Scott Cederlund Comic Reviews

Roger Langridge combines whimsy and wisdom into a comic that enjoys the imagination of children in Abigail and the Snowman #1. Children's imaginations can see so much more than most adults can. We see jobs, paychecks and responsibilities. Children see invisible dogs or bigfoots. These are things we never question when we're young but can't even understand once the weight of adulthood sets in. This is the world that Abigail and the Yeti inhabit, a world where children see so much more than those of us who are supposedly older and wiser.

It's funny to say, but Morrison's Superman in Action Comics may be a more street-level character that his Batman has been lately. At least we could have said that up until the moment when he decided to focus less on Superman fighting big business or the military establishment and made Action Comics #4 a story about an alien invasion. Morrison's run began as a story about a boy who thought he had the power to change and inspire a city. Hopefully that is a story that we can get back to.

After 12 issues, do we have any idea who this new Superman is? Much like how his alter ego has been in flux ( is he Clark Kent or Johnny Clark?), Superman himself has been poorly defined as Morrison tries to figure out who the 21st century Superman is. With this issue, he defines part of who Superman is as the secret identity story gets resolved but now he's got only a few more issues to tells us about the "super" part of the man. This isn't the Superman from Morrison's All Star Supermam. That was a hero at the end of his career, saving the world one more time. Morrison's Action Comics Superman is only a man who has to learn how to save Metropolis before he can save the world.

Brian Michael Bendis’ Action Comics is clearly covering the more human and personal side of Metropolis, especially when compared to Bendis’ Superman run and its more cosmic, big action focus. This issue shows how Bendis is creating a criminal underworld within the city, more reminiscent of his Powers or Daredevil runs than DC’s oldest superhero. This is a city that’s usually battered around by Lex Luthor, Brainiac, and even Giganto, not by crime and corruption. This may be Superman’s city, but Bendis shows us its underside that needs a different touch than the last son of Krypton might be able to provide. Where X-ray vision and flight may be overkill in taking down crime, maybe a journalist’s well-researched and righteous piece may be just what the city needs.

Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey have created a comic that is faithful to history while not so serious about it that they can't find the room to have a laugh or two about it.

It's hard not to think that Philip Kennedy Johnson and Salvador Larroca are just moving through the steps of this comic. They know the beats and the marks that they need to hit but there's no joy or delight in moving through them.

Alien Legion: Uncivil War #1 does everything it possibly can except to tell a story. Neither the writing or the art move in any way that develops and grows. It starts out full of noise and bluster and basically flat lines from there. Without real characters or stakes, Dixon, Stroman and Potts produce a comic book that lacks even the most basic elements of a story- a reason for its audience to care about anything that they have just read.

From a slightly-perplexing and contradictory villain in The Misogynist to the throwback artwork, All Time Comics: Bullwhip feels slightly less than its predecessor All Time Comics: Crime Destroyer but still feels as much of a past time as the first book did. It's telling that in launching a comic book line, Fantagraphics, Bayer, and Marra aren't aiming to imitate Brian Michael Bendis or Geoff Johns but are instead recreating comics of the past. By embracing a narrative and visual approach that feels more at home in comics that were found on an old newsstand instead of in the modern comic shop, All Time Comics: Bullwhip serves as a reminder of just how far comic storytelling (both of the superhero and non-superhero variety) has come while also showing us just how much of the charm of comics have been lost as they've become more a technological production.

By revisiting all of these old elements of comic books, Bayer, Trimpe, Marra, Rota, and Parker create a low-tech comic book that revels in its retro approach to superhero comics in 2017. It’s fascinating to watch today’s comic creators trying to recapture the feeling of old comic bookss as they’re adding to the traditions that they’re trying to faithfully recreate. All Time Comics: Crime Destroyer #1 is right there with Ed Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree or Tom Scioli and John Barber’s Transformers vs. G.I. Joe as a modern comic that lovingly and unironically recaptures the spark of older comics. All Time Comics: Crime Destroyer #1 is a comic book unlike most today and one that would have been perfectly at home on the newsstands when such things still existed.

Jean Grey makes the stand; they'll stay and fix the present. They'll do what Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops and Charles Xavier weren't able to do and they'll create a better future. Of course, thanks to the Beast, she sees her own future as well " the one where she dies and is reborn as Phoenix; the one where she destroys an inhabited solar system just because she's hungry; the one where her husband has an affair with an enemy who one time tried to destroy her. Bendis shows Jean Grey a future where she is not exactly as innocent as she wants to be.

While it feels like in 12 issues that not much has happened, Bendis and Immonen continue to reveal to us how our present days are a broken dream of the past. All New X-Men #12 isn't about the past or the future; it's about now and maybe it's about how dreams need to change.

Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray create a pitch-perfect closing to Jonah Hex's story, never backing away from the desperado he was while acknowledging that he does not need to be that outlaw forever.

Of course, this is the X-Men so no one really ever stays dead so Aaron and McGuinness get the dirty work of Amazing X-Men #1 out of the way immediately and give us back Nightcrawler in the opening pages. Any moroseness or pity the character might have had about being dead is immediately discarded as pirates invade Heaven and he gets to be a swashbuckling hero once again. Aaron and McGuinness show us that even the rougher parts of the X-Men's history can be twisted around until the absurdity of it becomes what the stories are about and you've just got to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman have created one of the creepiest books from DC right now. There is just enough of a Vertigo taste wrapped up in Animal Man #5 to show you can do fantastic horror with characters who run around in their long johns. It does not try to hide what it is. Usually you want to hide your cards but Lemire and Foreman show you just how far they'll so to make you scared about what you can see as much as you're scared about what you cannot.

"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted," may be a creed for assassins to live by but a storyteller should only permit the things that add to the story, that build it, to be part of that story. Kurata gets preoccupied with some bright, shiny plot elements but luckily she manages to find her way back to Shao Jun and her story.

While Astro City #50 is a celebration, it is celebrating the small moments of reflection that normally that fill most of our days and nights.

Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opea's Avengers #3 is less a conclusion of a storyline and more a wrap up of a prologue as the Avengers travel to Mars to rescue their teammates and fight the aliens who bombed the Earth from that distant planet.

Avengers #20 reaches heights of grandeur that has been lacking so far in Infinity. Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu and Gerry Alanguilan create vistas and characters that finally feel like they belong in a grand cosmic story

Avengers, Phoenixes, White Rooms, Man-Things, and even throw in a Howard the Duck for good measure. Avengers #41 is a comic that practically demands that you just shut down your brain and absorb Jason Aaron and Javier Garrn's artwork on a completely 13-year-old level, invoking the days when you just didn't want to think too deeply about comics and just enjoy them on a big old dumb and mindless level. People punching people, what more can we really ask of an Avengers comic? And if that's what we demand of our super-heroes, Aaron and Garrn give us exactly what we want.

Avengers: Endless Wartime is an Warren Ellis book but it follows the blueprints that Ellis laid out years ago without ever being able to take that next evolutionary step to set it apart from everyone that Ellis has ever influenced.

