by Chris Delloiacono, Mike Maillaro and Jeff Ritter

This week!

• RAW IS SAMI!!!

• Handicapped Heroes

• Best in Our World: King of the Ring

Swords of Sorrow is Dynamite’s big summer crossover.  I am actually very worried about it getting overshadowed by events like Convergence and Secret Wars. I have talked extensively about my love of Dynamite's other crossover series like Masks and Legendarry. Swords of Sorrow seems to be very much in the same vein, though this time it will be featuring an all female cast. The first two issues come out this week, and I was happy to get the opportunity to review them early.

Warning! These reviews contains quite a few spoilers!

Swords of Sorrow #1

Written by: Gail Simone
Illustrated by: Sergio Davila
Cover by: J. Scott Campbell
Colored by: Jorge Sutil
Lettered by: Erica Schultz

Published by: Dynamite
Cover Price: $3.99

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

Secret Wars #1 - Or as I like to call it "The Elephant In the Room." I have ZERO interest in this series, but since I enjoy quite a bit of Marvel's books, I feel like I have to buy it just to know what's going to happen to the books I enjoy reading. Jonathan Hickman holds basically no appeal for me. Sorry to sound so cynical, but I am expecting Secret Wars to be a huge disappointment.

Blast of the Week - What sports/sporting events do you follow, are you excited about?

Mike Maillaro: When Mike Weaver suggested this topic, it didn’t occur to me how much was going on in sports this weekend.  I get to work this morning, and there is a big headline in my local paper “THE BIGGEST WEEKEND IN SPORTS!”

• Kentucky Derby

Dead Drop #1

Written by: Ales Kot
Art by: Adam Gorham
Cover by: Raul Allen
Colored by: Michael Spicer
Lettered by: VC's Dave Sharpe

Published by: Valiant
Cover Price: $3.99

Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!

By Mike Maillaro and Mike Weaver

Convergence:  Infinity Inc #1 by Jerry Ordway and Ben Caldwell

Worlds Featured: Metropolis (Pre-Crisis Earth 2) and Atlanta (Hex)

by Mike Maillaro and Mike Weaver

Convergence #4

Summary: This issue starts with Telos explaining what’s going on to Earth-2 Dick Grayson.  Brainiac saved these cities and tasked Telos with terraforming this world for them.  But, Telos needs to decide who would make a strong society worthy of this world.  So he decided to have them all fight it out.   He wraps the paralyzed Dick Grayson in some kind of liquid metal that helps him regain his mobility.  

I love to browse Kickstarter for cool new inventions, clever board games and exciting graphic novels. Recently I came across Heathen, a new graphic novel project from Oklahoma-based artist Natasha Alterici. After reading the synopsis, I immediately backed her project. I then contacted Natasha to learn more about the project, her interest in comic books, and herself. 

Tell me a little about yourself and how you came to be doing a Kickstarter for this graphic novel project? What drew you, no pun intended, to the comic medium? And who are done of your artistic influences? Your style on Heathen reminds me of Ashley Wood, which isn't a bad thing!

Fantastic Four #645

Sometimes you're lucky to review an item that simply put, you know going in you already love. I mean, what can I tell you about the film Goodfellas that hasn't already been said? It's up there with the first two Godfather films as one of the greatest achievements in gangster cinema. So glorious is this film that it transcends the genre and isn't JUST a gangster film. It's simply a masterful piece of storytelling. Beautifully written, masterfully directed, and featuring some of the best performances of the past quarter century. It's fingerprint is upon so many films that have come since. Goodfellas has created stereotypes and tropes of the genre, yet when it was released it was original and vibrant. The only question to be pondered: does it hold up twenty-five years later.

By now you know the main players: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner are back in “Marvel’s The Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron,” reprising their roles as Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Thor, Hulk, and Hawkeye, respectively. The S.H.I.E.L.D. brass, Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury and Cobie Smulders’ Maria Hill are also back, along with Anthony Mackie as The Falcon and Don Cheadle as War Machine. Idris Elba appears as Heimdall but Tom Hiddleston does not reprise Loki in this installment.

That’s already a rather ponderous list and we haven’t even got to the bad guys yet.

by Chris Delloiacono, Mike Maillaro and Jeff Ritter

This week!

• Ring the bell for Verne Gagne

• Extreme Rules Results

• NXT Results

• Pro Wrestling Syndicate - Spring Breakdown Results

One of the things Zenescope is known best for is they have a variety of series that are modern day versions of various classic and fairy tale stories, most notably their Grimm and Oz lines. So, when I heard that Oz: Reign of the Witch Queen was supposed to be a very good jumping on point for Oz, I decided to check it out.

Before I get into the review, I do want to say that one of the early impressions I had about these books was that they had done a lot of cheesecake redesigns for the characters. In fact, when you search for “Zenescope Grimm” on Google, one of the first images that comes up is this: 

Mike Maillaro: So, this week’s topic is something I have been thinking about a lot lately.  With the rise of Netflix exclusives, Amazon, Hulu, Sling, Roku, and on and on, it is harder and harder to justify the cost of cable TV.  So the question is:

Where do you see Television in 5 to 10 years?  

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

When you initially fall into Paige Britt's THE LOST TRACK OF TIME -- and make no mistake: you fall into this book, you don't just dip your toe into it -- you may, if you're a reader of some experience, find yourself in familiar territory. So familiar, in fact, that I kept waiting for Norton Juster's Milo to drive past looking for the off ramp to THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH.

Which I should now clarify by saying that THE LOST TRACK OF TIME is absolutely nothing like THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH; it's more a literary fraternal twin, if anything. But I digress.

Charmed Season 10 #7

Written by: Pat Shand
Art by: Dimat
Cover by: David Seidman
Colored by: Valentina Cuomo
Lettered by: Christy Sawyer

Published by: Zenescope
Cover Price: $3.99

Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!

Even though I just reviewed Charmed a few months ago, this was supposed to be a good jump on issue for new readers, so I decided to give it another shot.  This story was mostly a stand alone story, though there was a lot here that provided closure to hanging story threads, and a lot of setup for future storylines too.

Convergence: Justice League of America #1 by Fabian Nicieza and Chriscross

Convergence Week 3 by Mike Maillaro and Mike Weaver

This week, we have Pre-Crisis Gotham City, New York City (Kamandi), Gotham City (Red Rain), Central City (Tangent), Durale (OMAC), and Pre-Crisis Legion Metropolis as our combatants...though I will say up front, you don’t get to see much of these characters in many of the tie-ins.

Convergence #3 by Jeff King and Stephen Segovia

Very interesting news posted by Gamespot this morning:

Today during a special event in San Francisco, Telltale Games and Marvel Games announced a partnership for a new game due out in 2017.

The event is ongoing; we'll have more details on the new game as they become available.

Telltale has also published a blog post about this announcement, though it doesn't offer much in the way of specifics.

"Announced this evening in San Francisco, we're excited to reveal an all-new partnership with the incredible team at Marvel Entertainment. We'll be teaming up on the development of an upcoming Telltale game series project set to premiere in 2017!"

Source: Gamespot