The Longbox Short-List - Week of February 24, 2016

Welcome back to Critical Blast’s weekly look at what new comics you should check out each week.   Just a warning, I make these picks pretty much a week BEFORE I actually get to read any of these comics, so if something is a stinker, I take no blame on that.  Let's get to it!

Comics shipping this week

JUSTICE LEAGUE 3001 #9 – With the announcement of the DC Rebirth launch list, I was pretty sad to see Justice League 3001 didn’t make the cut. It’s always one of my favorite DC books. This is especially frustrating because the May solicits had an awesome cover for Legion of Death which looked incredible. But sadly, that arc will probably only be two issues before the series abruptly ends.

STREET FIGHTER X GI JOE #1 – I usually read the solicits pretty closely to see what books I might want to read. Somehow I missed this. I am a huge GI Joe fan, and I have probably spent hundreds of dollars in various Street Fighter games over the years. I have no idea if this will be any good, but I still want to see it.

POSTAL #10 – One of my favorite Image books. It was just announced that POSTAL, TITHE, and THINK TANK are going to have a crossover soon. I don’t read Think Tank, but I may start because Postal and Tithe are excellent.

KARNAK #2 – Not a dream! Not a hoax! KARNAK #2 is finally coming out! It’s been so long I barely remember the first issue, but I did remember really enjoying it. I guess I had better re-read it before issue 2 comes out…

FAITH #2 – The first issue was great. I had high expectations for this book, and it manages to exceed them. Valiant puts out a lot of great comics, and FAITH is definitely on that list.

GRAYSON #17 – Looks like Dick Grayson will go back to being Nightwing during Rebirth. I just hope that they keep King and Janin as the creative team. Like JL3001, GRAYSON is always one of my favorite titles. I honestly am not that worried about the title change, but only if they keep this awesome creative team.

SPAWN #261 – I don’t talk about SPAWN all that much just because I’ve read it so long, it’s kind of just there on my pulllist. Which is unfair, because it’s a book I enjoy quite a bit. Larsen and McFarlane make a terrific creative team, and SPAWN is really in a great place right now, with Spawn declaring war on hell to try and bring his ex-wife back to life. It sort of feels like this is a SPAWN story that should have been told like 200 issues ago, but SPAWN sort of meandered through some huge changes over the years when different creative teams tried out new things on the book. But SPAWN has gone back to basics, and it’s a stronger book for it.

FLASH #49 – The last issue where Barry was being hunted by the Rogues who were working for the Central City Police was pretty brilliant. As we build up towards next month’s big issue 50 (not to mention Flash being hinted at as a big part of REBIRTH), I’m real curious where this series is going.

WE ARE ROBIN #9 – No surprise, but it doesn’t look like this book survived the cut for REBIRTH either. I will admit, it’s a little slow moving at times, but it’s been a solid ground-level look at Gotham. If nothing else, it’s helped provide some variety to DC. A Batman book without any Batman characters. But, it looks like only 
GOTHAM ACADEMY (which I don’t like all that much) will have to continue that.

HOWLING COMMANDOS OF SHIELD #5 – This book gets just about no press, and I think it’s probably already been cancelled since it didn’t show up in May’s solicits. I don’t know why Marvel keeps trying to reimagine the Howling Commandoes as monsters. It’s a fun idea, but it doesn’t ever seem to sell all that many books. Monster books are way out of style and probably won’t be coming back.

SUPERMAN LOIS AND CLARK #5 – With a lot of Superman titles coming out of Rebirth (like Superwoman, The Super-Man, and Supersons), I suspect this book is going to be really important moving forward. Which is a good thing. It’s a great series, and I’ve loved having Jurgens on a Superman book again.

ALL-NEW ALL-DIFFERENT AVENGERS #6 – Vision has betrayed the Avengers, tearing the team apart from the inside. Unfortunately, this has been telegraphed since real early in the series, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense with the going-on’s in Vision’s solo book. I hate being cynical about ANAD AVENGERS, but I just feel this book is punching way below it’s weight class. With this creative team and these characters, it should be great…but so far it’s just barely been average,

SILK #5 – Silk has been pulled in a lot of directions since her new series started. She’s working undercover with SHIELD to try and take down Black Cat. Meanwhile, she has a day job, is fighting against the Goblin Nation, and trying to find her own family. I get the same excitement from SILK that I used to get from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN when I first started reading comics. That is a very good thing.

BACK TO THE FUTURE #5 – I am glad they have decided to make this an ongoing series. It’s been great to see some of the stories before, after, and in-between the BACK TO THE FUTURE movies. My only gripe with the series is that sometimes it feels like the stories are rushed because of only having a limited number of pages to tell them, but hopefully now that this is an ongoing series that will give them more time to expand and clarify the stories.