Avengers: Rage of Ultron had the potential to be the next X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills or The Death of Captain Marvel. Remender, Opea and Larraz have the story and the characters to create a ,ighty Marvel Graphic Novel that could have all told this great, timeless conflict that would define what these kind of stories would be for years to come. There's so much in this comic that's excellent but the inconsistent art and the cheated resolution damage any weight that this story could have had. And sadly it feels like all of these pieces were rushed just to have this comic book out before some big Hollywood event. Art and story were sacrificed at the altar of deadlines and bottom lines. What could have been a great, character defining comic ends up having all of the emotional impact of a inconsequential one shot comic that will be retconned in two to five years.

Employing the poetic storytelling that he has grooved on lately, with its own visual meter and structure, Mignola provides a true Ragnarok to this series and to this legend. Even if it feels like Mignola has brought us to this point of saying "goodbye" to Hellboy at least two other times before, there's a finality in this story that's been absent from any other Hellboy story

Get ready to fall in love with Bandette, the hero with the heart of a thief. Or maybe it's just the opposite, as Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover show us how Bandette can stop a bank robbery at the request of the police but maybe get herself a little something out of it, as well.

Snyder and Capullo are charging ahead with this Gordon as Batman plot, but Batman #46 is an issue that shows how many narrative balls they can juggle in the air without really taking the time to get to dive deep into any of those stories. With a lot of characters, Snyder and Capullo spend a little time with character A and then with character B and C before heading back to the beginning again. The snippet of character moments creates the sense of a lot happening, but none of the stories are developed in a completely satisfying way. Luckily, Mr. Bloom carries the weight of the issue, creating a threat for Batmen new and old.

Instead of telling a story about James Gordon, this issue demonstrates that he isn't the driving force of this storyline. "Superheavy" isn't about Gordon learning to be a superhero instead of a cop, which would have been a much more fascinating story to see. It's about Gordon doing his time filling in the role of Gotham's Dark Knight protector. There's no purpose or greater calling for Gordon and that's why his story ultimately ends up feeling so inconsequential. Even at the beginning of his time as the Batman, his role in the cowl feels so much more meaningless than previous replacement Batmen.

Gotham still needs its Batman, but Snyder and Capullo are questioning whether Bruce Wayne needs to be Batman. And right now the answer looks like that there's no other man alive who could possibly be Batman.

Waynes sacrifice for Gotham City is what echoes throughout the alternate realities that Snyder, Tynion IV, and Paquette illustrate. The idea of Bruce Wayne giving up his life in the name of Batman and Gotham City is the bonding agent in this issue as well as in Snyders whole run. As his Batman has been about the ways that Gotham City has kept its secrets from Batman, his Bruce Wayne continually runs into parts of his life that he has had to give up for the safety of Gotham City. And inBatman #49, he has to give himself up over and over. And worse yet, his closest alliesand lovers need to sacrifice their Bruce Wayne as well. The tragedy of Scott Snyders Batman is front and center as Bruce Wayne pays the ultimate price to be Batman.

Even when Snyder and Capullo "killed" Bruce Wayne, his return was a foregone conclusion. So the story was never going to be about "Will Bruce Wayne return?" The story that Snyder and Capullo had to tell was "How?" and "Why?" Batman #50 highlights the costs that Bruce Wayne is willing to pay to be Batman but it also shows why James Gordon was the Batman that Gotham City needed to defeat Mister Bloom. This issue features the most optimistic ending to a Snyder/Capullo Batman arc. The battle over the heart and soul of Gotham may be never ending but Gotham has its heroes that are willing to be Gotham's champions.

Batman #51 is a strong reminder of the mark that Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have left on Gotham City and Batman himself. Through one night in the city as Batman races the clock to discover an unseen threat to Gotham, Snyder and Capullo are leading the reader through one last look at their version of Gotham, a city that has hidden its secrets from Batman throughout their run on the book. As the capstone to their run, Batman #51 looks back at everything that theyve accomplished over 50 issues while promising a future full of more stories. And thats what Gotham is; a city that for as many stories have been already told about it, there will always be stories to be told about it and its hero, Batman.

With an unfocused story and uninspiring artwork, Batman Incorporated #0 is a scattershot collection of deleted scenes from a much larger work. While Morrison has used this approach before, his and Burnham's attempt here to fill in the gaps just highlight the gaps (where have these heroes been all this time) without showing us anything new or revealing about Batman or any of his international partners. It's an issue put together by editorial decree without finding a unique place within the story that's being told in this series.

There's potential here, but the prize of this story remains hidden for now.

Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson one-shot featuring their four-legged supernatural crusaders is a welcomed but too brief visit to Burden Hill and its protectors.

Beta Ray Bill #1 is a depressing comic. It starts with one of those bad days that only gets worse as the hours go by.

Narratively trying to follow Black Magick from point A to point B to point C and beyond may give off the impression that Rucka and Scott are moving slowly with the plot, only inching it along. That type of reading basically ignores the forming of the characters that is happening on each and every page. Rucka, always an economical writer, let's Scott's artwork tell so much of the story here as she visually fills in all of the elements of a life that reveals character. Whether it's a flannel t-shirt tied around her waist when she has to cast some protection wards around her house or the fire extinguisher that seems to be placed to satisfy some municipal ordinance in some secret, shadowy lair, Rucka and Scott are shaping real lives for these characters that exist beyond the boundaries of the comic page.

Rick Remender's story feels like it's running in place as the idea of anarchist scientists seems put aside and the characters lack any real definition. The scientists have become standard adventurers and the comic feels like a retread of Lost in Space as the characters all fit into neatly into the roles of the space family Robinson.

Fullerton's quick, gestural lines infuse an immediacy in this book, capturing the danger that Killian and Neev are facing while on the run for their lives. The art in this book highlights the impending danger of this story.

Allred and Horton cap off the story of Bowie/Stardust with pages that show the many lives that Bowie lived after allowing the alien to inhabit him. These lives are simply captured through iconic images of David Bowie, images without words or context yet these pages are so much more exciting because Allred and Horton’s adoration of the men gets out of the way of the story they’re trying to tell. A montage from the period immediately before Bowie’s death in 2016 defines the man's views of life and death so much more evocatively than so much of the book does. A story lives in these pages where too much of the rest of the book is a catalog of events and gigs.

Bug! The Adventures of Forager #1 fits into DC's Young Animal imprint, with its looking-to-the-future-by-way-of-the-past methodology. The questions and doubts of Forager align with Michael Allred's Madman, creating a worldview that is colored by costumes and capes. The resurrected naivety of Forager is both a character strength and a character flaw that allows Lee and Michael Allred to wonder about the nature of man, existence, and rebellion. That strength allows the Allreds to ask these universal questions, while those weaknesses keeps those questions from achieving the depth that they deserve.

At this point, Casanova: Acedia #1 may not be as cute or playful as Sex Criminals or as formalistically invigorating as Hawkeye, but it contains Matt Fraction's best writing as he continues to build upon themes that he began years ago. The view of Casanova as a continuum that began in 2006 shows a book and a writer who has continued to grow and it has become something very different than it was almost nine years ago.

That's the book that Casanova: Avaritia is: it's about these messed up people who are just trying to make it through this life without getting any more messed up.

