Now here is what should have been issue 25 of X-Men Forever, even at the end its says, End of Volume 1, but this issue didn’t fit the flow and feel established by issue 24.

Giant-Size X-Men Forever #1 gives the reason why Professor X will not present in Volume 2, well at least not for the first few arcs.

Apparent the last time the X-Men were in Space and ran across the Shi’Ar, Charles monkeyed with the security systems and left them unwillingly open to attacks by the Skrulls, Good work Chuck! So the Shi’Ar come to Earth looking for Charles to bring him back and fix the problem he caused. Upon leaving he gives Scott, Cyclops, full and complete control of the X-Men and the School.

There is also a couple of pages used as setup for the first arc in Volume 2.

With one lone director in charge of the Consortium, we don’t know who it is though, she lets SHIELD know that the X-Men are no longer to be trusted and something has to be done, and then SHIELD gets the Avengers on the case, and with the Continue Reading…

When it comes to X-Men, I am probably the last person who would want to talk to about them. Yes, I can name most, if not all of the X-men Characters, but if you want to know about the continuity and the ins/outs of relationships of the characters, I may kill you. Serious.

XMF #23 is the second to final issue of this run (they are doing volumes, Vol 2 starts in June) and not a single answer gets answered, but thankfully no new questions are raised as the X-Men conclude their confrontation with the Neo-Sentinels, The Consortium, and try to stop the Plaque -X Cannon that would wipe out every mutant on Earth.

Some rather big things happen in the issue, as you can probably tell from the cover image. Everyone’s favourite blue-furred mutant genius, sadly, dies. I still think there could have been someway to have save him, Jean Grey could have put a TK shield around and protect, but he gave himself up for the greater good of mutant kind.

Also, a shocker of shockers, Mister Metal Pants Tony Stark, dies as well. I think Continue Reading…

I’ve been waiting for this for awhile. I sadly did not follow the previous Jack Staff series and I really wish I did, but I am so glad to have this comic in my grubby little hands.

What’s really nice is that this issue sets up everything quite nicely for those who have never read or even heard of the series before. All the characters are introduced, their motives for what the are doing are explained, mysteries are set up and Jack Staff barely even appears in the books except a flashback, nicely done Paul.

The writing is sharp and engaging, each character has their own developed voice, but mind you they have been around for awhile already.

The artwork is brilliant. I love Grist’s work. Efverything is very simply drawn but at the Continue Reading…

I remember seeing the solicit for this, and thinking it was just a one off making fun of the industry and I really had no interest in actually picking it up. I would flip through it but it’s a 4 dollar 32 page one shot, which to me is a bit of a rip off.

Thankfully writer Rich Johnston was kind enough to send me a preview copy of the comic to review for us here at Wander Tech.

Chase Variant is a Government Assassin, 9 were created but only 2 remain and every other Government in the world wants her and will stop at nothing to get her. That’s the basic story but on the bottom of each page is a card game going, which relates to what happens on the page above it.

I was a little confused about the card game at first til you realize that the card game is really determining the story. Its kinda neat.

I completely brushed this comic off at first sight, but now having actually read it, I would really suggest picking it up, as it is a great read. The artwork was pretty good. Saverio Tenuta and Bagwell do a great job bringing Chase Variant to life and as an artist I have never seen before, I would love to see more from them, outside of Heavy Metal.

I asked Rich if there would be a possible ongoing series if this one shot does well and he said ” I’d love to take Chase on an long adventure through many gaming styles…” I would love it too.

Chase Variant is out Feb 17, so look for it. And grab both covers if you can. Its by Rob Liefeld and we all love Rob.

For years, comic book companies have tried to put out anthology collections and 9 outta 10 times, they completely fail. They pair up subpar writers with subpar artist on D-List characters, it’s a recipe for failure.

4 years ago, Image released Popgun. A collection of independent creators, and some better known ones, doing short 2 – 30 page stories of varying genres.

I was hesitant to pick up the book based on its price point, 29.99 USD, about 40 CDN. And the fact that its filled with unknown creators but I had 100 bucks in gift cards from my birthday so I thought why not? I was able to get them for less then 20 bucks CDN from Chapters online store. You can’t beat that!

What really surprised me overall, is that there wasn’t a single story I didn’t like in all three volumes. Yes, there was some gnarly artwork throughout, but over all it was pretty good.

Continue Reading…

If you’re like me and have been collecting comics since you were 11 yrs old, you’ve read something from pretty much every company out there and you most likely remember the hoopla about Image Comics. I was there for probably the first 2 yrs of the company, but I was burnt out from the constant stream of spin-offs, one-shots, the mini series and whatever they could throw out and stick to the masses.

I dabbled here and there throughout the years but my interest in Image was gone. Continue Reading…

Back at Christmas time I got a whole crap load of gift cards to a local bookstore that, thankfully, also has an online store and I asked the good posters at Images MB to recommend some decent series that have been traded that I should check out, and Noble Causes was one of them. I was a little hesitant but I decided to give it a try.

The entire series has been collected into 9 trades and into 2 massive black and white archives of roughly 600+ pages each at a insanely good price.

Noble Causes is best described as a Comic Book Soap Opera that actually works insanely well. You get massive doses of heavy drama, with great sprinkling of super battles and scene chewing villains. Its such a prefect blend that I actually wasn’t craving the action scenes but the interaction between the characters. There is so much going on here that it puts any daytime soap opera to shame.

