Comics Briefly: American Vampire #28, Batman Inc. #2, Star Trek/Doctor Who #2, Superman Family Adventures #2, Wolverine and the X-Men #12

I just haven't been getting much in the way of comics recently. Saga #4 (last week) was good, as was American Vampire: Lord of Nightmares #1 (2 weeks ago). This is the week that all the other titles I'm collecting come out, though.

Favorite Issue this Week: No idea. Everything was AWESOME. I may have finally cut down my pull list to just books I actually enjoy.

All issues new in stores on June 27


American Vampire #28 (The Blacklist, Part One)
Writer: Scott Snyder, Artist: Rafael Albuquerque, Colors: Dave McCaig

Woo! All our American Vampires together to kick ass at last! I just loved this. Pearl was gorgeous and fierce, Cal is a stand up guy, uh, vampire, and Skinner is back and better than ever. Give me an action-packed set-up like this and I'm raring to go!


Batman Inc. #2
Writer: Grant Morrison, Artist: Chris Burnham, Color: Nathan Fairbairn

This issue re-caps Talia. Yup, her whole story, more or less. While my husband was reading this issue, he started to laugh and said, “Morrison just broke the new timeline.” Because clearly, when Damian is conceived (11-ish years ago, by now?), Bruce was not only Batman, he was already world-traveling-super-detective Batman. So yeah, all the good Ra's-Talia-Batman stuff from Denny O'Neil's runs? Morrison's letting us know that as far as he's concerned, it's all still in. Suck it, reboot! I approve. Despite a couple of odd art choices here and there, this is a super strong issue and a nice profile of this title's leading femme fatale.


Star Trek/Doctor Who #2
Writers: Scott & David Tipton and Tony Lee, Art: J. K. Woodward

I take back every tentatively negative thing I said about this title last month. I loved the hell out of this issue. The painterly style really grew on me, I think because it works much better for the Next Gen crew than for the Doctor. Maybe the artist just has more experience drawing those actors? There's a lot more emotion and intention in the art for the Star Trek characters. Even the action panels were great this month! Issue one gave a bit of orientation about the Doctor, Rory and Amy for any living-under-a-rock types. This issue gave us a mini-adventure to establish the crew of the Enterprise-D, for any young newbies, and then picked up the crossover about halfway through. I really, really got a huge kick out of this, and the preview of next month's cover has me all sorts of excited.


Superman Family Adventures #2
Writing and Art by Art Baltazar & Franco

AW YEAH TITANS! That's what I have to say about that. Well, and that this issue made me giggle a lot. It's corny and adorable and it has affable, paternal Clark and Streaky the Super-Cat and I love it.


Wolverine and the X-Men #12
Writer: Jason Aaron, Penciler/Colorist: Christ Bachalo, Inkers: Tim Townsend, Jaime Mendoza, Al Vey & Victor Olazaba

Not quite as strong as the other issues this week, but still enjoyable. There are some really good moments here, both comedic and dramatic. This title deals with some interesting aspects of the Avengers Vs. X-Men developments, without being completely bogged down in the pedantic parts. The Phoenix Rangers (I can't be the first one to make that joke... to sum-up, over in the main AvX titles, the Phoenix arrived and hosted itself across 5 different characters, giving them ugly costumes, crazy powers and an unreasonable devotion to Cyclops's recent fanaticism, or something. Mighty Mutant Phoenix Rangers.) we see in this one are nicely creepy, though. Rachel Grey is decently highlighted here, although the more fun parts are scenes like Beast and Iceman trying to beat each other down, and Kid Gladiator taking on everybody.