Rapid Reviews - 13 October 2004 - Part I

So I'm a week behind officially. Sorry about that. I'll be doing quite a bit of reviewing over the next few days to try to catch up.

Vagabond Vol 5: Musashi challenges a spear school. This volume is made up of mostly a very long fight. The art is good and the fight is easy to follow, but it gets old quickly. In addition, it ends on a cliffhanger. I really hope other volumes don't end the same way, as the library only has the first seven volumes. After that I'm going to have to wait until I have money to buy the rest.

Green Arrow #43: I feel like the book is setting stuff up nicely with the new villain, but the "shocker" on the last page didn't actually shock me at all. I suppose the fact that I'd already seen articles on-line about what was going to happen, despite my best efforts to avoid spoilers, kind of ruined it for me. And it also seems like the revelation overshadows what the rest of the book is trying to do. I guess I'll have to come back and reread this storyline later to see if it hangs together better. In the meantime, here's a look at the cover to this issue compared to an Aquaman cover that I instantly thought of when I first saw it:

The Green Arrow cover says "in 12 hours, this girl will die!" while the Aquaman cover says "Set your watches! 1 hour out of water and Aquaman Dies!" Very possibly a coincidence, but it certainly seemed similar to me.

Bloodhound #4: Nasty nasty nasty book. But it's good. I cannot describe why I like it, but I really do like it a lot. I suspect I'll like it despite the crossover issue (which I did order, btw. I did not order Firestorm). Anyway, the first arc ends with the reasoning behind why Clevenger was so eager to save the daughter of his former partner. Overall a nicely successful story that I'm hoping a few more people will give a try.

Still to review: Fallen Angel, JSA, Astro City: A Visitor's Guide, Captain America, and Powers. And from this week: Amelia Rules, Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, Comic Book Digest, Conan, H-E-R-O, Identity Crisis, Java!, JLA, JSA: Strange Adventures, Neo Dawn, Noble Causes, Plastic Man, Teen Titans, Batman Strikes!, and Fantastic Four.