Chasin' The Bird: Charlie Parker in California is not a full view of the man. As a collection of different perspectives of the musician, each one wants something different from the artist, and those color the viewpoints of each of the narratives. They all want something different from him but they all want something. They're looking for some love, some validation, some partnership, and even some friendship from a man who was all about the music. They wanted him, but did he want them at all? Chisholm only gives us these outside views of the artist. We're left to put together a puzzle of who Charlie Parker was during this year, but the puzzle is intentionally incomplete.

Parker and Shalvey don't do anything to give us a reason to pay any attention to this fight. The introduction of the Dark Avengers vaguely refers back to some previous battle that we're supposed to know about that supposedly gives this battle some pathos. Instead, it's just an excuse to watch Thor pound on Luke Cage even if it isn't the real Thor but it is the real Luke Cage. Dark Avengers #174 introduces a new twist on an old team but the concept already feels worn by the end of the issue.

Dark Days: The Forge #1 lifts a veil on the DC Universe, but it doesn't reveal too many secrets as opposed to just revealing that there are more secrets to be told. Snyder and Tynion IV hide things in this story like Batman hides artifacts in his moon Batcave. With a superstar team of artists, the writers put Batman directly at the center of this multiverse while surrounding him with teammates and proteges and secrets. This issue may be a prologue to the next big thing, but you have to wonder whether this is a teaser to what's coming or if it's the first chapter of the next big epic? Either way, Dark Days: The Forge #1 sets up the promise of exciting things to come.

The first Dark Knight series was revolutionary. The second series was rebellious. But with this third series, attitude has given away to assuredness, as Miller, Azzarello, Kubert and Janson pull away from the new, young and unknown characters in favor of something a bit more commonplace. Batman and Superman overshadow their younger counterparts, making this latest issue a very conventional team-up of DC's two oldest heroes. Dark Knight III: The Master Race #3 is the most traditional DC superhero issue that either Frank Miller or Brian Azzarello have had their names attached to, playing this issue safe and tame rather than pushing the story forward for the daughters and futures of Batman and Superman.

All of the politics and rage of Miller and Azzarello's story is purely surface level, which is really the biggest disappointment of this issue when you consider the pedigree of these two writers. Harkening back more to the innocent spirit of the 1950s than the grim-and-gritty 1980s, Dark Knight III: The Master Race #5, Miller and Azzarello's writing is fairly unambitious toward triggering any fanboy buttons that both writers have been known to push often in the past. And while Kubert and Janson are perfectly capable of recreating beats of classic comic books, it's only the rare instances where the artists are allowed to create their own moments where Dark KnightIII: The Master Race #5 gets to be anything other than a pastiche of an old-fashioned team-up comic book.

It's almost scary just how easily King and Weeks transform Elmer Fudd from being the straight man to Bugs Bunny into a dark, complex and cunning character. Turning Elmer Fudd from a joke into the star of this comic, King and Weeks use these cartoon characters to tell a story about crime, love, and revenge without having to change who these characters are.

It's difficult to follow what is happening in the story until the end when a new character shows up to provide answers that are far more fascinating than the path we took to get there.

Doom Patrol #1 is actually a fairly simple story as the individual parts of this issue are fairly straightforward even if the ways that the many sequences go together remain a mystery.

Whether it's a dream or a nightmare, Johns and Frank continue to deliver just enough meta-textual teasing to pique the curiosity of where this event is heading in future issues.

With this issue, Starkings continues to show us just how rich of a world that he and his multitude of artists have created. You can have these high concept stories, where mysteries take the characters to Mars in just the previous issue and here you have a very grounded story, a very realistic story about how the average elephantman had to assimilate into society while our main heroes and villains have had their celebrated and praised.

Excalibur #16 uses classic storytelling while finding fresh directions to take these characters in.

This is not a story about life or death; it's a story about salvation. You know from the start that everything has been shot to hell and know the characters are scrambling to make sure it doesn't get worse. The different stakes in this issue leads to a different kind of storytelling from Brubaker and Phillips. They keep you guessing throughout this book, trying to figure out what they are doing and where the characters are going.

Brubaker and Phillips are holding back as much of the true story as long as they can. Fatale #4 just shows how good of teases they are as the issue is captivating because of what we don't know just as much, if not more, than because of what we do know.

Future Quest #3 expands the story and develops a history for it. And with the great art by Steve Rude and Aaron Lopresti, Parker has a Birdman story and a Herculoids story that shows just how great these characters are.

Whatever this Generations event started as, morphed into, and finally hit the comic stands as, it is ultimately another rote and forgettable attempt by DC to offer up some logic behind how all of these stories relate to one another. This is weird because it feels like the recent Death Metal event tried to accomplish the same goals as DC tries to move into whatever its post-continuity existence is going to be. Maybe there aren't enough writers and artists to create a good comic that's driven more by editorial dictate than it is by creative thought. This is a corporate comic that does nothing other than giving DC another chance to try to get its continuity right.

That little bit of thoughts of our own place in this wild universe adds a bit of texture to Stokoe's writing about monsters, robots and aliens in this issue. It's fun seeing giant kaiju fight and battle but that's not really a story. Godzilla fighting Space Godzilla isn't doesn't offer much other than the thrill of Stokoe's magnificent drawings bringing these creatures to life. The story that Stokoe offers in Murakami, a man whose obsessions have cost him a life, gets to the soul of Godzilla: Half Century War #5. In Murakami, we find a man who has outlived his obsessions and is stuck wondering what's next?

Matt Wagner revels in the pulp roots of Grendel vs. The Shadow #1. With Grendel and the Shadow, Wagner gets to have a field day playing with gangsters, villains and antiheroes. Over his long career, those seem to be his storytelling passions as he continually returns to characters like Grendel. This comic gives him room to play around in the moral darkness that allows Grendel and the Shadow to exist. In Wagner’s stories, Grendel is the “hero” but in Wagner’s dark context, the word means little. The Shadow is a “good buy” but when you look at his thoughts and methods, the extremeness of them border (if not fully tip) into the realms of fascism. Neither of these characters are good guys but each are our protagonist. Wagner creates a story where it’s easy easy to get lost in their seductive ideologies and root for both characters.

This comic goes for capturing a truly cosmic scale of adventure, trying to establish the intergalactic jurisdiction of the team. It creates stakes that at once fee large but also impersonal and distant. Al Ewing and Juan Frigeri provide a timely reset for these characters, giving themselves the ability to re-establish who and what this team is. But by taking this moment to do that, Ewing and Frigeri lose a bit of sight of the magic of this cast. By showing them as galactic superheroes, we end up missing the more personal and established interplay of these characters that all of the incarnations of this title have been built on. When you make the Guardians of the Galaxy into a superhero team, that's what they are - just another superhero team.

It's too early to tell if Happy is invading Nick's world or is Nick invading Happy's. Maybe it's even too early to tell which world is real and which one is imaginary because with Morrison's work you can never tell. With Darick Robertson grounding this story in a recognizable if vulgar world, Morrison can use his magic words to distract us with cursing and cuteness. He draws us into the story even if it's only to figure out whether the cursing or the cuteness is the true heart and soul of Happy #1.

