Geekscape Comics: Weekly Reads!

👎 – Skip, read at your own risk
👌 – Okay, not great, not bad, you might find something to like here
💪 – Great, highly recommended

Image

Another week and another huge Image release! This time it’s Black Monday Murders from the creative team of Jonathan Hickman and Tomm Coker.

“MAMMON” ALL HAIL GOD MONEY! From JONATHAN HICKMAN (EAST OF WEST, Secret Wars, Avengers) and TOMM COKER (UNDYING LOVE) comes a new crypto-noir series about the power of dirty, filthy money… and exactly what kind of people you can buy with it. THE BLACK MONDAY MURDERS is classic occultism where the various schools of magic are actually clandestine banking cartels who control all of society: a secret world where vampire Russian oligarchs, Black popes, enchanted American aristocrats, and hitmen from the International Monetary Fund work together to keep ALL OF US in our proper place.

This book is dense. Hickman essentially creates a world where the leaders of the financial markets are devil worshipping magicians, but you have to be a smarter person than me if you want to understand everything that’s going on in this oversized debut issue without reading it multiple times. There is tons of a dialog and diagrams as you might come to expect from Hickman. Tomm Coker’s art is a nice balance of photo-realism and creepy noir… if that makes any sense.

If you haven’t read anything from Hickman before, I strongly recommend reading this in trade as it is going to require a lot of focus to understand what’s going on.

👌 The Black Monday Murders #1

DC

This may have been the greatest week of DC’s Rebirth yet!

Action Comics has become my favourite of DC’s ongoing series. There is a ton of action in this issue as the battle with Doomsday rages on, as well as more glimpses of the cloaked men behind the scenes. This is exactly what I want in biweekly book, enough story to keep it interesting, but never too much that I feel lost or like I’ve forgotten plot points.

I’m pretty sure the creative meeting at DC before Rebirth must have went something like this:

“So what’s next for our characters?”
“How about we take every super hero we have and give their powers to everyone?”
“Ok”

The trend that began in the Flash is continuing with Super characters in Superwoman #1. I don’t even know how many of them there are now…

We have pre-Flashpoint Superman, his son, Lex Luthor Superman, Supergirl, powerless Clark Kent, the “new Super-Man” (which I haven’t read) and now not one but two Superwomen (well, sort of). That’s a whole lot of super! If you aren’t fatigued by the characters yet, I actually found Superwoman #1 to be a surprisingly enjoyable read, although a little dialog heavy at times.

Alright, one more DC title to dive into before we transition to Marvel, and that title is All-Star Batman. This is the title I was most excited about back when DC announced their Rebirth titles, basically because I recognized and was excited by the creative team. Remember, I read very little DC before Rebirth. This title is unlike any other Batman story (Batman, Detective Comics) on the market right now. John Romita Jr.’s art makes it worth the price of admission. While the book gets a little zany for Batman at times, it is still a fun and refreshing read if you are interested in a less dark Batman than what we’ve become accustom to.

💪 Action Comics #961
💪 All-Star Batman #1
👌 Deathstroke – Rebirth #1
👌 Detective Comics #938
👌 Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #2
👌 Red Hood and the Outlaws #1
👌 Superwoman #1
👌 The Flash #4
👌 Wonder Woman #4

Marvel

While Civil War II isn’t of much interest to me anymore, but the few Marvel books outside of it that I’m still reading have been great and this week’s Amazing Spider-Man and Black Panther are no different!

Amazing Spider-Man is now into “Before Dead No More” but it definitely feels like the event itself. All the story lines that have felt ignored the past few issues are back in the spotlight and I’m loving it! Looks like Slott is ready to deliver us another superior (ok, bad pun) Spider-Man story.

I haven’t been into Black Panther, but this issue was one I actually enjoyed. I doubt I’ll ever go back and read these these issues and give deep thought to the themes Coates is digging into but this issue made me glad I’ve stuck with the series.

💪 Amazing Spider-Man #16
👌 Black Panther #5