… and it was quite good.  Not the unqualified blast of fun that the first “Iron Man” was, but more enjoyable than its unfocused sequel.  Director Kenneth Branagh (unsurprisingly) gets good performances out of the entire cast and (surprisingly) shows that he has a good hand on big-budget effects-driven film-making.  We get several great shots […]

While Tokyopop the manga publisher will cease to exist in North America at the end of the month, Tokyopop the media company still lives on.  In fact, its first major film release opened on Friday.  “Priest” is set in the far future and focuses on a soldier in the war against humans and vampires called […]

This volume represents a couple endings as it collects the last four issues of the “Conan the Cimmerian” ongoing series and writer Tim Truman and artist Tomas Giorello’s final story about the title character’s adventures at this time in his life.  As “Conan” stories go, it’s pretty by-the-numbers as the barbarian’s escape with the beautiful […]

Oh man!   “The Viltrumite War!”  I remember that sitcom!  BEST!  COMEDY!  EVER!  Even if it was moved around for fourteen different timeslots in the three months during the summer of 1987 that it was on. Alright, so while the series’ naming trend of its collected editions is effectively broken with this volume, it still […]

The first volume of this series  represented a return to form of sorts for writer Mark Millar, in my opinion.  While it wasn’t quite as good as his work on “The Ultimates,” it was still miles better than anything else I had read from him last year.  This volume, however, doesn’t sustain that trend.  Though […]

Now this is odd.  Here we have a collection of comics that I think I might have actually enjoyed more if I had read them in single issue form.  That’s because while these six issues have an overriding plot, it’s very much a “hunt the MacGuffin” endeavor whose only purpose is to provide a context […]

All good things must come to an end, or — in the case of most Marvel comics these days — pause for a month or two before being re-launched with a new title and direction.  Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente’s “Incredible Hercules” saga reaches its conclusion in this volume, and it’s a worthy end.  […]

After the trauma of finding out that his girlfriend was a superhero,  the awful thing she had to do to join The Seven, and their subsequent breakup, Hughie decides that it’s time to head back home to Auchterladle, Scotland to get away from it all.  However, he finds out in short order that not only […]

While Peter Milligan is perfectly capable of working within the constraints of mainstream comics (read:  ones featuring Marvel and DC superheroes), they usually don’t allow him to go into the full-bore weirdness and surrealism that became a hallmark of his Vertigo work.  I mention this because that’s the kind of weirdness you get with “Kano,” […]

If I told you that this book was very “Milligan-esque” would that make you any more likely to pick it up?  Or, would you have any idea who I was referring to?  Writer Peter Milligan came onto the American comic book scene around the same time as Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis and in much […]