Much as it pains me to say that something by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev is “deeply skippable,” that’s what best describes this collection.  Picking up in the wreckage of the title character’s life post-”Secret Invasion,” she’s offered a deal by Agent Brand of S.W.O.R.D. that’s equal parts “fresh start” and “revenge.”  This deal […]

This volume isn’t an essential read by any means, but it’s still a fun story — assuming you can get past one glaring flaw in logic.  It kicks off in the wake of “Second Coming” as Rogue finds herself chaperoning Paras, Loa, and Anole to Mumbai after Paras receives a letter from his powerful lawyer […]

Was all that setup worth it?  Kinda.  The biggest problem with this arc is that you really could’ve squeezed it down into five or six issues and only missed some of the “flavor” that Matt Fraction brings to Tony Stark’s adventures.  Throughout most of this volume I felt that he was trying to depart from […]

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the previous two volumes in this series, it’s just that they weren’t as good as their hype.  That’s why instead of buying them as soon as they came out, I picked up these two volumes for — wait for it — half off at Comic-Con.  I’m glad I did […]

If you’ll recall, I thought the last volume of this series was a bit of a “swing and a miss” when compared with the rest of it.  Too much speechifying by the main villain with a plot that functions more as a transition to the next part of the story than as a story in […]

Bob Saetta is the number two man in Booklyn’s biggest mob family, and one day he walks into a police department and gives them everything they need to put said family away.  His one condition is protection for himself and his wife and child, and it goes out the window once his brother Paul “The […]

As I mentioned on the podcast a while back, I’ve been wanting to read this series for quite some time.  “Two-Gun Mojo” was a definitive work that crystallized what I think a Jonah Hex story should be like.  I’m certain that it’s the reason I was never able to really get into Justin Gray and […]

If you had any doubts about Ed Brubaker’s grasp and understanding of the character of Steve Rogers, there are two collections that should clear them up for you.  Even though the character is no longer Captain America (at least, at the time these were written he wasn’t; he has since resumed the mantle, but we’ll […]

Before he hit it big with “Morning Glories” and his Marvel exclusivity, Nick Spencer wrote this mini-series about several lives intersecting at the title club’s last party.  Closer to Liman’s “Go” than Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” this also uses non-linear storytelling to start us somewhere close to the end before going back to the beginning to […]

The only reason I bothered to pick this up was that it has the last three issues of Greg Ruck and Eric Trautmann’s run on “Checkmate.”  It was a fun series that successfully mixed globe-spanning espionage with superheroes in the vein of “Suicide Squad.”  (Imagining Rucka’s “Queen and Country” with superheroes, or “Gotham Central” for […]