New Comics - With reviews!

An afternoon off to visit the gym and get ready for the Heaven and Hell concert that evening meant that there was just time to visit Forbidden Planet to see what was waiting for me.

Well there was only four comics and as I've just read three of them I'd thought I'd review them straightaway. The fourth was Astonishing X-Men #23 - but I'm waiting until the story finishes in issue #24 before reading that one.

The three that I have read were all good and enjoyable.

The first Fantastic Four # 551 by McDuffie and Pelletier has all the ingredients of a classic FF story. However saying that, other storylines have promised a great deal and not quite delivered at the very end.

In this issue Namor, Black Panther and Doc Doom come back from 70 years in the future to stop present day Reed from making a terrible and disastrous mistake. It was well told with a few surprising twists and turns. After finishing it, I re-read the prologue and it seemed far more ominous on this subsequent reading. Good art yet again by Pelletier makes this a top issue.

Rating 8.5/10

It was trepidation that I began She-Hulk #22 by Peter David and Shawn Moll. Dan Slotts run had been just so good that it was always going to be a difficult act to follow.

The way David has approached things is by moving Jen away from the law firm and put her in a new situation. It works quite well as one or two little mysteries are unveiled.

Moll's art was also a nice surprise. He's a new one to me but his style is very similar to Gary Frank which is not bad at all.

Rating 7.5/10.



The New Avengers: Illuminati (5 of 5) by Bendis/Reed and Jim Cheung was the most welcome surprise. You could tell that the whole series had been leading up to this point and so it's a shame that we had to endure a few poor issues between No. 1 and this.

The issue ties in to the Secret Invasion of the Skrulls which was begun in recent issues of New Avengers. Again there are a few surprises in this issue including the revelation that one of the Group is a Skrull.

I thoroughly enjoyed the issue and am looking forward to the limited series.

Rating 8/10