Revival #20

Dana Cypress is terrified that the FBI will discover that her sister killed the rotten Check Brothers, but it turns out they just want her expertise with Revivers — it looks like one has gotten past the quarantine zone and made it into New York City. The sheriff discovers that the mayor’s wife is a secret — and insane — Reviver. Lester Majak consults with an old friend from a nearby Indian reservation about the ghosts haunting the woods. And Em meets up with a daredevil Reviver named Rhodey Rasch who likes dressing up as Jesus just to freak out the squares — he thinks he can help cure Em’s slowly decaying body by jumping off bridges with her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of bleak, glorious, freaky, gory fun. If y’all haven’t been reading this, could I suggest y’all go get the trade paperbacks as soon as you can? It’ll help you get caught up quick, and they’re absolutely grand to read.

She-Hulk #4

Jennifer Walters is frustrated by the fact that she was able to get Kristoff Vernard, the son of Dr. Doom, granted legal asylum, only for his father to kidnap him back to Latveria. After a chat with fellow superhero lawyer Matt Murdock, Jennifer undertakes a covert mission into Latveria to confront Dr. Doom — but does even the She-Hulk stand a chance against Dr. Doom — especially when he breaks out the giant robot to fight her?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The art is just phenomenal. There’s this one glorious silhouette midway through with Shulkie and Daredevil fighting crime in San Francisco that’s absolutely amazing. And the story ain’t at all bad either — I like the fact that Jennifer figured out a third way out of the confrontation with Doom.

Veil #3

The wizard Cormac is hiding out inside a deserted church making plans against the politicians who tried to use him, and he also manages to take control of Veil and bring her to him.

Verdict: Thumbs down. This series is so absolutely inconsistent. In the first issue, Veil was a quirky innocent who spoke in rhyme. In the second, she’s almost completely normal. In this issue, she does absolutely nothing aside from getting mind-controlled. It’s infuriatingly erratic.

She-Hulk #3

Jennifer Walters has her first client — Kristoff Vernard, the son of Victor von Doom. And he wants to defect to the United States. The problem is that he doesn’t want to be Doom’s puppet, either now or someday when he inherits his father’s throne, and he’d rather be his own person in America. And the problem for She-Hulk is that he’s been in the U.S. exactly a year — and that’s the cut-off point for filing a legal claim for asylum. And the other problem is that there are a heck of a lot of Doombots between them and the courthouse. And even if they can get hold of a judge, there’s one more problem — where Kristoff goes, Dr. Doom is probably close behind.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Grand art, fun storytelling and dialogue, and wonderful action, both on the physical and legal levels. It’s a fantastically fun comic, and one more example of how Marvel is doing almost everything right. I mean, can you imagine DC making a comic like this?

Veil #2

Veil somehow made a bunch of thugs kill themselves — but she did it at Dante’s apartment, so they’re both on the run from the cops. But the problem with running from the cops is that they catch up with you eventually. Meanwhile, there’s something unpleasantly supernatural going on — a ritual spellcaster called Cormac performing sacrifices on behalf of a crooked politician. He has some sort of connection to Veil, but what is it? And what is Veil anyway?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s not as good as the first issue, to be honest — Veil suddenly stops talking in her weird sing-song rhyme and starts speaking perfectly normally, which takes half the fun out of the whole thing. But it’s still a good story, with cool, stylized art and lots and lots of mystery. I ain’t giving up on it yet.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The Carol Corps and the Kamala Corps could change comics for the better.
• If anyone tells you that Captain America needs to be grim, dark, and gritty, they don’t know a thing about Captain America.
• Anti-science goons lied and cheated their way into getting Kate Milgrew and a bunch of real scientists to appear in their fauxcumentary.

Moon Knight #1

A new start for the Moon Knight, with Warren Ellis at the helm. After a few fairly lengthy recountings of his origin — mercenary Marc Spector killed in Egypt, resurrected by the god Khonshu, and driven insane by Dissociative Identity Disorder — we get into the meat of the story. The Moon Knight is back in New York City, riding in a fancy robot limousine and wearing a custom white suit. He works now as a consultant for the police, who call him “Mr. Knight” — because if they refer to him as Moon Knight, they acknowledge that he’s a crazed vigilante and would have to take him to jail.

The cops are investigating a number of slasher murders in which someone hunts down particularly fit individuals, ambushes them, stabs them to death, and steals parts of their bodies. Spector lists off his deductions about the killer, then travels into the sewers alone to bring him to justice. But what chance does a lone nutbag have against the powerful slasher? And just how crazy is Moon Knight anyway? The answer may surprise you…

Verdict: Thumbs up. The dialogue is, for the most part, wonderful. Characterization is very interesting. Not a lot of action, but what we get is wonderfully effective. The reimagining of Moon Knight’s background and mental state is excellent. I’ve never been able to get into Moon Knight much — his insanity seemed to be something that everyone took for granted, with little real storytelling impact. What we get in the end is much stranger than we were probably expecting, and a great deal more interesting than any run-of-the-mill insanity. And it’s particularly interesting that this is one of the few Warren Ellis books I’ve read where the unstoppably badass protagonist is not a craggy, cranky Brit — that alone makes it more interesting to me…

Veil #1

And here’s another debut — a new comic written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Toni Fejzula. Our lead character is a woman who suddenly awakens, nude, in the subway, attended by rats and with little real memory of her past. In fact, she seems to be working hard on relearning language and tends to speak in rhyme. Her appearance out of the subway causes a considerable stir — a bunch of hoodlums decide they want to do some typically unspeakable things to the naked crazy girl. She encounters a protector, Dante, who takes her to his apartment to get her some clothes. But the hoodlums don’t give up that easy and come looking for payback. Unfortunately for them, Veil has some very unexpected abilities.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A weird, wonderful read, with trippy, sing-song dialogue and remarkable stylized painted illustrations. This one was the talk of the local comic shop — the owners loved the stuffings out of it, sold out much faster than expected, and had already ordered more copies. Expect this one to fly, people.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #2

Argh, I totally missed out on the first issue — it disappeared fast, and no new copies came in over the last month, so I’m picking up the backstory from the title page blurb. Loki wants his Asgardian crimes expunged from his record, so he’s undertaking missions from the All-Mother — for every mission he completes, she erases some of his misdoings.

Loki’s new mission is to find the goddess Lorelei. We learn how he was assigned this quest — the All-Mother appeared to him in a bowl of punch — and we follow him as he tracks Lorelei while she robs a casino. So where is Lorelei hiding, and who is the mysterious redhead Loki’s spending time with at a speed-dating session in New York?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a very funny, very clever comic — just like we’d expect for the God of Trickery — with lots of wonderful dialogue and a very smart heist scene starring Lorelei and her cohorts.

Well, it’s the last weekend of June, and we all know what that means. It means July is almost here. And it’s going to start getting even hotter and more miserable. But we’ll have to take whatever meager comfort we can get from the weekend and, of course, from… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from January 2013’s Avengers Academy #39 by Christos Gage, Tom Grummett, and Cory Hamscher. In the final issue of the series, Veil is left on the outside, the only member of the team to completely lose her powers. So she goes back to high school. And everyone knows how much high school sucks, right?

Those are what we call “Prepare for an Asskickin'” eyes.

Yeah, the great thing about being a superhero has got to be getting a crash course on how to beat the crap out of everyone in the world.

Y’all have a great weekend — stay cool while you can…