A slightly different take on Superman. Good but a little strange. I’ll have to give this one a 3.5 because only a week later I can’t remember anything in particular about this series. Neither good, nor bad.

For various reasons, mostly due to the story lines being strange, these can be forgotten

Another good Batman comic. Batman: Dark Victory is a 14-part comic book limited series.

I'm hoping this is the turning point for the Ultimate Series. We'll see.

This one can really go either way. After reading the first 12 I'm enjoying it way more than the TV show because there is far less 'drama'. The TV show seems to much like a soap opera for me.

Few and far between, but here are a couple more I can recommend.

All of these were acceptable but just barely short of a solid recommendation. Both the Powers and Nomad comics are series so further reading may push them one way or the other.

Just average. Some are series so it's possible that future issues could modify that ranking. As a general rule the "Ultimate" Series should be called "Ultimate Bicker" as the writer believe that constant internal team conflict is essential to every story. Otherwise these would be 4/5's.

I found the following "Not Recommended" for one reason or another. YMMV.

One of the most anoying things I'm finding with many of these comics is that a lot of them start out well, or have a great story idea, but like bad anime or a Steven King novel, the just can't end the story well. I've read a couple of each of these, and so far I want to read more, but I'll have to wait on any recomendations.

Somthing new. I was sick and out of work for a 4 days and bored out of my mind. So I read a lot of comic books. With to many to review all of them, I think I'm going to do this in large groups.

I found the following "Not Recommended" for one reason or another. YMMV.

Good idea, good art. Unfortunately the author didn’t know where he wanted to go with this, and it really would have been nice to not include the cliques for once.

People actually like this kind of crap? Uggh.

Maybe there was a story buried under the art, but if it was, it was buried deep. Comics need both story and art. Otherwise I’d just read a book, or look at a painting. On a side note, its scary how much Sylvester Stallone looked the comic.

Hard to evaluate this one. The “battlefields” series is a set of 9 comics broken into 3 sets of 3. None of them overlap so they can be read independently. It could have been a great series, maybe something like Crecy, but its not. It doesn’t really tell a complete story, and doesn’t seem to have a point. That being said, its done well, but it could have been so much more.

Ummm no. The formula has gotten old. This could have been written 20 years ago and that’s not a good thing.

Issue #167 introduces the “New Mutants”. The last 50 or so stories have had nothing in them to recommend them for reading.

Good idea, good start, dies from lack of direction. The author tires to take about politics wants you to think he is going to talk or cover some interesting issues. But he doesn’t. His depth is online headline deep. Add to the fact that he jumps from issue to issue and never covers anything in depth, and you have a poor story. And throw in a bunch of 2 dimensional stereotypes just cause.

Good Start but the writer couldn’t hold it together. Got way to weird to fast and the “save the universe” storyline hit about episode 5. Not a good sign. Unfortunate cause I really liked the, “Hey I’m superman, I think I’m going to kill some 3rd world dictators and make the world a better place.” The writer of the series is Warren Ellis who seems to be a big name, but I’m going to call him the Steven King of comic books. Great Ideas, great starters, but can’t finish a damn thing worth crap.

After 5 issues I really expected some more depth. But I guess you just not going to find it here. Its almost like someone watched the 80’s move Real Genus, turned it into a comic book and forgot the humor.

I really liked this when I started the first 4 issues of so were great, but the story took a massive left turn from science fictions to the reincarnation of an Egyptian Bug God. Strange to say the least. Its Unfortunate that the writer seemed to flounder in direction with lots of sub plots that went no where. This really could have been great.

There are a couple of notable stories in this batch, but the increase in quality is still very slow and sporadic. Pacing and characterization are still weak.

This is a great site with information and Trivia
http://marvel.wikia.com/Uncanny_X-Men_Vol_1

You would be better off reading Neuromancer or one of the Shadowrun books.

