I’m A Superhero: Wolverine #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Many years ago, a secret government organization abducted the man called Logan, a mutant possessing razor-sharp spoilers and the ability to heal from any bad comic…

I don’t know about you, but I really didn’t feel like I needed another Wolverine book. We got the debut of The Savage Wolverine just two months ago, we’ve had Wolverine & The X-Men going since the end of the Schism event about a year and a half ago, and then there’s that good old Wolverine comic that, until recently, had been running since Logan put on an eyepatch and started acting like it would make people without massive traumatic brain injuries think he was a completely different dude with fucked-up hair and adamantium claws back in 1988. Even forgetting the recent Wolverine: The Best There Is series, throw on top of those books Wolverine’s appearances in X-Men, Avengers, New Avengers, and even fucking X-Babies, I wasn’t exactly waiting with bated breath to bring my monthly Wolverine expenditures into the three figures.

But still, I picked up the first issue of writer Paul Cornell’s and artist Alan Davis’s new Wolverine, partially because I generally dug Cornell’s recent work on DC’s Demon Knights, partially because I’ve liked Davis’s work since Captain Britain and more importantly (to me, anyway) Miracleman, and partially because I co-run a comics Web site and part of my job is to read stuff that I don’t necessarily give a damn about and write about it.

And it turns out that that’s not a bad thing, because Wolverine #1 is good. Really fucking good. Better than the opening to about any solo Wolverine story in recent memory.

Particularly that first page, which is one hell of a cool shot across the bow.

Have You Seen My Sword In This Light? Would You Like To? – Review Of Demon Knights #2

Are you reading Demon Knights by Paul Cornell and artist Diogenes “Best Name Ever” Neves yet? Why not? Do I need to come over there? Read this book, damn it!

I could stop there and make this the shortest review ever, but I won’t.

Here’s why you should be reading this book:
(*spoilery goodness after the jump*)

Somebody Please Buy The Lady A Drink: Review of Demon Knights #1

I had intended to bring you all a recap of last night’s Deadliest Warrior: Zombies vs. Vampires, but then Daniel Bard imploded in the middle of his inning during last nights Red Sox/Blue Jays game and our local bar consoled us with beer and free popcorn until “Whoops, I have a job to go to in the morning” o’clock. So, that show is sitting on the DVR and I will get to it when I can.

However, last night I did get to read Demon Knight #1, written by Paul Cornell with pencils by Diogenes Neves (that may be the best name, ever). One of the things I remember most vividly at Comic-Con this year was just how excited the two of them were in discussing the book at one of the New 52 panels this past July. The other thing I remember vividly was this thing with a homeless guy and some Tide Stain Stick, but that’s neither here nor there. Demon Knights is truly something they should have every right to be excited about. Neves art is vibrant and expressive. I was already a fan of Madame Xanadu after Matt Wagner‘s run with the character, but between Neves’s work and Cornell’s character voicing, I just fell in love with the character:

Sometimes you just have to ditch the fairy queens of Avalon for the Dairy Queen. I get it.

This Book Is Now About Martians (And Other Aliens): Stormwatch #1 Review

What’s that old saying? “Roofie me once; shame on you. Roofie me twice and I will pistol grip mace bomb you.”? I think it’s safe to say that I approached the new Stormwatch with exceedingly mixed feelings.

I absolutely adored the book when Warren Ellis wrote it and I followed it over into The Authority, although based on this quote I found on The Authority’s Wikipedia page, that book almost didn’t happen:

one of the reasons I turned their STORMWATCH into THE AUTHORITY is that I found out that, despite the fact that no-one was buying STORMWATCH, they kept it going because they liked reading it in the [Wildstorm] office and wanted to keep me employed. And I felt so bloody awful about that, and at the same time had been so struck by Bryan Hitch’s STORMWATCH issues, that the train of thought that led to THE AUTHORITY began.

The Authority limped through many incarnations of writer and artist after the inital Ellis/Bryan Hitch run that included Mark Millar/Frank Quietly, Robbie Morrison/Dwayne Turner, Ed Brubaker/Dustin Nguyen, Grant Morrison/Keith Giffen/Gene Ha…actually it’s around here that I started to tune out of The Authority. I think I might have picked up “The Authority/Lobo” one shots (‘cuz, you know, it’s friggin’ Lobo), but I was pretty burned out on the book. And, it didn’t help that somewhere in this time period Wildstorm tried to relaunch Stormwatch with the blatantly anemic Stormwatch: Team Achilles and Stormwatch: Post Human Division. It’s dead, Jim. Stop being a necrophiliac.

But, back to the actual book.