REVIEW: Inhumans vs X-Men #1

Writer: Charles Soule & Jeff Lemire

Penciler: Leinil Francis Yu

Inker: Gerry Alanguilan

Colorist: David Curiel

Review: Cody "IdentityCrisis" Miller

I’m way out of my element here, Donny. I don’t read or keep up with the X-Men or the Inhumans much…and by much I mean hardly ever. The last real X-Men book I can recall reading was a few years back when the X-Men were battling it out with the Avengers during AvX. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the Spider-verse let alone the stamina to keep up with Terrigen Clouds and Captain Laser-eye’s day to day...maybe if they had made better movies.

Thanks to the nifty “we put this here for you in case you don’t read X-Men or Inhuman books” section on the title page, I learned the Terrigen Mists,which are so precious to the Inhumans, have somehow suddenly become toxic to mutant-kind. Well, Cyclops just wasn’t going to let that crap happen on his watch, and well, Black Bolt killed the shit outta Cyclops.

I could applaud that. I have never been a fan of Cyclops and in fact I’d go so far as to say I hate him. I can’t really give you a justified reason as to why…it’s a long-lived hate, too. I’m glad he’s dead…again.

REVIEW: Doctor Strange/Punisher: Magic Bullets #1

Writer: John Barber
Storyboards: Jason Muir
Artist: Andrea Broccardo
Review: Will Dubbeld

Not so long ago Marvel graced us with another flash-in-the-pan crossover event/maxiseries/dollar snatch called Original Sin. It reeked of editorial mandate and pretty well spat on 40 some-odd years of Nick Fury and Howling Commandos storytelling. I don't blame scribe Jason Aaron so much as editors handing down unneeded continuity 'fixes' and otherwise mucking things up.
The art was on point, though...

Throughout the miasma of Original Sin one segment did shine, however, in the form of the most unlikely Buddy Cop team-up in recent history:
Dr. Strange and The Punisher.
Aside from his brief stint as a supernatural agent of God, Punisher is about as mundane and nonmagical as they come, and I'm fairly certain Stephen Strange doesn't know an AR-14 from an AK-47. Sticking these two together seemed to be a perfect Odd Couple scenario and it played out wonderfully.

REVIEW: A.D.: After Death Book One

Writer: Scott Snyder
Illustrator: Jeff Lemire
Letterer: Steve Wands
Review: Art Bee

At my LCS I love finding amazing trades and graphic novels. They cost more than your normal floppies, but they can drop some awesomely hot story in your lap like a sack of hot taters. Yeah taters…the rest of the world knows them as potatoes. For those of us with a drawl in our lingo, they are taters.
Getting back to my original thought, I found a neat new graphic novel format, A.D.: After Death Book One, on the shelf with the other floppies at my LCS. It was a thicker cover with 65 pages of content for $5.99. This intrigued me greatly as did the splendid watercolor artwork inside. My only hesitation was the writer’s name, Scott Synder. In my opinion he has delivered some great work in the past in addition to some bottom of the barrel quality writing. The Hammond Comic Blog’s own Will Dubbeld greatly dislikes Mr. Snyder’s work and has vowed to avoid it all. He has stated, "Snyder has great ideas and his stories have a strong start, but he nearly always shits the bed in the third act".
(Editors note: I’m actually currently reading his Batman book, but that’s due to John Romita, Jr. on pencils. Love some JRJR…)

REVIEW: Warhammer 40,000: Will Of Iron

Writer: George Mann
Artist: Tazio Bettin
Colorist: Enrica Eren Angiolini
Review: Madman

Hells yes! I’ve wanted this comic for a long, long time, like eighteen years long, long time. I’ve been a huge fan of the table top miniature game Warhammer 40,000 for a long long time, like 22. You could say I was weaned into gaming in most regards with Warhammer. For those that don’t know, 40k involves moving miniature plastic troops, tanks, and just about any war machine you could possibly imagine coming out of the 41st Millennium around a 4x6ft table. That and a big damn rulebook with detailed specifics pertaining to every situation and individuals stats for each miniature dude. At first it was just some random thing that my buddies and I stumbled unto . . . it was better than Nintendo . . . it was before the internets . . . a reason to hang out. In the heyday of my youth when we were haunting our parents' basements braving: moldy spiders, head wounds from mashing into a light bulb, the smell of wood stored in the room next door, or (as rumor had it) a ghost. That’s pretty much all we did for a couple of years. I took a hiatus from all things involving a permanent residence during most of my 20s, and it wasn’t until 15 or so years later that I bought back into the hobby. Towards the end of my youthful run Games Workshop, the company that produced 40k, started to produce a comic series, and it was glorious. I loved that hell out of that comic back then and have read them many times since. I am so glad they’re back.

REVIEW: The Mummy: Palimpsest #1

Written by: Peter Milligan
Art by: Ronilson Freire
Review: Will Dubbeld

Regular visitors to this column (and yes, I'll be arrogant enough to presume there are regular visitors . . .) will have noticed I'm quite fond of pop culture from yesteryear. Film and comics books (clearly) from the 1940s through the '80s in particular capture the essence of what I consider the pinnacle of achievement for those genres.
Exceptions notwithstanding, I'll choose a classic noir or horror over a more contemporary counterpart.
Thus we arrive at Hammer Horror.

In the 1950s through the 1970s Hammer studios cranked out a bevy of gothic horror films through vehicles like Frankenstein Created Woman and Taste the Blood of Dracula. Without gushing over how sublime these films are, which I could do ad nauseum, I'll get to the heart of the matter. In addition to a regular diet of Dracula and Frankenstein movies, Hammer also produced a series of mummy films.

As in shambling Egyptian undead kings and the like.