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I was a latecomer to the comic book series “The Savage Dragon”. The first issue of it that I bought was number 71. I was not a big fan of most the original Image Comics material but I did buy some of it here and there. I still have a soft spot for “Stormwatch” of all things. I also never took much notice of Erik Larsen’s work when he was drawing “Spider-Man”. I didn’t think it was terrible or anything it just wasn’t my thing. I don’t think I even read more than an issue or two of it. I didn’t read many mainstream Marvel, DC, or Image comics in the early 90’s so it’s no wonder I wasn’t on board with Dragon when he was launched back in 1993.
What eventually got me to by “The Savage Dragon” was the fact that my friend and co-worker at the time, Chris Giarrusso (of G-Man and Marvel Bits fame), was a huge fan of the book. Over the years he gave me a couple of issues to read but they left me cold. It was tough for me to take most mainstream super hero comics seriously so I could only see Dragon’s flaws and not its strengths. Image, along with the rest of the industry, were churning out a lot of crappy comics in the early to mid 90’s and it was easy to miss the better ones.
Chris’ enthusiasm for the book never diminished over the years. Finally, at the end of 1999, I decided to start reading it regularly just to really give it a try. It took me a while but I wanted to see if I could see what made the book such a favorite of Chris’. I generally like new things anyway and probably was looking around for some new comics to read so what the heck. “Savage Dragon” lasted longer than most titles so it must have something going for it, right?
I jumped on with issue 71 and was confused right away. That was no big deal to me because I expected it. I don’t mind not being in on the ground floor because it gives me a lot to discover. After all in the 1970’s, as a kid starting to read comics, almost every series had been going for years when I jumped on board. It’s only now, when comic book stories have arcs, that I hear people say that they don’t want to start reading things in the middle. When comics didn’t have story arcs it was always the middle so everyone I knew jumped on anywhere and didn’t mind having to catch up.
I continued to figure things out but was confused for a few more issues until, at the end of issue 75, Larsen blew things up. Literally. Dragon (he’s only called “Savage Dragon” on the cover) messes things up by killing a time traveling villain. This changes time and Dragon is thrown into a different Earth than the one he knew. The Savage World Larsen called it. It’s sort of the same Earth the dragon knew but it was an Earth where things went terribly wrong.
I could tell by the letters page that it was a shock to most regular readers. Imagine if with issue 76 of “Spider-Man” the book suddenly took place in the world of “Kamandi”. That’s quite a change but it was good for me, as a new reader, because Dragon was in a whole new world and there was less for me to catch up on. Dragon had to catch up on things himself. I liked it and I’ve been reading the comic regularly ever since.
I have to say that what I missed when reading the couple of issues of “The Savage Dragon” in the early 90’s, before I started buying it regularly, was Larsen’s enthusiasm for the book and for comics in general. He likes making comics, wants to have fun making them, and want his readers to have fun reading them. He takes “The Savage Dragon” seriously but it is not a serious book. Serious things happen all the time but that’s not what the book is about. The book is about adventure. In a super hero way.
So the reason I’m writing this piece now is because last winter I decided to buy the first 70 issues of “The Savage Dragon” that I didn’t have. After a couple of Ebay purchases I was was all hooked up. I now have every issue. Number 1 through number 163. Plus the original three issue mini-series. Since I had 73 new issues to read and had only read the other issues once I decided I was going to read through the whole series. It took until the month of August until I was able to sit down and actually read them all.
I don’t know that I’ve ever read 166 issues of any series all in a row in such a short period of time. I’ve always meant to do that with the 200 issues of “Usagi Yojimbo” that I have on my shelf but as of yet I haven’t. And besides “The Savage Dragon”, “Usagi Yojimbo”, and “Cerebus” I can’t think of a series offhand with 166 issues all written and drawn by one guy. That’s kind of special.
That’s one of the interesting things about “The Savage Dragon”. It represents one person’s vision of what a comic book should be. All of the trends and styles that have come and gone in comics over the last 18 years are not here as they would be with a work-for-hire book where creators come and go all the while trying to keep in the public’s and their editor’s good graces. Here we only Larsen’s personal trends. It resists embarrassing fads and styles in a way that work-for-hire comics can’t.
