Scott McDaniel Batman, New comics

New comics!

Strange Adventures 10

Things are finally made clear as Mr. Terrific lays it all out like the detective at the end of a murder mystery.  It’s 27 pages of narration, but Tom King had me completely glued to the page.  Fantastic writing, and now we’ll see how it all turns out.

Black Widow 7

This team of Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande might be, no joke, one of the best creative teams ever.  I can’t believe how blown away I am by this title right now.  As heartbreaking as it is, I’m glad that Thompson is continuing to explore the trauma Natasha’s experiencing in losing her family from the first arc; It’s not a plot point that’s so easily dismissed.

You don't have to be a parent for this to sting.

And then there’s the art.  Mind exploding.

Shadecraft 3

I can’t articulate why, but the story so far has been as insubstantial as shadows themselves.  It lacks any kind of emotional weight, and I’m finding myself sadly disappointed so far.  The only thing keeping this on my pull list besides the art (and even that isn’t Lee Garbett at his best) is Joe Henderson’s continued streak of excellent issue-ending cliffhangers.

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr 1-2

This is kind of like Neil Gaiman’s immortal Death: High Cost of Living, but not really.  The goddess of death is out of a job, and she sets out to kill the person responsible.  It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read, and it’s lovely.

Batman 575-578, 582-584, 588-590

The start of the Scott McDaniel run. (I think this comes after his time on Nightwing and before Green Arrow.)  He works with Larry Hama, Ed Brubaker, and Brian K Vaughan in a series of stories that are all decent enough but really need the art to elevate them to a Nice rating.  

Having not read much, if any, non-GI Joe writing by Larry Hama, this is the first time I’ve noticed that his scripts could very much pass for his GI Joe stories, with their military specificity and characters describing exactly what they’re doing.  Batman’s basically a more verbal Snake Eyes.

Vaughan writes a creative Matches Malone origin story that would be more interesting if I cared at all about Matches Malone.

I was literally thinking this exact same thing at the exact same moment.

Sweet pose from McDaniel.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice