These books are both painfully awesome for entirely different reasons. New Avengers continues to kick ass with all the Skrulliness complete with accusations and fear and anxiety. Plus, we get some supervillains! Egad and gadzooks!. It's been so long since there was a legitiamte villain in this book, it's crazy. I'm thinking issue 19 or so. so you do the math. That's over a year! This si going to be good.
Basically, the Hood (read the mini if you haven't) is looking to fill the void left by the combined exile of the Kingpin and the unorganized mess the heroes have become, so he's looking to be new top dog. The Owl gets capped, Deathlok makes an appearance, and so does Madame Masque (her second in two weeks, mind you). Of course all this is coupled with the increasing paranoia among the team.
The only problem is that I knew it was coming. No one knew about the Skrull stuff beforehand, but anyone who reads about comics knew the Hood was set to make a comeback. Hell, I've known for months. That's the necessary evil of the hype machine, I suppose.
Criminal is good for an entirely different reason. What Brubaker's (Captain America, Daredevil) doing in this book is crafting a noir masterpiece the likes of which have perhaps never been seen on the comics page. It's everything that's good about Sin City, without the goofy stuff that Sin City sometimes carries with it.
The current arc follows Tracey Lawless, badass gone AWOL looking for some answers to who killed his brother he hadn't seen for twenty years prior. Tracey has infiltrated his brother's old crew thinking it was an inside job, and has inevitably fallen for the hot chick in the group... who apparently was also fucking his brother before he died. Of course, they don't KNOW Tracey is Tracey. They think he's Sam Logan.
This issue in particualr moves a lot of different stuff forward and progresses virtually every plot thread seen thus far in this arc. Did Tracey really think he could kill those guys at the dock in issue 6 and have no consequences?
The best part is that you believe it. There's nothing about this book that makes you suspend your disbelief even in the slightest. There's no nearly super powered character here like Marv from Sin City who, while entertaining, was hardly what you'd call a mortal man. The characters in Criminal could walk out of any dive bar in any city at any moment and they all breathe individual life and they just work.
Unfortunately, we've also got 2 contenders for what I'm going to call the "Meh Awrad." And nothing bugs me quite like spending good money on sub-par comics. This week's contenders are New Avengers/Transformer #2 and World War Hulk Front Line #3
Now... You look at a book like New Avengers/Transformers, and you say, "Lee. I don't understand. It's got Avengers, Transformers, and there's even some Dr Doom in there for good measure. What's not to liek about that?" Well, besides the horrible cover, the book's just not that good. I think the main thing holding it back is that it's built around IDW's current Transforers continuity and not the much-loved, long-established G1. That, and it's just not that good. It's really pretty, though. Tyler Kirham's pencils are solid. They evoke a '90's feel full of energy and fine pencil work without going too overboard with it.
Front Line's not bad. Really, it's not. It's just not that good, either. After Civil War: Front Line had all sorts of little nuggets crutial to the overall plot of the event and even more plot that set up the Marvel U afterward (Speedball, Norman Osborn, etc), I was expecting more from this. I mean, it's cool to see Ben urich and Sally Floyd, since we don't see them anywhere else, but onthing's happening in this book. The detective story with Korg is nice, but completely disposable. The little back-ups are pretty damn funny, though.
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