Incredible Hercules: Assault on New Olympus TPB: Herc and Amadeus Cho reunite to take on Hera and her plans to recreate the world. This has been a great series written by Greg Pak with art by Fred Van Lente. My only complaint is that toward the end of the trade, Pak seems to have forgotten that Herc brought heroes with him, as they aren't mentioned for about two or three issues. I also wish Pak would get a gig on Spider-Man. He definitely has the correct "voice" for him.
Daredevil: The Devil's Hand TPB: It seems like forever since the last trade came out. This one tells the tale of Daredevil's taking over the Hand (a group of assassins who have plagued his life for years) and his first couple of "missions" leading them. This was the first storyline written and drawn by the new team of Andy Diggle and Roberto De La Torre, respectively, and I certainly enjoyed it. I would have preferred there to have been a bit more movement in the story, as there was quite a bit of political machinations by the Kingpin, and some obvious contrivances with repect to Matt Murdock's support team of Foggy Nelson and Dakota North. However, the story itself was interesting and the art ranged from good to excellent.
Ms. Marvel: Best You Can Be TPB: In this book, Ms. Marvel tracks down Mystique because she believes that Mystique is impersonating Captain Marvel and attacking Kree-religion churches, but discovers she has a much larger plot. While the first issue in this book has extremely uneven art, the rest of the art in the book was stunning, and the writing was great. However, the editor should be replaced. In one issue, Ms. Marvel supposedly takes someone 500 miles in 5 minutes, but in the next she claims that she can fly 700 miles in 2 hours if she's going flat out. In showing that flight from San Francisco to Seattle, they show her flying north with Mount Rainier behind her. For those Pacific-Northwest-impaired, that would mean she's in Eastern Washington, and couldn't be a straight-line flight as she said it was. Otherwise, it was a great book in a great series.
The New Avengers: Luke Cage TPB: This book covers three stories. In the first, Luke Cage goes to Philadelphia to help an old friend stop an incoming drug shipment. This story was okay, but the art by Eric Canete was awful, and I'm not a big fan of stories where a superhero faces off against normal thugs. It seems like a waste of a super-hero story. After all, how big a hero can they be when they really have no possibility of losing? The other two were fun, meaningless, one-off stories. It also includes a reprint of the first issue of Luke Cage's original series, Hero for Hire.
Captain America Reborn TPB: This is another that I was looking forward to, much like Wolverine: Old Man Logan. Thankfully, this one was much better. It tells the story of the return of Steve Rogers, who was killed at the end of the sort-of-recent Civil War series. I did feel that too much of Ed Brubaker's story was spent telling snippets of Steve Rogers's past, but the art by Bryan Hitch and Butch Guice was good and, overall, the story was entertaining and held my interest throughout.
That's it for today. I should be back later this week with more books I've read. I still have a couple of Marvel TPBs to go, as well as three (soon to be four) weeks of regular issues.
