Legends of Red Sonja #1 (Comics Review)

Red Sonja is on a pretty damn good kick right now. She has her own monthly comic that was recently relaunched and has been doing really well. It also helps that it follows a fairly successful and long run that continues to be collected in trade paperbacks. There is an upcoming crossover series involving her and Brian Wood’s Conan. And then there’s Legends of Red Sonja a new mini-series that started this week and furthers the, well, legend of the She-Devil with a sword.

When Gail Simone and Walter Geovani launched the new series a few months ago, the first issue had a number of cover variants that were all drawn by some of the industry’s top female artists, including the original cover. With Legends Gail has turned that thing around and the stories in this anthology-style series are all written by some of the best and biggest female prose and comics writers. But this is not a typical anthology series, it is quite different, and that is something that works to the advantage of this series quite well, going by the first issue.

Arrow Season 2 Episode 5 (TV Show Review)

If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s recent Batman movie trilogy and you’ve been watching CW’s Arrow of late, AND you hear that the new episode this week is titled League of Assassins, then you are going to be hyped up as hell. I certainly was. Having enjoyed (for the most part, all the scenes with the League of Shadows in the movies, and having some knowledge of Ra’s al Ghul outside of the trilogy, this week’s episode was something I’d been really, really looking forward to.

There are lots of great things in this episode, the best being the storyline consistency in terms of how the episode progresses the larger season-length narrative, and how it continues to build up all the characters, especially Ollie & Co, the Canary, and the Lances. Some of the characters, like Roy Harper and Brother Blood and Isabel Rochev took a backseat this week, but I didn’t mind that at all since the other characters had all the bases covered.

Note: This review contains spoilers for the identity of the masked vigilante who may/may not be Black Canary.

Green Arrow #25 by Jeff Lemire (Comics Review)

This is the month that marks a slew of DC releases which tie into Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s ongoing Zero Year event for the Batman title. Whether a Bat-family title or otherwise, there are a lot of these comics, and the first among these is Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino’s Green Arrow #25, which takes a break from the ongoing events in that series to give us a flashback to the origins of the relationship between Oliver Queen and John Diggle.

Of course, if you recognize that name, then you are in the know as to some of what’s going to happen in the issue. Created for the CW Arrow, John Diggle has carved out a niche as a fan-favourite character and its great to see that he is transitioning to the comics. Reminds me of how Harley Quinn was introduced in Batman: The Animated Series and then transitioned to the comics, such that she is finally getting herself an ongoing series this month. As a flashback, this was a really good issue, despite a few flaws, but the overall effect is superb nonetheless.