This week's picks

Pretty good week for comics. I'd say there were a solid handful up near the top, worthy of consideration for the top three (marred by the fact that two pretty quickly took two of the top spots), plenty of books that drifted between "fine" and "good" and really none that slumped into "unreadable" or even "irredeemable." This blog should be called the Irredeemable Unreadable. Anyway. Picks!

Black Widow 2

After a very impressive debut just two short weeks ago, BLACK WIDOW lands on the top picks again with another thought-provoking, character-driven and absolutely gorgeous book. This one is particularly neat because you open the comic and the very first page is a beautiful full-page panel of Natasha flipping away from a car crash ("flipping" perhaps implies a little too much intent). There's a lot to like here and it's not hard to find it all. The action scenes are very impressive and well choreographed, the quieter moments hold their spots perfectly, Natasha's dialogue is exactly what you'd want it to be, the art continues to be amazing (guys, I can't stress how pretty this book is), we get some plot both with the introduction of the Iron Scorpion and with Isaiah's sudden ability to take care of problems. It's just a very interesting, very well made book. I'm really looking forward to this one and I think everyone should probably get in on the ground floor of it now.

Hawkeye 16

Proving that sequential numbering isn't for everyone, HAWKEYE 16 leapt ahead of HAWKEYE 15 in release date and shows, for anyone who may have been asking, that Kate Bishop can absolutely kill in two issues back-to-back about her. I don't know who possibly could have been asking that but, as much as I like the idea of the alternating story and I rather miss seeing what's happening with Clint, Fraction has made Kate such a compelling and entertaining character, pulling her from her more rigidly set YOUNG AVENGERS past and giving her solo adventures the likes of which have never been seen and she's knocking it out of the park every time. Add to that Annie Wu's incredible art and her uncanny ability for expression and emotion and this is a book with both immediate payoff and re-readability through the roof. Look, I love this title anyway and I don't know what else I can say to convince you but this book is amazing.

Superior Spider-Man Team-Up 9

I like the Spider-Man team-up books in general, with AVENGING SPIDER-MAN earning a special place in my heart and now SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN TEAM-UP pulling in good issue after good issue, but this one feels different in a way because of just how tied to the current plot of SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN it appears to be. Up to now, the team-up books have been good and extremely entertaining for the most part but have been pretty self-contained. Instead, this one has its roots very much in the GOBLIN NATION arc from SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN and has repercussions that must be felt throughout both books. Also, the writing is impressive, the art is fantastic, and the characterization is spot on. One of the things that always impresses me about this book and AVENGING SPIDER-MAN before it is the adaptability of the writer to pull in a score of other characters, write them for only an issue or two, and somehow nail down the personality. Impressive feat and Kevin Shinick does it every bit as well as people like Christos Gage and Christopher Yost. Great stuff here, enough even to beat out other top picks contenders X-MEN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and IRON MAN.