It’s tough to sum up 166 issues of a comic but I’d say that at its core “The Savage Dragon” is about Dragon’s personal world. And kicking ass. A lot of time is spent developing the myriad of super powered and regular people who surround the Dragon and they’re always fighting. Unusually for super hero comics there are consequences to the fights. Characters die or are maimed. Plus innocent bystanders can be killed in the melee. When a villain or our hero accidentally knocks down a building the people in the building die. And it’s mentioned. That’s Larsen’s mixture of serious and fun.
I’ve complained a lot about hating time travel and alternate world stories in general but Larsen uses them to good effect. He does kill off characters and brings back alternate world versions of them but not gratuitously for “Shock value”. Plus there is no guarantee in the Dragon’s world that alternate versions of characters will even be similar. Things change.
Anything can happen in Dragon’s world including it being totally conquered by super villains. Twice. And there is no wizard to make things magically go back to the way things were before. Even after the eventual defeat the consequences of a villain’s world conquest linger. That’s what makes “The Savage Dragon” unique and interesting. It’s a world created and controlled by one person. Unlike the work-for-hire universes of Marvel and DC things don’t have to be set back to normal at the end of every story. In “The Savage Dragon” there is always a new normal on the horizon.
Larsen’s art has also changed over the years. I wasn’t too fond of it at the beginning of the series as it had to much of that early 90’s Marvel/Image pointless noodling and/or cross hatching in it. That’s a taste thing since a lot of comics fans back then seemed to love it but I never warmed to it. Larsen experimented with a style here and there for an issue of two when it interested him but really his line has evolved over the years into a sketchier drawing line. By that I mean that his cross hatching has turned into a more spontaneous energetic gestural line. He’s spending less time on pointless noodling and I, for one, like it better that way.
There is one demarcation line I really noticed having to do with storytelling. With the “Savage World” story line Larsen started basing his layout on the classic six panel grid that Jack Kirby and so many others used. He used an early 90’s Marvel/Image pin-up storytelling style for most of the issues before then but he never went back to it. Even after the “Savage World” story ended. Not that he’s only used six panel layouts since then but he’s used variations on it and other classic layout techniques. His story telling has gotten much stronger for it.
So there you have it. One hundred and sixty six issues of one person’s vision of what a monthly super hero book should be. I was a little sad when I reached the last issue, number 163, and had no more to read. It’s a good thing 164 is coming out next month.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comic plus two hard covers:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
Having just read the original Wein/Wrightson run on “Swamp Thing” I got interested in reading the early part of Alan Moore’s run writing the book. These were the first comics I ever read that were written by Moore and I liked them a lot but haven’t checked them out since my college days back in the late 80’s.
They have held up well. As a matter of fact it’s easy to see that DC’s whole Vertigo line is based on the ideas in Alan Moore’s run on “Swamp Thing”. Moore not only redefines the character Swamp Thing but he redefines how DC’s mystical characters and their world is run. It’s a dangerous inhuman world that is outside the perception of normal people but it can bleed over and affect their lives in an awful way.
The artwork by Bissette and Totleben is also very interesting. It’s dark and moody like Wrighton’s work but has a totally different approach. What’s unusual about the art is that quite often things are not defined by their edges. Especially in close ups things are defined by contoured hatching. It makes things eerie. Tatjana Wood’s coloring is also very good.
“The Anatomy Lesson” is the first story in this run and in it Moore establishes the new paradigm for Swamp Thing. And it’s a scary one. Swamp Thing is not who he thought he was and there are monsters hidden in the nooks and crannies of the world where hardly anyone bothers to look. Old mystical foes are tapping into this new found pool of horror and becoming unstable. Things are not as they once were.
As good as the fist story was it is issues 29-31 where the series really takes off for me. That’s when Swamp Things’ old nemesis, Arcane, comes back to haunt him and Arcane is more twisted and nasty than ever. Except, much to Arcane’s regret this isn’t the Swamp Thing as he used to know him.
I remembered issue 31 being an all time classic issue and great ending to a story. Upon reading it again for the first time in twenty years I’d have to say that assessment still stands. It’s well written, well drawn, and just plain exciting. It would be in my top ten singles issues of all time if I had such a list. But I’m adverse to list making.
So if you’ve never read them or haven’t read them in ages go check out Alan Moore’s run on “Swamp Thing”. They’re as good as their reputation.
