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Catching up with reviews at Newsarama

Click on the bolded title to be taken to the full review.  You may need to scroll through the page a bit to find my reviews.

The first rule of The Walking Dead Volume 14 is that you don't talk about The Walking Dead Volume 14:

Adlard is a wonderfully naturalistic artist who's great at drawing people actually just talking, which happens a lot in this story.  Particularly in this new volume, if you didn't see the zombies, you could swear that Adlard is drawing some kind of bedroom drama or a character driven piece about people trying to live up to their own personal images of themselves.  And that's actually a pretty good description of The Walking Dead for the past couple of years, only with zombies thrown in between the bedroom parts.

There are a lot of books lately whose titles reference six guns like David Gallaher and Steve Ellis's Deadlands: The Devil's Six Gun:

It’s a strange, short tale that takes one or two odd turns, particularly a brief passage where Blackburne becomes some kind of carnival act, sharing mystical visions with an audience. It shows just how far Blackburne has fallen from the path of science and inventing. Gallaher’s story is heavy, cramming a lot of plot into the book and Steve Ellis does a good job keeping it moving along.

With the upcoming DC relaunch (don't call it a "reboot",) I'm trying to figure out how much faith I have in Paul Levitz after reading Legion of Super-Heroes #14:

Levitz practically pioneered the six or seven part storyline in super-hero comics but he seems to have forgotten that you need to focus on the characters to give the story its purpose. Maybe he needs to go back and read “The Great Darkness Saga” and see how it’s supposed to be done.

I've been waiting for a Frankenstein series ever since Seven Soldiers and Jeff Lemire doesn't let me down with Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #1:

The best part of Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #1 may just be that Lemire and Roberson wisely ignore that first part of the title, "Flashpoint."  There's nothing linking this issue to DC's mega, continuity changing series.  Lemire and Roberson don't feel like they're creating a continuity-heavy tie-in book.  They're just writing and drawing the first issue of a three issue miniseries.

Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden and Ben Stenbeck come close to rewriting Moby Dick in Baltimore: The Plague Ships:

With Golden riding shotgun, Mignola puts all the familiar elements of his stories that we're used to in this book but the book never feels as frantic or adventurous as most of his stories usually do.  This book, following Baltimore on his quest to find the vampire that killed his family is much sadder than most of Mignola's stories are.  Baltimore's tale isn't one of adventure or destiny or even the day-in/day-out workings of fighting monsters; it's the story of one man trying to atone for his sins and that gives it a different feel than almost anything else that Mignola has done.

I hate to say it but I've never been able to get into Adam Warren's Empowered and Empowered: 10 Questions for Maidman didn't help at all.

While Warren has his fun poking at the sexuality of superheroes who run around dressed as animals (could he be right that this borders on bestiality?) and anime fan service pointing out how Maidman's outfit is perfect for panty shots, this comic is disappointingly light on the tease and really doesn't have of anything beyond the story.

Savage Dragon #171 reminds me just how much fun Eric Larsen's artwork is.

Larsen's art in this issue looks easy and fun. It looks like Larsen has fun drawing in a way that too many other artists don't. Each page is exciting and pure as Larsen gets out of his own way and lets the story happen. He's a natural storyteller as there doesn't appear to be much effort put into the book yet the story is tight and well done.

It's always good when Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips get back together on Criminal like they have done with Criminal: Last of the Innocent #1:

Riley is trapped in the world that he longs to regain and the world that he's stuck in. Brubaker and Phillips give him a lovely moment of clarity at the end of this first issues when the two worlds collide in a dream sequence. As he sees his past, not just as memories but as something that can be regained, Brubaker gives Riley a perfect moment of dark humor, a near perfect cliffhanger that lets you know just what Criminal: The Last of the Innocent is going to be about.