Comic Quickies: War and Tights

Peter Panzerfaust #1: This one here is my surprise of the week.  Why? Because even though it is written by Kurtis Wiebe, (who is pretty much the shiz in creator owned comics lately) I hadn't planned on picking this one up.  However, when I made my weekly pilgrimage to the comic shop I decided to give this bad boy the flip check and it really caught my attention.

First off, the art here is pretty cool.  It's got this loose energetic feel to it that fits very well with the narrative. What you have here is a hefty helping of WWII action and mayhem with a bit of a re-imagining of the Peter Pan story.

Yeah, the concept sounded a little iffy to me too, (I mean Peter Pan isn't exactly the coolest guy in school) but so far things are looking pretty good.  I'm not sure yet if Peter is all that magical, or if his feats just seem magical through the eyes of the other orphan boys in his crew. So far the guy is an enigma.  All in all this was a pretty solid first issue, and I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about the characters and seeing what else Peter Panzerfaust has to offer.

The Activity #3: I'm on a bit of an espionage/war kick right now (which you'll see manifest itself around here in the from of reviews prolly in March) and it all stems from  this comic.  I wasn't totally sold on the first issue of The Activity but over the past couple of months, this comic has slowly grown on me, and now I'm pretty much smitten.

Nathan Edmondson has taken a very realistic, non-glorified approach to espionage in this title and the results are pretty great.  While his previous effort Who is Jake Ellis was an adventure-romp, this one is much more gritty, and character driven.

So far, each issue has been more or less a stand alone, and has centered around a mission where the team goes in and gets the job done in an incredibly professional manner. However, in this third issue, the shit hit the fan on their latest mission, and what we get is the aftermath rehash and finger pointing session with bits of the actual mission mixed in.  It is a pretty cool way to tell a story, and Edmondson pulled it off quite well.  This guy is pretty impressive.  Looking forward to seeing more of this title.

Batwoman #6: This title is still the best thing to come out of the DCnU, even with an artist switcheroo for the second story arc.  Taking over the artistic duties for the next five issues is Amy Reeder.  I was disappointed to hear that she and J.H. Williams III would be trading art duties for the story arcs on this title, but it turns out Reeder is a pretty solid fill in, despite the monstrously huge shoes she has to fill.

This issue takes a unique story telling approach as it delivers the story through six different POV characters.  This was a little bit confusing at first, but once I got the gist of what was going on, I actually thought it was a creative idea and it worked out pretty well.

Like I said earlier, Reeder's art is pretty great.  Sure, her art is a step down from J.H. Williams III, but just about anyone would be a step down.  Anyway, Reeder still delivered on series art specialties like changing art styles depending on the story, and delivered six or seven double page spreads too.  Her art felt a little more cartoony than I'd like for this title, but some of the pages here are quite impressive.  Out of all the DCnU titles I've tried, this is the only one I can say I love.

Action Comics #6: The last time I talked about comics, I mentioned that it looked like Action Comics was about to take a turn towards more epicness, and that Grant Morrison needed to bring the thunder to this title...Well, be careful what you wish for!

This latest issue definitely got more epic, and Morrison definitely brought some extra thunder to the story, but I'm not so sure the results are positive.

This was a strange and confusing issue, despite having some very familiar Superman plot moments.  What goes down is that Superman punches some shit, gets poisoned by kryptonite, almost dies, then at the last minute doesn't die.  However, why these things are happening is anyone's guess.  Oh, and from what I can gather, all this shit is occurring sometime in the future, but some of the people involved are from even further in the future and already know how shit will turn out.  Uh huh.  Part of me thinks that I'm missing something, part of me thinks I'm over-thinking things too much.  Maybe the next issue will clear things up.  I'm putting my faith in you Grant Morrison.