To continue my story from last week about the new brush I bought I worked on a second painting with it. It was a little bit different of a challenge than last week in that I continued a painting that I had already started and intended to do in my old method. I hadn’t put down any oil paint yet but had painted the black line of the picture in acrylic as I usually do. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to shift gears an do this painting in acrylic in the new style I had done that one painting in. It ended up helping that my new style doesn’t really exist yet. It’s in development.
The problem I ran into was the broad expanse of color. How do I paint large areas of color and make them interesting? In my oil painting style I know how to. I can use the texture, direction, and size of the brush strokes to create an interesting visual surface. I can make a large area of the same color paint look nice. It’s what I’ve been doing for twenty years. But acrylic paint isn’t oil paint. It doesn’t have the same surface. In last weeks painting I was using long brush strokes of color to make the surface more interesting. But since this canvas was already started as an oil painting I didn’t have the same long strokes in the image. Hmmm…
One of the things I’ve always thought about when making a painting was impact. Near and far. I use images and I want the image to be interesting when you look at it from across the room but the painting also has to be just as interesting as you step up close to it. The image is the first thing you see but as you step closer you see the paint itself. That’s where the surface comes in. How, why, and where the paint is put on the canvas has to be as interesting as the image itself. The two things working together is what makes things work for me.
So in making a painting with acrylic paint I know I can get the image part down. It’s when you step up close that I’ve been figuring out. It this second large acrylic piece I ended up using more surface texture than in the first one. Though I didn’t want to imitate one of my oil paintings I did imitate some of the texture of oil paint with some acrylic gel medium in spots. This allowed me to hold the brush stroke in certain areas and build up the close up visual interest that I wanted.
I also worked in some brush strokes with my new brush in areas that were, at first, not obvious to me. I started seeking spots out and seeing shapes a little differently. I found that the new brush was also good at making spirals. I like spirals they are always good for visual interest in my mind. The have a life of their own as they reference their own making and continue to swirl in the imagination.
It’s still not there yet this new way of my making a painting. But I am enjoying it. I especially enjoyed stretching my thinking on this one because I didn’t know if I could do it. One of the reasons I’m trying this different way of painting is that I had my normal way down cold. I had a vision of this painting finished before I painted it. By vision I don’t mean any angels coming down from the clouds sort of thing I just mean that I knew what it was going to look like in the end. It certainly can be a good thing knowing what I want something to look like and then making it so but lately I’ve grown tired of it. I want to meander through for a while.
I’m still picking away at this one. A stroke here. Some texture there. I’m nut sure if it’s done just yet. It might need a little more something but I’m not sure. I guess that’s what meandering is.
I bought a new brush this week. A new paint brush that is. At $33 it is one of the more expensive paint brushes that I have ever bought. Not that I buy cheap ones but a $20 paint brush is usually the top of my price range. It’s the big sable watercolor brushes that are really pricey and I don’t use them. The watercolor brushes I do use are the ones smaller in size and price. Most of the brushes I use for oil painting are made from bristle and not that expensive.
I bought the new brush out of a catalogue in an inspirational moment. That is I was looking for inspiration while thumbing through the art supply catalogue and stumbled upon this brush. I’ve been thinking about painting in some sort of new way and thought that changing tools might be one way to accomplish that. So I ordered a Da Vinci Cosmotop Spin Quill number five. It looked cool and it looked like I could do something different with it. It gave me ideas.
A couple of days later the brush arrived, I started working with it, and I was disappointed. Not with the quality of the brush or anything like that but with the fact that the brush wasn’t a magic instrument. That’s the problem with getting inspiration from a tool that you see in a catalogue. In my mind I already knew how to use it but in reality I didn’t. New and different images didn’t dance effortlessly off the tip of my new brush. So much for the magic of inspiration. It was time for some perspiration.
What I did was make a painting. It’s different from my others in that it is a large acrylic painting and usually when I work large I work in oil paint. It was also painted in a different way than my oil paintings but not in so different a way than my smaller acrylic paintings. Overall it’s different, yes, but I’m not so sure what those differences mean just yet and where they will lead me. There is a lot of work to be done after inspiration leaves.
It’s difficult working in a new way after all these years. I’m used to things going a certain way. Of course the whole idea of doing things a new way is because I was bored with doing things the old way but the old ways still have their pull. It’s the pull of the reliable. I know I can make a good painting that way. I’ve done it many times before and I can do it again. Figuring out a new way is a lot of work. Things aren’t necessarily reliable on a new path.
