Weekly Pull List 7-17-13

Justice League of America 6 - Part 2 of the Trinity War. The fighting in Kahndaq continues until Superman tells them to stop and turns himself in. ONce in custody Superman is visited by Batman and Wonder Woman. A discussion of science vs. mythology ensues and is followed by Diana going to talk to Hephaestus and then when science and mythology fail, she goes to find the Justice League Dark to see if magic would work better. The last page introduces us to the Question for the first time in the New 52 I believe. I am excited to see what happens with the Question as he's a pretty awesome detective character. Great moments are when Vibe totally takes out the Flash with a crazy sweet audio blast, and finding the Question. They do touch more on Superman being brainwashed which is a good thing. Solid issue, good writing, fun art, exciting set up. 3.5 out of 5.

Sonic Universe 54. In the penultimate issue of the Worlds Collide crossover. This issue is mostly a fight between Sonic and Mega Man and Metal Sonic and Bass. Great action sequences including a montage of them teaming up and using all of Mega Man's new weapons from the series. Pretty awesome. 4 out of 5.

Thor God of Thunder 10. Part Four of the Godbomb arc. Gorr has completed the godbomb and revels in his imminent victory when his wife calls him her god. With his vision of gods, Gorr doesn't like this and kills her. His son realizes this and decides to help the Thors earn their escape and regain their hammers (or axe in the case of young Thor). With weapons in tow they attack Gorr who is working on activating the godbomb. Again a very nice issue. It's a little weird when the other gods refer to them as a Thor, but mostly it's just a very fun ride with beautiful art and ends with the bomb going off in a glorious cliffhanger. Again, it you like Thor at all you should be picking up this book. At the very least in Trade. While I thoroughly enjoy what Jason Aaron is doing with this book, I am ready for the Gorr story to be done, which it is next issue according to the letters page. This just gets me even more excited for the coming issues. Another shout out to Esad Ribic and Ive Svorcina for the amazing pencils and extraordinarily beautiful colors respectively. 3.5 out of 5

Finally, and I mean that in every sense of the word, we get to Scarlet 7. In this issue we see Scarlet set up a rally as a distraction so she can break into the mayor's office and try to blackmail/threaten him into firing all of the cops who are corrupt in the city. This issue isn't great. It's a transition between parts of the story. Very much filler, but it makes for an interesting story. This series always leaves you wanting more which is due to Bendis being an epic writer. Maleev as usual brings out the story in a beautiful way with his gritty, rough art. The only real problem with this book is that the creators are so busy that this one takes too long between issues. While the book is always good, this one was not worth the long wait, unless the next few issues come out quickly. 3 out of 5.

Weekly Pull List 7-10-13

We're back with my weekly pull list. It's later than normal since I started working nights at one of my jobs so my schedule's been off. Got a very nice variety this week so here we go.

Let's start with Thor: The Dark World Preview 2. There's light spoilers in this so skip to the next review if you don't want minor plot points ruined. This issue was much less of a repeat of scenes we've seen in the movies and branches out better and actually sets up the movie. It's not great and the use of the tesseract to repair the bifrost is glossed over. I wish we had time to explore the other worlds more and see more of the repercussions of the bifrost being destroyed, but I imagine that's what the movie will be. 3 out of 5.

Superman Unchained 2 comes next. We start off in a fantastic sequence where Superman is saving the world's tallest skyscraper as it's falling down. Real interesting story as Snyder does. The appearance of the new "Superman" as he amps up to fight the actual Superman is badass. We also see a new version of Lex in a version of his armor and has an experiment go wrong which drives him a little nuts. Very few complaints about this book apart from the art. Now it does look beautiful, but the characters all look pretty similar, especially the scene with Superman and Batman talking. It's distracting and weird. Still a great book and I'm excited to see where it goes. 4 out of 5.

Mega Man 27. Part ten of Worlds Collide follows Mega Man and Sonic invade the Wily Egg base. Again, I'll review the whole series in a month or so when it's done. 4 out of 5.

