New Comic Wednesday: June 24 Edition

Happy Wednesday, kids, you know the drill. They make a bunch of comics, I read a bunch of comics, and we all hope for the best.

And, that said, here’s where things landed this week:

I love anthology books because it’s always fun to see a variety of creators take on a character and Dynamite’s 48 page The Shadow #100 has a hell of a deep bench when it comes to talent, enlisting the likes of Franco Francavilla, Howard Chaykin, Matt Gardner, and more for a series of shorts. There’s a lot of good stuff here. Howard Chaykin—who was born to draw The Shadow—tells a very meta tale pitting the character against a couple of shady criminal accountants (one of whom looks a lot like J. Jonah Jameson) shaking down a comic book publisher for money. Michael Uslan’s humorous nod to Batman’s humble beginnings as a thinly veiled clone of the shrouded avenger who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men is hard to not chuckle at. Francavilla’s story is a gripping throwback to classic horror tales and, as always, the accompanying artwork is stunning. The only thing holding the book back is the single note nature of the character—he’s a guy with guns who mysteriously appears laughing, spits out the same catch line, and pretty much scares the piss out of anyone within earshot, including the people he saves—which wears thin pretty fast.

The Shadow

As of U.F.O.logy #3 (Boom!), the penultimate issue of James Tynion IV and Noah J. Yeunkel’s strange, Spielburg-esque throwback to 80’s sci-fi films, I still have no idea what’s going on—yet I can’t stop reading. We’ve got mysterious government experiments waking up and walking around, a teenager who’s seeing all kinds of weirdness after being marked by an alien, a small mid-western town with a dark history of U.F.O fanaticism, and I can’t imagine how this is going to tie up. Hardly a good point to jump on, this book would read a lot better if they would’ve skipped the monthly issues altogether in lieu of going directly to trade.

“Can it be that it was all so simple, then?” While Rodimus should send Optimus Prime a gift basket for letting him miss out on that whole Combiner Wars nonsense over in their companion series Transformers, his crew just went through a lot of nonsense for the sake of maintaining the status quo in Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #42 (IDW). Taking stock of where we are now—the Autobot ship Vis Vitalis was overtaken by parastic nano-tics during a “pre-wake” dance party for Thunderclash, the “Greatest Autobot of All-Time,” and the map to Cyberutopia is once again lost—yep, we’re right back where we started. As shown by a very funny and self-aware gag at the end of the issue, this series is juggling too many larger-than-life personalities at the moment, and it’s hard to connect to any of them.

Aside from Sophie Campbell’s always incredible artwork, writer Kelly Thompson’s much lauded Jem and the Holograms comic has been a less than compelling read for me. Sure, it gets a lot of well deserved points for having a diverse, female centric cast who—again, due almost entirely to Campbell’s gift for character design—read visually as individuals, but the book has largely been focused on style over substance. This week’s Jem and the Holograms #4 (IDW), is more of the same in that regard, except that it feels like some of the characters and plot ideas are starting to finally develop. While it’s still difficult to really care about any of them, it’s nice to see that Jericca is more than an insecure bag full of boy-crazy, intrepid music journalist Rio actually has a brain, not all of the Misfits are completely homicidal, and that we might actually get treated to the shockingly inexplicable physical danger and attempted murder that the cartoon was known for. Hey, it’s progress—I’ll take it.

Jem6-24

While I wasn’t a fan of Mark Waid’s original Empire and Barry Kitson’s artwork isn’t my taste, Empire Uprising #3 (IDW) is a pretty interesting look at what happens after the bad guys win. Proving true the old adage that bad guys are terrible at falling in line with one another—because…well…bad guys tend to be motivated completely by self interest—Lord Golgoth’s ministers are jockeying against each other behind the scenes for his favor while he’s trying to maintain a firm grip on his empire. If you can get past the excessive violence and garish, it-came-from-the-90’s character design, this one might be for you.

Man, kind of a rough week, amirite?


Also available this week:

Boom! – Adventure Time #41 Deep State #27, Uncle Grandpa Pizza Steve Summer Special

IDW – Dead Squad: Ayalla Tal One-Shot, Donald Duck #2, Garbage Pail Kids: Gross Encounters of the Third Kind, Orphan Black #4, Skylanders #10, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: New Animated Adventures #24, Transformers: Windblade #4, Johnny Boo Meets Dragon Puncher, G.I. Joe: Real American Hero #215

Dynamite – Dawn/Vampirella #4, Frank Cho’s Jungle Girl Season 3 #3, John Carter: Warlord of Mars #8, Legenderry Green Hornet #5, Swords of Sorrow: Black Sparrow/Lady Zorro Special


Project-Nerd is a press partner of BOOM! Studios, Dynamite Entertainment, and IDW Publishing. If you would like to see your studios’ content included in our weekly release article, please contact our editors.

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