It was a week for the throwback. Rereleased books, classic writers, and relaunched franchises were the order of the Wednesday. Today we examine forbidden love, father-son day, destined spears, and vampires of the new world, all here on Panel of the Week.
Magdalena #1
I was pleasantly surprised by this relaunch of Magdalena. I was expecting more of the usual hot nun with katanas fighting demons, and to be fair there was a bit of that, but there was also some decent history of the character and the introduction of an interesting new villain. This is still a Top Cow comic so we got no less than three huge splash pages of Patience in different saucy outfits. This is the most relevant. If a word like relevant can ever be used in the context of Magdalena.
Ultimate Comics Avengers #6
For everyone who hasn’t had enough Mark Millar in the last few weeks I give you Ultimate Cap flying a teleporting plane into his son, the Red Skull. The next panel is Cap apologizing, FYI. Carlos Pacheco handled the pencils for this first arc and I think for the most part he was not up for the job. Granted this is a title in the gimped Ultimate universe but it’s still an Avengers book and I think that calls for some top talent from Marvel. He draws a decent Red Skull but he just didn’t have the chops to breathe life into the lamest set of Avengers I can remember.
X-Men Forever Annual #1
I’ll admit that it’s been a while since I’ve read some Claremont. I don’t remember the action scenes, any scenes really, containing so much narration. That includes the usual square box voice as well as the voices of the characters themselves. Night Crawler has been around for decades. We know what it means when we see ‘BAMF’ and then he appears behind his attacker in the next panel. I couldn’t help but feel that this was a lack of faith in his artist, his reader, or both.
American Vampire #2
We got some familiar ground here with Pearl in this issue. That trope being a life turned upside down. In this case it’s a new life as a Sun resistant vampire. I’m guessing the following issues will follow her transition into this new world. Artist Rafael Albuquerque was born to draw blood-drained corpses. Don’t get me wrong his vampires are beautifully vicious and natural but they’re nothing compared to his dead bodies. I hope he draws this book forever and ever.
Age of Bronze #1 (Image Firsts)
Image has been releasing a bunch of Issue 1’s lately. I feel confident that I own most if not all of these rereleases somewhere in my longboxes. Well, except for Age of Bronze here. Creator Eric Shanower makes these black and white pages sing with expressive faces and gorgeous, delicate line work. Looks like I’ve got some trades to buy.