As I was working I had to keep telling myself not to panic and quit. That’s not easy to do when you’re making a bad painting. I kept telling myself that the painting was not about being good, at the moment, but about finding a path. It’s too bad paths aren’t found in just one painting. I stumbled along with my new brush, used some old brushes too, and somehow managed to finish the painting.
I’m not sure if the painting is good or bad but at least the process interested me more than my regular one did. Maybe that’s because I didn’t have any real process worked out yet. There was a lot more improvisation throughout this painting than in my usual ones where almost all of the improvisation comes at the end. That was part of what I am looking for.
One of the things I did succeed at that I wanted to do was to finish the painting a little faster. My usual method, being so meticulous about every square inch of paint, is quite time consuming. I was looking for more speed and spontaneity and got some of that. But I was also surprised at how much longer it took than I thought it would. Maybe that was because I spent more time thinking about how to do things than I usually do but it could have just been because things always take longer than I think.
I haven’t even gotten the new brush to do what I want it to do just yet. I’m not sure if I ever will but I do know there is room for improvement. I can see places where I had it working as I want it to but I’m not all the way there yet. It’s confusing and I’m not used to being confused while painting. I’m used to being sure of myself. Strange path I’ve picked.
Being a comic book collector I’ve been contemplating rarity lately. A lot of comics are considered valuable because they are rare. But that’s really only one consideration out of two. The second consideration is that a bunch of people want to own it. That is an even more important consideration.
I have a lot of comic books in my collection. I even have a lot of rare comics in my collection. But I don’t have many, if any, comics that anyone would consider valuable. I do have the first issue of the new X-Men plus the first appearance of Wolverine and these books would be considered valuable except for their condition. They are my copies from when I was a kid and they’re pretty well beat up.
Condition is everything when it comes to the value of comic books. Well, since I mentioned rarity and demand it’s maybe not everything but a blemish or two could be the difference between a $100 copy of the first appearance of Wolverine and a $1000 copy. My copy has so many blemishes it’s probably worth around $10. Nobody wants to pay a whole lot of money for a beaten up old comic unless it’s really really rare.
I do have a lot of comics that, by numbers alone, should be considered rare. At a guess I’d say that the Hulk issue from the 1970’s that had Wolverine’s first appearance sold around 250,000 copies. Of those how many could still be around? 100,000? 50,000? I really have no idea but I’m betting there are still a lot of them in existence. It’s not that rare. But when Wolverine stars in a couple of Hollywood blockbuster movies that gets a lot of people interested in him then demand drives up the price of his first appearance. And that’s exactly what happened.
Due to my peculiar taste in comics I buy a lot of what is referred to as “Small Press” comics. That means the print runs are no where near 250,000 copies. A lot of the print runs are under 10,000 copies. Many closer to 2,000. That would make them pretty rare but not in the least bit valuable because hardly anyone wants them. The demand for these small press comics, if you could even find them, would be almost zero. I imagine part of that is not only the general public’s disinterest but because the people who, like me, actually bought them probably still own them. I don’t think small press fans get rid of their comics as readily as mainstream comics fans because we know that they are hard to find even if they are worthless.
I was once at my regular comic shop buying one of my regular small press books, they ran about $3 a piece then, when the owner of the shop noticed there was some defect in the printing of the cover. As I said before, condition is everything when it comes to comics so he asked if I wanted him to reorder the comic to replace the flawed one with a pristine one. I do like to keep my comics in nice shape but I declined. I told him not to bother because in ten years my flawed copy will be worth exactly the same amount as a mint condition one. “They’ll both be in the 25¢ bin?”, he replied getting my joke. It was one of those jokes that was funny because it was true.
One of the things that has been making comics less rare these days has been reprint collections. I don’t even think they’re referred to as reprints anymore. Just hard cover and trade paperback collections. Some people buy those exclusively and have no interest in the individual monthly issues. But I’ve noticed that now some of these collections are going up in value as long as a) they are out of print and b) it doesn’t look like they’ll be coming back into print anytime soon.
The one book the jumps out at me that fits into this category is “Avengers Assemble” Volume 2. Volumes 1 and 3-5 can be found in print at Amazon.com and the likes for cover price, about $35, or less but volume 2 is out of print and can only be found used at Amazon for $150. The book is only four years old and the original comics it reprints could probably be found pretty easily and cheaply but since this volume is not likely to be reprinted anytime soon the price has risen on it.
