Trades, serials for today: Saga, America's Got Powers, I Kill Giants and more

I haven't been able to check my gmail in 3 days, so you'll forgive me if I haven't blogged in a while.

The time has been very useful to me -- I get to actually be alone with my thoughts, instead of putting them in the public and then be alone with them, after no one's commented.

Here's a look at the stuff I'm reading. These are actual photos because I don't feel like finding the scans online. Variety is the spice of life, eh?

Saga #2, by Brian k. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

America's Got Powers #1, by Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch

Avenging Spider-Man #6, by Zeb Wells, Mark Waid and Marco Chechetto

 

Saga introduces a new bounty hunter, who leaves just as quickly as she came. Nothing really moves forward in the comic, because our unlikely trio are still in deadly peril, but Vaughan's dialogue almost makes the issue worthwhile. It's Fiona's designs that clinch it. The end of the issue solicits a reader survey, and I'm interested in doing this. Anybody else on board?

America's Got Powers: Bryan Hitch is insane. Ross takes a lot of time to build a small world that we're already familiar with, and I'm wondering if the page economy could have been improved. But, Image is doing something different and I'm willing to support it for an issue or two.

Avenging Spider-Man: Leave it to Zeb to nail down three different voices here. You get the idea of who Daredevil is, Spider-Man as well as Punisher and his ally Punisherette. Give them to Chechetto and you get some crazy good super-comics with some crazy good layouts.

I could have spent my money on something else. I could have gotten a milkshake instead. I'm glad I got comics.

But now I want a milkshake.

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura

Transmetropolitan vol. 1: Back on the Streets, by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

Welcome to Tranquility: One Foot in the Grave, by Gail Simone and Horacio Domingues

 

I Kill Giants has some great cartooning in the way of Niimura. Fifth grader Barbara Thorson tries to escape her home life by creating an imaginary world, and with the help of her friend and the school psychologist, she learns that she's stronger than she thinks she is. It's a story that's all-too-rare in comic books, and I'm glad to read it.

Transmetropolitan contains the three-issue debut of the Vertigo comic, and it's a great thesis statement for the series: Spider Jerusalem returns after a five-year hiatus to journalism, and he learns again how messed up the world is. It's a great, darkly humorous piece of cyberpunk. I'll read the next volume if my library has it.

One Foot in the Grave is Gail Simone's continuation of the Wildstorm comic, and it's a bit weaker in its dependence on soap-opera-style dark pasts. With less vintage flashbacks than the first, the story here is still a story, but not one I'll fondly remember.

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