Justice League 22. Part one of Trinity War. We see a lady visit Madam Xanadu to see the future. She flips over her tarot cards with the heroes' pictures and they use that as a narrative function to show what's happening with the other characters. I was totally on board until they had Superman attack someone unprovoked, thus starting the battle in Khandaq. I'm sure it will be explained away in the coming issues, but it irked me a lot. Overall a solid kickoff to the story and I hope it continues going that way. 3.5 out of 5.

Helheim 5. Still a really neat book. If you like vikings or mysterious magic you need to find this book.  In this issue we see Rikard fighting his way through many undead monsters to one of the warring witches. It's brutal violence at its most beautiful and it looks fantastic as usual. Excited for more! 4 out of 5.

Weekly Pull List 7-3-2013

I finally got Sixth Gun 31! It's a good one as I mentioned before. One of the weirder arcs of the book that hints at a super awesome dark past of the Six. Super anxious. Here's a good article about it in the Washington Post.

Next up was Sonic the Hedgehog 250. Part Nine of the Worlds Collide. This book is what I didn't know I've been waiting for over the last few months. It has a splash page of Sonic and Mega Man and their team facing off against nearly every Mega Man boss. It is a fantastic page and worth the entire series so far. There's also one that shows Sonic racing through the battle taking out a bunch of robots. Super cool. As far as plot, there's a huge battle and Sonic and Mega Man decide to invade the base of the evil Drs. As they are flying up to the Wily Egg, Dr. Light gets thrown out and is plummeting to his Death!! With two of the greatest splash pages I've seen in comics this book gets a 5 out of 5.

Tying in to last week's prep for Trinity War is Trinity of Sin: Pandora 1. Finally getting to a plot that was hinted at two years ago at the onset of the New 52, TOS Pandora follows the mythological character as she gets doomed to walk the Earth forever due to her releasing the seven deadly sins on the world. We follow her over the centuries to see how she was tormented. She's about to get revenge of sorts on Wrath when she's summoned by a member of the Council who punished her to apologize for her punishment. He gives her a hint of how to stop them and says the council has been destroyed (as seen in the Shazam backups in Justice League, so I guess I'll go read those.) The book ends with a clear direction where we are going. Pandora heads off to find the box and Superman as only the purest of hearts can use it for good. Comic in itself gets a 3, but it gets an extra point for being a great, clear set up for the Trinity War. 4 out of 5.

Finally we get Green Arrow 22. Another great story from Jeff Lemire as we follow Ollie on his quest for the three dragons and Komodo to get his revenge. He invades a castle and finds Shado tied up. Upon releasing her he is attacked by Count Vertigo. The depiction of the vertigo attack is fantastic. It's as if they punched out pieces of the image and twisted them around. It's incredible. If you enjoyed Arrow then this book is a good choice. It has several trick arrows, Count Vertigo, Shado (who apparently had a kid with Robert Queen, Olivers father, and that's who's hanging out with Komodo.) Anyways, great book. Lot's of classic Green Arrow stuff. 3.5 out of 5.

What are you reading this week? What are your thoughts on Trinity War?

Weekly Pull List 6-19-2013

Very solid week for comics this week. I only picked up three books, but they are all great books.

We'll start with Sonic Universe 53 - We return to the world where the blue heroes take on the dastardly doctor duo. This issue wraps up part two of Worlds Collide by having the heroes rescue the rest of the roboticized masters (the friends of sonic turned into evil robotic versions.) They then start heading toward the base where Drs. Wily and Eggman are holding Dr. Light captive. Once again, good book. I think I'll hold off on reviews until the crossover is finished and just leave basic plot synopses for the issues. 4 out of 5

Next up we head to the beautiful, horrific, wild west in Sixth Gun: Sons of the Gun 4. This title follows the story of the wicked General Hume's comrades and vicious teammates. I re-read all four issues today which is definitely the way to read it. It is great to see the villains' story outside of the main book. This issue's main story follows Silas as he arrives in a town and begins to investigate the mysterious disease taking hold of people and a bunch of livestock with strange injuries. A few of the infected beg for Silas to put them out of his misery. As his gun, the fourth, calls up the spirits of those it has killed he brings about a sort of cult. The book ends with him stumbling into a barn and finding a crazed looking lady taking a bite out of a cow's neck. Interesting story and fantastic to see a cult sort of story in a very atypical setting. Bunn and Hurtt do great work as always and this is a fantastic prequel mini series. This is probably my favorite issue so far. It's an interesting concept of having the bearers of each gun get their own story in this pseudo prequel. 5 out of 5.

