Thanks for your input. However, I never read his run on GA. But I do like his Batman & the Outsiders so far. Will I still like Connor Hawke mini?

I’m a Dixon fan and a Connor Hawke fan, and I found the Connor Hawke mini to be… unsatisfying. It wasn’t bad, and I actually enjoyed the first few parts of it quite a bit, but there was something about the end that just seemed unimaginative and dull, like Dixon wasn’t trying.

Dead of Night was soul-crushingly bad for a fan of the Man-Thing like me: Aguirre-Sacasa, who really should know better, almost copied the original Roy Thomas/Gerry Conway/Gray Morrow story verbatim, adding an “other man” for… well, no reason whatsoever it seems, since Ellen’s dialogue is taken right from the original Savage Tales story.

Aaron’s kickoffs to GR and Wolverine were good, but not great.

Punisher: Force of Nature was a riot. Very clever and funny, and bodes well for Cable.

I think that Scalped is good enough to be the best new Vertigo ongoing since the early 00s, and quite easily in my mind. It has a fresh setting, strong characters, and Aaron is rolling out a big, interesting tapestry of a story.

Like every Vertigo book since Y/Fables debuted, Scalped suffers from employing too slow a burn, characters that can be difficult to tell apart, a tone that can be a bit too dark/cynical, and an overall incosistency. Not that there’s been a bad issue, but it can be plodding for an issue or two and just when you’re getting a bit tired of it, they’ll drop a thoroughly brilliant issue.

Hmmm…this sounds like I hate it, but I really recommend it.

I stuck with Scalped for 13 issues, but those weaknesses ended up overwhelming the strengths for me. I just felt like it was spinning its wheels after a while, and the unrelenting grimness became tedious.

Like every Vertigo book since Y/Fables debuted, Scalped suffers from employing too slow a burn, characters that can be difficult to tell apart, a tone that can be a bit too dark/cynical, and an overall incosistency. Not that there’s been a bad issue, but it can be plodding for an issue or two and just when you’re getting a bit tired of it, they’ll drop a thoroughly brilliant issue.

Hmmm…this sounds like I hate it, but I really recommend it.

Just wondering what you guys think of Jason Aaron’s first issue of Ghost Rider?

Not a huge Ghost Rider fan, so I didn’t read it, and we don’t always cover creative team changes, so we decided to give this one a pass. None of us had a whole lot of interest, to be honest, so at best you’d probably get a disinterested review.

Based on his Wolverine this week (which I thought was pretty awful), I don’t think I’d have been much of a fan of his Ghost Rider.

Still intend to give Scalped Vols. 1-2 a fair shot at some point, though.

No review of Image’s Gutwrencher #1 or Next Issue Project #1?

Didn’t get either one, actually. The Next Issue Project was order reduceable due to lateness and we reduced it to zero thanks to zero interest from our customers, and Gutwrencher is, I believe, a Shadowline book, almost all of which have been non-starters for us as well.

X-Force I’m not as sure about, some good stuff, some stuff I’m not too sure about, all which has been covered here already by others. In any case the story has me interested enough to stick it out for a while and see where it goes.

Bob I was the same way with Salvatore, I was 23-24 when “Crystal Shard” or whatever it was called came out, thought it was horrible.

I flipped through X-Force. Honestly, I think from the few times they’ve tried it, that the idea of a badass X-team doing all the dirty work is better in theory than it is in practice.

Also picked up X-force on everyone recommendation, haven’t read that one yet either, but paging through it the art was maybe a little too, slick and “heavy metal” looking for me, not that style dosen’t have it’s place, just wasn’t what I was expecting I guess, besides like I said that was just a quick scan, it may well read better.

Oh and Randy, maybe it’s just my Drizzt-hate talking, but Salvatore never rising much above the level of familiar and cliché? Has it ever been any different for that guy?

I enjoyed his stand alone issue of Wolverine that was out months ago much more than the whole six issue story arc of Jeph Loeb’s Wolverine, so I’ll check his Wolverine this week.

Looking forward to the FF with Millar/Hitch, not looking forward to the book being late.