It’s a new week of books with a mishmash of usually pretty solid books.  There’s been some upgrades to the website as a whole as well as how we’ll be handling weekly reviews.

You may notice our new “sharing” button to the upper right.  If you enjoy this blog (or individual posts), please share it with your friends out there in the tubes.

We’ve also decided to start rating the comics out of ten in three ways:

Story – Is it an entertaining read, is it coherent, how’s the dialogue, etc?

Art – How’s the art?

Overall – Is it worth purchasing?  Some comics story might overcome the art, and sometimes art is great and the story just isn’t worth it.  And sometimes they both suck.  This score tells you if it’s worth the purchase.  If there are any major discrepancy between the “story”, “art”, and “overall”, the final “overall” score will be explained.

All scores are on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being low and 10 being high.

Weekly Purchases

Astonishing X-Men #31 – I’m one of the few who felt Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men was overrated and so far I’ve been unimpressed from Warren Ellis’s run.  His first arc was drawn out, boring, and had some major issues with how some of the characters were depicted.  This second arc is a step up from his first attempt.  I couldn’t help shake the feeling this is how this series would read if J.J. Abrams wrote it.  We’ll see how the rest of the arc pans out.

Story: 7 Art: 7 Overall: 7

Batman and Robin #5 – Batman and Robin must deal with the Red Hood and Scarlet as some pretty heavy hitters come to Gotham due to the Hood’s recent activity.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the quality of the series since I was so unimpressed with Grant Morrison’s previous Batman arcs. 

Story: 8 Art: 7 Overall: 7.5

Cable #19 – Cable and Hope run, Bishop catches up to them.  This has gone on for the series entire run.  Now they’re in space, and now throw in the Brood.  Ho hum, here’s hoping out for a good pay off down the road.

Story: 6 Art: 6 Overall: 6

Dark Reign: Zodiac #3 – We learn what Zodiac’s game was really about, and this one will definitely send you to the Marvel website to look up this little nugget of history.  The third chapter definitely didn’t hold up to the level of the first two, a shame really.

Story: 5 Art: 5 Overall: 5

Dark Reign: The List – Secret Warriors – The List one shots have dealt with Osborn’s attempt at dealing with his enemies.  This story has Fury seeking Osborn’s help to deal with the unraveling history about Hydra and S.H.E.I.L.D.’s history.  For those who’ve been reading Secret Warriors this issue is a must read.

Story: 7.5 Art: 7 Overall: 7.25

Deadpool #16 – Deadpool heads to San Francisco and wants to join the X-Men, but do they want him to join?  I wasn’t a fan of the “pirate” side track of the last few issues, but this was right back to what I enjoyed in earlier issues.  At times the art is a little off, but a really good issue.

Story: 8 Art: 7.5 Overall: 8

Doctor Voodoo #1 – Marvel rocked ages of history as Stephen Strange passed on the mantel of Sorcerer Supreme to Brother Voodoo as an ominous warning was given that great calamity was on the horizon.  Marvel hasn’t had luck with it’s more “mystical” inclined comics in the past with a few runs of various families of books ending on more than one occasion.  Marvel’s recent ressurection of it’s “mystical” side of it’s universe with Captain Britain and the MI13 went down in flames not too long ago after a little over a year.  We’ll see if this series does any better.  So far though, I’m not too impressed.

Story: 7 Art: 6 Overall:6.5

Irredeemable #7 – Mark Waid continues to explore what could possibly make a god lose it.  We learn some of the secrets the Plutonian has been hiding.

Story: 6.5 Art: 6 Overall:6.25

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #2 – Marc Spector continues to fight to keep the madness away as he has a nice heart to heart with the Sentry.  Also, Osborn makes his move to take out Moon Knight once and for all.  Not as good as the first issue, but I think overall this series will be pretty good.

Story: 6.5 Art: 6.5 Overall:6.5

Graphic Novels

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks – Fans of the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z will enjoy this graphic novel full of short stories of recorded zombie attacks throughout history.  Brought to you by those two books’ author Max Brooks.

Story: 8 Art: 8 Overall: 8