What is a Short Pants Review? While we’d love to give full reviews to everything, there just isn’t enough time in the day. So we’ve come up with Short Pants as a way of providing capsule reviews from our varied review writers, giving quick hits and short capsule thoughts about various comics we’ve read recently.

This time out, Dave and Randy cover Conan the Cimmerian #0, BPRD: The Ectoplasmic Man, Hulk #4, Immortal Iron Fist #16, Indiana Jones Adventures Vol. 1 TP, Magdalena/Daredevil, Man With No Name #2, Pilot Season: Alibi, Thunderbolts #121, Transformers Spotlight: Wheelie and X-Men First Class Vol. 2 #13.

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What is a Short Pants Review? While we’d love to give full reviews to everything, there just isn’t enough time in the day. So we’ve come up with Short Pants as a way of providing capsule reviews from our varied review writers, giving quick hits and short capsule thoughts about various comics we’ve read recently.

This time out, Randy covers Batman and the Outsiders #8, Brave and the Bold #14, George RR Martin’s Wild Cards: Hard Call #3, Guardians of the Galaxy #2, Pilot Season Genius, RASL #2 and Warhammer: Condemned by Fire #2.

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Writer/Artist: Alex Robinson
Company: Top Shelf

Alex Robinson, author of mega graphic novels Box Office Poison and Tricked, is back this summer with a shorter tale in Too Cool To Be Forgotten. The length of the book isn’t the only difference, as Robinson focuses in past his usual big ensemble cast and inter-locking stories to tell one story mostly about one character, Andy, a forty-something father who, in trying to cure smoking through hypnosis, winds up re-living his high school years. It sounds like the premise for a wacky comedy, and there are some laughs here, but Robinson does a great job of bringing to life the very real unpleasantness inherent in re-living your high school years, especially if you’re not sure how you got there or how long you’ll be staying.
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The Uniques #1
Writer/Artists: Comfort Love & Adam Withers
Company: Self-Published

I’m usually a bit disappointed when indie creators decide to try their hand at superheroes, because they’re rarely up to the level of the professionally produced, “we’ve been doing this for decades” level of DC and Marvel. Every so often you get an Invincible or a Dynamo 5, but straightforward, costume and all superheroics from self-publishers usually seems at best a touch unambitious. So I approached The Uniques with a bit of trepidation. However, while The Uniques is not as fully formed as some of the Image superhero books I love, it’s a very interesting spin on superheroes with promising artwork, intriguing characters and pretty kick ass action sequences. And even though the first issue hits a few familiar notes that may have been seen in other superhero comics, there are plenty of moments and indicators that writer/artist (and husband and wife) duo Love and Withers are plenty ambitious. Continue Reading »

Creator: Jaime “Jimmy” Portillo
Company: Self-published

I’ve encountered many a vampire tale in my day. Seen the movies, read the books and comics, even played the role-playing games. With that in mind, this book faced a pretty tough challenge. What could it give me that could hold my interest? What could Portillo have to say that I hadn’t seen a million times?

Quite a bit, it turns out. This isn’t the same old sexy vampire seduction tale, nor is it an angst-filled cry to the heavens about being turned into a monster. When you first meet Gabriel, Portillo’s eponymous protagonist, he’s just returned to his hometown of El Paso Continue Reading »

Life Sucks GN
Writers: Jessica Abel & Gabe Soria
Artist: Warren Pleece
Company: :01 First Second Books

Vampire stories are a dime a dozen, and it seems like every variation on the mythology has been done. However, while I’m not an expert on the vast stores of vampire fiction available now, I will say that Life Sucks seems to offer up a fresh interpretation of vampires. That interpretation? Think Clerks with vampires and you’re not far off the mark. Abel, Soria, Pleece and colorist Hilary Sycamore serve up a tale of a wage-slave vampire whose eternal unlife is filled with the same kind of tedium as that of Clerks‘ pathetic protagonist Dante Hicks, right down to the wisecracking, more cooled-out Randal-style buddy, but where Dante only Continue Reading »

Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov
Artist: Kody Chamberlain
Company: Digital Webbing

Ever had a really bad fever? The kind that gives you hallucinations where the weirdest crap happens, but it all just seems to fit, and every so often things will just take a right turn (or maybe a left) for no discernable reason but it’s okay because why not, really? Reading Punks is like that, except there’s no imminent chance of dying and you don’t get to call in to work.
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Wednesday Number Ones is a weekly feature here at Comic Pants. We take the books that are premiering a first issue from that week and give a quick opinion on them. From time to time we may also include more than issue number ones in this feature. If a noteworthy one-shot or the first issue of a new story arc is released, we may talk about it in this feature.

This week we will cover Archibald Saves Christmas #1, Dan Dare #1, Dock Walloper #1, Gargoyles Bad Guys #1, Marvel Atlas #1, Mercenaries #1, and Zombie Simon Garth #1
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Writers: Jesse Bausch, R.S. Paulette, and Joel Priddy
Artists: James Callahan, Justin Alicea, Patrick Godfrey, Shane McDermott, and Ian Sampson
Company: Oddgod Press

Taking a fresh look at an old idea is one of the surest ways to get my attention. Doing it with style and talent is almost guaranteed to do it. Jesse Bausch and James Callahan have more than gotten my attention- they’ve left me demanding more. Strange Detective Tales takes noir detective stories and old monster movies and mixes them in a way that makes me wish that these had been the movies I saw late night growing up. Continue Reading »

Creator: Mike Dubisch
Company: Strange Fear

I’ve been a huge fan of Lovecraftian-style horror since, well, I first read H.P. Lovecraft’s work, so when I run into comics that really portray that feeling of confusion and the unknown I get excited. Those kinds of books are few and far between, with most creators seemingly under the impression that all it takes to make something Lovecraftian is a tentacle-faced monster or use of the Necronomicon. Mike Dubisch gets it, though, and to prove it he takes the Lovecraftian idea that man is cosmically insignificant and a pawn for unknowable powers and mixes it with the claustrophobic setting of a ship in space, a la Alien. Continue Reading »