"Don't lose it, Buttercup." Fraction is a smart writer and puts this line in there telling us what's going to happen later on in the comic. Of course he's going to lose it! That's the center of Fraction and Pulido's story. It's not the "what's going to happen?" question that we're left asking, but the how and why? But by the end, Fraction and Pulido turn it back around to "what's going to happen?" as they throw a twist into the story that makes you question and reexamine every other page of this comic book. It's a slick ending that just makes everything the creators have done up to that point so much more mysterious and intriguing.

Hellblazer #300 reminds us of just what a bastard John Constantine really is and just how much we enjoyed reading these dark tales. Constantine was the ultimate cheater, a character who never showed all his cards even as he made sure that he had a wild card hidden up his sleeve. Milligan, Camuncoli and Landini play this issue the same way. We think we know the game and how this book, series and character are going to end. It's an ending 25 years in the making that still manages to trick us with its magic. A John Constantine may be showing up in comics with Batman and Superman now but our Constantine is gone. Milligan, Camuncoli and Landini pull off a final trick, giving us everything we expect from the final issue of Hellblazer while denying a finale that leaves us mourning the character.

Hellboy's survived the storm and the fury, but here is something new for him to face. One storm is over but Hellboy in Hell #1 reads like the hours before another storm. Each panel is a clap of thunder. Some of those claps are in the distance acting as an early warning while others rattle your very soul. That's the power of Mignola and Stewart's images. Mignola reminds us of the primal forces that exist unseen in the shadows while Stewart provides some hope in the form of light against the darkness. As the character has to face his own past like a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge, he will need to understand everything he has lost. That may be too much to ask of Hellboy, and Mignola knows this.

Hellboy in Hell #6 explores death in a way that’s quite a different than what we usually see in comics. Most of the time we’re waiting for the heroes miraculous resurrection because there’s a new event around the corner or a new movie is coming out next week. Even here, that hope is always going to be there; you’ve got to hope that one day you’ll see Hellboy fighting alongside the B.P.R.D. again to save the world but it doesn’t feel as inevitable as knowing that Peter Parker will be alive again. Hellboy is dead and Mignola’s story is about how death can truly change you. Visually we’re starting to see this character as a dead man and that flips around the story. So that as Hellboy enters his third decade of publication, Mignola has fundamentally changed his character by killing him. It sounds so stupid and simple to say “death changes everything” but Mignola is showing just how complex an idea that really is.

Mike Mignola continues to create this rich mythology around the Hellboy character. Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea builds off of the rich history of the character and his world, giving Mignola the opportunity to pay homage to Herman Melville while adding to the legendary narrative of Hellboy. Working with Gary Gianni, this new comic book creates a moody and lovely chapter in the life of a character that feels as if it was ripped out of a sea shanty to simultaneously enchant and frighten off kids dreaming about life on the open ocean.

"Climbing teaches you that you're all alone," is the wrong lesson for Zan to have learned in her lifetime. She isn't alone because that's the natural state of things; she's alone because she pushes everyone away. That's her story. We continue to see it in High Crimes #8, as one of the few allies she has leaves her because she wouldn't tell him the truth about why she was climbing Everest. Sebela and Moustafa's thin-aired thriller takes us to the top of the world where we begin to see the person that Zan wants to be. She might think that climibing teaches a person to be alone but that doesn't mean that she wants to believe in that lesson.

House of X #1 is a largely exhilarating, sometimes frustrating, and often chilling start to this latest iteration of the mutant story. Hickman, Larraz and Gracia begin the newest cold war between mutants and humans, all without firing one single optic blast or a popping of adamantium claws. This creative team relies on big ideas, skillful execution and the excitement of the new to pull their readers into this new day of X. Welcome to the new age of mutants. Hope you survive the experience.

Immortal Hulk is the most disturbing comic book on the stands, but in a good way " in a way that challenges us and everything we've ever thought we knew about the Hulk and what it means to be a "good guy."

The world is full of monsters. We like to think that those monsters are coming after us, somehow thinking that we're equal to them. But what if we're the prize in their battles? What if it's the monsters that are fighting themselves? When the monsters are the Hulk and the Leader that puts us between the proverbial rock and a hard place where we're just waiting to get smashed by one of them. Al Ewing and Joe Bennett have been stringing us along for a while now, playing some kind of sleight of hand game so that by the time this issue reveals the real rock and hard place, it's already too late for us. We're stuck in the middle, just waiting and hoping to see what this creative team's next trick is going to be.

It's not motion comics bad, but Waid and Krause still haven't gotten beyond the contrived feeling of wanting to recreate the kind of jump cuts that you can do with video.

It may be a cliche to tell your story using a reporter who is trying to find that story, but it's a fantastic device that allows the storytellers to work on multiple levels. Using Babb as the eyes and ears of the reader in this issue, Bechko and Hardman get to tell multiple, related stories. With Babb and Maia's stories unfolding, we get a before and after image for this series. We see a bit of what presaged these events and what the result has been while Bechko and Hardman open up the mystery of what happened to this world. Invisible Republic #1 is all about those mysteries. It's not world building that they're practicing here but world revealing. The world is familiar enough that they don't need to walk us through it to explain it to us. Instead they reveal the world to us, revealing the specific details of these worlds and characters.

In John Carter: The Gods of Mars , Sam Humphries and Ramn Prez create a Mars that I want to dream about.

Power Ring and Grail have been central to the story that Geoff Johns is telling in "The Darkseid War" but neither of them has really been at the forefront of the story until now. Justice League: The Darkseid War Special #1 gives both characters nice spotlights and stories that create personal stakes in this large, grand story about heroes and gods. Even as Johns is writing this huge story that has multiversal ramifications, he -- along with Reis, Jimenez and Pelletier -- strike with these moments that aren't about being Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman, but about being Power Ring and Grail: two women whose destinies are tied into the fates of gods, monsters and heroes.

In some ways, each issue of Kamandi Challenge is about living fast and leaving a beautiful corpse for the next creative team to deal with in 30 days. That seems very anti-Kirby, who was all about creating these rich and grand narratives. He created Kamandi roughly around the same time as he created The Demon and OMAC and after he created the Fourth World saga, all of which are these large worlds that he built up over time in layers, adding narrative block to narrative block to create these concepts that still intrigue and amaze us. Through its artwork, Kamandi Challenge #1 hints at the legacy of Jack Kirby but misses the spirit and chutzpah that Kirby put into each and every page he drew.

A dog, a bartender, an enabling co-worker, an irate boss and a woman working at the hotel who knows that no dogs are allowed. While Joe may honestly believe that he's rescuing Kinski from a negligent family, Hardman is setting up this circle of witnesses, judges and accomplices around Joe. I think it's obvious to say that he's not acting in any rational way and we see him continue down a path of questionable choices. Kinski #2 is about what most truly captivating stories are about: obsession. A man sees something and has to have it. Whether it's a woman or a dog, obsessions lead men to do stupid things and Joe is no different than anyone else that way.

Lazarus is a book that's measuring out its story as Rucka and Lark masterfully control each and every page.

