Good, Bad, and Poorly-Drawn: Wondie vs. The Gods!

Better late than never I always say, so here's my top picks of books to grab and ones to avoid for last week. Just in time to snag them up when you head to your LCS tomorrow!

The Good: Top 5 Books

#5 - Blue Beetle #6: Paco becomes a member of the Reach, and the final straw is broken; forcing Jaime to leave his family behind and head to New York. Fans of the old Jaime series may still be up in arms about this radically different take, but I for one am glad they aren't just re-treading old stories.






#4 - Daredevil #9: It's actually not as great as some of the previous issues, but it's still one of the best things coming out of Marvel right now. Waid and Rivera are killing it month after month, and Mole Man creepily slow dancing with a corpse is an image that will take a while to get out of my mind!






#3 - X-Factor #232: The "They Keep Killing Madrox" arc comes to close with a bang involving a great twist on the normal Dr. Strange. The writing is as top-notch as ever and the idea of bringing a couple of new alternate universe characters to the 616 universe is very intriguing. I loved this arc but I can't wait to rejoin the main team, especially now that Havok and Polaris are back.






#2 - Batman #6: I know everyone else seems to put this at #1 for just about every week, but I liked another book even more. Nevertheless, this issue was packed to the brim with everything that was great about issue #5, but with a great pay-off where the Bat finally gives Talon what he deserves. And the cliffhanger....oh man.






#1 - Wonder Woman #6: This book has jumped back in forth in quality in my opinion. The loss of Cliff Chiang was a crushing blow, but the fill-in artist is finally starting to grow on me a bit. The real reason I placed this book up at the top of my list this week is simple: Wonder Woman in a room full of actual Gods, and managing to hold her own in the badassery department. She literally manages to use a piece of Hades' head to put a crimp in Hera's plans. That made my week, and this is a very under-rated book that I highly recommend.




The Bad: Books to Avoid

DC Universe Presents #6: The start of a new arc based on the Challengers of the Unknown. Except instead of characters we know they are all extremely unlikeable d-bags from a reality tv show. Oh and the book doesn't really care about things like explaining what the hell is going on. I say just skip this arc entirely and come back at issue #9 when Vandal Savage takes over.




Legion of Super-Heroes #6: Most of the cool things about the Legion are pretty missing in this issue. Instead you get a confusing mess about Dragonwing going back to China to visit her sister. Seems like uninteresting filler, and combined with last issue (which was also filler, but unlike this, was interesting) I'm beginning to think that the writers are just messing around until the Dominator story-line gets going.




Ultimate Comics: X-Men #7: A non-plot advancing issue that revolves around Quicksilver. It seems "confusing mess" is the order of the week for several of these books. Lots of references to things that are being set up for later, but taken at face value are pretty meaningless. And a twist that, after last month, just seems like they are trolling us.






The Poorly-Drawn: Books To Cringe At

Wolverine #301: Now I can't say the ENTIRE book is poorly drawn, because it's split up into chapters and each one is tackled by different artists, but the middle parts drawn by Steve Sanders are just way too cartoony for Wolverine. It's just distracting and ugly, and I hate when artist changes mid-book are so noticeable like that.





Avenging Spider-Man #4: Both this and Uncanny X-Men are drawn by Greg Land this month, but the Spider-Man title seems to win my loathing the most. First of all, to go from Joe Mad to this is cringe-worthy in itself. I would've much preferred Humberto Ramos because his style is similar to that of Joe Mad and he's already doing Spidey so why not. Greg Land's art is too clean and pasted on, not to mention he has no idea how to draw a facial expression that doesn't look like it's mid-orgasm. It's confusing enough on female characters...but on Hawkeye it's just creepy.



And those are my thoughts on the books released on 2/15. As always, let me know what you think by leaving comments and stay tuned all this week for updates galore!

Until next time comic fans, stay golden.