By Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
While searching though his late godfather's estate, reporter Nicholas Lash uncovers an unpublished manuscript that details the story of Josephine, a seemingly immortal femme fatale who has been on the run from a demonic cult since the 1930s, leaving a trail of doomed men in her wake. Produced by one of the best creative teams in the industry, this is an absorbing, decades spanning tale that explores the complex and ever changing role of the femme fatale in crime fiction, with some Lovecraftian horrors thrown in for good measure.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
By Stephanie Phillips, Alessandro Miracolo and Marco Renna
I really wanted to love this. Jean Grey having her own solo title where she embraces being the Phoenix and becomes a cosmic defender is the dream. And all those gorgeous Yasmine Putri covers just made me even more excited. Shame that it ended up feeling like Phillips just dusted off a load of unused and unremarkable Captain Marvel scripts and changed the names. To make matters worse, the artwork by Miracolo and Renna was just so sloppy and amateurish, which is an increasing problem with so many Marvel titles lately.
Rating: ⭐⭐
By Charles Soule and Various Artists
After finding happiness in San Francisco, Matt Murdock returns home to work as a prosecutor by day and fight crime by night, alongside his new sidekick Blindspot. This is the run that Daredevil: Born Again seems to be taking the most inspiration from, which is kind of funny since this run was clearly influenced by the original Netflix series. After Mark Waid and Chris Samnee's light-hearted and colourful run, Marvel obviously wanted the comic to more closely resemble the show so it was back to all that dreary New York grittiness for Matt Murdock. He even looked more like Charlie Cox in some issues. Unfortunately, this was one back to basics reboot that just left me cold. It was often too gritty for its own good and some of the new villains Soule introduced were just ridiculous (Tenfingers? Really?).
Rating: ⭐⭐
By Simon Spurrier and Various Artists
I put off reading this run for so long because I loved the previous one by Jeremy Adams so much and was really pissed off that DC just suddenly moved him over to Green Lantern. Spurrier is a writer I actually quite like, but his attempt to turn The Flash into high concept sci-fi has just been a complete, and often confusing, dud. This is also a very depressing book that seemingly went out of its way to have the entire West-Park family estranged and going through some serious stuff, even baby Wade. I soldiered on for as long as a could, mostly out of love for these characters, but eventually had to throw in the towel after nine issues.
Rating: ⭐⭐
By Ram V and Christian Ward
An unidentified object crash lands in the South Pacific. A team of experts on a experimental state of the art submarine are sent to investigate, but soon discover they aren't alone in the deep. I get the sense this was pitched to editorial as “What if we mixed The Abyss with Event Horizon and threw in Aquaman”. Seems like the creators basically wanted to do a horror movie starring Aquaman. No, that isn't quite right. They wanted to do a horror movie guest starring Aquaman. Despite top billing, the King of Atlantis is more of a background presence for much of the story. The crew of the submarine are the main characters, and we see Arthur as they see him, as more of a mythical figure than costumed superhero. If you're familiar with the movies mentioned above you'll have a pretty good idea how this all plays out, but luckily Ward's stunning art easily compensates for the predictability of the script.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig
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