Hillbilly has a simple charm that's reminiscent of Jeff Smith's Bone. While Bone has a deceptively heavy undercurrent, Hillbilly's dark surface masks a surprising innocence. The dialogue and humor have the authentic ring of folk tale yarns told to children around bonfires. It's a little bit funny. It's a little bit creepy. It's completely entertaining.

No, this is not a perfect comic. Tony learning of his adoption is just a gimmick to inject unnecessary drama into his life. It is front and center throughout the issue as the driving force behind all of Tony’s actions. It’s too...normal. This is important to Tony, as it would be for most people, but he’s willing to start a war with a well-funded terror group to find answers. There has to a more efficient way, right? Still, it’s hard to demand much more from an Iron Man comic. Our hero is charismatic, funny and clever. He makes bad decisions and cleverly finds ways out of the situations he creates for himself. Some readers may complain about the relative lack of action, but, all-in-all, you won’t find an Iron Man story that captures the essence of the character as well as in International Iron Man.

Despite the drastic change in course for the series, it’s as enjoyable as ever. Even if people aren’t hyped about this new direction for Iron Man, I have a feeling this series is important for Marvel’s new direction.

People should definitely read this.

The potential for this world is endless. Naifeh has shown a willingness to borrow ideas from famous works, but has also shown originality. It shouldn’t surprise us to medieval version of other famous characters in upcoming issues. It also shouldn’t surprise us to see Naifeh draw from historical or legendary figures that will mingle with his original creations. This could be Astro City of the Middle Ages and I can’t wait to see where the next issue takes us.

Shipwreck #1 feels like the first chapter to a profound comic book series. Comics creators have explored surrealism before, to varying degrees of success, but having a writer of Ellis’s gravitas throw his talent at the genre will give future writers a higher bar to hurdle.

Thanos is frequently the epicenter of major cosmic events. He’s a crazy god who likes to kill things, so conflict obviously trails him. This first issue has a different approach than the usual Thanos story. The stakes are as high as they usually are, but we don’t see the “boots on the ground” opposition. There’s no Drax or Adam Strange to stand in his way. We’ll surely see him go up against powerful opponents soon, but this will be fun while it lasts. So far, Thanos is a tornado tearing through trailer parks...and it’s awesome.

Issue #2 is another solid Thanos adventure. All the plot threads are winding toward each other. Action breaks up the less spectacular scenes of scheming and talking. It’s also nice to see Marvel do something that isn’t aimed at 13 year olds. I’m not against that tactic, per se, but they’ve been a mostly one-note company with their Disney-friendly tone lately. The stakes are often so low that we’re worried about the high school chemistry grades or love lives of Marvel’s teenage heroes. It’s refreshing to see Thanos mercilessly murder a few thousand innocent people every now and again.

This is everything one could wish for from a Thanos title and it seems to get better with every issue.

Issue #2 takes time to introduce new characters and new problems, which made it a little slower than the nearly perfect first issue, but it’s still a great entry to a promising comedy series. Highly recommended.

Kidnapping Nain Rouge will surely set up a never-ending comedy of errors that the team must hustle to overcome. This series continues to be a funny and appropriately unexciting. The stakes are low, which allows for more comedic scenes between the sparse action. Villains are secondary because the heroes are their own worst enemies. It's one of the best comedy series available.

Rick has lost three of his closest allies in this war already and that’s just the beginning. We will soon enter bloodbath territory and after so much build up, it will be a terrifying relief to see who makes it and who doesn’t.

This is another hit for Marvel. They continue to get more confident as they diversify their geographical settings and their roster of young new characters. Kate Bishop is a more established supporting character than some of the younger Marvel leads, but now she’s proven that she can hold her own as a title character.

Even if you’re upset with the direction that Marvel is going with its steady stream of big events and replacement characters, this is an excellent series to pounce on. It has a charismatic main character who is written well from a female perspective and has a strong supporting cast (even if they’re thinly developed thus far). It’s excellent.

Dan Jurgen’s wrote a fun and well-paced comic book, stuffed with nostalgia and action. Even though it’s not perfect, it’s probably unfair to demand more.

