There are times when a creator is telling a story that goes in a direction that you think is a really bad idea.  Kieron Gillen was doing this in the previous volume of this title as Tony Stark found out from crafty Rigellian Recorder 451 that his genius had been genetically engineered to give humans […]

What we get here is a real letdown compared to the excellence of the previous volume.  That’s mainly because Marvel decided that this collection could be better served by reprinting the Dardevil team-up from Waid’s run on “Indestructible Hulk.”  If you’ll recall, I found that particular story to be fairly underwhelming.  It’s a shame that […]

This volume has a bit more going on in it than the previous ones.  In the four issues collected here from the main series, the cast deals with the fallout of “Battle of the Atom,” and tangles with the Purifiers.  Then, to pad things out, “X-Men:  Gold” is also collected here.  It’s a one-shot featuring […]

Mia Fleming hates Suzanne, her new stepmom.  So when she goes along with Mia’s dad on his annual mountain retreat, Mia makes it her business to find out just what kind of person has wormed her way into her family.  With the help of some friends, and a stolen addressbook, they find out that Suzanne […]

After introducing us to Forever Carlyle and her world in the first volume, writer Greg Rucka starts digging further into it with this new collection.  We see her the rigorous training she underwent to become the Lazarus of Family Carlyle and how she employs those skills to avert a terrorist threat in the present day. […]

Unlike a lot of other publishers, Avatar doesn’t seem to place many restrictions on sexual or violent content in its titles.  I imagine that kind of freedom is how they get writers like Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, David Lapham, Kieron Gillen, and Alan Moore to write comics for them.  “No limits” is an appealing thing […]

After the first volume I couldn’t wait to read the conclusion to Cap’s adventures in Dimension Z!  Now that I’ve read it… well… it’s not quite on the same level   Maybe if it hadn’t started off with a terminally silly scene where Arnim Zola’s tachyon kung-fu powerhouse daughter Jet Black monologues about how much she […]

In case you had any doubts that Hickman’s two “Avengers” titles were different sides to the same story, this volume will put them to rest.  So if you’ve been putting off reading “New Avengers” for some reason — and the monthly sales numbers tell me that there are a lot of you — then consider […]

A few months back, I wrote (briefly) about the first volume of a series called “Five Weapons.”  Essentially it was “Harry Potter” with child assassins standing in for child magicians, and whether or not it worked for you all came down to how hard you didn’t want to think about the incongruity of that premise. […]

Back in that period of time we like to call the “early aughts,” Marvel put out a miniseries called “Wolverine:  Origin” that would explore Ol’ Canucklehead’s earliest days.  It wasn’t done out of a desire to answer the many longstanding questions regarding the character’s origin, but to beat Hollywood to the punch after the success […]