Comic Reviews by Walt

QUANTUM AND WOODY #4

I’m continuing to quite enjoy this series. I’ve been reading through the original series digitally, and other than consciously noting that they’re different, for what I’m getting of the reading experience of both: this new iteration fits right into the spirit of the original. Even the slightly modified relationship between Eric and Woody works well and does nothing to diminish their interactions…if anything, it adds depth. Despite all the hubbub earlier and the promotional posters, here in THIS issue we finally meet “the goat,” and quickly see why this is the most awesome goat in comics. I’m pretty sure my high enjoyment of the Goat is knowing it to be a running gag from the original series combined with the “hype” from even before I’d read any of the originals. I look forward to seeing both the continuing development of the main characters, as well as how the goat is handled in this iteration long-term/moving forward. This issue wraps up the first arc…if you’ve not read any so far, it’ll definitely be worth picking up the collected volume.

SHADOWMAN #11

Of all the Valiant titles, this is certainly the best one TO have a Halloween Special. That it’s another issue of the main title and not some extra issue (say, a $4.99 one-shot with a couple of sketch pages making up the $1 difference from the price of a regular issue) is a huge “plus” for me. The story itself didn’t interest me all that much, yet as a slice-of-life piece, I liked it; it’s the sort of thing I often like to see…so I can’t quite figure out why it didn’t have the expected appeal. The art was good; no complaints from me there. This is a self-contained issue…and Valiant offers a “previously” blurb on the inside cover, so really, you don’t need to have read anything before this to pick it up and “sample” the Shadowman title. Not my favorite issue, but not every issue CAN be. This is still a decent read and I’ll be continuing to keep up with the title.

FOREVER EVIL #2

With all the “hype” around the first issue and what it COULD mean for Dick Grayson/Nightwing, as well as buying several of the 3-D covers and figuring context wouldn’t hurt, I bought the first issue, and it wasn’t all that bad…I figured even though I had no intention of following Villains Month into any individual titles, I’d go ahead and check out the next issue of Forever Evil…and here it is. I did. There’s potential…but I have no intention of buying all the tie-ins: whether individual titles’ issues OR specific tie-in minis, and this reeks of Infinite Crisis to me where the main issues might advance things a bit, but also serve as ‘setup’ for many of the tie-ins (which will have the “meat” of the event). I’m not interested enough by this issue to plan on continuing on with the series. Perhaps if it gets good word of mouth from others I’ll jump back in…otherwise, I think I’m pretty much done with this.

BATMAN: BLACK AND WHITE #2

Normally I’d balk at the $4.99 cover price, especially for “only” a mini-series…and I’d wait for the collected volume. After all, mini-series = short, finite story = better in one go as a single-volume. However, this is an anthology, and each issue is already several shorter stories…and for me that would get a bit grating after awhile, having a thick edition where every several pages begins a new story. So I’m enjoying this format, and getting some nice, short one-off bits dealing with Batman and his cast, by a number of creators with varying name-recognition for me. If this were an ongoing series, I doubt I’d have as much interest in it–I’d wait for others’ reviews and general word-of-mouth as to anything particularly “amazing” to be found in a given issue. But while nothing really stands out to me from this issue, I enjoyed it, and compared to many comics felt I got a good read for my money.

Filed under: QUASI-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: Batman, Black and White, Forever Evil, halloween, Quantum, Quantum and Woody, Shadowman, Valiant, Woody | Leave a comment »