Finally I got Sixth Gun 32. As part 3 of this story, I was a bit lost until I got a digital copy of issue 31 which still hasn't come in yet. This story is following Becky through her "Ghost Dance" as she is passed out in the desert. Drake and the others set off to find the supposed skinwalkers who are Hacking into her ghost dance to hunt Becky down at the behest of Missy Hume. This story is close to being the best of the series to date. Her fever dream of sorts takes her into the past where she finds out that The Six have been reincarnated throughout the years. We see them as tomahawks and later as swords as she appears in medieval times at a castle under attack by dragons. We see the dark past of the Six as they are used in sword form in a seal much like one we saw in the first arc. After they activate the seal Becky appears on a street in the middle of some town and is confronted by a pale, older version of Silas Hedgepath, wielder of the Fourth gun and his crew which resembles the other gun holders we've seen in the Sons of the Gun. I really like this issue! It's setting up for some really neat story to connect both books through Becky's dream while still keeping a great story going in the book's present time. The art always pops off the page to portray the wicked feeling of the book. The story takes turns that hint at a fantastic history of the Six and promises to fulfill the desire to see more. I've said it plenty, but if you aren't reading Sixth Gun, go pick up the trade paperbacks at your LCS. 5 out of 5.

Weekly Pull List 6-12-2013

Welcome back to another weekly segment of Dan's pull list. I've had a really busy week of work with many long days including working both jobs in one day so it was a well needed break to just sit back and read some comics. At least until I passed out and took a nap. Good week this week!

Helheim 4 - After hitting it's stride last month, Bunn moves us toward a war between Rikard and his undead army and the two witches. It's great stuff. As usual Joelle Jones' art is beautiful and works wonders to enhance the feel of the book. As before this issue is heading towards a fantastic battle between demons and the undead. It gets 4.5 out of 5. It doesn't do anything wrong, but I'm leaving room to grow as I believe it will.

Superman Unchained 1 - The premiere issue of the Scott Snyder written, Jim Lee drawn new series, this book plays off the hype that Snyder has received due to his Court of Owls story over in Batman. His entire run has been beautifully crafted and sufficiently dark so it's interesting to see his take on Superman. We follow Superman as he stops 7 out of 8 satellites that had been knocked out of orbit. After consulting and borderline accusing Lex Luthor of the destruction, Lois points out that all 8 satellites appeared to be saved by Superman. After investigating the sea where the last one fell and finds a hand indent where it was caught. It is revealed that some shady government group has had their own Superman for 75 years or so. While I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, I am a bit cautious as it seems to be following a similar arc as the Court of Owls. This doesn't hurt the book, but I will be cautiously optimistic from here on out. Jim Lee's artwork is stunning and really brings Superman to life. All in all it gets a 5 out of 5 from me as it's an incredible opening to a (hopefully, yet quite likely) fantastic story.

Batman 21 - Much like Justice League a few weeks ago, this one was in my box with the rest of my list. As it's Scott Snyder and it's starting a new arc (Zero Year) I figured why not? Surprisingly I was not overly impressed by this issue. We start with a tease that a yet unnamed villain has taken control of Gotham in Batman's absence. Six months prior we see the Red Hood and his gang causing trouble. Bruce meets with his uncle who tells him to come back to Wayne Enterprises, which he of course refuses and then it's revealed his uncle is working with Edward Nigma. This issue didn't stand out to me because there's a lot happening yet nothing leading towards an obviously good story. I may stick around for a few issues to see what happens. 2.5 out of 5.

Mega Man 26 - Part 7 of 12 in the Worlds Collide story. This story continues to be exactly what I want out of it. It's super fun. Has great interactions between the characters. Basic, yet interesting, story. It's just a solid story with great action. 4 out of 5.

