Tag Archives: idw

November 20, 2015

Comic Block October 2015

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

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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.

Leave a comment | tags: back to the future, comic block, Comic Books, comic subscription, Comics, dark horse, heroes: reborn, heroes: vengeance, idw, montly subscription, mystery comics, nerd block, tomb raider, tomb raider the frozen omen, unboxing | posted in Comic Books, Unboxing

October 20, 2015

Comic Block September 2015

By Jasomania

I am aware that we are half way through October before I am getting this up but I as George Washington famously said, “shit happens”.

First lets get the run down of all the goodies in this months box:

Deadpool Vs. Thanos 1 from Marvel Comics
Dangergirl 1 Exclusive Comic Block Variant from IDW
Mirror’s Edge: Exordium 1 from Dark Horse
Mad Max: Fury Road 1 Exclusive Nerd Block Variant from Veritgo
Saga T-Shirt with Prince Robot
Green Lantern light up ring

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Solid box top to bottom. Not only did we get a Green Lantern Ring and awesome Saga T-shirt but we got four comics this month instead of our normal three! I’ve mentioned this before but part of the promise of the Comic Block has been that we will occasionally get exclusive variant covers and graphic novels. While we have gotten variant covers o’ plenty there has yet to be a single graphic novel. Perhaps next month? I did read all the comics in the box and below are is my rundown of each issue.

Mad Max: Fury Road 1

Witness! From the best I can bet this comic book takes place between Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome and Mad Max: Fury Road. It starts with a couple page run down summarizing the events of the first three Mad Max movies which feels like way more information then we actually need. It then has Max go to Gastown to participate in a Battle Royal style Thunderdome situation in hopes to win a V8 engine. Max is victorious however killing of one of the members of the Buzzards gang attracts their attention. The Buzzards find where Max has been hiding, steal his engine, stab him, and tie him to the ground to be left for dead. Max passes out and a mysterious woman frees Max and bandages his wounds. The comic ends when Max wakes up. The mysterious woman enlists Max’s service for an unknown job in exchange for saving his life.

The comic was so-so. It spends too much time recapping the old Mad Max movies and not enough time moving the plot forward. Very little actually happens. The art is really inconsistent. At times it looks great and extremely detailed, but at other times the faces of people look like mushy blobs. They also go to great links to make Max not look like Mel Gibson or Tom Hardy which is a weird choice and distracting. This is only an issue 1 so it’s job is really just to set things up but I wished we had gotten a little more. With so little happening I wasn’t able to form any strong ties to anyone or anything so don’t have a lot of motivation to find out what happens next.

Deadpool Vs. Thanos 1

Deadpool has been up against a lot. He’s been up against X-Force, Hawkeye, Carnage, and now Thanos. I’m a little unsure on the actual plot of what happened in this comic, there were a lot of moving parts. There was some stuff about Death being kidnapped and so the dead on earth were unable to actually die. There was a fight between Deadpool and Thanos for the affection of Death. Thanos kind of killed Deadpool and then brought him back to life so they could team up and find Death. It was a little confusing, but there were a lot of jokes, breaking the fourth wall and talking about tacos.

I have real mixed feelings about Deadpool. I like him in theory but I find most of the fourth wall breaking and jokes to be more gimmicky than actually funny. The comics I have read with Deadpool up to this point have been ok but because of all the jokes and such there never really feels like there are any stakes. There were some genuinely funny parts in this comic but not funny enough to get me to buy more issues.

Mirror’s Edge: Exordium 1

If you don’t already know Mirror’s Edge is based on a video game for PS3/Xbox360/PC that came out in 2007. It was fairly groundbreaking at the time for being a first person shooter that involved little to no actual shooting. It is based in a futuristic society which “runners” use parkour moves to navigate around the city delivering messages. If I remember correctly the game sold ok but not stellar. Everyone loved the aesthetic of the world but the game itself was painfully short (4-6 hours long) so people didn’t want to shell out 60 dollars for it. I played it back in the day and remember liking it but also it giving me head aches from moving around so fast. Also, if I can bitch for a moment I really hate when games allow you to have weapons but actively do things to discourage you from using them. Either take the weapons out or make them usable don’t half ass it.

