What a great week. Expensive week, but great. SHIELD, Turf, even the Invincible Returns catch-up issue was much better than I anticipated. The big bright shining star was easily SHIELD, and for good reason, but the art all over the rack was superior. I clipped out a few for you, so here it is, your Panel of the Week.
S.H.I.E.L.D. #1
Meet the latest action hero, Leonardo Da Vinci. After the recent punching up (sorry) of the Sherlock Homes legend how long will it be before this Italian golden god gets the same treatment? Look at him! Of course he’s here to save the God damn day. What else would he be doing in his personal astronaut rig? Where has Marvel been hiding Dustin Weaver? I have to agree with Wolk on this one. Every page of this book is a detailed work of art. Plus it has a Galactus cameo. Who hasn’t defeated that giant Grimace?
Batman and Robin #11
I’m not even going to go near the writing on this book. It’s Morrison after all. The closest thing I can think to compare it to is Lost. You are fairly certain the story is going to be awesome but right now you have no clue what’s going on. The artist on this arc is Andy Clarke. His art style is almost vintage. He uses very fine lines to handle the shading and on some pages, like this one of Dick sprinting to escape a room, it looks beautiful. On other pages characters like Damian and Oberon look wooden.
Wolverine Weapon X #12
Hey, it’s another Old Man Logan! This is just the latest in a very long line of what-if future versions of Wolverine. We don’t get too much detail into how Logan got himself into this state. Hopefully, the next issues will tell us. Of course, all you Age of Apocalypse fans out there will know that this isn’t the first time Wolvie has lost a hand. My only question is why a hook? If we’re slapping on grim prosthetics why not the claws?
Demo Vol.2 #3
This was probably my least favorite of this volume so far. It reminded me a bit too much of Memento. I couldn’t tell if the endless stream of post-it notes in Marlo’s life are reminders or directions? Was this OCD or some type of precog ability? One of the merits of Demo is that I never know where the story will go. It doesn’t matter much, I could watch Becky Cloonan draw the phone book. Wait, does that analogy work?
Vengeance of the Moon Knight #7
I used to be a very big fan of the Merc with a Mouth. That second(?) volume he was featured in, the one drawn by McGuinness, was just delightful. Since then I’ve found both the art and the writing of one of my favorite characters to be uneven at best. In fact, when I plucked this issue of Moony off the shelf I groaned when I saw that Deadpool had infected yet another Marvel title. But dammit, I just had to chuckle when I saw this panel.
New Avengers Luke Cage #1
I bet that any time an artist is tapped to draw Luke Cage he or she must secretly delight in the notion that maybe for a page or two Luke Cage will appear in his original Power Man outfit. And for good reason, this get-up is just silly. The only thing that made that tiara and yellow buccaneer boots ok was the fact that his partner, Iron Fist, was skipping across roof tops in a high collard pajama set with matching booties. The Luke Cage we know and love today isn’t version 2.0. Oh no, there was a very short lived revamp of Luke that had a goal of making him as mediocre as possible. See below:
