Jarrett Kruse Comic Reviews

It is crazy to think that they could handle any more but the heroes have no time but to step up to the plate and make Ultron an offering. They all decide that She-Hulk will be the sacrificial lamb that they will offer up to Pym's mighty and practically unbeatable machine. However when Luke Cage shows up with She-Hulk in a relatively defenseless manner giving the green lady as penance to the digital nightmare, it hits the man with unbreakable skin like a truck; Ultron has created their very own model of Vision! And the green and yellow dynamo is "hungry" for lack of a better word. Whoa! I am loving this series!

While writer Joshua Hale Fialkov does his best to keep the pace going, Andy is not really someone to invest in. He comes off as just a whining teenager talking about how difficult his life is without powers. The cover art is done by Humberto Ramos but I have always been partial to his work on Crimson rather than any super-books. Nuno Plati's art looks sloppy. Overall, I have to give the whole Alpha experiment a definite pass. Maybe it will work in a few years when Andy grows into his powers but I'm not optimistic about such an unappealing hero.

When they meet in London where Alfred has taken the stage again as a classically trained actor, Bruce divulges to Damian that he has known the whole time that he never left Gotham and that his green screen skills are not quite as good as he thinks. But more importantly, Bruce tells his young son how much he has grown and that he does trust him to be his partner; a far cry from the beginning of Damian's earlier Bat-career. While it might be a little schmaltzy, Batman could use the occasional schmaltz from time to time and if anything Damian is keeping him and Alfred young.

To recommend this book would be tantamount to telling you to spend your hard earned cash on a complete incoherent mess. I am sure that their are Liefeld fans out there and that's great; to each his own. Bloodstrike is just one of those new titles that never really gets out of the starting gate. If it was a different artist and writer, I guarantee I would say the same exact thing about this book. Throw enough garbage at the wall and something is bound to stick. However with Bloodstrike you genuinely wish that nothing stuck to the proverbial wall. A total "pass" on this new series that whose genre I cannot even quantify.

Immediately, Five Weapons reminded me of the only other high school comic that I am currently reading, Morning Glories. While there is room for improvement in Five Weapons and it's very difficult to judge the debut issue of a new series, there were just no characters that I really cared about. With Morning Glories I was hooked right out of the gate, but Five Weapons just feels "blah."

While Jim McCann's plot is confusing, Janet Lee's pencils are a space-age delight. I really just kept wishing that I understood what this book was about besides a guy in the future going to a Running Man type prison where you have to wear a collar that can mean freedom or death. Maybe the second issue will explain a little more but unfortunately, I need a solid debut issue for me to jump onboard a new series. But because of the stellar art, I may actually see what issue number 2 has in store for readers.

While Loeb's script is good enough, it's a relatively ho-hum first outing. There are many other books that I would have loved to see him tackle. Loeb is a seasoned writer who just isn't in his wheelhouse with Nova. With notable Bat-books under his belt, I realize that he's trying to challenge himself. While that's nice to see from any writer, I just don't think Nova is enough of a marquee character to deserve his own series. I've always found Ed McGuiness' art to be okay but without much for the characters to do outside of Jesse's bedtime stories, there isn't much to pencil. Plus I found the palette being used was too muted with not enough "pop" of color for an intergalactic crime-fighter. It was an "OK" debut issue, but my main concern is that I'll have to wait for five or six issues before I get the entire new origin story I was anticipating.

This is definitely a wonderful jumping-on point for new readers and if you enjoy it, I cannot recommend all of the previous volumes of Powers highly enough. I promise that you will tear through them voraciously, asking yourself why you never got into the series. Powers Bureau #1 has rewarded my faith in a series that I thought was dead for sure, especially with Bendis seemingly writing the entire Marvel Universe these days. Still, seeing Pilgrim and Walker together again just feels right. Welcome back guys, I didn't realize how much I missed you both.

It's always fun to see Taskmaster as he is just this weird, likable character especially when he was an instructor at the Avengers Academy some years back. Putting him with the likes of the High Council of A.I.M. is a smart move for Secret Avengers but it is the overall missions that bother me. There just doesn't feel like anything is at stake for any of the characters and it's like we're going through the motions that we've seen a hundred times before: that is to say a great big terror organization that is threatening the world with a power far beyond something that human's should wield.

It would be criminal to fill this review with spoilers but this is a must-have book for anyone looking for a great new series to jump onto. The Diggle/Jock combo has always packed a punch but I think this is some of their best work to date. While I'm not usually a fan of black and white when I am forking over three or four bucks a book; it really works in Snapshot. It's almost like a "modern noir" tale and has a Brubaker-lite feel to it. The idea that our whole lives are stored on our smartphones is scary and Snapshot plays on our worst fears of losing our own precious phone. A month is too long to wait for issue #2 of this new gem.

I've always loved The Rocketeer and the era in which it takes place. Langridge and J. Bone are able to capture that swingin' feeling of 1939 with ease and they don't take themselves too seriously. It reads like an Archie comic but with a superhero as the centerpiece who's really just a cool guy with a sweet jetpack and a badass helmet. After all, what comic book reader doesn't want to fly? Believe me when the first jetpacks are released, I assure you it will be at a comic con. Pick this one up for yourself or for the little geeks. The Rocketeer is as fun as it always was.

The Tomorrows is an okay enough book, but I certainly don't think they are reinventing the wheel the way a lot of critics seemed to summarily agree on. I did not think any new ground was being broken during the time I read the first issue. It was okay, but definitely not something I would highly recommend to my fellow readers looking for a new series to jump on board to read.

In the epilogue, it is three months after the attack and Havok, Wanda, and Sunfire are on the run in the city. Wanda is reading a map and Alex finds the manhole cover they are looking for and finds the skeleton of Immortus, dead for centuries, with writing on the wall with a message for the new team. And then, Onslaught appears. Well, not just Onslaught, but with a little Red Skull and Charles Xavier thrown in for good measure. Whoah! I didn't see that coming.

There's bad comic book writing for lack of experience, and then there's bad comic book writing that's so hopelessly derivative because the fear of even trying something new is so paralyzing. Venture is the latter. Not sure who the superhero on the cover of the issue is, or who anyone on the variant covers are. But they will no doubt fool some comic newbie into purchasing the issue. As far as my baseball fantasy goes, I feel like I have gone back to the minors, as mighty Casey has struck out.