Walking Dead, Archer and Armstrong, Bloodshot, New comics

New comics!

Rorschach 6

I don’t remember enough about what’s gone before to know where this comes in the timeline of the story.  The letter exchange between Laura and WIl is fine enough, as are the snippets of the presidential debate, but this is one of the slighter issues of the series so far.

Taskmaster 4

More fun than the previous issue.  The fight between Taskmaster and Okoye is well done, and I like how Taskmaster was constantly thwarted in his attempts to look at her.  (He can’t copy her movements until he sees her.)  One issue to go, looking forward to his showdown with Black Widow.  

Walking Dead 97-193

For the majority of my time reading this series, I’ve been giving the issues a Pretty Good rating.  But I’ve had to change my assessment after finishing the whole run - My collection initially ended with issue 168 (The emotional death of Andrea).  But I had to know what happened next, and bought the last four trades to finish up the story.  (That doesn’t contradict the Wouldn’t buy again rating; I wanted these issues to finish up the collection.  But were I to lose my whole collection, I wouldn’t buy Walking Dead over again.)  

In the final analysis, I tore through the last 97 issues of the story in 3 days; There’s no way a comic that’s only ‘pretty good’ can grab my attention like that.  A couple of final thoughts about Walking Dead:

There are few villains in comics as compelling as Negan.  An amazing job of writing by Robert Kirkman to make him so sympathetic after the horrors he’s performed.  George RR Martin’s the only other writer I can think of off the top of my head who can do that so well.

The spreadsheet I made keeping track of all the deaths.  (I stopped after TPB 28.)  Kirkman killed 68 out of the 111 characters I tracked.  The majority of the survivors were introduced at around the halfway point of the series (The discovery of The Hilltop).  

The introduction of the Commonwealth was a little too far fetched for me; That society was way too developed from what we’d seen up until then.  

The status of the world in the flash forward, which was as implausible as the Commonwealth, still felt earned.  I was ready for the happy ending after so many issues of death.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Good 

Archer and Armstrong 1-4

Moving on to the Valiant comics in my collection.  (Except for Ivar, Timewalker, which somehow wasn’t grouped with them.)  Archer, which has the same creative team as Ivar, elicits pretty much exactly the same comments - Well done humor, good action, interesting plot, but not enough to keep me reading.

(Archer reads as a clone of Connor Hawke, which is a point for, not against, the series.)

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Bloodshot 1-4

An entertaining but forgettable story about a superpowered agent rebelling against the government that created him.  

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice