The amazing Vigilante #1, a grim and gritty crime fighter

Adrian Chase, former lawyer, embarks on the very first issue of his own series as The Vigilante. He's tough, and he'll kill you! And he is in no way is a rip off of The Punisher. Honest!

Things are looking bad for mob boss Quilt!


Almost there!


Vigilante confronts his prey, and they engage in a manly game of handball!!!


Fortunately, the Vigilante is a really bad loser, and takes him down! Suck on that, bad guy.


Oh yeah, and there's some lame-ass hired killer by the name of 'Brand', who has the genius idea to name himself after his weapon of choice. Yes, he will burn the letter 'B' into your face. The 'B' stands for 'Brand', since that's his name and that's what he'll do to you. Genius!

Thankfully Vigilante does us all a favour, and kills him too. Because really, who needs to see that again?

How to ruin a good comic

Rant time.
**spoiler alert: Annihilation**

I just got Annihilation #5. This mini has been excellent, and of the six comics I got today, this was first to be read. Pretty soon though, I was getting pissed off. Why? The volume of ads in it. I know ads are a commercial necessity, and for the most part I don't mind (much), but this issue it was overkill. There was 25 pages of comic (not counting the text based recap first page), and 22 pages of ads. I'm assuming this is more than usual, I really can't be bothered doing a comparison, but it just really got annoying, especially the placement of ads in crucial places, where the page turn should be a big reveal.

For instance, when Galactus gets freed from his restraints, something that had been building at the end of last issue, and on into the beginning of this. This is pretty much the event that will turn the tide of the whole story (I'm going on interviews with Keith Giffen). So we get this as the last panel on a page:


"Know me Annihilus. Know me and..."

*turns page*


"...order a pizza from your car"

Major anti-climax. Turn the page again, and there's a cool splash page of Galactus looking pissed and about to break things, and right next to it is an ad for Magic, with one of those annoying comic-format ads (that looks like it has panels), so it serves only to distract. If I hadn't been on a train when I read that, I probably would've sworn out loud. There's another spot with a double page ad just as Ronan busts his way into the Kree HQ, which totally killed the momentum of something that had been building since the Ronan prequel mini, 6 months ago.

Maybe Marvel expects everyone to rush out and buy the trade, just so we can see the story unmolested. In the interests of fairness (*puke*), maybe it really was just how the ad placements worked out, but I haven't been this irritated by, say, a DC comic, in recent memory. I might have a quick flick through IC just to compare.

It was a good story though.

[update] ok, so I just checked a couple of the DC comics I got yesterday (Blue Beetle and 52). One had 23 pages of comic, and 8 pages of ads, the other 22 and 9.
Make mine DC.

How not to treat girls, featuring Firestorm

Today's lesson: Don't walk around with your superhero girlfriend, in your secret identities. You just might run in to your real life girlfriend...



Y'know, for all that people complain about the new Firestorm and want the old one back, Ronnie was a bit of a jerk when it came to Doreen.

How not to treat girls, featuring Firestorm.

Lesson 2
Do not fly around with your superhero girlfriend, in front of your real life girlfriend.



You suddenly feel cold all over, Doreen? That's because that's your boyfriend up there, girl.

Even gods have off days

I often tell people I'll buy any comic that features the Silver Surfer or Firestorm, even if it's a one panel shot of the back of their head. Which is true. Though that is said with the expectation that the rendition of said back of head is better than this offerring by Jack Kirby:



Even the Thing recoils in horror at the sight of the silver thing with no neck.

Thirty Second Recap

As part of Chris Sims' 2007 Thirty Second Recap Contest over on ISB, I present, for you viewing pleasure, a summary of Ultimate Extinction. Presented in limited edition Image-style black and white format, so you can see the stunning line work without that pesky colour of the regular edition getting in the way.

Great unanswered questions

Ok, so way back in 1994, I bought a couple of issues of 'StormWatch' by Image. It was kinda cool, but once I noticed a particular aspect of the art, I couldn't handle it, so stopped buying it. However, it has occurred to me since then that maybe I just didn't know enough about the premise of the book. See, what was bugging me was that everyone looked the same. I put this down to bad art, but could I have been wrong? Was StormWatch really a comic about a superhero team of clones?

These guys all looked the same:



The black guys got to look different from the white guys:



But they all seemed to be cloned from one model too:



There was even a female clone:



Although apparently that was a little unstable since there was a chance you could be created without a nose.

I wonder to this day if I missed out on a great comic, simply because I didn't understand it.