November 21, 2023

It’s been a busy week. Between a bunch of rewatch TV series, several active TV shows, a group of new movies in theater, and school, there has not been a lot of time to read last week’s books. In fact, tomorrow is NEW COMIC BOOK DAY and I am just now making a dent in last week’s large pile.

However, I am officially on Thanksgiving break and tomorrow I am excited to head into Comic World (after watching Napoleon in the morning) and spend the afternoon reading my new books. I may bring along some of the ones from last week that wound up falling to the side.

I really have missed these Wednesdays since school has started. These days of coming to Comic World and just lazily read the books while hanging out with the great people who work there. I’m thrilled this is going to work out.

I did carve out some time tonight after school to get caught up somewhat with the new comics from last week. Here they are:

Spine-Tingling Spider-Man #2. Written by Saladin Ahmed and art by Juan Ferreyra. This new Spider-Man horror series has been really fun these first two issues. The art is great and the story is rather creepy, as Peter finds himself powerless and being pursued by some true horrors. I have loved this original idea so far.

Daredevil #3. “Introductory Rites” Part Three. Written by Saladin Ahmed and pencils by Aaron Kuder and Farid Karami. John Romita Jr, Scott Hanna and Marcio Menyz did the cover art. Father Matt has plenty of problems, including one where an old friend, Ben Urich, is looking into the church Father Matt is at. Worse yet… Bullseye is back!

Astonishing Iceman #4. “Out Cold: Part Four” Written by Steve Orlando and drawn by Vincenzo Carratù. Jesus Saiz did the cover art. Iceman teams up with his Amazing friend, Spider-Man in his continued struggle with Orchis. Throws memories back to my childhood. All we were missing was Firestar.

Fantastic Four #13. “A Thing or Two.” Written by Ryan North and art by Iban Coello. Alex Ross did the cover art. Dr. Doom teams up with Dr. Doom the T-Rex against our heroes, including the FF-dinosaurs. Weird and wild issue and continues this excellent run of FF comics.

Red Goblin #10. Written by Alex Paknadel and penciled by Chris Campana. Inhyuk Lee did the cover art. Venom guest stars. Normie and Rascal come together and ‘make up’ in the series finale of this intriguing book. I do think that I am going to miss this book.

Capwolf and the Howling Commandos #2. Written by Stephanie Phillips and art by Carlos Magno. Ryan Brown was the cover artist. This has started off as some pulpy fun. Captain America has been turned into a werewolf and the Nazis are out there causing trouble in this WWII flashback.

The Deviant #1. “A Christmas Story” Story by James Tynion IV and Joshua Hixson with Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. A cool new horror story by James Tynion IV. It definitely has the flavor of some of his other horror books, such as Something is Killing the Children. Except this is with Santa.

Big Game #5. Written by Mark Millar and art by Pepe Larraz. This has been a bloody and shocking book so far. Sadly, they use time travel to make everything not matter any more. All those deaths were just done away with inside this finale. I must say that I was a little disappointed but not surprised. I mean, the whole Hit Girl fake out was about as cheap as you get.

The Cull #4. Written by Kelly Thompson and art by Mattia De Iulis. The crew comes back to their world to find things are considerably different, not even counting their own new powers. They are looking for their families and hoping everything is okay. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

Animal Pound Ashcan. Written by Tom King and illustrated by Peter Gross. A very thin or short issue. Admittedly, it was an ashcan, and it did give a nice flavor of the new Tom King series, Animal Pound. It feels too slight to matter. I am looking forward to the actual series though.

Antarctica #5. Written by Simon Birks and art by Willi Roberts. The first arc of this book wraps up here, with a pretty solid cliffhanger at the end. Hannah and Dr. Curtis have to unite to face their troubles. This is a beautiful looking book. I do have some challenges following with the story at times, but it has been a rewarding experience so far.

Killadelphia #31. “Death Be Not Proud. Part 1: From Hell the Dead Thing Spawned.” Killadelphia returned with an appearance by Spawn. I got into Killadelphia by reading the first 30 issues combined into trade paperbacks. This is interesting, but it really is a step in a new direction than the previous books. I’m curious to see where it goes from here.

The Immortal Thor #4. “To Possess the Power of Thor.” Written by Al Ewing and art by Martin Coccolo. Alex Ross did the cover art. Cool issue as Thor is reforming the all-new Thor Corps to help him face off with Toranos. There is Ororo, Beta Ray Bill, Jane Foster and Loki here.

Swan Songs #4. “The end of… a Sentence” Written by W. Maxwell Prince and art by Caitlin Yarsky. A man right out of prison, who loves word games such as Mad Libs, falls into a job as a watchout for his brother’s bank heist. Very original and fun to read.

Outsiders #1. “Never the End.” Written by Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly and art by Robert Carey. Roger Cruz with Adriano Lucas did the cover art. Todd made me buy this one. I exaggerate of course, but he did point out that this is a new version of Planetary, which was a series from Wildstorm that I recently picked up and am currently (slowly) working my way through. This featured Batwoman and some other new versions of the old series. Unfortunately, this did not interest me as much as the previous series did.

Other books read this week: Uncanny Avengers #4, Superior Spider-Man #1, Superman: Lost #8, Jean Grey #4, Alpha Flight #4, Fishflies #3, and Something Epic #7.