Amazing Spider-Man #604 review

Amazing Spider-Man, I’ve grown accustomed to your pace. Three times every month we’ve been getting a consistently intelligent, witty, action-packed book that’s classic Spider-Man for the 21st century. Which makes it a bit of a bugger when the calendar arranges a fortnight’s break between issues of a particularly fine storyline. For that’s what Red-Headed Stranger […]

Adventure Comics #2 review

The Brainiac-Luthor team dominate the first few pages of this issue, attacking grunts, making deals . . . you know, the whole baddies bit. But once we leave West Virginia (‘mountain momma’) and join Conner and Martha Kent in Smallville, that stuff just fades into memory. For the Johns-Manapul team is far more persuasive than […]

Secret Six #13 review

One of Mad! magazine’s longest running features is Scenes We’d Like To See. This issue of Secret Six goes in the other direction, flashing back to Scandal Savage’s 9th birthday for a scene I could easily live without. As a rite of passage her father, Vandal Savage, has her run a gauntlet of thugs for […]

Justice League: Cry For Justice #3 review

Here’s Cry For Justice writer James Robinson admiring Grant Morrison’s recent Batman: RIP story in a text piece this issue: ‘One of the things I loved, following on from how Grant worked in and greatly personalised the International Club of Heroes, was how in a few pages of RIP he managed to give these multinational […]

Red Tornado #1 review and The Torch #1 review

Yup, it’s Android Week as two of comics’ oldest non-human heroes get a chance to fly solo. First off, it’s the Justice League’s longtime Pinocchio, the Red Tornado. As we join him he’s at adopted daughter’s Traya’s recital with partner Kathy Sutton, listening proudly, but distracted. He’s recently realised there are other androids out there […]

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid (Exterminating Angel Press, $16.95)

The first comic character Mike Madrid ever took to was Supergirl, so it’s appropriate she lends her name to his look at fighting females. From Sheena, Queen of the Jungle in the 1930s to Manhunter in the 21st Century, they’re all here – Wonder Woman, the X-Women, the heroines of the Legion, Lois Lane . […]

The Shield #1 review

DC’s Red Circle launch concludes with The Shield. It’s your standard ‘injured military man gets a special suit’ story, with loads of military speak which I found unintelligible and offputting. J Michael Straczynski gives us seven pages of Afghanistan action which I was just willing to end, so we could get our hero, Lt Joel […]

Flash: Rebirth #4 review

That’s better. I’ve not been impressed with this mini to date, due to Barry Allen’s miserable nature and too much Speed Force nonsense – the force was never part of Barry’s legend, it was Wally’s thing, so I couldn’t see the sense of it in a Barry-centered book. But writer Geoff Johns does one of […]

Fantastic Four #570 review

And . . . a new creative team brings me back to the Fantastic Four. The first thing I notice is that the smartarse, self-consciously ‘modern’ cover dress of the Millar/Hitch run has gone. Look at that lovely Seventies logo, complete with headshots! OK, so the cover line meant to entice us to buy is […]

Wonder Woman #35 review

‘It’s like watching a ballet. With compound fractures!’ That’s how Black Canary wittily describes witnessing Wonder Woman fight in the conclusion to their two-part Tokyo romp. There’s never any real sense that Diana and Dinah are in danger from the supervillain fighting arena they enter – Dinah’s confidence ensures that. Canary knows that she and […]