CWR WEEKEND BLOG EXTRA

Welcome back to a new CWR WEEKEND BLOG EXTRA. This week: a selection of new titles from Ross Richie’s Boom Studios!

First out of the gate we have SECOND WAVE #6, written by Michael Alan Nelson and drawn by Chee. The last couple of issues had shown a steep decline from the first few, leaving me wondering if Nelson had run out of gas with his story. But just when I was ready to write the book off: recovery! This is more like it; Miles and his rag-tag band escape the hick town they were stranded in and the Martians come back into play as a threat to their lives. While the last two issues were out of balance, this measures out trouble from both the human and the alien sides in equal amounts, which is what makes this book special and unique. I’m now back on board with it.

On the flip side, X ISLE #3 (written by Andrew Cosby and Michael Alan Nelson and drawn by Greg Scott) still isn’t setting my world on fire. The castaways have yet another gun-pointing standoff with one another as agendas conflict, and a couple of minor tweaks about the island’s nature appear (one, sadly, spoiled by the cover). In the previous two issues, I had sort of felt like the real problem was that all of the characters were so annoying that you wanted them to die, and soon. But in reading issue three, I’ve begun to believe that perhaps the real difficulty is in pacing. There’s really very little forward movement here as far as the underlying plot goes, and it makes me wonder if the final two issues are going to feel extremely cramped in order to offer some sort of resolution.

Andrew Cosby, writing with Johanna Stokes and aided by the art of Rafael Albuquerque, has a far better time of it with THE SAVAGE BROTHERS #2. When last we left the redneck zombie hunters, they had decided to rescue a virgin stripper from a head floating in a glass jar. Taking that lunacy to another level, their next feat must be to actually escape from the head’s zombie tracking dogs and other assorted creepy creatures. SAVAGE BROTHER has very little going for it in the way of plot or character development, and that’s perfectly fine. It has more than enough going for it in the humor department and the ludicrous fun department. There’s more than one laugh-out-loud moment here, and if you listen close enough, you can here Cosby and Stokes laughing as they wrote it. Great stuff. Oh: and congratulations to Cosby (co-creator) and Stokes (staff writer) on the renewal of EUREKA, a victory not only for them, but for fans of quality television as well.

Closing out the weekend is WHAT WERE THEY THINKING: MONSTER MASH-UP, written by Joe Casey, Keith Giffen, Johanna Stokes, and Kevin Church and drawn by various. This series, which features public domain comics re-scripted for humorous effect, can be a bit hit or miss. However, this issue is fairly strong. It gets off to a poor start with Casey’s overly long gay-joke story (homoerotic humor has been a staple for each issue and has begun to feel like a crutch), but my buddy Church, aided by Giffen, swoops in to pick up the pace with a funny story involving a man who likes hairy women. This is Church’s first published work, and while it has dead spots, he does a decent job of getting his voice onto the page and getting some snickers, which is something to take pride in. But stealing the spotlight from everybody else is Stokes’ tale, “Hats Off”, which is almost impossible to describe. It involves two men who are rivals for one woman and racing to find a lizard creature, but that barely really covers it. I’ll just say that this is the first time in the series that I was naked with jealousy over how good one of these stories was. Genius stuff.

That’s it for this weekend. I’ll be here through the week with site updates, and back here next weekend for another weekend blog extra!

/Mason