You can lead a horse to water....
Final Thoughts
Punisher War Journal #22: I say it every time, but nothing can ruin a comic like Chaykin's awful art. A great book can become good...a good book becomes mediocre...a mediocre book become bad..and, if it's a bad book, like Blade, it becomes the worst Marvel comic you can buy.
Your enjoyment of Punisher War Journal probably hinges on your enjoyment of the issues before it. The fun and "suspension of disbelief" that readers had before is now gone. In it's place is a more serious comic. And, it's not that it's bad...it's that it's mediocre, and the GOD AWFUL art brings the entire story down. Just look at Chaykin's drawing of G.W. Bridge on the sixth page; I would consider that drawing just as bad as many of the bad drawings I've seen posted by Liefeld on this message board. (Dude is fat, yet those thighs never come close to coming together.) If it wasn't for Chaykin, I could possibly consider giving this book a one or two point bump up; but, as it stands, it's just a 5/10
Criminal #4: I love this title. Brubaker lets us into the gritty side of life, investing our interest in the shadiest of characters. They are the definition of anti-heroes, and even though a story is only one to five issues long, we really feel like we get to know them. This one, the first of four issues, deals with a newspaper strip writer and artist who gets more than he bargained for when getting involved with a redhead and her violent boyfriend. 9/10
Uggg....don't you hate when you finally get around to reading one of your comics, and you discover some printing mistake with your issue, like where a dark ink smudge has blacked out a part of two pages...or two pages are stuck together...or, the middle pages aren't quite stapled to your comic?? My Eternals #3 had a couple pages stuck together, and what's making them stick is too much print, and it left a little mark on it.
Eternals #3: What a great comic! Working at a methodical pace, the hunt for the Eternals continues, a Druig seems to be winning that race. I love how this series picks up right where the other left off. 9/10
Invincible Iron Man #4: Four issues into this story, and you just get a whole lot of talk. I was hoping for sooo much more out of this new Iron Man series, especially since Fraction said he wanted to be different than Iron Man's other book. I don't see a whole lot of difference, especially considering we still have Tony Stark acting like the Director Of SHIELD throughout. And, while I do like Ezekial Stane as a bad guy, the whole Pepper Potts subplot is kind of stupid. Also, I really am not a fan of this kind of art. 6/10