With no visual secrets in this book, Rodriguez's art captures the shock that the reader experiences and the normalness of it for the family who lives in the house.

This comic is its own id. It exists because of and for its basic urges. Otto embodies these desires and provides the propulsive momentum in this funny comic. Gillen, Rossignol, Stokely, Bonvillain, and Cowles give us this first look into this world of action and unbridled urges that promises to be anything but stale! If boring comics are a crime, then The Ludocrats looks like the perfect get-out-of-jail-free card.

So a large chunk of the satisfaction of this ending is that it's an ending a lot of us have waited a long time for. But whether we've only read this past series or been on this ride since 1984, In this last issue we get to see a cartoonist who is in full control of his art and writing, able to create an emotionally resonant story of a man struggling to keep his family together.

The best thing about Minimum Wage #2 is the genuineness of it. And even if it isn't completely authentic, Fingerman makes it work within the boundaries of his story. Fingerman's story rings true for his characters. Rob may be directionless right now and his relationship/sex life with May feels that way as well as even after spending the night together, Rob ends up finding out things about May that he has trouble processing. Bob Fingerman takes the risqu magic of the old underground comics shows us that it can still be revealing in 2013.

Mister Miracle #1 is an issue that asks how we can face the world day in and day out and it's an issue that frighteningly has no answers for that question.

Windsor-Smith crafts a war story that recognizes that wars don't end with an armistice. For some people, wars never end as they have to live with the experiences and atrocities every day and every night, even after they eventually get to go home.

Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #2 shows the same creativity, the same freshness and the same world building that Graham has done in both King City and Prophet but here it is so much more warmly welcoming to the reader. It doesn't approach the reader as someone new to the world and therefore show off how different it is from everything else (even though it is.) In this book, we find a world that is about love as much as it is about the weirdness of its landscapes. Graham easily moves between a story about a bounty hunter and her odd jobs and two lovers trying to discover a new life for themselves. For both parts of the issue, he settles into a groove that lulls the reader into it and welcomes them into Graham's imagination.

It may take a reading or two to decipher but this is really one of Morrison's least convoluted stories. Since he can let Burnham do a lot of the heavy, psychedelic maneuvering, Morrison's plot in this issue is one that can be easily boiled down to one or two snappy lines, but that doesn't make it any less exciting than Morrison's best reality-bending stories. It even allows him to include lines like "Welcome to the real world," and it works perfectly as Burnham effortlessly shifts you from one reality to another and you need to be grounded by Morrison's words.

Even as all of that is going on, DiDio and Giffen are creating a thrilling conspiracy story. What's Maxwell Lord's endgame? What's Genesis? Why Kevin Kho? On almost every page, they are giving us big, loud action but they are also sowing the back-story seeds, building their story by creating new questions with almost every issue. And that's also recapturing the fun of monthly comics, where every 30 days you get an issue that makes you want more.

For this final issue, Giffen and Koblish show the O.M.A.C. rampaging Hulk-like through Checkmate, tearing the organization down as it tries to get to Maxwell Lord. Using all of Kirby's techniques from emotive figures to thunderous sound effects to the ever classic but effective Kirby crackle, Giffen and team serve up a tour-de-force of Marvel action.

King and Bagenda demonstrate how far these leaders, the Viceroy and Primus, will go in the name of their conflicts, there's no morality or lack thereof behind either side. At this point, it makes this issue into empty posturing as both sides show just how cruel and unjust their actions are. It cannot be as simple as the good guys versus the bad guys because the creators are going out of their way to color the protagonists of this story as morally compromised as the protagonists are. Omega Men #2 is a war comic but who are we supposed to be rooting for? This isn't as easy as old Sgt. Rock comic books ever were.

As a first issue, Plunge #1 is a solid read, but it’s also weirdly weighed down by exposition and set-up. It’s structured to get us from Point A to Point B in this issue where Point B is the cliffhanger to get us back for Point C. It’s episodic television structure that prompts you to tune in next month for the next exciting issue of this basic cable thriller, but it's more exciting because of Immonen and Stewart’s work than for Hill’s writing. As a set-up to the rest of the series, this issue establishes everything it needs to before its second issue, even if it don't necessarily create a lot of excitement for it.

It's still early to understand what game Hickman and his cohorts are trying to pull off here. But it is exciting to be caught up in the familiar conflicts of the X-Men even as they are being reimagined.

Sometimes it's not the story that's being told but the journey that the creators take you on that counts. As Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios have marched us along with their characters into Death's domain, Pretty Deadly has been a confounding yet fascinating story

You can't say that Ridley Scott's Prometheus is a graceful story, but it ages pretty well compared to Paul Tobin and Juan Ferreyra's comic sequel.

By the end of this issue, maybe you'll think you have Graham figured out and you know what Prophet is about. Maybe you'll think that you know what the story is and who the true John Prophet is. And just maybe, well... more than maybe... Brandon Graham will throw up a surprise on the first page that just shatters all of your notions about the book you've just read. He's done it at least a couple of times already. I honestly don't think I ever want to know what's going on in this book; I just want to be swept up in the Prophet current and carried along into the story and wherever it may take me. And I'm perfectly content to believe that the current will shift and that we'll be heading in a different direction next month.

Smith's focus on Tesla makes everything else in this series that much more possible. It makes the danger that Rasl is racing to prevent that much more dangerous because there is a hint of reality in Smith's story and a hint is just enough sometimes.

Reckless has the technical proficiency that we expect from a Brubaker/Phillips joint production but lacks the rough edges of their best work that truly gives their work its true character. It lacks the jagged edges that a reader can lose themselves in. As Brubaker and Phillips try to mimic a certain style of crime book (think of Donald Westlake's Parker books), they know the notes and beats that they need to hit but just aren't able to infuse the passion and heat that drive the machinery of those stories.

With their exploration of the undead, Seeley and Norton are asking different questions about the undead. Are they truly zombies or are we seeing the dead being given new bodies as part of a Heavenly resurrection? Why shouldn't we be happy that our aged mothers and too-soon killed family members are seemingly impervious to death. "Oh, Death, where is thy sting?" could be a triumphant statement as much as it is a dreadful question. Revival #1 may look like another zombie book but that's a line that Seeley and Norton carefully walk, never letting us know quite what's going on at the start of their story.

This issue itself functions as a Rorschach test, providing the general shape of the story to come as King and Forns leave it to their audience to fill in the context around it. What you see in it is informed by what you put into it yourself. We know that there is something here but King and Forns only give us enough to start filling in the details and shadows ourselves. At this point, it actually feels a bit more like a trap, like we're being set up already for some twist that we half expect but won't see coming down the line. As we're being eased into this story, we know as much as or less than what the detective knows so we are put into his role, trying to complete the picture through our own assumptions and worldviews. And from a first issue, can we really expect anything more than that?

There are elements of Satellite Sam #1 that you could point to and say "that's a Chaykin comic" or "that's a Fraction comics" but that misses the fusion of these two creators who are creating a true fusion of their two styles. Fraction has learned from Chaykin that glee in pushing comics boundaries. You would almost think a book by the two of them would be full of both of their excesses. Instead Satellite Sam #1 offers the best of both creators; a strong family story told through images that excite, that tease and that have so much energy in them that you can't help but get excited to see what's going to happen on each new page.

