This week's picks

Hey everyone, sorry for the no-post yesterday. I scheduled myself to have Saturday open so I could, if I chose, review the free comic book day books yesterday. Instead, I chose not to. Still, hopefully you guys all went and had a good time at your LCS. Now on to the top picks of the week!


Amazing Spider-Man 1

Dan Slott, Humberto Ramos, Victor Olazaba, and Edgar Delgado return to the world of Peter Parker and very quickly show us that they're ready to pick up right where they left off. With a solid lead story and a number of fun and interesting shorter stories to follow it, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 1 gives enough book and enough excitement to justify its $5.99 price tag but I couldn't help wondering this whole week about what I talked about at such length in my little miscellaneous section in the main review (linked to above). I still can't help but think that putting this book out for the regular $3.99, even if you sell it at a loss, encourages a ton more people to pick up this book and erases questions of "is the book worth the money?" and replaces it with "this book was well worth $3.99." ESPECIALLY for a big launch the week of FCBD. Get your new readers, dummies.

Avengers 28

I like it when things come to a head in a book in a way I don't expect. For all that I've loved the Illuminati and wondered about who would find out about the incursions next, I never jumped to Banner (though I very clearly should have, considering who comprises the Illuminati as is) and I never thought about all of the repercussions that would have. Hickman did something pretty clever by shell-gaming us with Captain America, kicked out of the Illuminati and memory erased while we sit and wonder when that's going to backfire on them. While we were looking at Cap, there was Hulk with the biggest of all axes to grind with this team. Hickman brings out the tension and the anger beautifully in this book before deflating it with a few well-placed Tony words. Really strong.

X-Force 4

I love Fantomex and I love what Spurrier had teased about Fantomex and I love issues that fundamentally change the way we look at a character but stay, somehow, in the realm of what we know of a character. That was a tough sentence to get through. ANYWAY, this issue has a bit of everything. Fantomex struggles with his programmed self-worth/self-assuredness as he can't help but recognize the skills of the people around him. Between that and the building sense of doubt around EVA and the explanation of the white hot room, Spurrier continues to bring out the very best (which is sometimes the very worst) in characters and really knows how to get them to a place where he can use them to tell the most effective stories. Great work all around.