Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

Sara Century

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Loki, Agent of Asgard Review!

by 1 Comment

Many of Marvel’s most notorious villains have gone through changes that added layers to their personalities, transforming them from mustache-twirling fiends to complex figures in their own right. Be it Doctor Doom’s relationship with his mother to Magneto’s lost family, superhero comics have given the genre world many of its most nuanced characters with supervillains.

Still, none of Marvel’s baddies have quite achieved the antihero status of Loki. Making his first appearance in Journey Into Mystery #85 in 1962, Loki spent several decades experiencing relatively little in the way of depth. Yet in recent years, his movie counterpart and a handful of dedicated comics writers have somewhat helped redeem the irredeemable God of Lies. To find this new, heroic Loki at his very best, we have the Loki: Agent of Asgard complete collection. [Read more…] about Wherever You Go, There You Are: Loki, Agent of Asgard Review!

Introducing Robbie Reyes: The All-New Ghost Rider Omnibus

by Leave a Comment

Ghost Rider Vol 8 #3, cover art by Felipe Smith, written by Felipe Smith, art by Danilo Beyruth and Jesus Aburtov, lettering by Joe Caramanga

The Ghost Rider has been one of the most prominent spooky antiheroes of mainstream comics since way back in 1972, and it’s hard to imagine a Marvel Universe without him creeping around its edges and popping in for the occasional crossover. Though Johnny Blaze was the original and Danny Ketch was his predecessor, there are countless other Ghost Riders that have never been explored at length.

When Marvel’s All-New line was in its planning stages, they approached writer and artist Felipe Smith to create a new Ghost Rider with the stipulations that he had to be young and he needed to drive a car rather than a motorcycle. Out of these sparse guidelines, Robbie Reyes was born. A Ghost Rider with a unique powerset and a troubled relationship with the spirit of a serial killer that he has been bonded with, Reyes brought a whole new edge to the Ghost Rider mythos in Ghost Rider: Robbie Reyes – The Complete Collection, while keeping the visual and thematic appeal of the character fully intact.

Collects: All-New Ghost Rider #1 to #12, Ghost Rider #1 to #5, What If? Ghost Rider (2018) #1 [Read more…] about Introducing Robbie Reyes: The All-New Ghost Rider Omnibus

Big Brawls and Brooding Babes in Acts of Vengeance: Spider-Man & The X-Men

by Leave a Comment

Web of Spider-Man #61, written by Gerry Conway, art by Alex Saviuk, Keith Williams, and Bob Sharen, lettering by Rick Parker

The early ’90s were a wild time for comics, and it’s no exaggeration to say that seismic shake-ups were happening all across the medium. Nowhere was that more true than at Marvel, where creative teams of many years were being ousted in favor of new directions brought in by “fresh new artists” like Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd MacFarlane, and a handful of others. Stylism over substance took the industry by storm, and the effects of that, both positive and negative, are still felt to this day.

Amid the changing creative teams and the industry-wide trends that would ultimately define the era, there is Marvel’s Acts of Vengeance crossover. A core group of elite supervillains including William Fisk, Magneto, the Red Skull, and the Wizard (among others) recruited dozens of villains to attack different superheroes than they normally would under the premise that fighting slightly changing up the heroes’ rogue galleries would leave them permanently defeated. This… didn’t… work, mostly because there was zero strategy behind it. This razor-thin plot is typical of the time period: highly disjointed, and still completely badass, because it allowed months of page space dedicated to big, pointless brawls that didn’t really have to adhere to any kind of a coherent overarching plot outside of the ongoing stories within each individual book.

Collects: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (1963) #326-329, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN (1976) #158-160, WEB OF SPIDER-MAN (1985) #59-61 and #64-65, WOLVERINE (1988) #19-20, ALPHA FLIGHT (1983) #79-80, NEW MUTANTS (1983) #86, UNCANNY X-MEN (1981) #256-258 and material from X-FACTOR (1986) #50 [Read more…] about Big Brawls and Brooding Babes in Acts of Vengeance: Spider-Man & The X-Men

The Complicated Redemption Arcs of Carol Danvers vs. Rogue

by 1 Comment

Captain Marvel #4, cover art by Amanda Connor, written by Kelly Thompson, art by Carmen Carnero and Tamra Bonvillain, lettering by Clayton Cowles

Content Warning: There is no way to talk about Carol Danvers and Anna Marie LeBeau without discussing The Marcus Story from Avengers #200, which involved gaslighting and rape. You can read Carol Strickland’s famous essay on the issue here, information on the relationship between Carol and Rogue here, and the long-term effects of all of these things here.

Of all of Marvel’s many long-suffering heroes, Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) and Anna Marie LeBeau (Rogue) are two that have undergone decades of growing pains to get to where they’re at today. Carol survived a troubled home life, a disastrous military career, amnesia, rape, having her powers and memories stolen from her, years in deep space battling the Brood… the list goes on. Meanwhile, Rogue hospitalized and ultimately killed the first person she kissed, fled a troubled home to be raised by a supervillain power couple before fleeing to the Xavier Institute to gain control over her wildly traumatic powerset. They share one event in common: the same issue where Carol was attacked, Rogue was the one doing the attacking, and both of their lives changed forever.

It might go without saying that these are two characters that would have been better off if they had never met, but as it stands, their first encounter gave us one of the most complicated stories of redemption vs. revenge in mainstream superhero comics: Captain Marvel vs. Rogue.

Collects: AVENGERS ANNUAL #10; UNCANNY X-MEN (1981) #158, #171 and #269; MS. MARVEL (2006) #9-10; X-MEN LEGACY (2008) #269-270; CAPTAIN MARVEL (2019) #4-5 and material from MARVEL SUPER-HEROES (1990) #11 [Read more…] about The Complicated Redemption Arcs of Carol Danvers vs. Rogue

Meet the Xenomorphs in Aliens Omnibus Volume 1

by Leave a Comment

Aliens: Nightmare Asylum, written by Mark Verheiden, art by Den Beauvais and Roger Casselman, lettering by Bob Pinaha and J. David Jackson

If you have yet to get into the Aliens comic franchise, you are in for a treat. Appearing mostly as one-shots and limited series starting in the late ’80s continuing up to this very day, these comics tend to be wildly violent and epically dystopian. Though centered around our beloved Xenomorphs (and sometimes Ripley!), the Aliens comics have also introduced a lot of brand new characters and concepts that, alongside the Alien novels, only helps add to the mythos of the films.

Aliens Omnibus Vol. 1 collects hundreds of pages of the classic Dark Horse-era Aliens output. It should be noted that there has already been an Aliens Omnibus series that is now out of print. The Marvel omnibus gathers more issues into a single volume and seems to be fully collecting not just the central series but the fill-ins and back-up stories that appeared in anthology series like Dark Horse Presents.

Collects: Aliens (1988) 1-6, Aliens (1989) 1-4, Aliens: Earth War (1990) 1-4, Aliens: Genocide (1991) 1-4, Aliens: Hive (1992) 1-4, Aliens: Tribes (1992) 1, Aliens: Newt’s Tale (1992) 1-2, Alien 3 (1992) 1-3, Aliens: Space Marines (1992) 1-12; material from Dark Horse Presents (1986) 24, 42-43, 56; Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special (1991) 1; Dark Horse Insider (1989) 14-27 [Read more…] about Meet the Xenomorphs in Aliens Omnibus Volume 1