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Frank Martin

The Pull List: Avengers: No Surrender, Backways, Detective Comics, Maestros, Marvel 2-in-One, & more!

January 26, 2018 by krisis

The Pull List has grown a lot longer this week – 17 issues in all!

That’s due to catching up with another Marvel book (Thanos), several new indie #1s, and a few Image books I’ve read to the present in the past few weeks. Also, starting this week I’m running very short reviews of the X-Men books covered in This Week in X here, so that you can catch up on all the week’s new titles in one place!

Here’s what’s on my Pull List:

  • Abbott (2018) #1
  • Avengers (2017) #677
  • Backways (2017) #2
  • Detective Comics (1937/2016) #973
  • Dissonance (2018) #1
  • Doomsday Clock (2017) #3
  • Gasolina (2017) #5
  • Legion (2018) #1
  • Maestros (2017) #4
  • Marvel 2-in-One (2018) #2
  • Phoenix Resurrection (2018) #4
  • Raven: Daughter of Darkness (2018) #1
  • Thanos (2016) #15
  • Vinegar Teeth (2018) #1
  • Wonder Woman (2016) #39
  • X-Men: Blue (2017) #20
  • X-Men: Blue (2017) Annual 1

I hope these capsule reviews can help you decided what series you should add to your own pull list, or at least catch up with once they hit collected editions! And, remember, this feature is still new and evolving, so your comments and suggestions count a lot! [Read more…] about The Pull List: Avengers: No Surrender, Backways, Detective Comics, Maestros, Marvel 2-in-One, & more!

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Aftershock Comics, Anthony Fabela, Avengers, Backways, Chip Zdarsky, Cullen Bunn, Dark Horse Comics, David Curiel, David Wright, Detective Comics, Dissonance, Donny Cates, Doomsday Clock, Eleonora Carlini, Emanuela Lupacchino, Frank Martin, Gary Frank, Gasolina, Geoff Johns, Geoff Shaw, Glitch, Image Comics, James Robinson, James Tynion, Jason Merino, Jim Cheung, Justin Jordan, Legion, Maestros, Marvel 2-in-One, Marvel Comics, Matthew Rosenberg, Pepe Larraz, Peter Milligan, Phoenix Resurrection, Raven, Raven: Daughter of Darkness, Skybound Entertainment, Steve Skroce, Thanos, The Pull List, Top Cow, Venom, Vinegar Teeth, Wonder Woman, X-Men Blue

This Week in X: Excalibur Returns (sort of) in X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue climaxes, and more!

January 12, 2018 by krisis

It’s the second week of new comics in 2018, and that means a whole new batch of X-Men comics books to help you catch up with!

This week brings five books with it – mid-arc issues of the two Ed Brisson old guy books in Cable #153 and Old Man Logan #33, the middle installment of Matthew Rosenberg’s Phoenix Resurrection, a climatic turn of events in Cullen Bunn’s X-Men: Blue #19, and an adorable pair of standalone stories in X-Men: Gold Annual #1.

None of these books are a must-read, but it’s nice to read a week of X-Men that’s solid across the board… well, except for one book, as you’ll hear in just a minute.

Don’t feel like reading right? You can watch the video version of This Week in X! This is not the same material as the full post below, although some of my opinions in the video overlap with the post.

Love the video? Love this post? Please let me know, because “This Week In X” is a pilot right now – there is no guarantee I’ll continue it past the end of this month unless folks are clamoring for more! [Read more…] about This Week in X: Excalibur Returns (sort of) in X-Men Gold, X-Men Blue climaxes, and more!

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Adriano Di Benedetto, Alitha E. Martinez, Armor, Art Adams, Blink, Cable, Cory Petit, Craig Yeung, Cullen Bunn, Djibril Morissette-Phan, Dono Sánchez-Almara, Ed Brisson, Externals, Federico Blee, Frank Martin, Jay David Ramos, Jean Grey, Jesus Aburtov, Joe Caramagna, Jon Malin, Leah Williams, Leinil Francis Yu, Longshot, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Marc Guggenheim, Matthew Rosenberg, Michael Garland, Mike Deodato, Monty Nero, Old Man Logan, Phoenix Resurrection, R. B. Silva, Rachelle Rosenberg, Rain Beredo, This Week In X, Travis Lanham, X-23, X-Men Blue, X-Men Gold

This Week in X: Astonishing X-Men, Phoenix Resurrection, Rogue & Gambit, & more!

January 5, 2018 by krisis

This Week In XI’m finally caught up to Marvel’s present day after a long abstention after Secret Wars, and that means I’m keeping up with the status quo of my favorite mutants for the first time since 2015.  And, since I’m keeping up, why shouldn’t you, too?!

This is a pilot of my new weekly recap of what’s new in X-Men comics. These are quick hit reviews, not feature-length write-ups or extensive recaps. My hope is that they’ll help you figure out the right books to be buying, and how to catch up with the current status quo of each title.

