Immortal Iron Fist #1-2

Written by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction
Art by David Aja
Additional art by Travel Foreman, Derek Fridolfs, and John Severin
32 pages, color
Published by Marvel Comics

The longer you’ve been familiar with the world of super-hero comics, the more you know some things to be true. Sooner or later, all characters will come back from the dead. Sooner or later, all characters who once starred in their own book that was since cancelled will get another headlining book. And sooner or later, you’ll get a real apathy towards the endless recycling and rehashing of the same characters over and over again. It’s because of this last one that I almost missed out on one of the latest revamps at Marvel, The Immortal Iron Fist. And now I feel stupid for doing so, because the reality is that it’s actually quite good.

Continue reading “Immortal Iron Fist #1-2”

Negative Burn #7

Written by Michael Cho, Shannon Eric Denton, Jim Dougan, Alexander Grecian, Ron Kasman, Ron McCain, Shane White, C. Willow Wilson
Art by Michael Cho, Georges Jeanty, Ron Kasman, Eric Kim, Pav Kovacic, Ron McCain, Rily Rossmo, Curtis Square-Briggs
64 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics

With a long and prestigious 50-issue run at Caliber Comics, Negative Burn was one of the few modern ongoing anthologies a little over a decade ago that’s worth remembering. Now with the title back as a regular title, it seemed like as good a time as any to dip in and see how well it’s delivering up selections of short stories.

Continue reading “Negative Burn #7”

Maintenance #1

Written by Jim Massey
Art by Robbi Rodriguez
32 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press

Part of the problem with trying to create a humor comic, when you think about it, is that both the writing and the art need to be equally funny. Each half of the equation normally has to support each other in a comic to begin with, but it’s doubly true with comedy; the potential difference in humor levels between the writing and the art can ruin a joke with only half of the punch line really being delivered. Fortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case with Jim Massey and Robbi Rodriguez’s Maintenance, where the two creators are in sync with each other’s funny bones.

Continue reading “Maintenance #1”