Comic Reviews: Planetary #27 & Criminal: The Sinners #1 (of 5)

It had been more than a year since I wrote a comic review. I have been helping move content from the old ComicReaders Web site to the new ComicReaders Web site and still edit when time allows, but my interest in review writing waned when I realized I was repeating myself– reviewing the same titles over and over again. My reviews had grown stale.

Two comics brought be out of my self-imposed retirement: Planetary #27 and Criminal: The Sinners #1 (of 5).

Planetary #27
Why bother? That is the question that ran through my mind as I stared down at the copy of Planetary #27 Shane had placed on the counter in front of me. (read the full review at ComicReaders)

Criminal: The Sinners #1 (of 5)
The greatest modern crime comic returns. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips put their Eisner award-winning comic on hold to produce Incognito, their pulpish five-issue miniseries about a super-villain living in a witness protection program. As a fan of Criminal, I was eagerly awaiting the series’ return, and the return of Tracy, the character reported to be headlining the new story arc. (read the full review at ComicReaders)

Outnumbered #6 (of 6) & City of Dust #3 (of 5)

It has been busy times for me since November 8, which was the day my son was born. This is our second child. We’re so happy, and he’s very healthy and content and growing like a weed already. Writing has climbed into the backseat for a period of time. I was on holidays for three weeks, helping the family get established with a new routine, and now I’m back to work and still busy with the kids. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world! When things settle again, which they will, I will be hitting the writing hard because I have a stack of comics to review and a number of hot plots in my idea book for short stories. (More on those later.)

I’d also like to take this time to direct your attention to a couple reviews I wrote while on holidays. They appear at comicreaders.com, of course.

Outnumbered #6 (of 6)
Rough and tumble is the way I like to describe Outnumbered. Its story is one told from the streets– a motley crew of marginalized young adults fights the destructive forces of a drug that has turned many of the city’s homeless and dispossessed into dangerous, mutated addicts.  (read more)

City of Dust #3 (of 5)
Dana at comicreaders.com thought Radical Comics would be grumpy at me for picking on them, so I agreed to review issue #3 when it comes out, this time focusing only on the story itself. I think I make it clear in my review of City of Dust that I’m not singling out Radical Comics. I simply felt I needed to say something about the current state of the comics industry. (read more)

The Stand #1, Fringe #1, True Blood

I’ve been so busy writing about the creation of “The Three Princes” that I’ve neglected to tell you about the reviews I’ve written for comicreaders.com. I will now remedy that…

The Stand: Captain Trips #1 (of 5)
This first issue feels like the book because writer Roberto Aquirre-Sacasa sticks closely to the source material. The art is strong, the dialogue crisp and the characters and plot engaging right from the get-go. (read more)

Fringe #1 (of 6)
J.J. Abrams and other creative minds behind the enjoyable, tense and thickly layered Lost offer up a new series this fall: Fringe. Apparently, we are all connected somehow and Fringe is going to explore and reveal the details. But first, we get the comic prequel. (read more)

True Blood: The Great Revelation
True Blood is a new show from HBO, an expansion more so than a straight adaptation of The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels written by Charlaine Harris. True Blood: The Great Revelation is a free comic by Top Cow and HBO. It’s an introduction to the world of True Blood in the guise of a story about murder and vengeance. (read more)

Universal War One #1, The Killer & Okko: Cycle of Earth

The bad thing about a blog is that the time between each post can be an indicator of how unproductive I’ve been, but that’s not always the case. For example, my previous post was July 21, which means it’s been almost a month since I posted anything on this here blog. I have, however, been productive in terms of writing. I’ve got a couple new irons in the fire on the comics front, and am a day or two away from finishing a work of short fiction. (You’ll learn more about it all in a future post.) So, it’s not just all day job and family time for me. I also manage to squeeze in some writing. But, enough with the self-placating; here are some reviews I wrote for comicreaders.com recently:

Universal War One #1 (of 3)
I borrowed this from ComicReaders for review purposes but enjoyed it so much that I bought the issue and added the miniseries to my pull-list. What we get is a very rich and realized setting and a mysterious, seemingly impenetrable wall of blackness that appeared out of nowhere and now divides the solar system. One each side is a number of human colonies, each now separated from the other. (read more)

The Killer #7 (of 10) & Okko: Cycle of Earth #1 (of 4)
Archaia Studios Press has seemingly completed the restructuring of their organization that has caused substantial delays in their shipping schedules. The publisher shipped some new books in August, including the latest issue of The Killer and the first issue of Okko: Cycle of Earth, which is a follow-up to the excellent Okko: Cycle of Water miniseries. I review both books in a recent installment of Weekly Wanderlust. (read more)

Graphic Classics: Fantasy Classics and small reviews

I managed to put together a handful of reviews for comicreaders.com in the recently passed months.

Graphic Classics volume 15: Fantasy Classics
The fifteenth volume of Graphic Classics is an anthology of venerable fantasy tales. The headliner is Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. (read more)

The Goon #26 and Young Liars #5
I reviewed these two comics in a recent edition of Weekly Wanderlust. Both were solid reads. (read more)