This week's picks

Lots of solid comics to choose from this week. Eagle-eyed readers, though, will note that I said in my pre-game that there were 18 books to be reviewed this week and even eagler-eyed readers will note that I only ended up reviewing 17. What tomfoolery is this? I didn't review Marvel NOW What?, the kind of self-mocking issue with joke stories from all sorts of people. I read it but didn't really review it because it doesn't totally strike a chord with me but I'm pretty sure it'll be fine for others. That's my review. Not for me. ANYWAY, on to this week's picks!

Uncanny Avengers 13

This nearly didn't make the cut over Superior Carnage and a couple of other books but, the truth is, I'm a sucker for a well-done hearing-damage joke. In this issue, Captain America has extensive hearing damage from a direct blast from Banshee and it plays throughout the entire issue. Guys, it's pretty hilarious. On top of that, there's other far more serious things happening and Remender does a fantastic job balancing out the funny with the dramatic, pulling us back in after kicking the issue off with Cap's shouting and moving to Wolverine's extreme pain. There's a lot to really like in this issue and, as has been true so far in this series, one of the most impressive things about the book is that it feels like everyone on the team gets pretty equal screen-time, certainly enough to give us a sense of the characters and their personality while not depriving us (or them) of their story. Good book all around.

Venom 42

Honorary final issue pick. This has been a really phenomenal series all around and one that I think didn't really see a huge downgrade or upswing from Cullen Bunn's replacement of Rick Remender. That may sound like something of a slight but I don't think it is. I think Remender was doing a fantastic job on a hard book and Bunn came in and really kept it running smoothly. I don't think it saw the biggest of upswings because Remender had done a solid job with the character and Bunn felt that. Why change a good thing? I do think Bunn took his own spin on the character and the story so it's not like a Roy Thomas-Stan Lee thing but the book's quality never really changed. Just a really solid, pretty long-lasting book, especially for one that could have flopped out of the gate. Sad to see this one go.

Young Avengers 11

This book is just really good, you guys. It's very sharp, it's very clever, it's very fun, it's very tense. Everything about it is pretty much the mark of a good comic. The pacing is good, the writing is smart, the story is interesting, the characters are well-developed and deep, the art is amazing, everything. And, like the best books, there are wheels within wheels and stories within stories here that are all, each one of them, worth telling. This issue sees the transformation of Loki from the more innocent and, at one point, more trust-worthy Kid Loki to the new, more Tom-Hiddleston teen-early 20s Loki. Really neat character design, really neat story to prompt the change, just a very smooth transformation, which you can't always say about comics. Really fun book. Excited for the next couple issues as we're bound to start seeing massive cameos from other young heroes in the universe and the resolution of the Mother story, probably. Though, admittedly, sad to see Kid Loki go.