Geekomon

Caveat Emptor: All these books are relatively new. So take it in context that I can only judge them by what's out.

Northwest Passage #1- Good stuff. English exploration stuff. Reminds me of Scott Card's Hatrack River coupled with a lot of Lewis and Clark. The best part of the book was the Hero's oratory on complacency and how the Company was in a rut because it wasn't exploring anymore. Success and safety builds complacency. Complacency means: Tortoise wins. Very good theme. Also, many parallel subplots, which means: Good story. Very Promising.

HoM - after reading all 7 issues of this mini, i can safely say that i'm underwhelmed. Totally underwhelmed. It's this Chaos Magic premise that's insane. The whole Marvel mutant world is built on the tension between humans and mutants. If you are going to destroy 96 percent of the mutants in the world, would'nt it be better if the USA declared war on these folk? Internment camps, furnaces, etc etc. That's a helluva lot more believable than chaos magic. No one likes Deus Ex Machinas. Bendis is still a good writer/director/framer but this Marvel megaevent is nothing but a stopgap response to Identiy Crisis. Marvel is good because it lets its writers have more power than the editors. That = better stories than DC. I hope they return to their bread and butter. Having said that, the writing is still pretty sharp. Interesting characters, good art, nicely organized panelling-->Doesnt matter how pretty your pig smells. It's still a pig.

Infinite Crisis #1 - Death, war, shit hitting the fan. I don't really know everything that's going on but hey, physical war and death of superheroes is awesome. Plus the Lex thing is awesome. DC is suppose to be about grand, sweeping, Dragonball style epics. Their superheroes are built with too much power to support any other type of story. IC #1 epitomizes all that is good about DC.
Unlike Worlds at War, the deaths in IC1 are graphic, and brutal. Realistic. Did I mention how stupid Worlds at War was?

Villains United - Possibly the only Countdown mini worthy of it's cover price. Taken as a whole, this is a rollickin' good read. Deadshot and Catman = Deadpool and Cable. That's high praise. The ending was nice, and the overall plot wasn't hackneyed. Everything made sense. Not only did it clink, it also built up several characters. Remember, these are second tier characters Gail is working with. She's actually given them life. And life means sales. Sales means popularity. Popularity means movies. Movies means DVDs. DVDs mean money. Gail needs a raise. And Birds of Prey needs to be canceled or turned into porn.

Uncanny X-men #464-#465 - You know, Chris Claremont and Scott Bachalo make a good team. Chris can write all these little useless Byrne captions and Scott can draw interesting pictures that make these Claremont explanations useless. Hey, anything that makes you not need to read Claremont exposition is A+. Of course, you've got to give Chris a coin or two for putting a DC world toppling spin into X-men. Bachalo, you should ask for a raise immediately. Your practically writing Uncanny by yourself.

Marvel Team-up #13 - I have to confess. I think Robert Kirkman knows his trade better than most people in the business. He KNOWS what he's doing. I have no idea why the Savage Critic doesn't like Team-up. This is fun, smart, and thinky. All his stuff is. I guess there's two schools. Robert Kirkman is manga good. Laters. (I'm not a big fan of tech jacket or battle pope though)