A while back, Matt Fraction wrote some great Thor stories that were collected as “Ages of Thunder.”  I don’t know my Norse mythology as well as I should, but you got the feeling that he was trying to tell stories about the character that tied in more strongly with his mythological origins than his Marvel […]

Given Asgard’s primary role in this crossover, it should come as no surprise that the events of the tie-in issues from “Thor” are more relevant than you’d expect from such things.  In fact, you could argue that a lot of this stuff should’ve been in the crossover proper.  Heimdall’s “absence” in the beginning of the […]

I think it’s a good thing that you can randomly pick out a title from Greg Rucka’s comics and find a well-written and developed female lead or supporting character.  The thing is that as he has been doing it for so long (“Whiteout,” “Queen & Country,” “Batman/Gotham Central,” “Batwoman,” do I need to keep going?) […]

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 […]