Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!
For the second installment in Image’s “Next Issue Project,” which continues now-forgotten public-domain titles from comics’ Golden Age, Erik Larsen, Paul Grist and others give you SILVER STREAK COMICS #24. Daredevil — not the Marvel blind guy — tries to save a woman being burned alive, leading to a funny twist ending. The Flash-esque Silver Streak enters a TV Western to protect a cowboy against a death threat. The villainous The Claw has become a corporate CEO, while Captain Battle kicks lots and lots of ass in World War II. With more emphasis on humor, this one’s even better than the first. Don’t wait for the trade — who knows if there even will be one? — because these are few and far between, and a real kick in the pants.
THE TALISMAN: THE ROAD OF TRIALS #2 continues the steady pacing and strong storytelling of the debut issue, in adapting the novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub. In Robin Furth’s script, the 13-year-old Jack Sawyer is instructed to jump dimensions in order to find The Black Hotel, an evil place where he’s to retrieve the titular talisman, in order to save his ailing mother. We meet his ruthless Uncle Morgan, a balding oaf who once tried to smother Jack to death as an infant. Tony Shasteen seems to relish illustrating different time periods in this issue, although a detriment is that you only get 25 pages of story for your four bucks. Rather than closing it out with a four-page commentary by Furth, couldn’t Del Rey Comics have used that space to tell more of the tale?
Presumably existing to capitalize on the smash-hit ARKHAM ASYLUM video game, DC’s BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM SPECIAL #1 reprints four tales, from 1995 on up, involving some of the most famous residents of Gotham City’s mental institution. First, a doc flips out after having been employed there for too long. In the wordless, humorous “Workin’ My Way Back to You,” Killer Croc makes an escape and punches out a bull (Sonny Chiba still did it better). The Penguin explains his frustations in attempting to kill Batman in “Penguin Dreams,” followed by “Fool’s Errand,” in which The Joker recants his run-ins with Robin, the Boy Wonder. While it’s nice to see this printed on super-thick pages, I would’ve been fine with normal stock in order to pay a couple bucks less.
The idea behind BATMAN 80-PAGE GIANT #1 is that Gotham City has frozen over in one hell of a blizzard. In eight otherwise unrelated stories by different writers and artists, we see how that storm has affected its most famous characters, on both sides of justice. For instance, butler Alfred picks up a prostitute … but not for that reason; Commissioner Gordon tracks down an on-the-loose Mr. Freeze, featuring excellent art and coloring by Rafa Garres; and Batman tracks down Man-Bat in a one-pager meant to amuse — and succeeds — by Steve Niles. Other characters populating this fun one-shot include Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Robin, The Saint and Veil — the latter two being people I wasn’t familiar with.
WOLVERINE MAGAZINE #4 begins with a continuation of the previous issue’s FIRST CLASS tale, with Logan and Kitty Pryde sparring against Russia’s Winter Guard supergroup, followed by a better-than-usual issue of WEAPON X: FIRST CLASS, in which Professor X attempts to recruit Sabretooth, and Gambit breaks into the Weapon X facility where Wolverine is being created. The rag’s highlight once more comes from Power Pack, the pint-sized, sibling superheroes who here have to save X-Men’s Cyclops. Finally, there’s part four of six in Marvel Illustrated’s THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK adaptation. I can’t get over how much I would’ve loved this magazine as a kid … so I do so as an adult. Sue me.
I knew I was going to like Marvel’s X NECROSHA: THE GATHERING #1 from the cover art, which keys off the poster for JOHN CARPENTER’S VAMPIRES. In this one-shot, writers Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost have a super-sexy mutant psychic vampire named Selene assemble a group of followers to do her bidding, which means killing, which means everyone. In five separate stories, each by a different artist, the mutants known as Wither, Blink, Senyaka, Mortis and Eliphas — gesundheit! — fall under her no-good spell. All the art is good, but special mention must be made of Gabriel Hernández Walta’s fantastic work. Despite being set in the world of X-MEN, this is a horror comic, and quite a good one at that. —Rod Lott
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