In some ways, there is very little sense of awe in Hardman's images because you look at everything and think "yup, that's the way it would look if miniature versions of the Avengers just popped out of a woman's body." He doesn't make that seem as weird as it should be. But then when you stop and thin about it, it's amazing how wonderful these images are that you can easily accept that the fantastic is happening right before your eyes. "

So when the dust clears, the good guys have won, the worlds are restored and the Marvel Universe goes on and on. Thanks to "All-New All-Different Marvel" debuting a few months ago, there are few surprises here, but Hickman and Ribic still manage to sneak one or two of them in. Hickman and Ribic have set a world ticking away and take their bows. Worlds lived. Worlds died and, other than a few things here or there, nothing much changed. And that's what happens with these things. The modern event is not about the destination, but about the journey there. And while it took eight issues before the heart of Secret Wars came into focus, this final issue gets to the soul of the Marvel Universe like no other event has before.

Fraction claims that he's writing a sex comedy, but Sex Criminals #4 may be one of the most honest comics that he's ever written.

Snarked #4 almost feels like a comic book that we should know all too well. It features ne'er-do-well heroes that have to help out cute kids because there may be a reward for doing so. And the heroes may end up learning valuable lessons in the end that there's more to life than trying to make a buck on any given day. The ne'er-do-wells may even end up liking the kids in the end. Imagine that! It's a simple formula but the charm to Snarked is in Langridge's storytelling. The charm is in these characters that look like they could be Muppets trapped in these situations where humor is often found with a dash of true adventure and danger. Snarked #4 is a kid's comic book wrapped up in an adults' subversive and humorous point of view.

In Sneeze, we find the Naoki Urasawa that we know from his previously translated work but his short stories reveal a playfulness that there is just not room for in his larger work. Even in the stories that feel like they could be expanded into something larger, his work is almost more spontaneous as he does not have to lay the ground for events that will happen hundreds of pages later or pay off something that happened 10 chapters ago. These stories exist more in the moment of the story. For the reader, it's the experience of living more in the moment of these stories than what's possible in some grand epic.

It's a collaboration that's constant but the result for Spaceman is something different than what we've seen before. While its obviously the same creative team that created 100 Bullets, every aspect of the book feels different than that conspiracy story. Spaceman #2 shows that we should expect the new out of our comics. Of course you can recognize thew work of Azzarello and Risso in these pages but this looks and feels nothing like any of the stories that the've done before this.

Spaceman is full of ideas, possibilities, dreams and nightmares. And that's all in the things that are suggested through the way that Azzarello and Risso have built their world. Around the story of the rescue of a kidnapped girl, the creators have suggested so many possibilities for their characters and their settings that the narrative hasn't been able to explore yet. After four issues, those possibilities remain far more intriguing than the story that is actually being told.

Miles Morales is a unique superhero, even if Spider-Man #1 doesn't really give any insight into what could make him a great one.

For many, Star Wars #1 will meets their goals. It's a Star Wars comic. It looks and feels like Star Wars. But underneath this overwhelming devotion to the George Lucas aesthetics, this comic fails to generate the excitement that the first movie did. Aaron and Cassaday easily capture the feel of the original movie but never quite connect with the tone or excitement of it. Cassaday's artwork never becomes alive and vibrant, while Aaron cannot quite overcome the legends of these characters. Despite one or two bright spots, such as Chewbacca as a sniper and C-3PO possibly forced to use a blaster, this comic lacks the anything-is-possible feeling that existed in 1977.

Darth Vader #25 concludes Vader's own version of Game of Thrones, where Vader has learned about the cost of power and the even higher price of keeping it. His Machiavellian maneuvers throughout the past 24 issues lead to this final issue and confrontation with the Emperor, himself no stranger to this game. And really, knowing that this series takes place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, the fate of Vader wasn't really in question. It was just going to be how much more of Anakin Skywalker's soul he was going to need to sacrifice to make his next grand cinematic gesture. For as iconic of a villain that Darth Vader has been since 1977, Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca show us that there is far more to the bad guys than their quests for evil and domination.

Ultimately, the nihilistic ending tells the tale of desperate men and dangerous men. Lapham's world isn't about life being meaningless; it's about life being mean and unforgiving.

The guitar is a catalyst to a deeper mystery that Dex is getting pulled down into. Rucka and Southworth know that they mystery isn't simply who took the guitar but why? Why was the guitar taken? Why was Dex hired? And why did it simply show up at her house? You'll want to turn in next issue for that.

Rucka and Southworth make their readers pay attention to the story that they're telling. The reveal of the true thief at first seems like a trick, an easy solution to get out of this story. But as you start to backtrack the story, to follow the clues and see what Dex has been seeing, you can see how Rucka and Southworth have been seeding this mystery from the very beginning. Rucka's assured and measured storytelling is as strong as usual but Southworth and Renzi's sometimes shaky artwork makes part of this comic feel unfinished. Even with the rough artwork, Stumptown #5 delivers a fantastic modern mystery that has both been about just what it seemed to be about while building an even deeper well of trouble for Dex in future stories by Rucka and Southworth.

Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason are trying to pull a fast one over us and they're doing a pretty good job at it. As "Superman Reborn" continues, each new revelation is quickly followed by a new mystery.

Attempting to tell a cohesive story of the once, current and future Supermen, Superman: Rebirth #1 really doesn't get to say anything other than, "Hey, it's Superman." There's no great revelation about the "New 52" Superman and everything it has to say about post-Crisis Superman just repeats old Dan Jurgen stories. This issue lives in the space between yesterday and tomorrow as it closes out one chapter of Superman before beginning another, but there's no story in it about today, or what either version of the character should mean to readers.

Snyder and Greg Capullo continued that theme in Metal, showing dark and twisted What If versions of the character fighting the Justice League. Where that story was large, colorful and brash, The Batman Who Laughs #2 is much smaller yet the stakes for one man feel much greater than the fate of the multiverse ever did.

Playing off of each other, Fialkov and Infurnari build a sense of dread in this issue one moment at a time while slowly revealing the more questionable motivations of a few of the characters.

In The End of Summer, it’s as if the house both protects the family while it picks away at them. As a reader, it looks like this great and magical place that would just be a fantastic place to live in but you can quickly see how the madness sets in. Tillie Walden creates this space that should be safe but the pressures it and the coming winter press on Lars and his family forces this maddening change in the family. “Twins. Cats. Architecture.” Walden’s story takes this fragile, unhealthy family and places them in a fortress, protecting them from the winter but traps them with the rest of their family.

By chasing after every joke they can think of, Mark Russell and Steve Pugh don’t spend any time developing or exploring any of the jokes. There’s one great panel riffing on David Bowie’s song “Major Tom” that goes nowhere while they keep coming back to this depressed veteran without ever making it funny. It’s a labored attempt at humor which is representative of most of the humor in this issue. If this is satire, it’s hard to tell who or what Russell and Pugh are trying to skewer with their humor, because there’s no focus to any of the jokes in The Flintstones #3.

