Comics of April 11, 2018

Now that I’m mostly done watching the Commonwealth Games (mostly paid attention to the swimming), I should start posting about movies sometime in the next week. I’ll probably just post two Star Wars movie posts over the rest of the month, then the Han Solo movie after it comes out, and then I’ll start the Dreamworks blogathon. I might be going through all the Dreamworks movies at a slower pace than I have with these blogathons in the past and I might even do a couple movies in-between. It’s nice to mix things up a bit. But whatever the case, I’m both looking forward to and dreading this one. As much as Dreamworks is Disney’s biggest competitor in the animation department, and they do have some great movies, they don’t have nearly the same track record.

Anyway, the comics I picked up this week include X-Men Red 3, Supergirl 20, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 81 and Detective Comics 978. Here are my first impressions. Because I’m working 3-11, there probably won’t be any reviews later.

X-Men Red 3 is great. It delves deeper into the mystery of what’s going on with Cassandra Nova, while not revealing anything about her end goals. Meanwhile, there’s a good sentinel fight where the main X-Men team prove themselves to be useful, yet the new technopath, Trinary, kind of shows them all up. Like most of Tom Taylor’s All-New Wolverine series, this continues to have a strong balance between an intense story, drama and fun. I haven’t read Astonishing X-Men yet so I can’t comment on that, but of the X-Men team books with a colour in the title, this is by far the best so far.

Supergirl 20 is good. It seems to conclude Supergirl’s war with the DEO, under the influence of a supervillain boss. Although the comic makes it clear that there is still mistrust between Supergirl and the general public, it forges a path for her to earn their trust back. Throw in some great action and some good character drama, and you’ve got a good entry in this series. Supergirl fans will likely enjoy this.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 81 is fun. In the aftermath of the three way war between the triceratops mutants, Splinter’s foot clan and the Earth Defense Force, both Splinter and Leonardo clearly need time to re-center themselves. Apart from that, this issue mostly focuses on tying up loose ends, while also introducing another story involving the Rat King. If you haven’t read this series and you feel lost after reading those sentences, I don’t blame you, but at this point it’s nearly impossible to sum up everything you need to know in one paragraph. Just know that even if this is sort-of a downtime issue, there’s still a lot going on. This entire series is worth checking out if you’re a Ninja Turtles fan, or are interested in checking out their series.

Detective Comics 978 is great. With the announcement that writer James Tynion IV is leaving this series soon, it’s no surprise that it feels like it’s building up to his final story arc. This issue partially reveals the plans of a hidden villain who’s been behind the scenes since the beginning of Tynion IV’s run. He reveals himself to be a major threat and a power hungry kid, who at the same time, might be going in over his head. But with Batman’s team fractured at the moment, it’ll be interesting to see if they can pull back together to take on this major threat. In short, this is a Batman team book that’s been brilliant from start to finish. You should be reading it.