REVIEW: Green Valley #1

Writer and Creator: Max Landis

Pencil: Guiseppe Camuncoli

Inker: Cliff Rathburn

Colorist: Jean Francois Beaulieu

Letterer: Pat Brosseau

Review: Art Bee

Image seems to have been pumping out some great hits over the last couple of years, but I am not sure if Green Valley is one of them. It is a medieval fantasy-style story with knights and barbarians galore. This team has done some things well and others not so well. This polarity is literal as the first half of the comic book is horrible and the second half is amazing. I will sum up the story plot then let’s look at these halves.

Bertwald, Ralphus, Gulliver, and Indrid meet with Barbarian Lord Brutus Gargus on a battlefield. The four humiliate the Barbarian Lord and make the army retreat. This seems to be the one mistake that begins it all as the cover states, or it may be them letting their guard down, for Brutus will come for revenge.

REVIEW: Love and Rockets Vol. IV #1

by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez
Review: Will Dubbeld

I may have gotten in a bit over my head here . . .
Love and Rockets was an elusive, legendary comic book in my younger days. Ads were prevalent in those old Fantagraphics comics, lauding the genius of Los Bros Hernandez and this Love and Rockets creation of theirs. I wanted it. Fantagraphics ALWAYS produces quality books and Young Will was certain Love and Rockets was no exception.

Unfortunately, my local comic shops were never hip enough to order the book. Nary a back issue to be found, my entire collecting career. Frustrating as hell is what it was . . .
I chalked it up to scarcity, believing that Jaime and Gilbert slavishly produced one issue annually and printed only as many copies at the local Kinkos as they could afford on freelancer pay.
The comic just felt that real, that underground.

REVIEW: The Great Lakes Avengers #1

Writer: Zac Gorman
Artist: Will Robson
Colors: Tamra Bonvillain
Letter: Joe Caramagna
Review: Madman

The tagline for this book completely sucked me in. It went something like this, “'All New, All Different?' No, thank you! New things are bad and different things are scary! Instead, why not join everybody's least favorite super-hero team, the Great Lakes Avengers", blah blah so on and so forth.

I really didn’t read anymore after that because, well, I was already sold. Every now and again I do enjoy the quirky irrelevant titles Marvel throws out. Sometimes I regret that decision, but sometimes it’s a solid win, such as The Superior Foes of Spiderman. I enjoyed the hell outta that run. Had I passed that up I would’ve missed Shocker running around NYC with Silvermane's head in a bowling ball bag and, well, that would’ve been very not cool. This book gave me that same vibe so here I am.

REVIEW: Home #3

Story: Todd Black
Art:  Beth Varni
Letters: Zakk Saam
Cover: Yashera Lynn Ames
Review: Art Bee

Here at HCB we have always preached the message of supporting independent comic book creators. Living in our philosophy, I am an avid follower and supporter of Kickstarter. There are six publications out there with my name attached to their development, but the credit goes to the creators. One of the most recent projects I have supported was Home #3, and with that support received issues one and two as well.

It takes a lot of creativity, guts, and devotion to get a project together and bring it to fruition. With that in mind, I always try to be kind to our indy creators in reviews while still being honest to you, our loyal and greatly appreciated readers. This review has been very hard to write to do justice to both. My opinions just flip-flopped five times while rereading and writing it.

Home is a tale of a young, beautiful, and underappreciated young woman named Elysia. She works as a janitor to make ends meet but finds her joy in computer coding, which she just understands naturally. The quality that makes others uneasy about her is her naturally blue hair. One of the main themes in the story is a strange code that appears sporadically all over the place. Elysia is able to manipulate this code to fix things or change things.