I just completed my collection of hardcover reprints of the Dark Horse “Conan” series this week. I used to buy the monthly comics but sometime around the third hardcover volume I decided to sell my monthlies and get the collections from then on in. Except I didn’t realize that the first volume was already out of print. It’s been on my back burner of things to get and I finally pulled the trigger on a used copy. It was no where near as expensive as “Avengers Assemble Volume 2” but at $35 it was $10 above the original retail price.
“The Eternals Omnibus” by Jack Kirby is another out of print book that went up in price. I was going to get it but never did. It’s original $75 price tag (it’s a big book) is now at around $150. I ended up getting the original 1970’s issues on Ebay for around $20. How’s that for a strange twist of comic book fate? As long as the package is nice and it’s out of print the collection of reprints can be worth more than the original comics. As long as someone wants them that is.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comic plus a trade paperback collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
I normally stay well away from Marvel and DC crossover stories but I happen to have been given this collection by a friend of mine. It collects “Tales of the Corps” 1-3 and “Adventure Comics” 4-5. The first are a bunch of short stories about the various colored Lanterns and the second was a two part tale of Superboy Prime versus some Black Lanterns.
If you don’t know about the “Blackest Night” crossover suffice it to say that the Green Lanterns were taking on a bunch of other colored Lanterns. That’s pretty much all I know about it. The short stories of the various Corps were the most interesting. They were mostly the back story of what was going on in the overall “Blackest Night” story and so were pretty easy to follow. And solidly entertaining.
The Superboy Prime story was a lot harder to follow. Just explaining who Superboy Prime is and his crazy backstory is too much for me. The art and script were nice but the plot was way too “Inside” for me to care about. A few people I know liked this story but they are better acquainted with the character than I am. Newbies beware.
Reading this volume brought up a couple of problems I have with “Blackest Night” in general. First off the editors and writers have done a good job over the years emphasizing that the Green Lantern Corps in not Earth or human-centric. The Green Lanterns’ beat is all over the galaxy and there are a myriad of Green Lanterns from all sorts of planets. There are Green Lanterns of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and species. So why is this whole story of various colored Lantern Corps based on the spectrum visible to the human eye? I’m sure all those alien eyes see colors that we can’t. I know it’s because it’s only a comic book made by humans for humans but it still bothers me. It’s the central conceit of the story after all.
As the writers also gave us a little history lesson about the various Corps throughout the stories they mentioned something that always annoys me. How come it’s only in sci-fi stories that we find societies that have “Abandoned emotion”? First of all it’s crazy, second: it’s impossible, third: it’s stupid, and fourth: it makes no sense. Abandon emotion? How would a society even do that? Certainly no human society has ever attempted such nonsense. Because it’s nonsense. Yet still it lives on in clichéd sci-fi writing. I could do without it.
Anyway, the first half of this book is a pretty good read but I’d say the second half is for hard core continuity fans only.
I’m no good at staying up late anymore. Yet another conclusion I’ve come to in my middle years. Not that I ever liked staying up late anyway. Y’see I’m a morning person. In my youth my limit for staying up late was usually somewhere around 2 AM. That meant that wherever I was I wanted to be out of there by 2 AM. That would be considered staying out late for me. Of course sometimes I was out past that time but that usually meant I was out too late.
As I said I’m a morning person. That means I’m up early every day regardless of how late I go to bed. I can’t sleep in. Not possible. When the morning comes I’m up. If I got no sleep the night before then I’ll be dragging all day. Maybe I can sneak a nap in but I have to be careful with naps. A morning or early afternoon nap is fine but if starts to get late in the day then a nap isn’t advisable as it will just keep me up that night. Beware any nap where it’s light out when you fall asleep and dark out when you wake up.
My recovery time has also lengthened over the years. It used to take me a couple of days to feel normal after losing sleep but now it’s more like five days. And I’m not even talking about staying up late partying. I’m not a drinker so I don’t have any hangover to recover from. I’m talking about recovering from just the loss of sleep.
I don’t even stay up working late as a lot of freelancers I know do. I’ve always managed to get the job done without staying up late. Of course if the job meant staying up late I might not even take it. A lot of the freelancers are night owls anyway and like to be up late drawing or some such into the wee hours. They’re night time people and like the quiet. Not me. From about 7:30 AM until around 2:30 PM are my best hours. Not that I can’t get things done at other hours it just takes more effort as I’m usually not at my sharpest.