This weeks line-up is Astonishing X-Men (2017) #7, Iceman (2017) #9, Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey (2018) #3, Rogue & Gambit (2018) #1, X-Men: Gold (2017) #18, and X-Men: Grand Design (2018) #2.

Is this helping you decide what to buy or catch up with the present? Let me know in a comment! But, beware: spoilers abound!

[Read more…] about This Week in X: Astonishing X-Men, Phoenix Resurrection, Rogue & Gambit, & more!

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Astonishing X-Men, Carlos Pacheco, Charles Soule, Chris Sotomayor, Cory Petit, Diego Bernard, Ed Piskor, Ed Tadeo, Federico Blee, Frank D'Armata, Frank Martin, Iceman, J.P. Mayer, Joe Caramagna, Joe Sabino, Kelly Thompson, Ken Lashley, Kevin Wada, Kris Anka, Leinil Francis Yu, Marc Gug, Matthew Rosenberg, Mike Deodato, Negative Zone, Pere Perez, Phil Noto, Phoenix Resurrection, Rachelle Rosenberg, Rafael Fonteriz, Robert Gill, Rogue & Gambit, Sina Grace, This Week In X, Travis Lanham, X-Men Gold, X-Men: Grand Design

Comic Book Review: X-Men Gold (2017) #1 by Guggenheim, Syaf, Leisten, Martin, & Petit – The X-Men Are Good (Guys) Again!

April 5, 2017 by krisis

There is a recurring theme in today’s X-Men Gold #1: “past is prologue.”

It’s a theme I lean into heavily in my every day life. Being obsessed with data and truth tends to emphasize the impact of the past on the present. Most fresh starts in life consist of actors with past track records of behavior, models of behavior that have previously been described. They aren’t really that fresh

That’s part of why everyone loves a sudden success story, whether that’s an indie movie or a hot new start-up. It’s not just the success we’re celebrating, but the subversion of trends and predictability.

When you swim in the data of a thing all the time, it’s really hard to be pleasantly surprised by those fresh starts. I looked at the return order probability of hundreds of start-ups. There was no novel return curve to discover. After the first few dozen, everyone snapped into a story I had seen before.

Comics can feel like that, too. It’s a tiny industry where the most read book never even approaches a million eyeballs (and I’m counting individual eyeballs here, not pairs).

Marvel and DC are creating most of their stories with characters who have been around for over 25 years. Most of them have been combined into the same teams before. Most of the writers and artists are part of a crowd that flip flops back and forth, with stops at Image or another indie to take a breather. Most of the world-changing stories just echo back and forth between the big two publishers, copies of copies of copies of big ideas that have already been had.

Past is prologue. We’ve seen it before, so we know what we’ll see. And, like in the rest of life, we’re pleasantly surprised when we get something truly novel…

…and then we want more and more of that novel thing, until it’s our new past and becomes our next prologue.

When Marvel or DC say they are launching something “new,” it’s with the caveat that a seasoned reader already knows the introduction to this story.

The question is: does that mean you can predict where it will wind up?

X-Men Gold #1 (digital)

Written by Marc Guggenheim with pencils by Ardian Syaf, inks by Jay Leisten, colors by Frank Martin, and letters by VC’s Cory Petit.

CK Says: Buy it! Bottom Line: Guggenheim’s new take on flagship X-Men feels familiar and maybe a bit fan-service-y, but that doesn’t stop it from being remarkably fresh as it achieves its back-to-basics aim: the X-Men feel like heroes again.

Marc Guggenheim takes his second swing at the X-Men in three years, and this one is a solid hit. X-Men Gold is a delightful first issue with hints of many past teams, but it has a fresh outlook that’s intent on minimizing the recent past as leaden prologue weighing the series down from the start.

The X-Men’s past being prologue isn’t something you’ll often hear me lament, X-Men_Gold_2017-0001-interior-002as a studied X-fan of over 25 years. I’m all for continuity-dense mining of years of history, but Guggenheim -the successful creator of CW’s Arrow – was wise enough to know now isn’t the time.

What’s X-Men Gold all about? The story’s title says it all: “Back to Basics.”

The X-Men are back to being a team who scrambles the Blackwing because they hear someone is in trouble – mutant or not. Or, at least, that’s what newly-minted leader Kitty Pryde wants them to be, which is how we wind up in medias res with the team facing down Terrax, whose previous X-book exposure comes solely from Dazzler.

Why are they fighting him? Because The Avengers and The Champions didn’t show up and the X-Men are heroes. [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: X-Men Gold (2017) #1 by Guggenheim, Syaf, Leisten, Martin, & Petit – The X-Men Are Good (Guys) Again!

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Adrian Syaf, Frank Martin, Jay Leisten, Kitty Pryde, Marc Guggenheim, X-Men, X-Men Gold

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