Thor: God of Thunder 9 - In part 3 of the God Bomb story we follow the trio of Thors as they head out to attack Gorr the Godslayer. This issue has the feel of an alternative metal concept album. This entire series has been pretty metal. They attack Gorr and have an epic stellar battle. At the end they hit Gorr into a sun and the final page is Gorr standing on his planet over the bodies of Thor. Epic is the only word with enough scope to explain this story. While it is cheesy at moments (young Thor riding a space shark), they are easily overlooked by having three iterations of Thor who all have their own personalities as well as a villain whom we can actually care about. The art is a beautiful, muted style. The lack of realistic images portrays the dark tone of the story alongside the metallic coloration really add to the viking raid feel. Another great issue. Only real worry is that this arc doesn't wrap up before Gorr gets stale. Easily one of the top books I'm reading. 4.5 out of 5.

Weekly Pull List 5-15-2013

I'm back this week with another short stack of books so this will be a quick post.

Sonic Universe 52 - Part five of twelve in the Worlds Collide crossover. This book follows The Blue Battlers as they fight the evil robots in the Skull Egg Zone somewhere between their two universes. They aren't doing too hot until Mega Man uses the Tail Wind weapon he absorbed when he released Tails from his roboticized self. Not much to say about this one. Continues the story, and sets up for next issue as per usual.

Helheim 3 - As you've read in my previous posts, I was overly thrilled with this book for the first two issues. This book serves as the  "This is what we are heading towards for the rest of this series" issue. If the first issue ended where this one did I would be so much happier. We get the backstory of a feud between two witches. One of whom is the one who brought Rikard back from the dead. Still a promising book, looking forward to see where it's going. As far as artwork on this book goes, Joelle Jones kicks some ass. The gritty world of the book is represented with the raw look in the art. This book has definitely put her on the list of artists to watch for me.

Weekly Pull List - 5-8-2013

And we're back! I've had a busy week. Recorded 3 podcasts and edited and posted 2 of them (still need to get Mainframe Chronicle up). Been busy with the two jobs as usual. Beat Mega Man X for the first time (a battle 20 years or so in the making). So now I'm onto Mega Man X2 as I have the Mega Man X Collection for PS2. Great game(s)!! Also saw Iron Man 3, which I liked a lot. Look for a review on that soon.

On a sadder note: news broke that the Sixth Gun Pilot was passed over by NBC. Read writer Cullen Bunn's response here. I didn't really expect it to get picked up, but was super hopeful as this could easily turn into a new Walking Dead size phenomenon. But alas...

Anyways, onto the main feature! Had a heavier week this week.

Avengers 11

I've not been impressed with this book since issue one. I was waiting for a change in style or story or something to make it better and this issue is it. Instead of feeling like exposition to an upcoming, uninteresting story, this issue was essentially a heist story. It follows a bunch of characters who I have no idea who they were as they infiltrate some place that I don't remember to find out why something happened in a previous issue (maybe?). Unfortunately the end seemed to be just set up for a new story. I'll try out issue 12 and if I'm not impressed, I'm out. Overall, decent issue. Much better than previous ones, but still not outstanding.

JLA 3

We will now jump to the big group team from DC. I think DC is handling their team books much better. We have a set roster with guest appearances instead of a pool of hundreds of people that it is ridiculous to keep track of them all. Also the story seems to be going somewhere and actually feels like it continues from month to month. I think the issue is that Marvel is trying to do a bimonthly book in Avengers so it feels rushed.
But onto the Justice League of America. This story may work better than Avengers, but it is rather cliche. It starts off where we left off: With the JLA fighting the Justice League, but surprise! it's actually robots. Since their assault didn't work, they try to infiltrate the Society of Villains or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays. They do so using a decent plot device, but of course the hot-headed Green Arrow almost ruins the plan since he's not in the know!! This confused me as I thought he was actually already part of the team, but he's apparently not... So I need to go reread the first two issues to see what I missed. Again, an enjoyable book if not at all surprising.

Sonic the Hedgehog 248

So I caught up with the Worlds Collide story where Drs. Wily and Eggman have tricked Sonic and Mega Man into fighting each other. I think the best way to describe this book is a young gamer's fantasy played out and aimed at a very young audience. In that respect it succeeds greatly. The story is predictable but it is still really cool to see. The evil doctors are sufficiently egotistical and fairly obnoxious, but it totally works for the story. Since Mega Man X and Sonic 2 were two of my absolutely favorite games growing up, I love the story. Were this not the case, I would probably not care at all.

