WEEK IN REVIEW : American Vampire-Lord of Nightmares #1 + Avengers #27 + AvX Versus #3 + Deadpool #56 + Knight Errant - Escape #1

Welcome back to more new-release reviews! Today is dominated by Marvel titles because this week there were a bunch of new AvX related tie-ins that we knew folks would want to read.

But despair not if you have little interest in the Marvel Summer Event, there are a couple of less fighty-spandex titles on the list as well, starting with this Vertigo wonder that kicks the list off!

American Vampire: Lord of Nightmares #1 (Vertigo)

Story : Scott Snyder

Art : Dustin Nguyen

(Reviewed by Anirudh Singh)

Another Felicia Book story, and this one steeped heavily in Vassals of Morning Star lore. Needless to say you should not be picking this book up unless you are an American Vampire fan. And in case you are an American Vampire fan, then congratulations... you just found another American Vampire comic book. An awesome continuation of an awesome series. With only slightly less awesome characters.

What? I'm a Skinner Sweet fan okay. And Felicia just never did it for me.

But that doesn't mean she didn't do it for anyone. And even though I begrudge her slow yet inevitable takeover of the limelight in the American Vampire saga, I do respect her prowess and recognize her necessity. She is the perfect heroine for this saga. And it seems that the vassals of the Morning Star have let loose the perfect villain for the saga as well.

Week In Review : Avengers #25 / B.P.R.D: The Long Death #3 / Batman #8 / Nighwing #8 / Ragemoor #2 / The Shadow #1

 Avengers #25 (Marvel)

Story : Brian Michael Bendis

Art : Walter Simonson

(Reviewed by Anubhav Sharma)

As I’ve said last week, I’m a big fan of Bendis penned event tie-ins, mainly because he gets the level of characterisation and depth stories as big as the events we’ve been seeing for the last half decade which may not fit in well with all the big action in the main books. At face value, one may not see how relevant this issue is to AvX as a whole, but deep down it gives much needed buildup on the Avengers side of the conflict at the core of the event, and serves as a bridge between the recent Osborn storyline and AvX. Captain America and the Protector, in particular, get their motivations fleshed out, which explains some of the former’s decisions in AvX so far and the latter’s solicited actions.

Of course, one can’t talk about this issue without talking about the return of legendary artist Walt Simonson to Marvel. With modern colouring techniques showing is art in a new light, it’s safe to say it as the same level of dynamism he was known for at his best. Also, is Thor particularly looks as majestic as ever.

SCORE : 8.2 / 10

REVIEW: Avengers vs. X-Men #1

It’s that time of the year, folks!

After the more character focussed issue #0, all the AvX action begins this week with the launch of the much awaited Avengers vs X-Men #1 – and legions of fanboys could not be more excited!

Also, before I get going, you are hereby warned of some Spoilers ahead.

John Romita Jr. handling art might be part of the reason, but the opening of the issue does seem to feel a lot like the opening of your generic Bendis-penned Avengers arc, which makes me wish the build-up on the Avengers camp had been more at par with the that of the X-Men.

While the dialogue is expectedly well done, Nova’s arrival serves the purpose of giving us some action before the main conflict is set to begin in later issues. 

Click image to enlarge

Week In Review: Atomic Robo – Real Science Adventures #1 / Avengers vs. X-Men #0 / Avenging Spider-Man #5 / Deadpool MAX II #6 / Ferals #1 / The Avengers #24.1

We're back folks! Here's Round 2 of this week's reviewing for your reading pleasure. 


Atomic Robo – Real Science Adventures #1 (Red5)

Story : Brian Clevenger

Art : Ryan Cody, Yuko Oda, Chris Houghton John Broglia Joshua Ross

(Reviewed by Akshay Dhar)

More Atomic Robo!! Whoohoo!! If there's a book/comic/character that I love as shamelessly and undoubtedly as fellow reviewer Anant loves Deadpool, it's Robo – Atomic Robo. Period.

From the first issue of the first series this has been one of the most amazing and unique series with some of the most original, creative and clever writing and this latest outing raises the bar yet again. Clevenger ups his game by changing tactics AGAIN. Previously Robo has started in a series of mini-series with no regard to chronological order (that I've personally noted anyhow) and reads like an old school just-having-a-blast comics. This time around however, we have a series of five short stories here – three are done-in-one style simple adventures while two are the first part of (unconnected except through Robo) multi-part stories that will presumably carry on through the remainder of this series of “Real Science Adventures”. I'll tackle them in order for you:

Week-In-Review: Avengers Assemble #1 / Daken: Dark Wolverine #22 / The Ninjettes #2 / Saucer Country #1 / Scarlet Spider #3

Well folks, here's the last set of new issue reviews for this week - hope you enjoy them! As always, if there's any series you want to know about or see reviewed, just drop us a line.
Till next week, happy readings!