Even though I sometimes wish Jurgens would show a little more pizzazz in his writing, Batman Beyond #2 stays the course and keeps us entertained while folding in essential world-building elements. In the foreseeable future, Batman Beyond will continue to build its roster of characters, conflict and backstory. Because of that, we should count ourselves lucky that Jurgens is in the writer's chair. We probably won't even notice that he's doing it.

This series has just about everything one could ask for in a comic book about magic. It has astral projection, trippy nightmares and hellscapes, oddball characters, spells, magical artifacts, demons and on and on. This has been the best issue of the current arc because it wasn't afraid to embrace the silly wackiness of magical interactions.

The last two issues have enough story for an entire comic book universe, yet it doesn’t get bogged down by any one storyline. They all tie neatly and sensibly together. The introduction of Ubilex is exactly what a space-faring fantasy needs. It’s a unique planet with its own rules and society. We see the story threads start entangling by the end of issue #2 and things kick into high gear. The next few installments in this series are shaping up to be great action-fantasy.

After one issue, Midnight of the Soul follows a well-beaten noir path, which is the beauty of it. At the heart of any good noir story are intriguing, conflicted and damaged characters. It’s easy to relate to Joel’s blunders. It’s easy to pity him and worry about him. Therefore it’s easy to root for him. That’s what a good noir story needs.

This issue added intrigue that promises action soon. It wasn't as entertaining or as illuminating as the previous issue. However, it breathed life into the characters surrounding Joel and wove a few new threads into the narrative. A few questions pop up in this issue that should have interesting answers. How will Joel behave when he sobers up? Is Patricia a femme fatale or damsel in distress? How will the crime boss deal with the problems made by this murder? The story slowed, but didn't lose me.

There isn't much of a plot, so to speak. Thus far, we're just following around a blogger. With stakes so low, it's hard to get invested in the outcome. However, mundane events are energized by Lottie's bizarre narration and other sequences are far from dull, even for fashion celebrities. Snotgirl is the kind of fun off-kilter comedy that too many writers try to bullseye, but miss the mark. This first issue achieves more entertainment than most opening acts and has the potential to get better.

This isn’t a comic book that can continue forever. The events set in motion at the end of issue #1 almost guarantee it will end. That’s a good thing. I can’t imaging following around Lottie and her “haters” for year, but a brief series should continue to be enjoyable.

Between the excellent artwork by Del Mundo and expert characterization by Waid, this is an enjoyable comic book, even with the trippy time-travelling stuff that usually accompanies Kang. The Kang craziness might not be for everyone, and, yeah, it did get slightly cumbersome, but the foundation for the future of this roster is rock solid. Maybe this is the comic to bring more balance to the current upheaval in the Marvel world. Remember, Waid is the guy who wrote Kingdom Come.

So far, Andreyko and Lopestri have managed to keep the story light, despite the grim circumstances of our heroes. It's a balancing act that doesn't falter once in the first issue. I look forward to seeing more adventures of Adam Strange and Hawkman...well, for as long as Hawkman survives.

When the story focuses on the main characters, it runs smoothly and is a lot of fun. It might be better if we had more time to explore the motivations for starting a galactic war, but detracting from the entertaining main characters might be a mistake. Andreyko hasn’t yet found the perfect balance between light-hearted, intimate character interaction and the impending armageddon they’re forced to prevent. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning perfected that kind of story with Marvel’s cosmic sagas. It’s easy to see some parallels in Death of Hawkman, but it hasn’t coalesced as masterfully. Perhaps it's unfair to compare this to one of the best cosmic stories of all time, because Death of Hawkman is still good...I just wanted a little more.

Overall, I like Riri and her place in Iron Man’s world. It forces me to wrestle with my personal preferences about Marvel’s editorial edicts, but it’s funny, touching, entertaining and continues Tony Stark’s story even if it doesn’t seem like it at first.

If Brubaker can make his characters transcend the well-worn archetypes they started as, this supernatural crime story could turn this series into something special.

