Thunderbolts #147

September 6, 2010

Title: Scared Straight

Writer: Jeff Parker
Art: Kev Walker
Colorist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Albert Deschesne
Cover: Marko Djurdjevic
Editor: Bill Rosemann
Publisher: Marvel Comics

As a tie-in to Avengers Academy #3, the Avengers are bringing some of their young students to the Raft to hopefully shock them out of their more villainous tendencies. When an electromagnetic pulse hits the prison where the Thunderbolts are housed, some of the Avenger Academy kids set out to get revenge against their former torturer, Norman Osborn. As they hunt down the former Green Goblin, Luke Cage sets free the Thunderbolts to keep the rest of the inmates in check.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a regular reader on this title. Marvel lost me at the same time that the book became part of Norman Osborn’s Initiative and most of the original cast departed, and in fact I only got this book because of its tie-in to the excellent Avengers Academy series. As it is, it’s okay. The book seems to have gotten back to its roots in a way, it’s once again about villains trying to find redemption of a sort. The Juggernaut actually works pretty well as a member of the team, although it’s hard to figure out why anybody would trust Moonstone again in such a capacity, and I’ve got no clue what Man-Thing is doing in this book. It is nice, though, to have original Thunderbolts Songbird, Mach-V and Fixer back in this title.

Kev Walker’s artwork is pretty good. A bit overly-detailed, like he’s trying to do a Leinil Yu riff, but he tells his story well, so I’ll nod and give a thumbs up.

I wish I could say this issue made me want to run out and start buying this comic again, as Thunderbolts was once my favorite Marvel title for a time, but it really is just “okay.” And just “okay” isn’t good enough for a comic book to make it to my pull folder.

Rating: 7/10

JLA #91

December 26, 2003

Quick Rating: Fair
Title: The Coming (Extinction Part One)

An alien creature comes to the JLA Watchtower to find something unique to planet Earth.

Writer: Dennis O’Neil
Art: Tan Eng Huat
Colors: David Baron
Letters: Rob Leigh
Editor: Mike Carlin
Cover Art: Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen & David Baron
Publisher: DC Comics

With this issue, JLA begins its new status quo as a book with rotating creative teams, and the first of these teams includes one of the revolutionary writers of the 70s taking the Justice League and telling what he’s most famous for – a “relevant” story. An alien spacecraft comes into Earth orbit, accompanied by a meteor shower that does damage to the Watchtower and sends Plastic Man into a panic until help can arrive. (He gets the best line in the issue here, calling for help from “One of you super-guys who can do more than stretch…”)

Predictably, the alien seems benign when actually recovered, and is only interested in studying a species of mammal indigenous to Earth, but near extinction. Always helpful, the JLA agrees to help the alien find the species he seeks… but will they arrive in time?

For a writer as revolutionary as O’Neil once was, this is just an “okay” issue. Granted, it’s a step up from the severely lackluster JLA we’ve been treated to for the past year or so, but it’s not really anything special. O’Neill has a pretty good handle on most of the characters, but some of Green Lantern’s dialogue seems too flippant – almost as though he wrote it as Kyle Rayner but the penciler drew him in as Jon Stewart – and the team as a whole seems a tad naive. Okay, granted, two of their members are aliens, but don’t you think they would have learned to be a bit more skeptical by this point?

Tan Eng Huat’s artwork, like the writing, is okay. His backgrounds are solid, and he does some imaginative stuff with Plastic Man, but most of the other characters seem sketchy and unfinished. I can’t tell by looking if this book was inked or colored straight from the pencils, but either way, a good inker could have greatly improved the artwork.

This is a decent start for the next chapter of the Justice League, but it’s not spectacular, and that’s what this title needs right now. Hopefully, for the rest of this arc, O’Neil will deliver.

Rating: 6/10

Futurama Comics #37

May 30, 2008

Futurama Comics #37 (Bongo Comics)
By Ian Boothby & James Lloyd

When the Aliens for the Ethical Treatment of Mammals decide that Fry and Leela are being worked too hard by Planet Express, they “liberate” them to a farm on a distant planet. Bender, left alone, is suspended from work and comes up with the strangest get-rich-quick scheme he’s ever had. The Fry/Leela stuff here is very good — it’s a nice send-up of certain human organizations and gives us yet another classic Leela/Zap Brannigan confrontation. The Bender story starts weakly — the reasons for his “experiment” aren’t particularly funny — but picks up quickly and winds up taking over the book. This is an issue that feels particularly true to the TV show, with send-ups of everything from the TransFormers to politics, and smaller jokes about anything from Pac-Man to 300. While not are sharp as the show was, it’s still sharper than most other humor comics out there. Good issue.

Rating: 7/10