It’s that time of the month again, well it was three weeks ago but I’m just getting in to writing this now. Let’s start off with the glamour shot of everything in the box.
Here’s the rundown of everything inside:
- Heroes: Vengeance 1 from Titan Comics (Comic Block Exclusive Variant)
- Back to the Future 1 from IDW (Nerd Block Exclusive Variant)
- Lara Croft Frozen Omen 1 from Dark Horse (Comic Block Exclusive Variant)
- Spawn T-Shirt
- Venom Art Print
Still no sign of the allusive graphic novel but every issue in this month’s box was a exclusive variant cover. Here is a look at the art print, it’s probably my favorite of these types so far, I just wish they had listed who the artist was on the preview card.
Heroes: Vengeance 1
My history with Heroes is pretty brief. I watched the first season probably 7 years ago and never bothered to watch any of the other seasons. I remember liking the first season but outside of the whole “save the cheerleader, save the world” thing I don’t remember much. I like the concept of Heroes and with my love of all things comics it seems like it would be right up my ally.
So what was I expecting from Heroes: Vengeance? Some new Heroes with cool and interesting powers? The old Heroes gang getting back together? We got neither, instead we got a story about a vigilante in a luchador mask with no powers at all. This is a prequel comic so I can only assume it has something to do with the new rebooted show, however as a stand alone comic it was incredibly boring.
The only thing of note was there were two different newspapers with headlines about an incident in Odessa TX, which I assume is related to the reboot series. Outside of that though it was a pretty dull story about a real life vigilante which I’ve seen done better in numerous other stories. I wasn’t excited for Heroes: Reborn before and this pretty much put the nail in the coffin for me.
Back to the Future 1
This comic actually is two different stories in one. The first is the telling of the first time that Marty McFly meets Doc Brown. Some local bullies steal Marty’s guitar and make him get a transducer tube for their amp in order to get it back. It turns out the town is sold out of tubes and the person who bought them all up was none other than Doc Brown. Marty outsmarts Doc’s security and gets in to his lab. Doc is so impressed with Marty that he offers him a job, which Marty immediately accepts.
The second story is of Doc meeting with Robert Oppenheimer where he is joins the Manhattan Project. I guess this is part of the Back to the Future lore that Doc worked on the Atomic Bomb that I was unaware of.
I didn’t really care for the comic. The two stories are really different and have completely different art styles to the point that I didn’t initially realize the second story was part of the comic. I thought it was just a preview of some other comic and almost skipped it entirely. The first story was really cheesy and didn’t add enough to the mythos to justify telling the story. The second story was just weird and reading a story about Doc Brown working on the Atomic bomb is not something I have any interest in.
On the bright side I do really like that IDW puts all the different variant covers inside the comics. I do have something of a variant cover problem but for the most part I’m more than content just seeing all the different covers. DC Comics used to keep the variant covers of issues in the back of digital issues when the New 52 started and even updated them as more came out. However they dropped this practice only a few months in. I really wish Marvel or DC would pick up on this and start including a preview of all the covers out there for each issue.
Lara Croft Frozen Omen 1
With Rise of the Tomb Raider coming out this month it is no surprise that Dark Horse is releasing a new Lara Croft series. The main story is that one of the curators at the British Museum is acting out of character and steals a priceless carving on a piece of Woolly Mammoth tusk. Lara tracks down the curator to Belize where he appears to be in some sort of trance. After seeing Lara he snaps out of it and seems to have no memory of traveling to Belize or stealing the artifact. A weird vine ensnares the both of them and we get a “to be continued”.
There’s also a weird devil guy.
I really enjoyed this comic. They usually skimp out on the art for these licensed properties but for this the art was fantastic and reminded me of John Romita Jr. I thought the story was interesting and overall was a great first issue.
They gave the reader just enough to set up the story while also keeping enough mystery to leave me wanting more. I usually don’t like these licensed property comics but I might have to make an exception for Tomb Raider.
Comic Books and Cats 