Make Mine Marvel, at least this week 🙂
New Warriors #3 (Marvel – Grevioux / Medina / Vlasco / Gracia) – Marvel continues to step it up in the Super-hero group comics. Coming out Civil War, Marvel created several new books revolving around the Initiative; three of the series in-particular focus in on a group of heroes. The first, the Avengers: The Initiative deals with new young heroes being trained by the government… the second: The Order deals with those already trained and starting their lives as government licenced heroes… and the third is the New Warriors. The New Warriors focuses in on those heroes / metas who do not want to register, think the Initiative is a bad idea and are acting outside of the law. All three book should be on your pull list, but the one that was so much better than my expectations is the New Warriors book. Kevin Grevious has taken a idea that could be very trite and fall flat very easily and made the reader interested; this series has much more of a thriller comic fell to it than an action comic… What has happened to some the disillusioned young de-powered mutants from House of M? Can Tony Stark really be all places at once? What happened to Night Thrasher? Take the great writing and add Paco Medina’s unique pencils and this is a must get series.
Issue Grade: A
Series Grade: A-
New Avengers: Illuminati #4 (Marvel – Bendis / Reed / Cheung / Morales) – The Illuminati series started strong, had a huge dip and now at issue #4, I wasn’t expecting much at all. But Bendis pulls this one out. Instead of the heart of the issue explaining some big event in Marvel’s past (this issue does deal with Marvel Boy), instead it deals with each member of Illuminati and how they approach a situation… whether from the holistic compassion of Charles, the logic of Reed, the “might makes right” instinct of Namor or the call to power of Tony. This issue is a huge lead-in to issue #5 which deals with each member and how they are dealing with the return of the Hulk. This issue and this issue alone in the Illuminati series I think will be pivotal and worth a collector getting an issue out of sequence for. On top of the straight out fantastic character sketches, we also get some incredible humor as the issue opens with each member dealing with the women in their lives. The readers gets a very tense moment between Namor and Reed, Dr. Strange dealing with rejection and the mild argument of who has it better single or married super heroes. At one point, Tony starts bragging about all of his conquests, one of them being Madame Masque… and Dr. Strange asks, because he doesn’t know who she is..
While perhaps a good portion of geekdom has gotten over their love affair with Bendis, he still has an incredible amount of talent and wit… hook him up with Brian Reed and this issue will be one of those a year from now you wish you had.
Issue Grade: A
Series Grade : B-
This review brought to you by the folks at Kowabunga Comics.