Childhood may be innocent but it's never simple. That's probably the biggest lesson anyone can take away from Lynda Barry's The Greatest of Marlys! As we see the world through the eyes of Marlys, her brother, and her cousin, Lynda Barry crafts children's stories without ever resorting to telling childish stories. Barry perfectly captures the innocent complications of childhood that resonate in all our hearts, whether we're young or old.

The odd thing about The Massive #1 is that it's hard to tell if this is a book about the environment or an adventure book about life on the high seas. Those introductory short stories in DHP really placed the character's in their broken environments. We saw how the world's upheavals affected the lives of people. In the first issue of the series, Wood and Donaldson are still finding a balance between their story and their themes. With the whole world as their stage, their first issue's broad storytelling doesn't seem angry at the world or yet overly concerned with these environmental changes. Like his earlier work, Wood's writing on The Massive #1 feels eerily prescient but Wood and Donaldson focus more on the characters in this issue rather than the environment. The thought of activism exists in the deep background of this issue, waiting for themes and issues to emerge to inject some emotion and energy into an otherwised reserved first issue.

This wouldn't be the only Elric adaptation for Roy Thomas, P. Craig Russell and Michael T. Gilbert but it's the only one all three of them would work on together. Other Elric comics would feature maybe only one or two of these creators and would contain elements of this book but nothing else could feel as complete as Elric of Melnibon. The sword and sorcery outer wrapper of the story gives this creative team the room to craft a story about a flawed individual who has to make choices that harm him while protecting and maybe even saving his world and his lover. Working together, these three creators made an adaptation that remains faithful to the original novel but never feels like a mere adaptation or retellling of the source material. They made Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibon novel into their great comic book.

Whether it's Jane's struggle with cancer and the godhood which could simultaneously save and kill her or Loki's own acts of betrayal that are done for all of the "right" reasons, Aaron, Dauterman and Wilson explore the tender last moments of these lives, contrasting them against the brutality of these mindless forces of destruction and death.

As Morrison finishes up the victory lap that is Multiversity, his grand comic ultimately remains about good guys fighting bad guys. It's all manufactured and produced from the same place. Ultra Comics and the Gentry are each their own constructions in the comic and they're the constructions of the very real Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke. The creators push and pull you down the paths that they want you to go and we follow, looking for meaning in every panel and line of dialogue. Even as in the end, Ultra Comics returns to the beginning, so to does Morrison in his career as Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1 echoes his Animal Man and Flex Mentallo stories. If there is any infestation going on with these comics, we should be investigating how these ideas have lodged in Morrison's mind and how he can't escape them.

P.I. is a detective hero for the internet age. Hiding in the backgrounds are posters declaring "Free Assange" and searches and keywords are the detectives' tools as much as stakeouts and interrogations. Even as other people hide behind complicated masks, disguising their true identities as they do something as simple as riding the bus, P.I.'s sole mask is some black face paint, striped across his eyes. It's less a mask and more a symbol, a black bar over a face like on television used to protect someone's identity but it hides nothing here. Maybe P.I. is the one man in all of Los Angeles with nothing to hide. In The Private Eye #3, Vaughan and Martin speculate on what the post-internet age will look like and it looks a lot like an old 1950s movie where a femme fatale could knock on a door and a unwitting sap would be pulled into the mystery of his lifetime.

Sandman Overture #3 has a lot to live up to with 75 issues of history that have already told the story of Dream. Neil Gaiman and J.H. Williams III know that history and are trying to fill in the cracks of that story. This issue is that filler. It's full of those patented Gaiman magical stories and J.H. Williams III wonderful artwork but it is ultimately empty because Gaiman has no need to retread old ground and doesn't have anything new to build here. Sandman Overture #3 contains things we've seen in both creators works before. It was wonderful the first few times but here it's just a repeat.

The Sandman: Overture #5 sadly adds nothing new to Gaiman's past stories, even as Williams and Stewart draw a Sandman story unlike any before it.

Cooke pulls you ever closer and closer into the confidential discussions of these two men and then quite literally broadens your horizons with large panels as Shade begins telling the man about his grand adventures. And it all works because Cooke makes you privy to the personal moments just as skillfully as he gets you excited by the fighting and punching.

For 50 issues, Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt have been telling the story about the end of one world and the race to recreate it. This seemingly endless cycle has been the sole purpose of the six mystical guns and Drake Sinclair, their human human agent of destruction and recreation time and time again. The fiftieth issue, the finale of the series, sees Drake Sinclair once again at the center of the chaos of the guns but instead of acting for the guns, Sinclair and Becky Montcrief fight to end the cycle through one final recreation of the world. Bunn and Hurtt conclude the series staying true to the characters. And while they maybe don't give the characters the ending they want, they give them the ending that they deserve.

This issue is a quarter of this series, the first issue of a planned four-issue run. It feels like a wasted issue where more should have happened. Kindt, Lemire and Rivera put together a solid comic book that serves a function but never rises above that function. Rivera's art is stunning, as it humbly opens up a world of uncertainty and danger. The quietness of his artwork sets up for foreboding atmosphere of evil in this world. Kindt and Lemire's story walks us through these characters, giving them all their moment in the light but it is hardly able to find anything for them to do with the spotlight. The Valiant #1 is a story of introductions, but it gets bogged down in those introductions and forgets to actually do anything with its colorful characters.

As their characters perform their roles, Gillen and McKelvie, you’ve got to read The Wicked + The Divine #2 as you would any gossip rag or TMZ-like website. This is about celebrity, the people who have it and the people that want it. Godliness and worshippers are just another type of fame in Gillen and McKelvie’s world; it’s a fame that has all of the highs and lows of any fame that someone on the top of the charts right now has. You’ve got to wonder who these people are. What are the differences between Lucifer and the girl she was before she became a god? There’s the story that Gillen and McKelvie are telling here about stars and fans but then there has to be the story that they coyly are-but-aren’t telling about fans who became the stars of their own stories. In this story, Lucifer tells her story, but we all know that Lucifer lies, don’t we?

In the real world, we've seen music venues turned into scenes of horrible violence. While The Wicked + The Divine #40 looks to be following down that same path, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie try to reclaim these spaces even as the world crumbles down around us all.

For the boy that Busiek used to be, that rock on the front lawn of his parent's house may have just as well been Mt. Everest. That's the way it seemed to him whenever he climbed it and shoved off of it with his sled. Today, even with his dimmed memory, it was just a rock. He realizes that in hindsight even as he wonders what his newborn daughter will remember from her own childhood. Will she have her own version of Busiek's rock and will she someday be able to separate the fantasy from the reality? Or, like her father, will there be parts of his dreams of his childhood that she'll want to hold onto forever?

Jason Howard delivers lively and energetic artwork over an Ellis story that is cold and calculated. With the patterned plot of a world changed by the extraordinary, Ellis is creating the prototypical #1 issue of an Ellis series. The names, faces and events have been changed but the by-the-numbers approach to the story leaves little room for any surprises or delight in a first issue. Full of ideas, Trees #1 hints at a lot of potential for the series but they are only hints in this issue as Ellis and Howard just tease at what this series could be about.