Where staying up late really kills me is when trying to do my own art work. It takes a lot of motivation, concentration, and energy to work on art when there is no pay involved. It’s easy to stay up late and then go into the office and be a bit of a zombie all day. Tired or alert you have to be there anyway. Doing the job might be a bit harder but as long as no one’s life is at stake it usually doesn’t matter. Plus there are coworkers around to cover for you.
It’s not even too bad for me to get my freelance work done if I’m tired. Sure it’s harder and there is no one to cover for me but it has to be done so I may as well do it. It’s not going to do itself. I find it easier to get work done and then goof off then to goof off when I have work to do.
No, the reason I find it so hard to stay out late is that then I can’t get any of my own work done. That’s the first thing to go when I’m tired. My motivation to work on my own art. It all seems so pointless when I’m tired. I look at my paper, paints, canvas, computer, or whatever and see no reason to pick any of them up. The effort takes more energy than my tired self has.
If I stay out late on a Saturday night I can count on not getting anything significant done until Wednesday or even Thursday. It slows me down. Plus it’s real easy to give up and do nothing but watch TV. I see a lot of people do that and the reason is because they’re tired. Mostly from the nine to five grind but also from not sleeping. The two do go hand in hand.
I’ve actually known people, night owls usually, who stay up late at night just because it’s their own time and not their employer’s time. They’re not staying up late doing anything that takes self motivation but just staying up. Often playing video games. The sacrifice of being tired all morning at work was no sacrifice at all for them because they didn’t really want to be at work anyway. And being awake and alert at work in the morning would not be an improvement in their eyes anyway.
But I can’t do that. Self motivation takes a lot of energy. Making things takes a lot of energy and work. In some ways I’d like to live a languid lifestyle staying up late and never putting much energy into anything. Watching instead of doing, going to shows, reading a lot, and generally not thinking about much. But I really like making stuff. So therefor I don’t like staying up late anymore. Think I’ll got to bed.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:
Some quick reviews since I’ve reviewed other volumes previous to these and don’t have much new to say.
“Captain America: The Death of Captain America Omnibus” by Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting and others
This volume is exactly what I thought it would be. All of Cap’s friends mourning his death for issue after issue until someone new takes up the shield to be the new Captain America. The first two issues are the most maudlin and they’re hard to get through. They are just so darned depressing.
The story ended up being okay and the art was fine (besides being a little too brown for my taste) but I really didn’t enjoy this volume much. I like Captain America and wanted to read some Cap stories but these are stories about all of Cap’s buddies. Such is the problem of writing a comic where the title character is dead.
The quality of this volume is equal to the last one but I don’t really see myself ever reading this one again. It’s sad, depressing, and not about Captain America. Oh well.
“The Starman Omnibus” Volume Three by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and others.
This volume starts out with a reprint of the “Shade” mini series before getting into Starman issues 30-38. I really liked the Shade stuff. I worried that I wouldn’t when I first started reading it because it seemed a little too Goth and serious (in a bad way) to me but it won me over. I ended up liking Shade’s story and the nice artwork.
The Starman issues are like the first two volumes of the omnibuses. Good stuff. They are as much about Starman’s civilian identity, Jack Knight, as they are about Starman. As a matter of fact there is really not much difference between them. Jack is much the same whether he has his star rod that gives him his powers or not.
Starman seems to be carried along by the story rather than the major mover of the story. But that’s the kind of superhero Starman is. Jack never wanted to be a hero. It was thrust upon him so he tries to do his best but isn’t really a 100% Batman type super hero. He plays it by ear and does what he can.
This volume continues the quality of the first two. Since I have never read any of these comics before I am enjoying them for the first time.
“The Incredible Hercules – Assault on New Olympus” by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and Rodney Buchemi
I think this is the last “Incredible Hercules” volume we get before they launch it as something else maybe starring Hercules. This volume is as good as the others. It’s full of fun and funny action as Herc takes on some other Greek gods in a final battle. Of course these Greek gods have been having final battles for a long time so there will probably be another eventually.
Anyway this is a good book. I don’t have anything new to say about these Hercules volumes since I liked all of them and they’re all about the same. Fun superhero/historical adventure.