New Comics (yester)Day!

Rann-Thanagar War #2 Good art. Muddy storyline. Lots of explosions and people getting disintegrated. Kyle Rayner gets some good screen time but Hawkman and Adam Strange not so much, this issue. I've made this complaint about other series and I'll make it about future ones, I'm sure but here we go again:

This issue suffers from "Trades Disease" which is the unnecessary padding of what should be a 4-issue miniseries or story arc into a 6-issue run because that's the number of issues that fit nicely into a trade paperback compilation. Not a lot happens in this issue. Having said that, there is some good padding in #2, especially on the Tamaranean queen if you know what I'm sayin'

Ahem.

Sorry about that. My biggest complaint about this series is that people keep showing up as if we're supposed to know who they are. Me heap-big comics geek and I don't recognize a lot of these cameos. Maybe they'll be identified in later issues. Also, so far, this conflict is not triggering any sort of emotional investment on my part. I really don't give a damn about most of the characters. In a war story, you're kinda supposed to, aren't you? I'll pick up #3 to see where this goes.

Lex Luthor Man of Steel #4 The Adventures of Businessman! continues. I'm still liking the series but this penultimate issue is the weakest yet. It's well-written but it's also all over the place. Also, Bermejo's art (still awesome!) makes a couple of the secondary characters look really insane in a couple of spots. Check out the freaky morning-show guy on page 14! Woah!

The introduction of Hope was done very well and I have to mention Dave Stewarts colors. They make this book. It wouldn't have a tenth of its impact without them.

The Stardust Kid #1 This one's by Image. I didn't know anything about it when I saw it on the shelf. I liked the cover art (see below) and I saw J.M DeMatteis's name on it.



Definitely worth the money. There's too much telling and not enough showing for a visual medium like comics in this intro issue but the story is very good and I am very interested in what happens next issue. This is by far the best comic I picked up this week.

More to Come My holdbox is at the other comics store and I won't have the stuff in there until Saturday. More mini-reviews then. In the meantime, it has come to my attention that many people have not heard what Rot Lop Fan can do for them. This will be corrected as soon as possible.