Shadowland #1- I haven’t been reading the Diggle run of Daredevil since I was planning on checking it out in trade format, but I figured I would take a look at this so I would at least have a vague idea of what’s going on. The Tan art is nice although I’m not a huge fan of the style and Diggle’s script is fine, but besides just being tired of Marvel ‘events’, I do have to say at this point Matt Murdock is just one of the more annoying characters in comics these days. He’s pretty much had two or three mental breakdowns in the past decade and the dude’s decision making abilities are kind of embarrassing. There’s a limit to how much I’m willing to accept a flawed character before they just turn dumb, and considering virtually every character in Marvel except Steve Rogers is motivated but guilt, shame, or deep psychological scars I’m usually willing to cut a lot of slack when it comes to flawed characters. If Marvel actually goes all the way with this and they push him to the other side as a villain, then maybe it could be interesting. Not really a bad book, but it suffers simply for being an event at this time where event fatigue and a poor economy (hey another $3.99 accompanied by like 5 mini-series) just make it obnoxious. Nice Cassaday cover though. C+

Casanova #1- If you’ve already picked up Casanova when it was first published there’s not that much extra here besides the new color and the back up story drawn by Fabio Moon which.....ok, yeah it’s worth picking up for the back-up alone. This will be something that reads fantastically as a trade and ideally they will include the new stories and stuff like that, plus I have to give Marvel props for allowing a Dark Horse ad page for other Gabriel Ba work. This is actually well worth the $3.99 price tag and if you’ve never checked it out before now is a great time to start. A-

Transformers Ironhide #3-Kind of a slow moving story, but fairly solid with nice art. I’m kind of a sucker for good Ironhide stuff and really, the next issue title being ‘Heroic Nonsense’ kind of made me squee like a happy little girl. B

Scarlet #1-This sort of read like Bendis trying to be Warren Ellis and that’s bad for a number of reasons. First off, I’m tired of when Ellis tries too hard to write like Ellis. Second, I’m just a little tired of Bendis anyway considering his workload in the Marvel Universe but having him switch his focus like this is not really winning me over. The narration and breaking of the 4^th wall would almost be interesting except it just came off as obnoxious to me. The moral ambiguity of the main character is also a little obnoxious, because if someone is going to complain about the world sucking and crime and hate and violence and all that and the first thing we see them do is kill someone, then bleh. We have Garth Ennis Punisher for a hardline character that we can still be interested in if we want to read that, or Ellis’ Authority. The scripting was the usual, which is to say amusing and well written but ultimately the same goddam voice again and again throughout every book. The art, while nice, kind of let me down. I have to say I prefer Maleev’s earlier work with a little less digital manipulation behind it. If there wasn’t a model reference for this then my bad and I’ll shut up, but it feels waaaaaay too photorealistic and the heavy sense of layering and filters just kind of broke it apart for me. Maybe the core concept will pick up a little in the next issue or two, but it just didn’t grab me right off the bat. C