Mega Man 25

Woo! 25th issue! In this episode Sonic and Mega Man go from fighting in Sonic's world to fighting in Mega Man's world. Eventually they start talking and realize they're on the same side. The part that's great is when the bad guys actually acknowledge this and verbalize why that's bad for them. It's amusing and again exactly what I want from these issues.

Chin Music 1

I picked this up because The owner of my LCS mentioned it was new. I saw Steve Niles was involved and he wrote the Mystery Society, one of the books that made me love comics. He also created 30 Days of Night. Everything I've read by him has been enjoyable. Not my number 1 writer by any means, but all decent at least. This book does not disappoint. It reminds me a lot of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt's The Damned series. It looks to be a 30's gangster book with supernatural elements. I enjoy the book. Took a couple reads to follow it. Really to get into the style of story telling. Bottom line? I'm in for a few issues at least. I could me getting this book for quite a while.

Thor God of Thunder 8

I've raved quite a bit on this book here already and this one doesn't disappoint. It's not the best issue in this series, but it's great in it's set up of the (hopefully) epic fight between the three Thors (say that 5 times fast) and Gorr the god slayer. I'm interested to see how this story will go forward and really this book is worth buying for the epic final page of the Thors riding through space on a viking ship. Art is beautiful. The dialogue is subtle and has great humor in it. The time travel in the story is odd, but easy to look past as the rest of the book is awesome. Great book! All around.

Weekly Pull List 4-17-13

And I'm back to talk about what comics I picked up this week. Again, been super busy with work and working on my novel for Camp NaNoWriMo. Yeah, there's a thing called National Novel Writing Month. It's a yearly event in November that gets people to write a novel in a month. They're doing a summer camp kind of thing for the month of April. I decided to take a shot at it. It started off great, but again super busy with work so I'm kind of running behind.

So today I picked up several books. Let's get started! Spoilers ahead!

Justice League #18 - Now this is my first issue of this one that I picked up. I've been kinda following the series but haven't been reading it religiously. This issue starts with Jason Todd and Alfred in the Batcave mourning the death of Damian when a mysterious figure breaks in and knocks them out before taking Batman's stash of Kryptonite. Meanwhile Superman and Wonder Woman are confronted by Batman over what the world views of them being together and how they can do anything. On the Justice League satellite, Firestorm and the new Atom get confronted by the return of Despero. As far as story, this book isn't really innovative. The story of Batman's contingency plans being stolen or going awry has been told many times (See JLA Tower of Babel, Batman No Man's Land, etc...). That being said, Geoff Johns is brilliant so I'm not too worried. As usual Ivan Reis' art is pretty beautiful. Overall a great book and I can't wait to see where it's going.

DC Universe Presents #19 - This is an interesting book. I've been following this title since issue 13 or so and it's an anthology kind of book. There's a few issues per story arc or there are one shots as the last few have been. I haven't been overly impressed by the last couple, but this is the final issue of this series so I figured I should finish it out. This issue was probably the biggest surprise this week. It follows a female scientist who comes across an artifact that seems it comes from 300 years in the future  when it's carbon dated. Anyways, a portal opens and Beowulf (yes the character from the poem) chases a shapeshifter to our time. At the end he ends up going back only to be followed by the scientist. I don't know what it was about this issue that was super exciting, but it was well written and intriguing. The art was pretty neat, but not overwhelmingly awesome. This seemed as a sort of set up for the issue Sword of Sorcery that started recently and I enjoyed it enough that I really want to go check out that series.

Sonic Universe #51 - Part 2 of the Worlds Collide Crossover. This book was a good continuation of the story that started last week. I had no real issues with it except that the continuity is kinda weird. Last issue the timeline jumps back a few days or something and this one continues from the jump back. I didn't pick up on that until halfway through which made for an odd read...

Sixth Gun: Sons of the Gun #3 - Again not an incredible book, but it was decent. The story still isn't as intriguing as the main series. Definitely worth a read if you enjoy the world of the Sixth Gun, but it might be worth waiting for the trade.

