Comics I Bought This Week: February 4, 2012

Feb04
on February 4, 2012 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got four new comic plus a hard cover collection:

  • Savage Dragon – 178

  • O.M.A.C. – 6

  • Stormwatch – 6

  • Dark Horse Presents – 8

    • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

    ”T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Volume 1” by Nick Spencer, Cafu Bit, and others

    I had never read ”T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents” before a few years ago. It was originally a series back in the 1960s published by Tower Comics and featured the talents of Wally Wood among others. I believe Woody was the driving force behind it but it also had art by other great cartoonists such as Steve Ditko. Sometime in the 2000s DC Comics got the rights to the old comics and reprinted them in their hardcover “Archives” format. That was the first time I got to read any ”T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents”.

    These T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents are an updated continuation of the 1960s stories. The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves is still what T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Stands for except it’s 2011 and there are all new superhero/agents working for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. This is the story of those new agents but their story is intertwined with the old 1960s agents so we get a lot of flashbacks.

    It all works pretty well. They writing is good and I like that they use different artists for the flashbacks. That’s a technique that’s been used a bit lately and I enjoy it. It adds to the flavor of a story and differentiates between the past and present in a very distinct way.

    The first main criticisms I have of this volume I have is that it loses a little storytelling focus in the last few chapters (this volume reprints ten issues).The beginning story about recruiting new agents to be the main super-powered guys works but then things get too muddled in the past. It’s not bad I just didn’t like is as much.

    The second criticism is that, storytelling-wise, they blew the big reveal near the climax of the first story. I couldn’t tell what the heck was going on. I couldn’t tell if there was one character or two characters doing a task. I had to flip back and forth three or four times to try and confirm that what I thought was happening was actually happening. Nothing else in the book was so confusing. Weird.

    All things considered I can forgive this comic its faults. Overall I enjoyed it. I think old time T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents fans as well as new ones will like this book.