What do you do when your government requires you to do a dirty and suicidal job no one else wants to? You get a team of superhero assassins and call them Copra. It was Sonia Stone’s job to corral these mean and ugly superheroes. Their last mission was meant to be a simple transport job – to transport a weird alien fragment stuck in a man’s head. That is until they were ambushed by a character named Vitas and his crew, previous member of team Copra. Apparently this alien fragment and its residence had powers of mass destruction. As this altercation took place, an awesome battle left 4 Copras dead, the other 4 barely survived. But not before Vitas was able to utilize the alien fragment to destroy an entire nearby city of tens of thousands of people.
Category: Reviews
Sex Criminals, written by the best duo in comics today, Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky, is a coming of age heist story, with lots of sex.
Suze is a woman who stops time when she has an orgasm. No explanation necessary, that’s just what happens. One day at a fundraising party to save her library, she meets Jon, whom she sleeps with, and discovers that he can do the same. What follows is an exhilarating tale of two young people in love who can stop time when they have sex, and of course they use their “ability” to rob banks and save Suze’s library from demolition at the hands of an evil corporation.
Don’t feel bad if you have to read pages from Kurt Busiek’s Avengers Forever several times over to understand what’s going on. Traversing space and time to save the entire human race from existence in all time lines is no easy task. It fact, it literally took thousands of Avengers.
Here’s the gist: Immortus, the Master of Time, defender of the time stream is set to kill Rick Jones. For Rick Jones, as you’ll find out, is the key to the most powerful force in the universe, the Destiny Force. Just when Immortus’ soldier, the Tempus, is about to smash an incapacitated Rick Jones, Kang the Conqueror warps into existence to stop him and the hordes of soldiers Immortus plucks from the past to fight for him. Here’s the catch – Kang IS Immortus. Just a younger, more counquerer version of him. As Kang starts to slowly lose to Immortus’ strength, Rick Jones inadvertently triggers his Destiny Force to pull in 7 Avengers from the past, present and future. Now they must ally with one of their archenemies to defeat an even greater threat, Immortus. Still with me?
The year is 1984. Mattel teams up with Marvel to create a line of officially-licensed action figures based on Marvel characters. Someone decides that the best way to promote these toys is to create a 12-issue comic book series that includes all of the characters, and the now-classic Secret Wars is born.
While Secret Wars may have been born out of pure promotional tactics, it has cemented itself as a modern classic by being the first major crossover event of its kind. Back in 1984, big crossover events didn’t really happen, so the thought of pitting Marvel’s best superheroes against it’s best villains was a fairly groundbreaking concept.
So how exactly did they bring all of these characters together?
The 2nd volume of the Inhuman series written by Paul Jenkins and illustrated by Jae Lee consists of 12 issues. It’s wildly rumored that the upcoming 2018 Marvel movie will be roughly based on this story line. Though we have no real information regarding the movie, the similarities between the fonts displayed at the #MarvelEvent and the titles of the volume 2 issues are uncanny. It also may just be a coincidence. But we’ll have to wait to at least the teaser trailer to even get an inkling. Though the trailer itself is probably 2 years away. Ugh! Anyways, read our review to see what it MAY be about.
The Guardians of the Galaxy was this summer’s blockbuster hit, bringing in almost $800 million worldwide. Before this movie, most people (including comic book fans) have never even heard of the ragtag space group, and now they’re encroaching on Avengers territory among the mainstream moviegoing public. This is great news for the comics, since interest in these characters naturally encourage people to pick up the comics so they can read more about them.
The current Guardians of the Galaxy series by Brian Michael Bendis is an ongoing series, 21 issues in at the time of this post, but it’s never too late to jump into the story! If you watched the movie, then you have all the familiarity you need to pick up this series and start reading along. Also, the first four arcs of the run have been collected in trade paperbacks, so you don’t have to go hunting down individual back issues if you want to start from the beginning – just pick up the trades and you’ll be caught up nice and quick.
For the sake of this review, I’m covering the entire run as a whole, and not focusing on individual issues. I’ve broken it down by each arc, which are collected in four trade paperbacks, with a fifth one being released in March 2015. I give a quick intro and commentary on each of the arcs after the jump.
The end of 2014 and 2015 is shaping up to be a boon for Mignolaverse devotees. The Wolf and the Apostle, is another brilliant entry into the horror series, Baltimore. New to Baltimore? New to the horror comic genre? That’s OK – The Wolf and the Apostle is a good place to start for new readers. Werewolves, the Inquisition and making deals with the devil sound right up your alley? Follow me down the damp, blood-spattered cobblestone streets into the beginning of this new series.
Haggard West was both the hero that Acropolis needed and deserved. Before the demi-god Battling Boy warped onto the planet, he was only one hero that could fight the monsters. But as we all know, Haggard wouldn’t be here forever. He needed someone to pass the blaster. Who else better than his one and only daughter, Aurora West.
Paul Pope and J.T. Petty’s Battling Boy: The Rise of Aurora West, was an excellent narrative into the life of Aurora West. The book takes place before all the events of the first story. Haggard West and his apprentice and daughter, Aurora West, were the only heroes in town. And being a minor character in the first book, I would argue that her story is actually more interesting than Battling Boy’s.