Bullet Reviews #6: Daredevil Reborn! Silver Surfer! Neonomicon!

Here we go:

DAREDEVIL REBORN #3 (Marvel)
Non-stop action, but not a whole lot of story. We finally see a real villain, but the odds are different here. Usually Murdock can handle up on Hand ninjas without little effort, but here the fact that there are so many guns troubles him. That’s what I call super power inflation. I can see that Diggle is trying to tone it down and bring it back to where it should be, but it just seems ridiculous at this point. On the upside, however, Diggle does
stick to the central theme he has been creating within the Daredevil mythos. We are still examining what Matt is scared of, and that he is no longer the Man Without Fear. Yet through it all we are trying to rebuild that man. Next month that process will be over, and we may have our Daredevil back! -Andy Kirby

FF #1 (Marvel)
“So this is tomorrow,” Reed Richards says. I can’t believe it’s finally here. This book was better than I was expecting by far. Hickman has put so much history into the Fantastic Four in his relatively short tenure on the book that it can often be hard to get into and difficult to catch up; yet, this jumping on point seemed totally understandable. This fact, coupled with the integration of what we see in Hickman’s S.H.I.E.L.D. book (Reed’s father) and the seeds planted for Val and Doom’s destiny, all come together to make a compelling read. And the art’s nothing to turn your nose up at either. Lastly, Spider-Man’s inclusion in the team is more central than I thought. Instead of joining up with the Future Foundation it almost seems as if Spider-Man has actually taken Johnny’s place…and at Johnny’s request no less. All in all a great read and a rich history to move forward. Two thumbs up! -Andy Kirby

GREEN LANTERN #64 (DC)
War Of The Green Lanterns begins! Hal Jordan is wanted by the Guardians for his willingness to team up with the leaders of the ‘unsanctioned ringbearers.’ They send a group of Green Lanterns to arrest him while Hal and the others, including Sinestro, Larfleeze and Atrocitus, try to locate and stop the renegade Guardian Krona who has captured the ‘living embodiments of the emotional powers’ each Lantern wields. This leads to the Book of the Black and no Krona. All hell breaks loose as the book, seemingly controlled by Lyssa Drak, begins to attack them and absorb their stories into its pages, while Sinestro helps Jordan escape. Meanwhile, Krona leads the Entities in an attack on the Guardians on Oa which does not end well for the blue guys. The six Guardians become hosts for six of the Entities while the last, Parallax, finds a new home in the Green Lanterns Power Core and it’s influence quickly spreads among the Green Lanterns. Krona now controls of power of the Lanterns, ALL of them… –Skott Of Fables

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #58 (DC)
War Of The Green Lanterns, Part 2: Kyle Rayner, John Stewart and others are in the Antimatter Universe when Krona attacks and have no idea what they are stepping into. Parallax controls the Green Lantern Power Core and quickly attacks them from within, digging up their deepest fears and turning Kyle and John against each other while the others fall completely under Parallax’s sway. Ganthet, the last remaining Guardian, struggles to free them of the influence while fighting it himself and removes their rings at great cost to himself: The loss of his ring and the hand it was attached to. Things move fast as Kyle and John are told to leave. As the infected Corps members close in Ganthet tells Kyle it was no accident he was chosen. So far, two chapters in, This War story is very exciting, my hope is DC doesn’t blow all the energy on the first few chapters and let the rest wallow like Brightest Day seemed to. The action and excitement of these first two chapters are on the same level as Blackest Night. -Skott Of Fables

NEONOMICON #4 (Avatar)
After her capture and abuse by the Dragon Cult, Special Agent Merril Brears escape is aided by the strange sea-creature (a Gargouille de la Mer) that contributed to her torture while prisoner… The Alan Moore mini-series wraps up this week in issue #4. This chapter is titled “The Lurker Within” starts off with Merril emerging from the sea, weary and without clothing, on a pier at the Salem waterfront. She quickly calls in the F.B.I. to raid the shop and underground caverns of her sick captors and tormentors. Merril tells her tale of capture and abuse at the hands of the cult and a mystical Lovecraftian sea-creature to her skeptical fellow agents. She has been through too much and is obviously not remembering events clearly, they think. That is until the raid turns up the evidence, as well as the Gargouille de la Mer, to confirm her story. Three months later, Merril has isolated herself and will not take calls. For reasons she doesn’t understand she is becoming fluent in Aklo, the language of the Gargouille de la Mer. She decides to go speak with captured cultists and ex-agent, Mr. Sax, in a federal mental facility. What sounded like the ramblings of a broken mental-case is in fact the Aklo language that Merril can now communicate in. The strange and twisted dark truth is finally revealed. -Robb Orr

SILVER SURFER #2 (Marvel)
This book is another good read. You can tell that Pak likes to write with his emotions. We are brought through a series of re-discoveries as the Silver Surfer finds himself in his old body…the body of Norrin Radd. Each breath he experiences the world anew. Nevertheless, the writing seems a bit rushed and the experience is jam packed into a compact story. I think I would have liked to see this story unfold over twice as much panel time. An eight issue mini may actually fit Pak’s plan a little more. The problem though is sales. How could the public maintain the sales of a Limited Series like this when it has no true bearing on current continuity? -Andy Kirby

X-MEN #9 (Marvel)
At first this story seemed hokey.  Yes, Bachalo loves to draw his lizards and an X-Men/Spider-Man team-up is cool…but where is the hook?  What draws me into the story.  The Lizard has been popping up here and there for some time now and frankly getting a little boring.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the villain wasn’t in fact the Lizard. I won’t spoil it for you, but I’ll tell you that the payoff was good.  What I think I like most about this story is that Gischler actually picks up a plot thread that could be considered “throw away” and brings it into a TOTALLY SEPARATE TITLE!!  The very idea that is amazing.  It’s not a crossover, it’s not really a team-up.  It’s the next logical event when one villain’s idea gets picked up by another (from a totally different rogue gallery).  I don’t want to sound drastic, but I think that Gischler has redeemed himself from the vampire debacle. -Andy Kirby

Special Thanks to Andy Kirby and Robb Orr for this week’s contributions!