarten that will feed her young intelligence. They scrape the money together but Shadow manages to get expelled rather quickly standing up for herself. As he brings Shadow home, Casey rants and raves about the money as he will, more out of nerves than anything. He grumps too much, leading to Shadow asking him 'Daddy, do you hate me now?' Then things get mushy for a bit before getting happy again. I don't want to spoil it but, No!, of course he doesn't. This was my favorite from this week. Good solid story that advances a lot of little things. It felt more like moments from someone's life more than a Story.