Including some good stuff, and some not so good stuff.
One of my goals as of late has been to read more novels, and that’s what I’ve been doing on my lunch breaks at work. Over the last few months I’ve read Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. It’s kind of in the vein of World War Z, but I much preferred Wilson’s 2011 book, and Steven Spielberg has been attached to a film version for a while, but that’s now on hold. I also read, or rather almost finished Eric Van Lustbader’s The Bourne Deception. I picked it up for $5 at one of those discount book warehouses not far from my workplace, but with its expanding list of characters, and ties to previous novels in Lustbader’s Bourne books, I just couldn’t keep reading it every day when I knew I had other books waiting for me . I treat films the same way. I give them 30 mins and if they don’t grab me, I stop watching. The most recent film to suffer from my cinematic snobbery was Bachelorette.
Thankfully, even though I’m spending less on comics now, I still enjoy my weekly trip to the local comic book shops, and the library now holds new monthly issues of Marvel, DC and Image series. This is good news, and I hope many other libraries do this too. Two of the women who work there are impressively knowledgeable about comics, clearly beings fans, and I always make a point to talk to them about sequential art.
This is how I’ve been reading Indestructible Hulk by Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu, and All New X-men by Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen and David Marquez. I’ve read the first 6 issues of the Green Goliath’s adventures, and it’s the best run I’ve read since Peter David’s game changing approach in the ’90s. So far it’s featured a sympathetic Bruce Banner who now works for S.H.I.E.L.D and features wit and drama, plus surprises like appearances by the Quintronic Man, and undersea tyrant Attuma. The latest issue is drawn by Walt Simonson and although his style is quite different from Yu’s, the legendary penciller known mainly for his epic run on Thor, excels here, plus throws in a mysterious retro look for the Norse hammer wielder too.
Indestructible Hulk is like Waid’s current work on Daredevil. It may not always be accessible to newbies, but it’s fun, intense superhero action.
Apart from Injustice: Gods Among Us, the videogame tie-in that’s rocketing up the sales charts, my other fave ongoing at the moment is All New X-Men. Yes, it’s yet another fresh relaunch, but this time it actually is fresh. In short, Beast, sensing his demise due to his growing mutations, gets so desperate that he travels back in time to the original five X-Men and asks them to see how dangerous, and cynical Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops has become. I’d say many of the readers who grew up reading the original X-Men adventures in the ’60s aren’t reading today’s version, but the naivete of the founding members clashing with their vastly different counterparts, and the far scarier world they left is a great set up. Stuart Immonen is one of my fave artists and his 5 issues kicked things off tremendously, and David Marquez carries on the oh so pretty visuals. Immonen is back for a while though, with the current ish (#9) showing what he can do with a great battle against giant robotic Sentinels.
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