Heroes for Hire #7 - Marvel (2007)

I'm gonna get all "reviewery" in a minute but first I want to say a couple of things:

DOOMBOT!

HEADMEN!

SHANG CHI!

If someone had asked me for a list of things I wanted to see in a comic book at the same time, well, I would have said Monica Rambeau, Machine Man and Boom Boom. But if someone had asked me what else I'd like to see in a comic book I would have listed the three things with the exclamation points above.

Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray are rapidly becoming my favorite writing team. They're doing Jonah Hex now, too. Seeing The Headmen at the end of issue #6 made me happier than anything in comics since Thor's unfettered might attack back in Secret Wars.

For those of you with social lives, The Headmen are evil science geniuses who are so evil and science-y that they have all replaced their bodies or heads with other things. Seriously. They consist of:

1. A woman with the body of a porn star and a head made out of one of those reflective balls people put in their gardens

2. Professor Gorilla-For-A-Body

3. Chondu The Mystic (who will put his head on anything)

4. A guy whose skeleton is too small for the rest of his body. OK, he didn't do anything with his head but that's because they couldn't figure out how to work with his little, tiny skull.

And these people are supposed to be intimidating. Well, I guess they are intimidating in an "I will do anything for world domination including cut off my own head" sort of way but they were just asking to be put in a humor title. Ellis was busy finding new, horrible things to do with MODOK so Gray & Palmiotti grabbed The Headmen and put them up against Humbug. Yes, the guy who can control roaches and stuff. This shit just writes itself!

There's another story involving Man-Ape, The Grim Reaper and Grindhouse which yielded the following line:

"We're villains...we don't roll over on each other like Captain America and Iron Man."

Ohh! Burn! Man-Ape vs. Mark Millar! Flawless Victory!

The art is nearly up to the writing on this issue. Alvaro Rio's pencils are spot on but the inking was better in #6. The credits list the inkers for #7 as "Tom Palmer & Terry Pallot" whereas #6 was inked by "Scott Koblish with Tom Palmer". There's some quality of the inking in this issue which is not as good as it was in the last; things look flatter. It didn't knock me out of the story or anything but I noticed it and it was a minor speedbump. The action scenes are well done and the "visual storytelling" (as the kids call it) is effective.

This one stays in my hold box. It's fun, cool and well done.