If it wasn’t clear in “New Avengers,” this volume makes it clear that Al Ewing has stepped up to take the mantle of Marvel’s “Big Ideas” guy after Jonathan Hickman left post-”Secret Wars.”  While “Ultimates” may have been the name for the Ultimate Universe’s version of the Avengers (as well as a thoroughly mediocre teen […]

All of the “X-Men” titles I’ve read so far from Marvel’s latest relaunch have done a good job of offering up familiar yet fun takes on the ideas and characters that have populated the franchise over the years.  This version of “Uncanny X-Men” is a bit different from its peers in that it’s basically an […]

Right now, “Injection” artist Declan Shalvey is busy doing back-up stories for “All-Star Batman” and a “Nick Fury” serial for the “Civil War:  Choosing Sides” miniseries.  I mention this because, while they’re raising his profile, they’re keeping the artist from working on the next volume of this series.  While Warren Ellis has said that Shalvey […]

Abe’s ongoing series hasn’t been the brightest spot in the Mignolaverse, creatively speaking.  Actually, let’s not mince words:  For the majority of its run, “Abe Sapien” has embodied some of the worst characteristics you can find in Mike Mignola’s writing.  There have been plenty of vaguely cryptic hints about the title character’s role in the […]

Between this “Extraordinary X-Men,” and “All-New Wolverine,” it seems that the direction for the franchise in the wake of Bendis’ run has been to embrace the familiar and return to what has worked before.  That means lots of character-driven drama between teams with defined members and actual fights against established members of their rogues’ gallery. […]

David Walker and Ramon Villalobos’ “Nighthawk” series was cancelled this week.  There was a bit of an uproar about this as it was apparently a well-liked series that dealt with white-hot social issues as the title character headed to Chicago to confront its gang violence problem.  Unfortunately, while the people who want their superhero comics […]

Robert Kirkman has joked in the past that his dream with “Invincible” was to hand it over to other creators at some point and have it live on in much the same way that Marvel and DC titles do.  That one day he would pick up the latest issue of the title, from younger creators […]

There will be no review of Garth Ennis’ and John McCrea’s “All-Star Section 8” here.  I was planning to do one, and it would’ve focused on how it was pretty much what you’d expect:   Ennis bringing in DC’s heroes for one more kicking with as much bathroom humor as he could get away with in […]

“The Legend of Zelda:  Hyrule Historia” has been the biggest-selling project to come out of Dark Horse in recent memory.  Two years after its release, it still makes the list of bestselling comic-related books on Diamond’s charts.  The problem is that despite all of its success, it’s still a book that originally came from Nintendo, […]

While the overall quality of their licensed comics has tended to be generally quite good over the years, it’s still somewhat rare to see a “name” creator on one of them at Dark Horse.  So when it was announced that Greg Rucka would be writing the “Magekiller” miniseries set in BioWare’s “Dragon Age” universe, it […]