Bullet Reviews! From now on these will be posted on Tuesday and will give you, our loyal fans, a chance to see what else will be available at your Local Comic Shop when you stop in on Wednesday to pick up new books. If you have the extra cash or are having a small week check out these titles! This week: Annihilators: Earthfall #3, Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #9, Green Lantern #3 and Teen Titans #3!
ANNIHILATORS: EARTHFALL #3 of 4 (Marvel)
The Magus has returned in a BIG way! Adam Warlock‘s darker half has figured out a way to come back and be totally safe from the heroes: He placed part of his mind in the heads of numerous children! You can’t stop him now. Then, to make matters worse, he spread his influence further and took over roughly 30% of the population of the U.S.! The stakes are high and Ronan is stepping up and wants to just take everyone out. He will, too, after all, he sacrificed his own people a time or two to protect the culture as a whole. To prove this point, Ronan places a battalion of Kree Sentries above the area. If the heroes fail to stop the Magus, he will!
Also: Rocket Raccoon and Groot continue to fight and try to figure out a way to escape Mojo’s television madness! Seriously, Marvel needs to launch a series of one-shots with these characters!
Overall, this series has been highly entertaining and with one more issue to go I’m looking for something very explosive in the final issue! -Skott Jimenez
GODZILLA: KINGDOM OF MONSTERS #9 (IDW)
What more can be said about this series? It’s Godzilla. It’s giant monsters. It’s Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! I know why some people have had problems with this book. During the monster fights there is no narration. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad but it doesn’t take away from the stories in my opinion. So, this time around we have Woods and young Allie in control of Mechagodzilla and fighting Anguirus! Washington, DC gets some power back and locates their Mech and they want it back but Woods has other plans and wants to use it to get back at the King of the Monsters who just recently destroyed both Washington and Ghidorah!
Overall, I’m still very much enjoying this series. For being a comic book it handles the action of the monster fights very well but writer Eric Powell might want to consider dropping some hints on what this is building to and give us readers some idea as to the longevity of the series. I don’t mind if he doesn’t but it would be nice to see some story building and some excitement of what’s possibly to come. -Skott Jimenez
GREEN LANTERN #3 (DC)
Sinestro Corps War boosted the Green Lantern property into the stratosphere and ensured, for a while, Green Lantern as a flagship DC title. But Blackest Night was underwhelming, succumbing to the temptation of turning a hot property into an event book. The title, in this reviewer’s opinion, floundered for a while, becoming over-complicated and reliant on the central concept of emotion-based power-rings. The universe, for a while, was cluttered with too many voices, double-crosses, and exposition.
It gives me delight to report that, while coming out of the gate largely unchanged from its previous incarnation, the new Green Lantern is a meaner, leaner kind of animal. Straight from the off, with the Guardians abandoning Hal Jordan on earth and barring him access to the wonders of an endless universe, Geoff Johns grounds the plot (at least for a while) and gives us time to breathe. This was a smart move, being a natural development after recent events, and a great jumping-on point for new readers in the same way that Secret Origin cleansed the palette and made Lantern accessible after Sinestro Corp War raised the profile of the book a few years back.
The focus here is on simplicity. By narrowing the focus of the title back to the central relationship between Sinestro and Hal, Johns has stream-lined the story-telling and regained the core appeal of the book – a Star Wars-in-space buddy cop road movie.
The two Green Lantern agents journey off-world in this chapter in order to liberate Sinestro’s home planet of Korugar from a Sinestro Corps that has grown malicious and undisciplined in his absence.
Particular highlights include a tantalizing glimpse into the next evolutionary step into the Guardian’s plans to protect (or as recent events would have it police) the cosmos, and a final page reveal bold enough to suggest Johns is willing to take some risks on the re-launched title.
On the art front, I have never found Doug Mahnke as perfect a fit for the title as Ivan Reis, whose pencils echo the romantic Americana of Neal Adams; all flight-jacket and swagger. However, Doug Mahnke continues to impress; his tight pencils in keeping with the clarity of the re-launch and, more importantly, he keeps the book shipping on time without sacrificing high quality. A large amount of credit must also go to colorist David Baron, an aspect of comics that often remains overlooked. A Green Lantern book concerning warring tribes differentiated only by their color-coding can make for confusing visuals. Thanks to Baron this is never in question.
Altogether, the new Green Lantern reads lighter, brighter, and altogether smoother than it has for a while. I doubted the skills of my navigator for a while, but I’m once again happy to fly with the Green Lantern
TEEN TITANS #3 (DC)
It’s been hard keeping up with DC’s New 52 titles but there are a few I try not to miss. Teen Titans is one of them. If you’re not up to speed, so far Tim Drake (Red Robin-gets completely left out of the New 52 except for this book. DC WE LIKED RED ROBIN, GIVE HIM HIS OWN BOOK!) is on a mission to get as many super-teens as possible before the international organization N.O.W.H.E.R.E. gets them-probably with less than good intentions. Just in case you’re not up to speed the first issue we see him try to recruit Cassie, who tries to keep her powers a secret and she hates the name Wonder Girl. Issue 2 Tim recruits Skitter a cockroach type beastie. Throughout the first three issues there’s also another story running through the book involving Kid Flash-who seems the most inexperienced of the teens saving Solstice and her saving him in return. Now Issue #3, where it seems things have been switched up on Tim. We meet a new teen who is hopping trains and just so happens to jump onto the boxcar with Red Robin in a hobo disguise and Skitter who seems to be recuperating in a cocoon attached to the ceiling. It turns out our stranger has powers as well. He can make constructs similar to Green Lanterns but they’re purple and no ring required. A few punches are thrown but the fight stops abruptly when our mysterious new super teen stops and hugs Red Robin and goes total fanboy on him. It seems Bunker-the new heroes name-was actually trying to find Red Robin because he wanted to be on the team. When the train comes to a stop our heroes get an official team-up against not only against mind controlled citizens but also a menacing new foe named Detritus.
It’s a fun book so far, hopefully we’ll soon see a complete team. This book is tied to the Superboy book as well, in fact on the last page of this issue it does say that the team we’ve met so far will be FIGHTING Superboy in the next issue. so issue 4 should really get the momentum going on this book. Oh yeah, at the end Skitter also comes out of the cocoon looking like…go buy the book -Jeremy Boreske
I'm liking the Green Lantern story, the ending left me shocked.