It’s been a week now, and everyone’s still buzzing about how great Iron Man: The Movie was. Not only that, but the previews for the new Batman, Hulk & Hellboy flicks look amazingly good, making me thank God for the umpteenth time that I lived long enough to see great special effects and supervillains in movies. For those of you who didn’t grow up in the schlocky 70’s, I need only warn you of SpiderMan: The Deadly Dust. ’nuff said.
Meanwhile, two series are just wrapping up this past week. The first is SCUD: The Disposable Assassin. Coming back after a decade-long hiatus, the series’ creators reunited for a 4-issue storyline wrapping up all the loose ends from the series. You hear that, Ben Edlund? If you haven’t read it, SCUD is set in a future where you can buy your own robot assassin out of a vending machine. This series is hellzapoppin’ freakin’ action, screaming for animation! Jack Kirby himself didn’t put as much zip-bang conflict into his series. Buy copies and drool.
The other series wrapping this week is Dark Horse’s excellent run of Conan. That’s not entirely true, as it’ll be back shortly as Conan the Cimmerian, Conan the Butter-Churner, Conan: He of the Flexy Muscles and Little Clothing which doth maketh Ladies Swoon… something like that. Any excuse to pump up flagging sales by starting over with another issue #1. Dark Horse has been doing this for decades, going back to their multiple 4-part Aliens miniseries and continuing to this day with the Hellboy franchise. Guys, it’s all one big story! There’s no need to keep breaking it up into miniseries after miniseries, especially when you keep continuity going and the (relatively) same creative team! Still, this past run of Conan has been absolutely amazing, and this last issue (#50) wraps with a reprint of the Marvel adaptation of the same story, expertly written by master scribe Roy Thomas.
Finally, the Skrull storyline over at Marvel still kept building. Bendis, I’m loving this!
I fixed the comments!