Comics Picks of The Week 29.01.2014

Not as busy a week as the last but fairly busy nonetheless. The new creative teams on various ongoing titles continue to go strong, particularly Justice League Dark and Witchblade while some of the newer titles like Black Science continue to be exception, so that’s one thing that I really liked about this past week. January in particular has been a really excellent month of comics what with Marvel’s full-on All-New Marvel NOW! launch and some really good issues for DC’s Forever Evil event.

Just one graphic novel again this week, the Lee/Buscema magnificence that is Silver Surfer: Judgement. I was meaning to read at least one more, but time wasn’t on my side and I missed out. Hopefully the new month gets off to a good start.

Anyway, here’s another edition of this new feature. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.

Catwoman #27 (Comics Review)

The only Catwoman issue I’ve read, in the New 52 or otherwise, is the recent Catwoman #25 which was a Zero Year tie-in and was written by one of my favourite writers, John Layman, and drawn by Aaron Lopresti and Art Thibert. It was a really fun issue that I picked only because it was a tie-in and because John and Aaron were behind it. I’ve heard far too many negative things about the current Ann Nocenti run to really be interested in picking up the series for long-term. But, that’s kind of where the Gothtopia crossover story stepped in.

John introduced Gothtopia in his short story for Detective Comics #27 and just a couple weeks ago we had Gail Simone doing a Gothropia issue for Batgirl, which I really liked. Both stories were excellent, so I managed to drum up some drive to pick up this issue. And I kind of wish that I hadn’t. Because this was mostly a very tiresome read with some odd artwork here and there. Not at all what I expected, even with the low expectations that I had of it. I’ve tried Ann Nocenti’s Katana in the past as well but that title didn’t work for me either. So I suppose, Ann Nocenti’s work really isn’t for me. Maybe I should try something else that she’s done that’s received some acclaim.

Justice League of America #8 by Matt Kindt (Comics Review)

Given the way that DC’s last big crossover event, Trinity War, ended and the way that the current event, Forever Evil, started, the big question on everybody’s mind has been just what the hell happened to the three Justice League teams. Forever Evil #1 jumped forward in time a bit and its opening act is disconnected with the ending of Justice League #23, which was the final Trinity War issue. It was only until the final page of this month’s Forever Evil #2 that we were able to get a glimpse of that in-between time, or rather, the result of it.

With Justice League of America #8, the first JL issue to hit stands since Justice League #23 in August, we finally begin to explore where the heroes are, what’s happened to them, and what the future has in store. Matt Kindt begins his 6-issue arc on this title with this new release, and it promises to be an interesting time, if he can get rid of all the kinks in his script.