Comics I Bought This Week: June 23, 2012

Jun23
on June 23, 2012 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Comics I Bought This Week

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

  • Dancer – 2

  • The Walking Dead – 99

  • Saga – 4

  • Ragemoor – 4

  • Dark Horse Presents – 13

  • ”The Invincible Iron Man Volume 9 – Demon”

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

    ”The Activity” issues 1-5 by Nathan Edmondson and Mitch Geralds

    I’ve been looking for some new comic book series to read and luckily for me that has coincided with Image Comics launching a whole bunch of new creator owned series. Decades ago I grew pretty tired of the same-old-same-old super-hero stuff from both Marvel and DC so these new series are more my thing.

    “The Activity” is a military book about a secret government run group of operatives that handles delicate political problems or other people’s screw ups. They’re not quite a commando squad but they have to shoot people on occasion. They see to be equal parts spy, soldier, and con man. It resembles most other small squad military style stories, filled with jargon, guns, and danger, but I thought it was pretty well done.

    I liked that each issue was it’s own mission. The overall story of the squad continues from issue to issue but each issue also has a beginning, middle, and end. I found myself getting into the stories more than other current comics that seem to lack structure. I knew I was going to get an ending and that helped me get into the story more.

    The artwork by Mitch Geralds was good for the most part but sometimes he went a little overboard with the color and textures. He was trying to do a lot with textures and I think he succeeded most of the time but sometimes not. A lot of the story is the agents talking or waiting and watching for things to begin so the Geralds does his best to bring the their world to life by illustrating it with a nice lushness. Just a couple of times it was too lush such as a night scene that was a little too dark or a snow scene where the blowing snow was too distracting. In both cases the color/texture got in the way of the storytelling. But in most cases the lush textures worked so it gets a pass.

    In my quest to find some new comic series to read I’d give this one a solid B. That’s better than average my mind and I’ll continue to buy it. Give it a look.