It’s fine. Issue #1 does its job. The marines shoot stuff. The alien kills people. In stories about Predators, Aliens and...whatever the things in Prometheus are called, that's about all one should expect. Abnett is experienced enough with cosmic storytelling to add a few nice flourishes, but, for the most part, this is exactly what you’d expect from the latest in this genre. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Thus far, Cloonan and Dillon have done an admirable job with the story. I’m sometimes surprised that writers continue to find entertaining ways to have Punisher kill people. I read somewhere that his lifetime kill count in the comics is approaching 50,000. Somehow, it’s still rewarding to see him mow bad guys down, and even more rewarding to see him take a detour from slaughter to show a little girl compassion.

This story is efficiently told. The art is appropriate. Punisher looks tough. The bad guys get dead. It’s a perfectly acceptable Punisher comic book...but it just doesn’t have much meat. It’s disposable entertainment. That’s fine for a few issues, but we need something dynamic and new to happen soon or I, for one, will lose interest.

Steve Dillon differentiated facial angles and jawlines, distances between eyes, nose and lip sizes, chin shape and hairline. Just because they’re all drawn in the same style, doesn’t mean they’re not different. He was among the first artists to show different physiques and heights on different characters. He drew fat characters, skinny characters, buff, weak, flabby, and stout, aged characters and children that actually looked like children instead of tiny adults. Losing him was a horrible loss to the industry.

As it is, Rocket Raccoon #1 is good enough. Earth has an amusing alien underworld that Rocket must explore in order to escape the planet. It generates some funny lines featuring deep cuts from Marvel lore. Jorge Coelho’s art looks a bit like John Romita’s way back when he used to shade and the writer Matthew Rosenberg nails Rocket’s character. I was never disappointed in Rocket Raccoon #1 so much as I was worried about the future of the comic book. It nagged me the entire time I was reading, but it was still an enjoyable read.

As a stand alone issue, Wonder Woman #8 is a fun throwback to Indiana Jones. This young Minerva could anchor her own adventure mini-series. As an issue in the ongoing Wonder Woman story, it feels like a stopgap between story arcs--a delaying maneuver while the real story is put in place. In the end, fun is fun and this story enough to keep the reader entertained. Even if you want a Wonder Woman story this month, like I did, try to sit back and enjoy the scenic route.

I wanted so much more for both Jaime Reyes and Ted Kord. Even though a team-up of such great characters still has promise, this was not the right foot forward for their new relationship.

It’s unclear if writer John Semper Jr was trying to divide time evenly between Victor’s life fighting crime as Cyborg and trying to be a normal young man. Or maybe he wanted to tell an intimate story in the first issue and decided later that it needed some action. Whatever the case, this issue was an unbalanced introduction to the series. A quick once over on the blatantly unsophisticated dialogue would have gone a long way to improving the overall first impression. Instead we have to wait until next month to see if Cyborg will get a comic worthy of his presence.

Carmine Di Giandomenico's art has a frenzied, scratchy quality that fits nicely in a flash comic. It's like an even split between manga and American cartoon art with a dash of traditional comic art thrown in. It's fun and energetic, which is what Flash comics should have. His work is worth checking out. While issue #2 has a few good moments and an intriguing cliffhanger, this Flash series needs to take advantage of the kinetic artwork and the momentum gathered at the end of the issue so the cliches don't weigh it down (It worked for The Losers. No one cared about the cliched writing because the pace flew too quickly for anyone to notice).

Merry Men isn’t as important as it thinks it is and it’s not as fun as it should be. Perhaps later issues will pick up, but this one fell flat.

When I see that Frank Cho created, wrote and illustrated a comic, including covers, I expected a tour-de-force. I expected something that he’d kept close to the vest for fear of plagiarism, a powerhouse comic book debut with mind-blowing action scenes and snappy dialogue. Skybourne #1 is just plain vanilla. It fails to lift its fantasy or spy elements above anything we’ve seen in a thousand B-movies and quarter bins. Hopefully next issue will give something with a little more flavor.

At least it was cool to see Frazer Irving illustrate the origin story.

I don’t remember Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe run being so disjointed and overloaded. I also remember the series being focused more on war and terrorism. I was never a die-hard fan of the series, so maybe it was always this broad. I just know that this comic has a LOT of stuff going on and I like very little of it. G.I. Joe #1 managed to capture everything I don’t like in a story and wrap it in a wholly unappealing package. If you like straight-forward stories, avoid this at all costs.