New comics are due to hit the shelves on Thursday (delayed due to the Easter weekend) so here’s a look ahead at some of the books we’ll be picking up this week. To see what’s available at Paradox this week, click here.
Matt C: If there’s one thing guaranteed to unify the PCG, it’s their perhaps unhealthy obsession with Nazis in superhero comics. They’ve been a staple in the genre for decades – the ultimate irredeemable villains – and throw in the Fuhrer for good measure (see the recent Hitler-brain-juice themed Taskmaster miniseries as an example!) and you’ve got a recipe for madcap shennagins far removed from anything based in reality (you – thankfully - never hear the Red Skull harp on about concentration camps, it’s pure comic book evil all the way!). Which brings us to Uber, Keiron Gillen’s new series from Avatar, rewriting history to see the Third Reich introduce superpowered soldiers to turn the tide of battle at the end of WWII. Gillen is a fine writer and Avatar never even attempt to appeal to a PG-rated audience so this immediately sticks out of the pack; superhumans in the Second World War isn’t an original idea, but I’m hoping Gillen manages to cook up something we haven’t seen before. Elsewhere it’s a bit of lighter pile of comics coming my way this week, which I’m grateful for after last week’s deluge, but there’s one other title alongside Uber that I’m eager to sample. Thanos Rising will tell the origin of the Mad God, and if you’ve been paying attention you’ll have noticed that the Thanos: Son Of Titan miniseries, written by Joe Keatinge with art from Richard Elson, was cancelled last year before the first issue hit the stands. Arguably Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi are bigger names than Keatinge and Elson, so while we’ll obviously never know if what they’ve come up with is any better than the one that was canned, I guess we’ll at least have a clearer idea by the end of the week on whether their take on Thanos is any good at all.
Stewart R: Ahhh, the four day Easter weekend disrupts the UK delivery of comic goodness! And lo, after his death he did rise again and come out into the light from the dark and his name... was of course Bucky Barnes! Winter Soldier, under the guidance of Jason Latour, is shaping up to be a terrifically gritty read and surprisingly not far removed from the tone that Brubaker epitomised in his previous writings with the character. Latour certainly seems keen to revisit Bucky’s dark, tumultuous past as the Soviet’s Winter Soldier and show the contrast against the repentant man we know of today as he tries to exorcise further ghosts that rose during the days of the Cold War. #17 promises yet another increase in tension as the Electric Ghost’s motives and machinations become clearer and I’d say that part of Bucky will be wishing he were still ‘dead’ before this story is over. Oooooh, what a segue! Ahem... speaking of ‘Death’, Marvel are also pushing their very Avatar of Life-erasing individual with Thanos Rising #1 by Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi this week. It was a forgone conclusion that the Mad Titan would be getting a big push following that delicious reveal at the end of the Avengers movie and placing this miniseries in the hands of Aaron, on paper, appears to be something of a masterstroke. He’s certainly the go-to writer for Marvel when it comes to rich, thick histories and grandiose character work - my PCG compadres cannot stop praising his work on Thor: God of Thunder - and putting one of the publisher’s most complex villains into his hands seems to make perfect sense. I’d been on the fence when first hearing about this latest series, but having seen the preview of Bianchi’s work and got the feeling that this is going to be a proper look at where Thanos came from I simply can’t resist. Ahem... and speaking of the irresistible, there is no way that I am going to miss picking up James Stokoe’s finale to the mind-bendingly superb Godzilla: The Half Century War miniseries from IDW! The cover to #5 is one of my favourite of the year to date and exemplifies Stokoe’s phenomenal eye for spectacle and detail which has been put to fine use through each and every chapter of this ode to the giant atomic Kaiju! Bring on the behemoth carnage!
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