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Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Sick Day Reviews
I'm busy getting over a very nasty case of the flu, so I figured, as long as I'm confined to my sick bed for the day, I may as well catch up on some review comics.
Second Wave #5 continues the tale of post alien invasion survival, as the protagonists deal with a group of bigoted small-town law enforcement officers who have taken to the concept of martial law with great enthusiasm. It's another good installment of Michael Alan Nelson's and Chee's adventure serial, and the latest batch of new characters to be introduced should make for some more entertaining melodrama as the story continues.
Jeremiah Harm #4 brings the intergalactic terrorist Dak Moyra closer to his goal of destroying the universe. Keith Giffen's and Alan Grant's story continues the mood of dark humor and extreme violence from the previous issues, but new artist Rafael Albuquerque doesn't quite match the manic grotesqueries that Rael Lyra brought to the story.
Joe Casey's and Julia Bax's The Black Plauge is an exciting new debut, focusing on a growing conflict within the factions of super-villaindom, exacerbated by the arrival of a new super-villain using the identity of a long since retired villain. But naturally, things become more complicated than that, as agendas and goals are not at all what they first appear to be. The book moves along at a brisk pace, and Casey's writing is clever and engaging. He manages to make the world feel recognizably super-heroic without having to resort to obvious analogues of more familiar characters. And Julia Bax has an appealing, clear style that helps to convey that superheroic feel.
