Weekend Reading: Marvel Comics, Combat Jacks, Rob Liefeld & Star Trek

Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Movies, Reviews, Marvel Comics,

First off, smart thoughts on the state of various elements of the comics industry - retail, Marvel, 24 Hour Comics Day - from Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter.

Bleeding Cool has the story announcing Rob Liefeld’s latest retirement from comics. And then moments later says he’s back.

Here’s a nice review of Mark McKenna’s new indy comic, Combat Jacks. “While McKenna might be known as a great inker, he is certainly a surprisingly good writer too. The story and dialogue of Combat Jacks is quite enjoyable, making me wish there were more comics like this sadly rare done-in-one sci-fi/horror story.”

Who was the mysterious Marvel Comics creator known as Kevin Banks?

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DC Comics Review: Justice League: Cry for Justice #4

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: ***

A nice improvement from last month’s issue, which I was really disappointed in, but this month we see a nice improvement in the story.  However, still not enough to knock my socks off.  Our story opens up with Hal’s splinter Justice League group recovering from Clayface blowing himself up.  They decide to leave and go interrogate another villain to see what Prometheus is up to.  Following them is none other than Batwoman.  It was announced that Batwoman would be part of this team and she finally makes her appearance.  Things are moving a bit too slow for me.

Our story moves over to Paris where Congorilla and Starman Mikaal Tomas are battling it out with two Z level characters named Penny Dreadful and Arak.  Both are working for Prometheus and Arak confesses to assisting Prometheus in the killing of the gorillas in Africa and kidnapping Congorilla’s gorilla friend, Malavar.  Congorilla is ready to kill them, but Starman stops him.  Penny kills Arak for betraying Prometheus and Mikaal kills Penny as she tries to kill Congorilla.  Mikaal is ashamed that his deceased lover Tony would not have approved of what he just did.  Congorilla comforts him, but also states that the trail for Prometheus has gone cold.

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DC Comics: Justice League: Cry for Justice #3

Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,

Rating: **

Here is another series that started off great, but is slowly going downhill.  The one saving grace is the artwork.  Mauro Cascioli is doing some great work here.  I particularly like his work on Congorilla.  In this issue we have two back-to-back splash pages that show Congorilla and Starman fighting off some bad guys and it looks absolutely awesome!  When I heard Conogrilla was going to be a part of this team, I thought I wouldn’t like the character, but so far I like him and think he would be good on the Justice League for a while.  Now to the story.

In our last issue, we saw Green Lantern’s pro-active Justice League taking shape.  GL and Green Arrow met up with the Atom, Shazam, and Supergirl.  In a weird scene, the issue opens up with GL questioning Supergirl on whether she’s here as a hero or a villain.  He asks her this because of the recent events in the Superman books with New Krypton and some of the Kryptonians acting like bad guys.  Instead of having Supergirl stand up to GL and say she’s a hero and her own person, she begins to cry!  I know Kara is a teenager, but come on.  It’s bad enough that female characters in comics have tough times being front and center of things, but to have her cry is just wrong and it makes her look weak. 

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