With DC Comics’ “New 52” dominating comic shop shelves this month with more number one issues than any other time in history, other titles that are launching right now couldn’t have more competition for readers’ attention. This week, we’re going to try to shine a light on some other big titles that are launching this month, beginning with last week’s Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1 by Brian Bendis and Sara Pichelli. It’s part of an entirely revamped Ultimate line-up from Marvel, and as a jumping on point it’s hard to do better.

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With the Summer coming to an end, DC Comics’ Flashpoint concluding and all the new number one issues DC is shipping every week, Marvel is just reaching the penultimate issue of their major event, Fear Itself. This series has had some big moments, but we’ve felt throughout that they weren’t sold with the impact they could have had. Chapter Six continues that trend along with a lot more set up for the final battle with the Serpent. This puts an impossible amount of pressure on Chapter Seven to bring the series to a satisfying conclusion.

Spoilers for Fear Itself in general, Fear Itself #6 specifically and the many possible fates of Bucky Barnes will follow.

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So the second week of the “New 52” DC Universe feels far more difficult to predict what will be good than the first. DC is releasing another 13 new number ones this week, but absent are titles that I have real confidence in like I had with Swamp Thing and Action Comics. How can anyone possibly be expected to determine which of these new books they should really buy? There’s just so many of them! To make your life easier, I’ll offer my ill-informed, not-quite-expert opinion on what titles are worth picking up tomorrow and each week during this first month of the New 52.

As far as this week goes, in my opinion there are three new DCU books that are probably going to be worth checking out and a few others I’m at least curious about. Read more of this article »

Last Wednesday, in recognition of the first full week of DC Comics’ New 52 promotion, I recommended the six five new DC titles that I thought were most likely to be worthy of your attention and your money sight unseen. Now that we’ve had a week to digest them, the question is how did I do? Undoubtably I think it’s safe to characterize the week as a monster success for DC at least in terms of PR: tons of sellouts, reprints and series being ordered in the six figures.  Overall, I can honestly say the quality of the actual product was stronger than I was expecting. I personally recommended the following series in order of expected quality: Swamp Thing, Action Comics, Animal Man, Batgirl and Stormwatch (and Hawk and Dove). So how were they in reality? Read more of this article »

The X-Men’s Havok has long been my favorite comic book superhero. In fact, we’ve even set up a fan site for him here at MLD. While he’s by no means a central figure in the Marvel Universe, or even in the X-Men’s corner of it, his inclusion in X-Men: First Class introduced Alex Summers to a whole new audience in theaters this Summer. His appearance in the movie was certainly fun to see, but like every character that has been brought to life on the big screen there’s a very different version of the man called Havok that you’ll find in the pages of the X-Men comic books.

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