Avengers Assemble #1 (Marvel)

Story : Brian Michael Bendis

Art : Mark Bagley, Danny Miki

(Reviewed by Anant Sagar)

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!!

I've always wanted to say that, along with a whole bunch of other things.

So anyway, to the point. Avengers Assemble #1. Excellent read. Basically meant to be an easy-to-access series with the team from the upcoming movie meant to serve as accessible to less regular readers.

THE GOOD:

The story is interesting. I like the Avengers cast seen here. I enjoyed the villains that they have. The Zodiac are an interesting concept explored as super-humans, each named after a sigh of the zodiac. So far we see two - one water elemental (probably Pisces) and Taurus. Action sequences are in abundance in this issue, something I really enjoyed, especially since they are really well drawn.

THE BAD:

AvX in Waiting : Ten Avengers to Watch out for

With some time yet to pass for Marvel’s latest much-awaited summer event – Avengers vs. X-Men – we here at Comic Addicts realised that now would be a good time to start off with our speculations and expectations from the event in the form of a series of articles.

Today, we’re gonna talk about those in the ranks of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes who, in this writer’s humble opinion, should play some pretty big roles.

10) Beast

As of right now, Beast seems pretty likely to stay on team Avengers, especially considering all his disagreements with Scott Summers over the last few years over the direction of the latter’s leadership of the mutants. However, what makes his position in AvX interesting is the likelihood of at least some fraction of the Jean Grey Institute faculty siding with their fellow mutants, as well as his recent interaction with the now anti-Avengers Wonder Man.

10 WAYS TO GET YOUR MIND OFF THE AVENGERS MOVIE

 -A list by Anubhav Sharma

1) Watch every Marvel Studios movie. Repeatedly.

Shiny!!

Week In Review 09.01.2012 : New Comics Mega-post!

Week-In-Review time folks!!
This week it's Animal Man #5 + Batwing #5 + Vampirella vs. Dracula #1 + Witchblade #151 + Avengers Annual #1 + Fatale #1 + The Lil' Depressed Boy #8!


This week three of the team have gotten together to give you one HUGE mega-review post, bringing you the best, brightest and most popular comics out this week!

Anupam's Reviews

Animal Man #5

Story: Jeff Lamire

Art: Travel Foreman

Writer Jeff Lemire's bought one of the under dogs of DC and turned him into a full on horror filled (new) Animal Man! Be it horror,superhero or simply comic book fans, this one shouldn't be a miss. Plus the visuals really set the book apart and puts it in the way too (horribly) dreadful category!

SCORE : 9.5/10

Batwing #5 (featuring a special appearance by Batman!)

Story: Judd Winick

Art: Ben Oliver

I would call this more of a character development story rather than a 'story' I would wanna see in a comic. The art overall gives a very realistic feel, which matches the story perfectly.

And don't get fooled by Bats's special appearance, practically there was no need of him to be there at all! Probably an idea by writer or editorial team to include him in order to raise the sells.

SCORE : 7/10

Week-in-Review: Avengers – Solo #1 / The Activity #1 / Catwoman #4 / The Immortal: Demon in the Blood #1

Well hello folks! Welcome to our premier edition of "Week-in-Review" which we teased you with just a few days ago.
Today I have for you some great and some surprising picks from the books released this past Wedesday. We will try and bring you a list like this every week on Monday's to give you a flavour of what's new and what's hot and whatever looks good in between - and once in a while when something is really to be avoided, we'll bring warnings! Now enough of me gabbing, on to the reviews!

The Activity #1

Story: Nathan Edmonson

Art: Mitch Gerads

I was definitely looking forward to this book from when I heard about it – not just because Image has been having a banner year and putting out some of the most awesome books, but because this is Nathan Edmonson's follow up to the magnificent Who Is Jake Ellis and his ongoing Grifter for DC. Like Jake Ellis, this is a secret agent and espionage kind of story, but where that was about someone on the outside bucking the system, this story is about a team that is the best of the best and the go-to guys for the elite, and so on and so forth – you get the idea. A sweet little opening chapter that has a new recruit joining the team (not the newest idea, I know) it acts as a 'testing the waters' kind of mission both for the characters and their new team-mate as well as for the reader and I personally found this to be a brilliantly thought out and engaging read with great characters. Plus, Mitch Gerads brings a nice style to the comic, though his art may not be everyones favourite, his layouts and choice of focus and detail are amongst the most awesome I've seen!