Anyway, they are finally making a sequel next year after being in some form of development over the last 7 years so this comic is most likely a tie-in or prequel.

The comic begins with Faith (our protagonist) on a mission. She gets two guards to chase her in order to allow her team access into a building in order to steal data. While running from the guards she accidentally interrupts some sort of deal between rival gangs and gun fire erupts. Faith tries to get away but is captured by the gang working for the crime lord Dogen. She is taken to Dogen who is impressed by her work and offers her a job. She declines and leaves, trying to steal some of Dogens art on the way out. Faith returns to her base of operations and their leader Noah is mad at her for the risk she took going on a rogue mission in the first place. The comic ends with Faith going back to Dogen and accepting his employment.

This was a really great first issue of a comic. A lot of things happen but they are presented in a controlled manner in which the reader can actually follow along. They keep talking about this beatlink thing which apparently most of the advanced runners have and Faith does not. Not having a beatlink is a slight to Faith and a cause of animosity between Noah and Faith. Call me old, but I actually side with Noah in this when he is angry at Faith for her risky behavior. He seems fairly reasonable and Faith just seems like a brat for not wanting to listen to him. Overall I really liked the comic and will probably pick up more of the issues as they come in. While I didn’t love the original Mirror’s Edge game, I did always like the world it created and liked revisiting it in this comic.

Sidenote I really liked that Dark Horse didn’t have any ads in this comic until the very end. It was a real pleasant reading experience to be able to go through the story and not be distracted by ads every other page.

Danger Girl: Renegade 1

I don’t know about you but I find this comic is best read while playing Mystikal’s Danger (Been so Long). So I know nothing about Danger Girl, and as if the comic was reading my mind, it was filled with exposition. It even took a pause halfway through to explain exactly what the Danger Girls are.

It starts off with Danger Girl Abbey Chase at age 12 running through the streets of Egypt. This scene was amazingly over the top. At one point she’s literally climbing a stack of woven baskets filled with snakes.

Abbey and her handler David move to Norway where there some more exposition about her Dad being on some super secret mission. The two are ambushed and David dies in the struggle. Abbey manages to escape and the comic jumps 13 years to a 26 year old Abbey in the Amazon jungle. Abbey is once again being Chased (see what I did there) and narrowly escapes a villainous woman with a snake eye (literally). The comic ends with Abbey giving more exposition and a glimpse of the weird emerald the Snake Lady was trying to steal from Abbey.

This comic was all well and good but nothing in it really grabbed my attention enough to want to read more. The over the top villains and ominous dark family history was just so typical that it almost felt like a parody. On the plus side the art was at least good and like Mirror’s Edge there weren’t ads in the interior of the book.

2 Comments | tags: comic block, comic block september, comic block unboxing, Comic Books, Comics, comics subscription, danger girl, dark horse, deadpool vs. thanos, idw, mad max fury road, Marvel, mirror's edge, monthly box, monthly subscription, nerd block, subscription box, unboxing, vertigo | posted in Comic Books, Unboxing

September 18, 2015

Comic Block August 2015 Unboxing

By Jasomania

August’s Comic Block came with the following items:

Bombshells 1 from DC Comics
X-Files Season 11 Issue 1 from IDW (Comic Block Exclusive Variant)
Red Sonja / Conan 1 from Dark Horse (Comic Block Exclusive Variant)
Heart and Brain Comic Block Exclusive Print
Spider-Gwendom T-Shirt

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

First let’s take a look at the art print that came in the box. This is the second time that a box has include a art print, the very first box had a cool Batman Print. This month came with a print that was a Web Comic that was ok, but not particularly funny. I’m not familiar with the web comic and it had the level of humor of a Bazooka Joe wrapper. Regardless I would rather there be an art print than some of the random extra items that some of the other boxes have had.

