This weeks picks

Kind of a slow week this week. Not a lot of standouts and not many that'll really stick with me but surely enough to fill this list out, right? Right?

Daredevil 36

It's a little hard to add too much weight to this finale as the book will pick up again next month with the same creative team. Fortunately, that's not really why it stands out this week. The fight and the court case are all good, particularly as Matt realizes just why he's protected his identity for so long and just what that protection has meant. There are a couple of really nice pages in the issue but the real driving force is the opening scene between Matt and Foggy. They have one of the best relationships in comics and one of the most unique and it's come through pretty well here as they've repaired their friendship pretty solidly (though it still had its bumps this volume) and the series ends with Foggy, despite the pressure it'll bring on him and the health care it will take away, urging Matt to reveal himself as Daredevil. Very nice stuff.

New Warriors 1

I don't think this was a perfect first issue by any means. I wasn't blown away by it in the same sort of way I was by NEW AVENGERS or BLACK WIDOW or HAWKEYE though, if I compare every book to those, most books will lose. What I really liked about this book, though, is it was a very confident set-up book. Sometimes writers on a new book will try to cram too much in or try to introduce too many storylines all at once. What makes this number one even better is that, looking back at it, it feels like this book very much could have had those problems as it showed a bunch of our new heroes and showed them all up against a new enemy but it never felt overloaded or slow. It moved well, it had a good tone, and I think it's planting seeds that will work pretty well. Very interested to see where this one goes.

Punisher 2

I don't know that this was really the best book out there this week and it certainly makes this list as a benefit of the slow week but all of these qualifications don't mean that this book isn't still worthy of consideration or of checking out. One of the things that this book is already doing really well is one of the intangibles of any sort of literature or media, creating a tone. It's still pretty early and so there's not really a way to even guarantee what that tone is but it's certainly establishing a unique and consistent feel for the series. A lot of that tone is built with Mitch Gerards' art and colors but I think Edmondson has also shown between this book and BLACK WIDOW that he understands the worlds that his characters inhabit. Time will still tell if this is a really top-notch book, more than just a top-notch Punisher book, even, but there are certainly hints of a greater world and greater character development and plot here, all helped by the established tone.