Most definitely on my pull list from here till it finishes, gets cancelled or Edmonson leaves at the very least.

SCORE: 4.7/5 

NEW COMICS: Zero-day bullet reviews - Avengers X-Sanction/The Ray/The Strain

Welcome Addicts to the inaugural week-in-review from ComicAddicts.com - a space we are planning to bring you a selection of the comics released that week in short, quick and easy reviews to help you see keep track of whats good and bad with each Wednesdays releases!

This week we kick-off our reviewing with review by Anubhav and Akshay, our comic obsessed work-horses who brought you the blow-by-blow every week for the DC Comics "New 52" releases. 

First out of the gate, the hotly anticipated Avengers: X-Sanction by superstar creative duo, Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinessas reviewed by Anubhav Sharma

(Click to enlarge)

Avengers X-Sanction

Ah Loeb, you make me sad.

Avengers: X-Sanction reunites the Jeph Loeb – Ed McGuiness creative duo that first brought us the Red Hulk (a.k.a "Rulk"). And its Déjà vu all over again. It’s all back: mindless smashing, every character who is not the protagonist is dumbed down, people acting out of character all over the place. This certainly does not fit well with Loeb’s earlier amazing work. Continuity errors aside (I thought Radioactive Man was a good guy now?!), and despite some unexpectedly good character work in the future sequence, this series does look like something you can miss, even if you’re looking forward to Avengers vs. X-Men. There is some extremely horrible dialogue involved, which, along with out and out bad pacing, gives the reader the feeling of nothing really happening throughout the issue. I’ve never been a very big fan of Ed McGuiness’ art, but in some ways, it is the almost-saving grace of the book with some big screen action and things blowing up.

As a book I was really hoping to like, a big disappointment.

Verdict: 5.2/10

Next up we have a double review (in keeping with the New 52 reviews) of DC's reinvention of The Ray:

Marvel New Galore : The Phoenix Returns as Bendis quits Avengers

This week Marvel announced their next big summer event in the form of ‘Avengers vs. X-Men’ a 12-part crossover being written by the Marvel Architects (Bendis, Hickman, Brubaker, Aaron and Fraction) with Art duties being handled by John Romita jr., Oliver Coipel and Adam Kubert. 

Click to enlarge!

Meet the Avengers! (Shattered Heroes roster)

Yeah, it’s that time of the year again, when Earth’s mightiest heroes, at least those who survived the latest summer event, are united against a common threat (Read : Norman Osborn), to fight foes no single hero can withstand. Except Batman. It’s a pity he’s in a different universe.

With the release of Avengers #19, written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by David Acuna, this new comic book day, Marvel has unveiled the full new roster of the post Fear Itself Avengers. It does seem like a pretty solid combination of Avengers mainstays, returning classic members and new recruits.

All images - Click to Enlarge

The Roster

1. Captain America (The real one)

After the <SPOILER!> non-death of Bucky Barnes in Fear Itself, it is time for the original Captain America, Steve Rogers to wield the shield and lead the team once more.

 

MARVEL NEWS: The Return of Soldier-X himself!

Welcome back to more wandering and wayfaring folks, its good to be back bringing you the slices of random awesomeness!

(Click to enlarge!)

I wanted to ease back into this after a month spent tirelessly and chaotically chasing down copies of the DC New 52 hot-off-the-presses and reviewing them after each week's Wednesday release – whoah was that a ride! Never did we think (me and my cohort, Anubhav – take a bow man!) that we would actually have to make ourselves read comics just to get through them to review them on time!

But now it is past, and while we here at Comic Addicts will keep on bringing you news from whats up with the new DCU, today we're venturing into other realms – more specifically Earth-616, or to the unfamiliar: The Marvel Universe.

Our topic for today is the impending return – in the centre of the next big Marvel-wide story arc – of arguably one of the most popular and definitely one of the most divisive and controversial characters among fan-dom. He has been known by many names: Nathan Winters, Soldier X, Nathan Summers, Nathan Dayspring Askani'Son, Priscilla (shout to to Deadpool fans!), etc, etc... but to most of the comic-reading and cartoon watching world-at-large he's simply Cable.

I'm not going into the character history and all that – its way longer and more intense then I can commit to just this one column/article/whatever, so just follow my link above to his bio over at Marvel.com and check it out for yourself at your leisure.

In the meantime, down to business!!