Finally, Sixth Gun #30 - This is the first issue in the next arc and it has the main character Becky getting trapped inside the spirit world or something like that. Hard to sum up the plot in a single sentence so that's how I'm doing it. Great beginning to a new story and I'm still in.

Sorry about the brevity of the reviews, I'm really tired. May come back and edit these tomorrow. We'll see. Thanks for reading!!

Weekly Pull List 4-10-13

Once again I have let my personal blog go a little bit. I've had a few ideas that I have yet to execute. It boils down to it that I need to get into a schedule for my posts. I'm hoping to get to 2 posts a week. To help this I'm going to start a weekly review of the comics that I read! I bet for most of you this will be less than interesting since you may not read comics, but this one's mostly for me to get in the habit of doing critical writing on a regular basis. So... yeah.

This week I picked up 4 books.

The first I read was Mega Man #24. This is the first ever Mega Man cmic I've ever read. I didn't even recognize that they actually existed. I was watching videos on youtube by Grace Randolph (She does excellent movie reviews for most everything, Beyond The Trailer, and also has a channel where she talks comics, Think About the Ink.) and came across this one:

As a child I played a lot of Mega Man X as it was one of the best games I owned for the Super Nintendo. and I loved going to my friend Tim's house because he had the Sega Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog games. As these were two of my favorite games growing up, I was pretty ecstatic when I heard about a crossover between these characters. Now to part 1 of 12! This book is pretty much exactly what you would expect coming from a crossover published by Archie comings with two of my big childhood characters. The writing isn't bad, but it is aimed toward a pretty young target audience. The plot is a bit fuzzy having not read the previous issues to get where it's coming from, but I'm excited to see where this is going nonetheless. I'm not expecting the biggest literary masterpiece I've ever read from this crossover, Just a nice fun story. So far it's exactly what I want.

Next up is Avengers #9. I started getting this book since they just restarted at issue 1 for the Marvel Now! campaign. I'm not going to lie, this is probably the worst book that I'm picking up. It seems like it is trying to be a high concept work that follows the big plan to have an "Avengers World." I think the biggest issue is there are too many characters. The main team doesn't really exist. They introduced some random people who appear and become the series villains of sorts. It's a little hard to follow, and as someone who generally doesn't like the otherworldly cosmic stuff, this book doesn't do it for me. It has a few more issues to intrigue me before I drop it.

Thor: God of Thunder is one of my favorite books. Those of you who know me know that I have Scandinavian ancestry and enjoy their culture and Mythology. So the thought of taking a Norse God and making him a superhero is perfect for me! I tried picking up some Thor stuff when I first got into comics, but the series I tried were either really childish and painful to read (Thor: The Mighty Avenger) or really awesome but a short miniseries with incredible artwork (Thor For Asgard). I have since collected quite a bit of Thor graphic novels and am only a few away from being caught up to present day with the continuity. But let's get into this weeks book! Issue 7 starts a new storyline that is a continuation out of the previous one. Jason Aaron spins a masterful web of a self proclaimed God Slayer who encounters Thor in three different times: When Thor is a much younger god, around nowadays when we know him best, and 900 million years in the future where Thor is the last Asgardian. The writing is fantastic and intriguing, the art is beautiful and the story is just all around awesome. It's not the easiest thing writing a story involving three different Thors and making them each unique and someone you care about. Not to mention the letters at the back of the book are pretty hilarious. This book is pretty cosmic, but unlike the Avengers book, it's not too difficult to follow and you find yourself caring about Thor. All three.

Last and completely not least is Sixth Gun: Sons of the Gun #2. This is a spin off of the Sixth Gun series which I'm sure you've seen me write about earlier in the blog. I've already talked about why I like the Sixth Gun and this spin off has almost the same flare to it. This book follows the guns in the past as their being wielded by the main villain, General Hume's, Henchmen. It's not quite as awesome but the main reason I wasn't as intrigued by this book was that it's been too long since I've read issue 1. I'm excited to go back and reread these past two issues before I pick up number 3.

Anyways, that'll do it for tonight. Soon I hope to do a quick post on the G.I. Joe movies and have a bit of a flashback to my childhood of playing with the action figures. As always, thanks for reading and check out links to our podcasts at the top of the page!

-DWJ