Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

Kenneth Laster

X-Factor Epic Collection: Angel Of Death Review!

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X-Factor exists in a really strange memory limbo. Most people think of the team as the Peter David run with Multiple Man or the government-run era with Havok and Polaris. But if you’re really tuned in you remember the original hook of the team being the Original Five X-Men reunited, and if you’re really really tuned in you remember the additional hook of them masquerading as Mutant Hunters to take and train the mutants they “captured” as the “X-Terminators”. This Original Five era may not be necessarily the most well-remembered era in the concept of the X-Factor team, but it can’t be denied that it gave some incredibly influential building blocks into the X-Universe – including Apocalypse, Archangel, and of course…Nanny and Orphanmaker. 

While Bob Layton was the author of the beginnings of this series, it really started bringing these ideas to life when the great Louise Simonson, primarily joined by her husband Walt Simonson, took the reins. X-Factor Epic Collection: Angel Of Death collects this Simonson era in its full swing. This collection really pushes the scope for what X-Factor as a concept can be by stripping it down and rebuilding what works, what doesn’t, and making it look like it was meant to be there from the beginning. From Archangel to “Inferno”, this collection really captures some of the heights of the Simonsons’ X-Factor run while keeping up the serialized soap opera so at home in this era of X-Books. 

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Nightwing: The Prince of Gotham Omnibus Review!

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Are you a Dick Grayson fan who enjoyed his run as Batman, checked out of the New 52 for obvious reasons, and came back because you heard good things about Grayson and find yourself asking “Hey what the heck happened in the *thirty* issues of comics in between these two series?” Well Nightwing: The Prince of Gotham Omnibus is here for you! And now you may ask yourself, “Dope but…are these many pages of comics…good?” and dear reader you are in luck because I have the answer for you in a resounding…eh. Nightwing’s New 52 era was a run helmed by writer Kyle Higgins and mostly consisted of three main artists over the 30+ issues: Eddy Barrows, Brett Booth, and Will Conrad along with a handful of fill-in artists and collaborators. 

New 52 Nightwing’s biggest sin is being sandwiched in between two huge swings with the character of Dick Grayson. Grant Morrison had just electrified the character by having him step into the role of Batman and creating a strange psycho-pop Gotham for the Bright Knight and his surly Boy Wonder, Damian Wayne to traipse through. Immediately after this run Tim Seeley and Tom King took Dick out of Gotham and into the world of psychedelic espionage in another fresh and radical take. And unfortunately in the middle child is Nightwing, a mostly standard Batman family comic with a largely forgettable supporting cast and constant derailment from crossovers that it felt hard for any of the interesting things it had going for it to stick. 

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Wonder Woman: Dead Earth Review!

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Wonder Woman: Dead Earth is a DC Black Label book by writer/artist Daniel Warren Johnson, Mike Spicer, and Rus Wooton, and it’s a weird comic book. The premise is very straight forward: Princess Diana of Themyscira wakes up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and has to uncover the mystery of what went wrong and protect the remains of humanity. On the surface, the hook isn’t really all that different from Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Last Knight on Earth, but what really set it apart was Daniel Warren Johnson spearheading this book.

Johnson’s Shonen influence and work on Murder Falcon and Extremity really make him an exciting artist; his work conveys an over the top momentum and action that is a really fresh presence on a big two book. And objectively, Wonder Woman: Dead Earth is a visually stunning book and plays so perfectly into Johnson’s strengths as an artist. The story and plot are where it gets a bit dicier. At its core Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, is a story around the notion of second chances told really effectively, but its problems come when the story is put within the context of DC Comics’ fascination with overly grim settings, and the broader mythology of Wonder Woman & her meta-textual themes and context in the real world. [Read more…] about Wonder Woman: Dead Earth Review!

The Best Tim Drake (Robin) Comics!

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Tim Drake is a complicated character. Not much in terms of continuity, not usually (side eyeing the New 52), but in terms of legacy. While Tim was very much the heir apparent to the Robin mantle after Jason Todd died, he reinvented it and made that name his own. Once Damian Wayne took over the role, Tim has been in a limbo ever since. Coincidentally a number of the best Tim Drake stories interrogate his identity and legacy within the Batman mythos in interesting ways. This list of stories paints a picture of Timothy Jackson Drake and who he is to the Bat-family.  [Read more…] about The Best Tim Drake (Robin) Comics!

Avengers by Jonathan Hickman: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 Review!

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Jonathan Hickman is a name associated with high concept science fiction and the exploration of flawed men losing themselves in the pursuit of a greater good. Hickman’s Marvel work is held in high regard with Secret Wars being one of the most memorable cross-overs in the Marvel era, and his entrance on the X-Men with House of X/Powers of X breathing new life into the line and the fandom. Hickman is a name that objectively holds weight, which is why Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers The Complete Collection volume one comes out at such an interesting time to explore what makes a Jonathan Hickman comic a Hickman comic.

For an author known for such complete runs, it’s an interesting time to take a look at how Avengers begins, figuring out how Hickman collaborates with artists on tone between titles, what kind of stories he wants to tell, how much of that comes across at the very start of this run and how we’ve seen all of this develop since then. [Read more…] about Avengers by Jonathan Hickman: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 Review!