B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs is the third trade paperback collection in the B.P.R.D. series. It really does not stand on it's own. The first BPRD collection is Hollow Earth & Other Stories. To start from the begining you should read Hellboy: Seed of Destruction.

How quickly a B- goes to a D-. Nothing worth reading here folks, just move along.

A pretty basic zombie comic. The story really could have been fleshed out more, but they managed to avoid most of the cliques and added one or two novel twists. Add a great ending to that and you have a solid B-. More importantly, I'm interested enough to read the next one.

I think the article from Wikipedia says it better “Set in a world where all chicken and other bird meats are illegal and the FDA is the most powerful government organization. The main character is a 'Cibopath' who can take a bite from anything and get a psychic sensation of what has happened to that object.” Yea it’s strange, but unfortunately its not strange in a way that made me want to read any further than the first issue.

This comic was on multiple top 20 lists so I figured it would be at least average. I must be missing something cause it reads more like a children’s Saturday morning cartoon.

I was hoping the comic book had some deeper story or interest that was lost in the film. My hopes were in vain.

Forgettable. Originally written by fans of the original Night of the living dead. They asked the question what was happening in the rest of the world when the Night of the Living Dead happened in Pennsylvania in 1968. I’ll read one more just to see, but this one is dead C average. A Series of 4 more was written in 2011 and followed by a series called Jungle Jim.

This one is very hard to review. Great Art with some interesting moments. I just don’t think the author was able to pull it all together into a good finished final story.

A+ Story idea. D Artwork. After one issue I was seriously not a fan of the sketch style artwork. This would be far better as a novel. I saw the movie, and was also underwhelmed. Such a shame to waste such a good idea.

The Big Reboot.

Who says reboots are a new thing? This is where the whole X-Men thing gets really complicated quickly. All but one of the old team leave and are replaced by new characters. Some of the old ones then come back, but some of the new ones leave.

The story just doesn’t make all that much sense. Presto change, new super mutants. Sorry if you like the old characters.

Reprints? WTF? So they actually just reprinted old comics but continued to number them as if they were new? What kills me is the fact that there is no indication that this is just a reprint. They slapped a new cover on it and called it a new issue. I would say this was an all time low point, but they did a very similar thing with “Classic X-Men” a few years later.

I was lucky enough to ‘find’ the first 200 or so of these in digital format so I figured I should read the quintessential series from start to finish. They are currently in the 600’s so I may run out of steam before I finish.

Some initial thoughts after the first 50.

These are really not very good and have not stood the test of time at all. The stories, the art, and the dialog are all poor. The professor is pretty much a Jerk. Women in 1963 were “Not looked upon with respect” shall we say. The villains are embarrassing. The Vanisher? Plantman?. There is no way you could predict this would become the powerhouse that it has.

This is a great site with information and Trivia
http://marvel.wikia.com/Uncanny_X-Men_Vol_1

A science fiction anthology magazine. Short stories turned into comics. Many of them were strange but it was a good read. Unfortunately there is almost no information online about them. I only had this one issue and was unable to find any collections or digital copies.

Probably only for fans of the books. I had always loved these books so I was excited to find the had been turned into a comic. As a side note: I never knew there really was a magazine called “Boy’s life” I just thought it was a gag from the movie Airplane. Sad but true.

Good artwork with clean lines, but an underwhelming story. The story is so underwhelming that I’m having trouble remembering anything of interest about it only a month later.

In reading a review of the original series the reviewer mentioned that the main characters all seemed to be clones of one another. Unfortunately this is still a problem. While the author did create a unique character for one of the four, the others seem to be all to interchangeable and hard to tell apart. I could have lived with that, but the ending simply poor.

On the other hand. I went back and read the very first appearance of the Challengers in DC Showcase #6, from 1957 and they just don’t make dialog like this anymore

“Despite the pilot’s frantic efforts to wrest the plane from the hands of death, the plane screams down from the skies and plows a terrible path through the trees of the forest below”