Comic Picks by the Glick

Manga and Comic Reviews

Punisher MAX by Aaron & Dillon vol. 4: Homeless

This concludes the Jason Aaron/Steve Dillon run on the title, and effectively closes the door on the story of the “MAX” version of the character as well.  The “Untold Tales of Punisher MAX” doesn’t count because it comes off as an inventory-clearing initiative than an actual effort to expand the title’s audience.  Now that this […]

Dark Horse Previews Picks: January 2013

The latest volume of “Blade of the Immortal” is announced for March 2013 in these solicitations, and that’s always cause for rejoicing around here.  That said, it has also given me cause to think about how conservative Dark Horse’s manga releases have become over the past few years.  It has gotten to the point where […]

Fear Itself: Invincible Iron Man

After the last volume of this series, Matt Fraction would have to work really hard to come up with something worse.  Seeing Tony Stark completely and utterly beaten by Doctor Octopus — for no good reason — still stands as the worst thing I’ve read all year.  Considering that the latest volume of “Casanova” was […]

DC Previews Picks: January 2013

New year.  New titles.  New creative teams.  New trades.  Let’s get down to it. Demon Knights #16:  Robert Venditti, best known around here as the writer of “The Surrogates,” takes over for Paul Cornell.  As was the case with “Stormwatch” my interest in this title has declined accordingly.  While I liked “The Surrogates,” Venditti’s style […]

Streets of Glory

This is a western written by Garth Ennis that he did through Avatar a few years back.  As you’d expect from his previous collaborations with the publisher it is quite violent, gruesomely so in some parts, and also hits upon some of his favorite subjects.  In this case, the necessity of hard, uncompromising men to […]

American Vampire vol. 4

The word out of the New York Comic-Con today is that “American Vampire” will be going on a not-quite-year-long hiatus soon as writer Scott Snyder and artist Rafael Albuquerque pursue other projects.  This will include a ten-issue mini-series with Sean Murphy and a new Superman title for Snyder and what I can only assume is […]

The Punisher by Greg Rucka vol. 2

Rucka’s go at building a “Punisher” series around the title character’s supporting cast continues in a fairly readable fashion here.  It’s not to say that this approach isn’t panning out, but it does feel remarkably subdued for a story involving Frank Castle and I imagine that some of these issues must’ve pretty slow when read […]

The Winter Soldier vol. 1: The Longest Winter

I’ve been down on Ed Brubaker’s “Captain America” for quite some time now, but this is a step in the right direction.  Things kick off with an epilogue from “Fear Itself” which explains that Bucky wasn’t pointlessly killed off during the crossover and is now going to use his “deceased” status to take care of […]

Killer of Demons

I picked this up on a whim at Comic-Con, as it came from the solid creative team of Chris “whole lotta X-books” Yost and Scott “Atomic Robo” Wegener.  The premise, about an ordinary office drone, Dave Sloan chosen by the Almighty to be his demon-slaying agent on Earth also sounded pretty nifty.  Unfortunately, while Yost […]

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Men & Journey Into Mystery vol. 2

Is this Kieron Gillen’s mutant ability?  To get good tie-in stories out of Marvel crossovers? At long last, “Fear Itself:  Uncanny X-Men” has hit softcover and I can find out the story behind Piotr Rasputin’s transformation from sensitive long-time X-man Colossus into the unstoppable… “Juggerlossus?”  “Colossanaut?”  Nah, I like “Juggerlossus” better.  Anyway, the arc collected […]