Next was the Spider-Gwendom T-Shirt. It is a White shirt with the following print in the middle. While I’m happy to now have my first Spider-Gwen T-shirt, it is kinda of creepy.

Bombshells Issue 1

If you have been following my blog than you already know I am a big fan of the DC Bombshells. I picked up quite a few of the variant covers of the initial set back in August of last year, and have picked up even more of this years set. I was actually planning on picking up this issue myself at my local comic shop until I went online and spoiled myself that it would be included in this month’s comic block.

The first thing to know about Bombshells is that it is a Digital first comic. This means that it is released weekly on ComiXology with every 3 issues collected and released for print each month. So then it makes sense that this issue is split up into three parts.

The first part introduces Batwoman. Batwoman is the star player of the Gotham Knights and does vigilate work on the side. For reasons not really explained the players on the Gotham Knights all where disguises and keep their identity secret.

Batwoman breaks up a robbery at the Ballpark (which we won’t go into how ridiculous it would be to rob a ballpark), and we see her romance with Police Captain Maggie Sawyer.

It ends with a cliffhanger with Amanda Waller recruiting Batwoman to help stop the war.

The second part introduces Steve Trevor whose squadron is shot down by Amazonians as they unknowingly fly into their airspace. This is a much shorter section so not much else happens in it other than he is brought to Wonder Woman for questioning.

The last part takes place in Russia with Kara and Kortni Duginovana aka Supergirl and Stargirl. I’m not sure if both have powers but Kara definitely does. They are fighter pilots for Russia and during their first mission Kortni’s plane malfunctions and Kara must reveal her powers to save her.

I enjoyed this comic enough that I’ll start picking up the other issues as they are released.

X-Files Season 11 Issue 1

I did not like this comic much at all. I was in the process of giving up until I realized I only had 4 more pages to read. If you are into the X-Files this will probably be your jam but it has been since the late 90’s since I’ve seen an episode so I was more than a little confused.

For reasons unexplained Mulder and Scully are not together and the FBI is looking for Mulder who is on the Lam. We don’t know what he did or why the FBI is after him. Mulder finds the debris of satellite and there are some wolves. I don’t know. It’s a confusing mess and honestly I just didn’t care.

Red Sonja / Conan Issue 1

This is my first time to read either a Conan or Red Sonja comic so going in I am unfamiliar with the characters.

The story centers around Red Sonja and Conan preparing for a war in Kush. There are several smaller mercenary forces that are going to team up for this attack and it has been decided that the leader of each fraction will fight to the death until only one remains. Red Sonja and Conan decide that rather than fight each other that they will lead together. This upsets the remaining warlords so the pair make quick work killing them off. While this is happening a wizard named Kal’ang is in the final stages of making some sort of super potion that will give him immense power. He gives a couple of his men a taste of his unfinished potion that, while not giving them full strength as the completed potion will, still greatly increases their strength. The superpowered troops try to surprise Conan and Red Sonja and are quickly killed.

After the attack Red Sonja and Conan decide to immediately go to war instead of waiting until the morning.

Overall it was pretty good. I thought the art was great, it was a cartoonish style but not so much that the people stopped looking real. The level of violence felt inconsistent. It’s not that I even minded it but it seemed like it just jumped from being extremely mild to cutting off heads pretty quickly. It was just jarring because the level of sexuality and language was extremely tame so I just assumed that this book would be for younger audiences. I don’t think I’ll pick up the series but I liked it well enough and might keep an eye out if it falls in dollar bins.

Well that’s it folks. I’ll probably keep doing these posts monthly as I’ve been enjoying writing them and it encourages me to really read all the comics I get in the box.

Leave a comment | tags: bombshells, comic block, comic block august 2015, comic block unboxing, Comic Books, Comics, conan, dark horse, dc comics, idw, red sonja, subscription box, unboxing, variant covers, x-files | posted in Comic Books, Unboxing

Comic Books and Cats

Tag Archives: idw