- 1. Thawing Out - Bobby Drake discovers he's gay and fights off anti-mutant bigots, all while trying to have a sane relationship with his judgemental parents. Appeals to the emo teen crowd. [3]
- 2. Absolute Zero - Bobby gets the old team back together (not that old team, the Champions) to "pour one out" for their dead companion Black Widow. A nice moment, but marred by the fact that comic book death is meaningless. Also he meets gay people and thinks about moving to LA. Heavy on the personal life quest and coming to terms with being yourself. [3]
- Or Is He Both? - Intelligent, sadistic Hulk looking for wrongs to brutally right, finding out that Banner can die but he never can. But an even more malevolent force is tracking him, and using Sasquatch as bait. Creepy and fun. [4]
- The Green Door - The Hulk is captured by the Avengers only after using a last-ditch Armageddon weapon; he is cut into pieces and studied, but escapes. Hulk hunters use a powered-up Crusher Creel to attack Hulk, but in doing so open up a doorway to a Gamma-radiated hell. Really well done horror stuff, creepy and suspenseful and pulse-pounding. [4]
- Hulk In Hell - With the Green Door opened, Puck and the rest of his Gamma Flight hulk hunters, plus Betsy Ross, try to reunited Hulk with his Banner half and face down the evil ghost of his father. Plus: the return of Doc Samson! [4]
Immortal Iron Fists - Kaare Andrews
Danny Rand has taken Pei, a tween monk from K'un-Lun, under his wing (but mostly leaves her in the care of a mysterious older lady?). He's meant to teach her
everything she needs to know about harnessing her chi and being a hero, but he keeps getting distracted by monsters that keep
trying to destroy New York, and he's clueless about how she should fit in at a New York
City public school? It's a great idea to have Rand pass on the Iron Fist legacy, but a bit lacking in education. I did not like the manga-style cartoony art at all, which depicts the kids as way younger than they're said to be. And as a Iron Fist trufan, I hated the depiction of a clueless, idiotic Danny Rand. Still, a lot of it was light-hearted fun. [3.5]
Invincible - Robert Kirkman
- Family Matters
- Eight Is Enough
- Perfect Strangers
- Head of the Class - I went into this from the TV version. The show is brilliant, nuanced, diverse, funny, and gory. This series is... well, it's pathetic in comparison. One of the most juvenile and poorly-executed comics I've read in a long time. The idea is great, but... everyone is white, the best friend isn't gay, there are tedious asides about mundane silliness like William wanting his name to be "William" and not "Bill" (??!), absolutely no moral ambiguity or shades of humanity in the villain, shallow pastiche parodies as characters, bizarre character behavior like worrying about school after discovering everything you've known is a lie, girls throwing themselves at Mark for no reason... Just boring, poorly thought out, adolescent fantasy stuff. No nuance. And so weirdly, weirdly fixated on teen sex and abstinence. It's very disappointing. However, after a while it gets better. [2]
- The Facts Of Life - In this volume, another killer undead cyborg threatens Marks' campus; Mark tells his girlfriend Amber his secret; Even goes off to help solve world hunger; Robot tries to help Monster Girl with her de-aging problem while guarding some secrets of his own; and Allen the Alien reports to a space council about Mark and how he might help in the fights against the Viltrumites. Kirkman certainly knows how to keep the pages turning, although some parts are astoundingly riddled with grammatical errors and the bizarre fixation on celibacy and "purity" is quite off-putting. [3.5]
- A Different World - With this volume, I began to feel Kirkman got into the groove of things. I still think there are streaks of immature writing (and come on, "Black Samson"?), but it's vastly improved. Mark is contacted by some insectoid aliens who take him to their leader, who happens to be... his dad! It seems that, Kirk-like, Nolan has taken a bug with boobs as his queen. Together, they try to stop a squad of Viltrums from destroying the planet and taking Nolan away. Meanwhile, Robot continues his machinations, while the Mauler twins help create a dimension-spanning supervillain. [4]
- Three's Company - Mark finds himself torn between his girlfriend Amber and his fellow superhero Atom Eve, who, he finds out from her future self, loves him. Also, he is sent dimension-hopping by the insane new villain Angstrom Levy, who seems unstoppable. Robot reveals himself as a clone of Rex. Now the story is really rolling, and Kirkman keeps all the balls in the air more or less (though the idea that his college friend could be missing for months with Mark doing or caring nothing about it seems a little off-character). [4]
- My Favorite Martian - Mark and a team of heroes, including the newcomer Shapeshifter, head to Mars to mop up the sequid take over from several issues ago, Also, he finally gets around to noticing that his classmate has been transformed into a mindless cyborg slave, and picks one of the two women in his life. [4]
- Out of This World - More development on Allen the Alien and a new Viltrumite named Anissa comes with a new ultimatum for Mark. His brother decides he wants to be a superhero also. [4]
- Who's the Boss? - Mark makes some fumbling attempts at romance with Atom Eve, which, while sweet, lands with a thump because while this is superheroic science fiction, it beggars belief that these superpowered beautiful people who face every day would be acting like Archie in 1950 and not crawling all over each other. Kirkman just has this weird idea about chastity that he keeps horning into the story. Mark also butts heads with his mother over her new romance, which also strikes me as a little odd for a worldly teen with the burdens he has. More dramatically, Mark makes a final break with Cecil and his government contract
after discovering that Cecil has been lying to him about certain assets
he's developing. [4]
Irredeemable - Mark Waid
Ivar, Timewalker - Fred Van Lente
Ivy - Sarah Olesky
An artistic high
school girl from a working-class single parent family tries to make it
through high school. But her friends start to drift away, and after a
fight with her mother, she runs away to live as a nomad and squatter
with an unbalanced boy. Pretty grim stuff at times; painstakingly
detailed, if cartoony, black and white art. [3.5]
Iznogoud - Goscinny
- The Wicked Wiles of Iznogoud - A series of not-at-all in continuity, and very much tongue-in-cheek, comedy shorts about the adviser, Iznogoud, who wants to be Caliph instead of the Caliph. But all his plans, which usually involve some magic trick, come to nothing, and it all backfires, as when he has been turned into a frog, or been captured as a slave. And then the scheming all starts over again. I love Goscinny, but this is not exceedingly funny or charming. It's fun enough, but like a newspaper comic. Acknowledge the silliness, and move on. [3.5]
