The Best Books You Didn't Read Last Week: 3/2/2009

Dynamo 5 #20


Written by: Jay Faerber


Art by: Mahmud A. Asrar

Picking up pretty well right where last week's #0 left off (which was 99¢ and would have been a steal at twice the price ... what do you mean you didn't get it? Go get it! It was 99 F*#KING CENTS ... seriously ... the frustration) we see the family Dynamo getting down on some serious butt kicking action against War Chest (go ahead ... giggle ... you know you want to) and another guy wearing the Strong Suit from issue #0. We also see some really cool inter-sibling drama as Scatterbrain starts to question Myriad's orientation while Scrap and Myriad decide to bunk up and share an apartment for the betterment of both of their wallets during these tough economic times. It's clear that the series is moving toward something big as more and more we see this Priest, Father Gideon trying his very best to remind Cynthia that she is also one of Captain Dynamo's children and that her half siblings have stripped of her memories and her life ... things are getting pretty sketchy all around as the team is really only just getting back in stride from their time spent apart. This is without question one of the best team books currently on the market and does everything that classic runs of Teen Titans, Fantastic Four and The X-Men ever did with a more modern sensibility and art that is out of this world. It's time for you to check in with the Dynamo Siblings, they've got something to show you when it comes to how a super-family is supposed to work.

Hack/Slash #20


Written by: Tim Seeley


Art by: Kevin Mellon

Alright, I know that I might be late coming to this party but this book totally rocks. Equal parts action and comedy mixed with drama and horror. And actually good horror ... and good comedy ... and good ... Comic-booking. Seriously, Tim Seeley knows what the hell he's doing and really does a killer job doing it. This might be a comic wonk kind of comic, or a horror wonk kind of comic, but it's really, really fun. I didn't start reading this book until Devil's Due started having all the trouble with Reanimator LLC, last fall. I figured if someone was going to go to all the trouble that Tim Seeley and the artists that he gets to draw his horror romps every month that they shouldn't get screwed for trying to do the right thing when someone else is just trying to make a fast buck. So I started ordering Hack/Slash for the store. Prior it would only come in for pull and holds and I would flip through it and laugh from time to time and say "Wow, cool sequence" from time to time, but I never really read the book. But when we started getting it in for the shelves I figured that it deserved my time and effort to read it in order to try and turn more folks onto the book. And it was, it really, really was. This is a whole lot of fun and I think that more people should be checking this book out. If you liked movies like Scream, television shows like Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, and comics like 30 Days of Night then you'll love Hack/Slash, it turns all the typical horror tropes on it's head and it has a hell of a time doing it.

The Best Books You Didn't Read this Week, Issue 8

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #28
Written by: Peter J. Tomasi
Art by: Luke Ross

The Blackest Night grows ever closer and the menace of the Sinestro Corps remains ever present. A lot of people started picking this title up when the Sinestro Corps War event was going on but not everyone stuck with the title after the crossover was finished and boy howdy did they make a mistake. We have seen Mongul wielding multiple Yellow Power Rings, we have also seen the home planet of Mongul's frequent weapon "Black Mercy", We have seen a quintet of Sinestro Corps members who hunt and kill the family members of Green Lantern Corps Rookies and steal their eyes. We have seen the terrifying change in the Guardian who stood toe to toe with The Anti-Monitor and will live scarred for the rest of her life. We have seen the birth of the first ever Lantern Bar, Warriors. But most importantly we have been seeing the growing camaradarie and brotherhood growing between two of the greatest Green Lanterns to ever live, Guy Gardener, and Kyle Rayner. This has been an incredibly fun book that everyone should still be following.



DARKNESS #5
Written by: Phil Hester
Art by: Michael Broussard

I have never been the biggest Top Cow fan. Marc Silvestri wasn't my favorite of the Image Founders and thus a house style based on his own never really grabbed me. Recently however there have been some titles and concepts that have really caught my attention. Bringing Ron Marz onto Witchblade for a 5 year long run was a smart decision, the growing talent of Stepan Sejic has been something worth watching, the idea of The Top Cow Pilot Season involves fans in a way that I think is incredibly interesting, but perhaps most importantly they brought one of my favorite current writers in the industry on to one of the only characters they have that has ever interested me. Back when they relaunched the series with Paul Jenkins writing and Dale Keown on art I decided to check it out and was pretty pleased with it for about 7 or 8 issues, but I eventually lost interest and stopped reading. Then I hear from an interview that Phil Hester is going to be taking on the third relaunch of the title. I have loved pretty much everything Phil has ever worked on, whether it was in his capacity as an incredibly talented artist or in his growing portfolio of incredibly engaging writing projects. I really think that this issue was amazing and that Michael Broussard has grown out of the house style and has become more than a Silvestri clone. This book is a quiet winner. Check it out.

DYNAMO 5 #16
Written by: Jay Faerber
Art by: Mahmud A. Asrar

With the recent announcement that Noble Causes will be ending with issue 40 it has become more and more important that people start checking out the other books that Jay Faerber is currently producing. So, my suggestion is to start with Dynamo 5. With two trade paperbacks already available it's easy enough to jump onto the title and start enjoying the incredible characters and relationships that are present in this title. Imagine, if you can, if a character like Superman who has a little less commitment to his marriage ... who had some illegitmate children ... and then died ... in the bed of one of his mistresses. His widow looks at the city around her and realizes that it needs protectors, and that only the offspring of her husband, the recently deceased lothario, will do. So she exposes them to the same radiation that gave Captain Dynamo his powere in the hopes that they will become super-humans as well, and it works, they each get one of his powers. And for a while they work together as a team. But Maddie's interference causes the group to disperse and now Scrap has put together a new Dynamo 5 and protects the city as best they can. CHECK THIS BOOK OUT!