Comics

Astro City #31

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Astro City #31With the help of guest-artist Jesus Merino, with Astro City #31 writer Kurt Busiek offers up a story from the perspective of a monster who, it turns out, isn’t all that monstrous. Told from the perspective of the Living Nightmare, a nightmarish creature that feeds on the fear of others, who escapes captivity not to wreak havoc but to do some serious soul searching, the story is one of introspection about what the creature is and who it wants to become.

Frankenstein Monster stories are hardly new, but in this day and age taking the time to explore the empathy of the creature rather than let it wreak wanton destruction down on innocents is something unexpected, anywhere but Astro City that is.

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Usagi Yojimbo #151

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Usagi Yojimbo #151In another single-issue tale, Usagi Yojimbo #151 opens with the rabbit ronin stumbling upon a valley of death where a ruined procession, and the broken bodies of both its samurai escort and the attacking bandits all line the forest floor. In the middle of the carnage Miyamoto Usagi finds only a single survivor, the daughter of the sake brewer in Maru Town who is the promised bride to the son of a brewer in the town of Tansu in two days time.

With only two days before her scheduled wedding, and on the eve of a tempestuous storm about to erupt, Usagi volunteers to accompany Haruko to Tansu when the pair are attacked again on the road by Koroshi, the League of Assassins.

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Uncanny X-Men #1

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Uncanny X-Men #1Marvel relaunches its flagship X-Men title with a new team of Psylocke, Archangel, M, Mystique, Fantomex, and Sabretooth led by Magneto. Uncanny X-Men #1 starts off with more of a whimper than a bang with a pointless story about Magneto’s team rescuing mutants who don’t have any interest in being rescued and have chosen to hide from the world until a time when mutant hostility and deadly mists are things of the past.

The cast of characters interests me, and I’m glad to see Magneto has adopted a bit of his old look back into his style, but I have a hard time seeing this team hold together for any amount of time. A fan of Magneto, Archangel, and Psychocke, I’m happy to see the threesome have found a home in a new title, but I’m not sure they couldn’t have done far better. M, the character I know least about, may interest me the most from what we see in this first issue.

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Obi-Wan & Anakin #1

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Obi-Wan & Anakin #1Set between the events of Episode I and Episode II, Marvel’s new five-issue mini-series Obi-Wan & Anakin offers a glimpse at an adventure featuring Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker. Called to a remote planet by an unknown source, Obi-Wan and Anakin crash land in the harsh environment of Carnelion IV with no clue as to who has summoned the Jedi to what the galaxy had assumed was a completely dead world.

The number of years between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones certainly open the door for a number of stories featuring not just these characters but others as well. One fifth of the way through this particular adventure, however, there’s not a lot to grab me. Teasing us with flashbacks to Anakin’s training, and Palpatine‘s interest in the young man, the adventure itself doesn’t really get started until it’s final page.

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Green Lantern #48

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Green Lantern #48Following the amusement park bombing that left his nephew in a coma, Hal Jordan heads to Gotham in search of answers about Sonar, the leader of a terrorist group claiming responsibility for the attack and threatening others if the United Nations refuses to give into his demands. The appearance of Batman Stand-in #7, or whatever this guy’s name is, attempts to play on the complicated relationship between Batman and Green Lantern but doesn’t have anywhere to go. Considering as a member of the Justice League there would be any number of other ways for Jordan to get the intelligence other than just showing up in the middle of Gotham (he doesn’t even go to the Batcave?) the entire sequence doesn’t make much sense.

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