X-Men #1- Really Marvel? Really? So, a new X-men title. With a couple variant covers. With vampires. Oh and it’s an ‘event’ with a bunch of spin-offs and other crap. You assholes haven’t even finished your last X-Men event and you’re charging people $3.99 for a new one and bragging it’s the first #1 X-Men issue in a decade. Disregard Astonishing X-Men, disregard the bajillion mini-series and one-shots that have #1 plastered on them, you have to brag about the technicality that this is the first issue to a regular series that happens to not have an adjective in the title. This is the exact crap that holds the entire industry back from ever developing anything new and meaningful. That all being said the script was lackluster while the Paco Medina art was fine. I think I’m just too far away from ever giving a crap about the X-Men anymore that I can’t think of anything really nice to say. C-

Brightest Day The Atom Special #1- Considering this is Jeff Lemire, I was thinking I might get into it a little more and while it’s not bad by any means it’s really not necessary either. Thankfully it’s only $2.99 and it’s sort of an origin issue while launching a new story arc (to be featured in Adventure Comics), so it’s not like a big waste of time and money. It just sort of felt like someone figured it was time to reintroduce Ray Palmer without really trying to do anything new, and this is what we got. Decent script from Lemire and Mahmud Asrae’s art is solid and kind of fits a new DC in-house style. B-

The Boys #44- Been waiting over three years for this particular sub-plot to develop and it looks like an interesting start, so yay! I kind of feel bad that many customers I know have given up on it, cause I have faith that Ellis can deliver some great material here and he’s playing the long game. Also, Russ Braun offers a similar enough style to Darick Robertson that while not a seamless transition is a good choice and didn’t miss a beat from the personalty of the series. B+

Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #2- I can’t tell you how much I love seeing Sprouse’s art and on this character again. This is just great sci-fi pulp fun that doesn’t take itself too seriously and offers an interesting story with beautiful art. A-