Everything improves after the end of a war, but what if theres no end to war? Two Brothers begins in the days following World War II,but thats really just the beginning of the emotional cold war that develops between Yaqub and Omar. Fbio Moon and Gabriel B tragic family saga is about people who should be bonded together by blood but have uncrossable gulfs between them that just spread and grow with every passing year. The space that the cartoonists unfold in this comic gives the readers the room to move around in and inhabit the same spaces occupied by Yaqub and Omar.

Umbral #1 is the beginning of a comic series that is still trying to figure out what it wants to be. While Christopher Mitten quickly cements the look and feel of this world, Antony Johnston stumbles as he tries to put together the language and sounds of it. As he blends modern curse words with made up words and names, the words just clash against one another without ever falling into a natural cadence. Umbral #1 is a comic book that is interested in world-building, but it doesn't settle into anything coherent or established in this first issue, as the dialogue clashes with itself and with the visual tone of the issue.

Johnston and Mitten quickly built their world and now they're getting to play in it. Umbral #2 lets the creators run free through their story, creating the look and feel of it as they go. From Mitten's wildly impressive artwork to Johnston's carefully planted details strewn throughout the issue about the characters and the world they inhabit, Johnston and Mitten's Umbral #2 perfectly blends their skills to produce a fun and gorgeous-looking comic book.

Remender and Opena's Uncanny X-Force #18 caps off a story that's been running for a while even as it sets up so many questions and so many conflicts for the future. It's great to see that Marvel's mutants are capable of stories that can still shock the audience even as the stories break their hearts.

It's a cliche that actions have consequences but that's just what Rick Remender and Julian Totino Tedesco are exploring in Uncanny X-Force #29, the actions of the team, stretching back to the killing of Apocalypse. In this issue, we see the future and the mutants win. They're the heroes that saved the world. But it required killing Betsy has been forced to kill too much. She's losing herself in her actions and Remender, in this issue, is showing us a glimpse of hope that Betsy may be able to pull out of the cruel path that she's been on.

Uncanny X-Men #3 is a book suffering from an identity crisis. There are things that Gillen and the artists want this to be and those things are hinted at in this issue but there's never any true connections made between the writing, the art and the audience. It may not be fair, but Wolverine and the X-Men works better because that book has an energy behind it powered by lively characters and energetic art. Gillen's Uncanny X-Men has a better story behind it but he's missing the elements that bring his story to life. He's made Mr. Sinister into an intriguing villain but he's done that at the cost of letting us know who these X-Men are. There's no energy or momentum behind the characters or the action to make this a compelling issue.

Eva was the first of the new mutants, so it's only fitting that she's the first to graduate. But like her teachers, her future is so uncertain. After using her powers to set everything "right," she has a final discussion with a young Professor X. "You are either the greatest or worst mutant in the history of mutants," he admonishes her. "Right back at you, Professor," she answers without missing a beat. She's part of his legacy the same way that Magneto and Scott Summers are. Bendis is writing these broken characters and he may not be that interested in putting them back together. And that's all right. He doesn't need to because under his pen, the X-Men are much more conflicted and interesting than they've been in a long time. Their broken nature is far more fascinating than their heroic adventures.

Usagi Yojimbo #1 functions as a piece of art as well as a commentary on art and storytelling as Sakai's own storytelling operates on multiple levels. And instead of getting too lost or involved in anyone of those levels, Sakai tells a fun story about the dangers that haunt feudal Japan that only its samurais can defeat.

That fuzziness is what makes this the anti-Rucka comic. Look at almost any comic series from Rucka and in the first few pages, you get a clear sense of time, place, character and narrative direction. In his comics and novels, that's how Rucka builds his story. He does all of it so economically that you hardly notice it. Veil #1 has all of those but Rucka's writing here doesn't feel as tightly clenched as it usually does. This comic feels much more improvisational as he opens this story with a very narrow focus on these characters and gives so much freedom to Fejzula to visually tell the story with shapes and colors. It is a different Greg Rucka that you see at work behind the story in Veil #1, a writer more willing to follow a darkly playful path than we've seen before.

This isn't an espionage story; it's a mystery, a whodunnit set in a world of spies. As Velvet tells us, "The Agency where every mission is a Black Op" and every dollar of funding is hidden"" These are people whose very lives are secret and off the books. Brubaker and Epting create the best James Bond comic in Velvet #1 by murdering James Bond and then leaving the secretary to be the one who has to find the killer. They're playing with the toys of a spy story while changing the game up by recasting familiar cliches of the genre to transmogrify it into a whodunnit.

This issue is the brashest in a series about the bad choices that are made by good men and women in the middle of the night in their nice suburban neighborhoods.

Aaron and Dauterman waste no time getting to the action in this story, delivering a killing blow in the first couple of pages. As this is a continuation of what has been happening in Thor for a while now, the creative team doesn't need to spin their wheels, to slowly build up or explain what has been happening so far.

In The Wild Storm #1, Warren Ellis and Jon Davis-Hunt declare that the future of Wildstorm begins now. As the issue opens with what is understandably another kill and another salvo in a war of secret organizations, it ends with the various sides of this war realizing that they're on the verge of something new and revolutionary. This issue itself isn't the revolution but it does hint at the future and it promises that our old ways of looking at the world will change just like the characters' views have to update with the changing times.

This is less a second issue of a new series and feels more like it should be the continuation the more interesting aspects of Brubaker's Captain America, namely the redemption of a good man who was made to do bad things.

Who knew school could be so much fun? By rebuilding the school for mutants, now dubbed the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, Jason Aaron and Nick Bradshaw have given us "The Breakfast Club" of the X-Men as we get to see these kids in a class that's just a thinly veiled fortune telling session.

Diana is an aspirational figure. When approached in a heavy-handed and misguided way, she is an unreachable ideal. Morrison and Paquette idealize her as well but they also give us an achievable ideal.

Hickman, Howard, and Larraz find their hero in Apocalypse only to abandon all of the other characters who have been a part of this story. There's just simply not enough room for them here even if most of them show up in a background of a panel or two. It's not that this is a disappointing end to the larger story but it is disappointing that they had to sacrifice so many of the elements and characters that sustained the previous 21 issues of this event.

X-Force #1 isn't a bad comic, but it feels like it's all been done before. Instead of spinning out of recent X-related events into new and exciting directions, some set by Brisson himself, this comic feels rooted in the past and unable to escape the pull of humdrum struggle of mutant versus mankind and mutant versus mutant.

This issue injects a nice bit of personality into Hickman's X-Men.

Something is happening here and hopefully, we'll get to see more of it before another 13 issues pass.

McCarthy and Ewing have created an ode to the old Marvel comics of the 1960s the same way that Jim Starlin and Steve Gerber were homaging the House of Ideas in the 1970s. Like those older creators, Ewing and McCarthy take the Stan Lee formula and ratchet up the hyperbole, the purple prose, the hallucinogenic landscapes and the action wrapped around character moments to create a modern day Peter Parker of the Zaucer. This comic is more of a Marvel comic than anything Marvel has actually produced in 2012, enjoying playing in Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's sandbox.