The characters are pretty great too. There’s Doc Noble, the father, inventor and silver age super hero in his own rights. Gaia, the mother; a Wizards daughter who grew reading about the Human world. Their children Rusty, Zephyr, Race and Celeste; each one with their own specific superpower. The black sheep Frost, who’s story is a great read, and the newest member to the family, Liz Donnelly; who happens to be marrying the youngest child race. There is also Krennick, the son of one of their foes who is Race’s best friend after they spent some together, a really great story.

When I got the first Archive in my hands, I swear I read through the book in a matter of hours, it was so engaging. There are so many characters who come and go, but you never get overwhelmed by them, some actually stay around and become integral parts to overall story of the series, such as Cosmic Rae. Even the villains introduced in the series, some which only appear once, don’t even seem to be cookie cutter characters.

As I’m writing this, I really want to spoil some of the stories contained with the 1200+ pages of this series but doing so will completely rob you of the joy of reading it. It’s such a fantastic read and I am really annoyed that its all over.

Noble Causes sadly suffered from poor sales towards the end and made some usually “jumping the shark” moves some series do to hopefully drive up sales. It jumped ahead 5 years, changed 75% of the cast and dropped some really good story lines, but even doing so still managed to be a good read.

I talked to Jay Faerber, the writer and creator, about the possibility of more Noble Causes and he said,

“It’s not impossible that I’ll return to the series some day, since I haven’t killed the characters off or anything. But I don’t have any plans to revisit the book in the foreseeable future.”

In the end, my only complaint I have with this series, is that I bought the B&W archives. While it is a great way to get the series for cheap, I think getting the colour trades would have been worth the extra money in the end.

Do yourself a favour and get this series. Whether it be the B&W Archives, the 9 volumes of TPB or even the singles (You can get all 40 issues for 40 bucks, I checked) you will not be disappointed.

I think this is a rather neat idea on Image’s part. Go back 70-80 years, to the Golden Age of comics and find characters that have fallen into Public Domain and release new issues of their comics featuring artwork by some of today’s top creators.

The first story in the comic is written and drawn by Erik Larsen (creator of Savage Dragon) and features The Daredevil. The story is rather simple and short, about 8 pages but has that really neat old school feel to it. Colours are often misaligned, the inking is rather scratchy and blotchy and dialogue is very plain but effective. I quite like Larsen’s take on Daredevil and am glad to see that he has worked his way into Savage Dragon.

The second story is by one of my all time fave creators, Paul Grist (creator of Kane and Jack Staff) and he’s tackling the title character, Silver Streak. I think Grist’s art style works tremendously with the old school format and colouring/inking styles used for NIP comics. If I didn’t know better I would swear this was a comic from 70 yrs ago. The story is incredibly simple and pretty funny too, saving a TV cowboy from being killed. Silver Streak has also shown up in a few modern day comics as well.

Rounding out the rest of the comic is a Yellow Claw story, which to a lot of people, including myself, was immensely disappointing. There was so much potential and it was squandered, the execution was just bad. Not to mention it went for a modern story instead of an old school story.

There’s a Captain Battle story which reads a lot like a rip off of Nick Fury, but instead of fighting Nazi’s in Germany, he’s fighting the Japanese in Pearl Harbour and on the Pacific Rim. I found myself liking this character a hell of lot more then I should have. And in this short story it gives you everything you need to get geared up for an ongoing series and I’d gladly get a Captain Battle comic every month with right creative team on board.

There is also a one page Kelly The Cop comic strip which is rather depressing. Very sad indeed.

Overall, a really great book. I love the oversized Golden Age format, the retro styling of the colours and inks and I can’t wait for the next book to come, hopefully sometime this year. Now I gotta go and find Fantastic Comics #24, the first issue in the Next Issue Project series.

I gotta tell you, it has been a long as time since I’ve read Savage Dragon. The last time I look at Erik Larsen’s creation was during the Savage World arc nearly ten years ago.

For those who don’t know, Savage Dragon was created back in the 80’s but didn’t come out til the early 90’s with the creation of Image Comics and other then Spawn, is the only original Image comic from then that still comes out without a new volume every few years.

To delve into the Origin of Dragon would be to ruin have the fun of the series, all you really need to know is that 18 yrs ago Dragon woke up in a burning field with no memories and spent time in the Chicago Police Force, various super teams, been married, killed, blown up and is still taking names, not to mention talked with God.

Within the last years worth of issues, it has appeared that Dragon has suddenly regained his Memories, I’ve been outta the loop so I don’t know how. He now knows who he is and why he is on Earth, and this doesn’t sit well with some people and leads a criminal organization, The Vicious Circle, to start splicing Dragons DNA into their own members to defeat him. But also a character named The Dark Dragon emerges, and claims himself to be the real Dragon.

Obviously. a battle of epic proportions ensues.. I mean EPIC!

As I said, I have not read Dragon in a long ass time.. My god.. this was just awesome.

I know Marvel and DC do tons of epic battles, earth shattering, status quo changing multi issues stories but Erik Larsen managed to what DC and Marvel does in 1 issue. I haven’t seen anything this violent in years in a comic. Yea, its 24 pages of 2 guys pounding the shit out of each other but it worked so well and it wasn’t over the top at all like Kick Ass is.

As soon as I read this I immediately wanted to read issue 157, which is out in 2 weeks. I can’t wait. Especially with the final 3 panels.

I think this issue along could grab a shitload of new readers, and I am glad Dragon is now added to my Pull List at my LCS. There are aslo two brand new trades coming out in the next three months that will get you caught up to issue 157.

Give it a try people.. 5/5 Stars!!