I’ve spent the entire week with my head in all of the old Rocketeer stories, and I have drawn a conclusion about Stevens’ work: he’s one of the best there ever was. It’s no wonder they turned the adventures of Cliff Secord into a film, and a damned good one at that. Dave’s panels jump off of the page with a type of kinetic energy that is unmatched in the medium. He’s able to get so much story across in just half of a page (he had to move quickly, as the first chapters were merely second fiddle tales in larger books).

The Rocketeer is a throwback to a simpler time. The popular (and revolutionary) trend in 80’s comics was the anti-hero. Creators were turning iconic characters into more complicated and darker versions of themselves, and those books are now considered masterpieces. Steven’s art-deco designs and 1930’s setting could have been viewed as back-peddling in a time of violent progress in comics, but The Rocketeer was an instant sensation. It’s easy to see why. He created a heroic character that flies with a rocket-pack, punches gangsters in the face, battles vengeful carnies, and gets the girl. Perfect.

Like many, my first exposure to THE ROCKETEER was the 1991 Joe Johnston film, starring Bill Campbell (second cousin to Bruce) and Jennifer Connelly (whom I had just gotten over in LABYRINTH, but fell head over heels again in this). My 10 year old brain exploded when I first saw this flying dude on the big screen. My brothers and I wore out multiple copies of that VHS tape, and I still watch it whenever it pops on cable. Even though the film is Disney-fied, the core of Stevens’ character and, most importantly, his designs are intact.

If you were ever a fan of this character, I’d highly recommend picking up both the new comic, and the beautiful hardcover re-issue of all 8 chapters IDW has put out. The color corrected pages really pop, and before anyone gives me shit about praising re-coloring, I have the old paperbacks, those early, pixelated printing days don’t do the art as much justice. Think of it as a new, hi resolution transfer.

Look into Dave Stevens if you aren’t already hip to this late, great artist. Not only did he create this amazing character, he also did the story boards for Michael Jackson’s THRILLER and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, AND he drew babes exceedingly well.

In the books leading up to this fourth one, Wolverine, Deadpool, Angel, Psylocke, and Fantomex have battled their way through the new Four Horsemen. You know, War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. Angel himself once occupied the role of Death as Archangel, so he’s got some mixed emotions about the mission. We see him mulling over shit in his head and really trying hard to NOT murder his teammates, as the voice of his Apocalypse programming attempts to take over. In issue 3 we saw that his fellow X-Forcers have actually taken preventative measures by training in the Danger Room to take Angel down (which really ruffles his feathers when he walks in on it. Imagine walking into a room full of your friends exploiting your weaknesses in order to bring about your death? Like Junior High all over again!). This is a pretty great example of how this book works all of the more interesting angles.

The previous issue left us on a cliff hanger note where Psylocke was positioned to snuff out the child-like, newly reincarnated Apocalypse, Angel had been taken out by Famine, while Fantomex and Wolverine had just avoided being killed thanks to Fantomex’s control over the realities of his opponents. This new issue opens with Fantomex and Wolverine facing off against endless scores of “goons” as Logan calls them, leaving him to wonder if  “this is the band of faceless goons that finally take us out.” This great moment in issue 4 exemplifies Fantomex’s power to a greater extent, when he utilizes his reality distortion and deception skills to confuse Pestilence, Death and Famine.  The three horsemen are tricked into thinking they have just killed Wolverine (in a pretty gruesome panel) when they have actually been transported to another planet altogether! Fontomex’s misdirection not only fools the Horsemen, but the reader as well, as the illusion has actually continued from the previous issue! This is Inception level mindfuckery going on here! The heroes (read: assassins) reach Apocalypse’s chamber, where they hope Psylocke has already done the dirty deed, only to find her defending the boy! Oh Snap! They had been so concerned about Angel that they hadn’t counted on the psychic ninja chick’s maternal instincts to kick in upon meeting the doe-eyed would be destroyer of all things! Needless to say, Angel is pissed, and wants him dead. After some in-fighting, they all finally decide that it is kind of bullshit that they’re there to kill a kid, so they decide to bring him back and rehabilit…BLAM! Just like that, Fantomex shoots the kid in the head! End of issue. Just when you thought that all of the bad-assery you have witnessed was about to come to a happy, hippie, “We are the World”, typical X-Men conclusion, a masked mutant shoots a blue kid in the head! What are you reading that’s better than that?

I forgot to mention the amazing artwork by Jerome Opeña AND how Deadpool revives Angel by feeding him his own flesh, so the pick below should take care of both of those items. Enjoy.

9) Northlanders: Every book in the series – This was one of the best comic reading decisions I made this year. Brian Wood has always been a favorite writer of mine, so there was really no excuse to have stayed away form this series for as long as I did. Vikings. Sword-swinging, axe-wielding, beard-twirling, blood-soaked vikings. Each storyline features a new set of characters to get to know, and it’s based, roughly, in period appropriate settings. This is pulp, viking awesomeness that I now can’t get enough of. Throw on some Sunn o))) or some Burzum, crack open a beer, and sit outside in the snow while reading this one for the closest possible Norse experience.

8 – The Uncanny X-Force is formed - With so much going on in the X-books these days, it was refreshing to see a small team of new and classic X-Men come together for a pretty badass purpose; they are going to kill Apocalypse. Rad right? And who better to lead a team against the Darwinian super mutant than Archangel. Apocalypse put this dude through so much, with that whole forcing him to be his Angel of Death and cutting his wings off – thing, so it’s no wonder that Warren Worthington would be the go to guy to cut down the reincarnated Apocalypse in child form. Throw in Psylocke, Wolverine, Deadpool, and Fantomex, and you have a team of perfect killers. The Danger Room training sequence where Psyloche is killing Archangel over and over again as a contingency plan is a great example of the lengths the characters are prepared to go to see their job done. Even cooler are the new Four Horsemen of Apocalypse. Great stuff here.

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7) Lobo VS Green Lantern – Geoff Johns had an amazing year with his run on Green Lantern. His single issues of this particular book are just as entertaining as the story arc as a whole, which is a talent lost in this day and age. A single issue of any given comic book should be fun, not just dialogue or filler material acting as exposition for next issue. The first comic I ever bought was a copy of Spectacular Spider-Man #184, it was the sixth part of a story-line which brought back Harry Osborne as the Green Goblin, yet it didn’t matter that I hadn’t read the 5 previous issues, this book kicked-ass on its own. I was reminded of this when reading Green Lantern #55. Even If I hadn’t read all of Blackest Night and the GL issues that followed, I would still be laughing and loving this amazing issue. The only exposition needed here is the one line where Hal Jordan describes Lobo as “the only person I’ve ever seen give Superman a bloody nose”. Pure awesome.

6) Dick Grayson as Batman/ Batman V.S. Robin – This series grew on me more and more as I was reading it. I really love the idea of the original Robin having to reluctantly take on the mantle of Batman and then train a much more bad ass Robin in the process. The dynamic duo’s dynamic is reversed in this series, with Grayson’s Batman being almost light-hearted at times, and Damian Wayne’s Robin as a brooding, violent, sour-puss. The must read issues are 10 – 12 where a pre-programmed Damian tries to murder the Batman.

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5) Batman Returns: Not the Tim Burton flick – ‘Nuff Said

4) The X-Men are cool again – This book really brought the X-Men back for me. The stunning artwork by Paco Medina (Deadpool) really sold me on this one. The fact that they are facing a horde of vampires may seem like some Twilight and True Blood bandwagon bullshit at first, but remember the X-Men have been scrapping with Dracula since waaay back in the day, so it fits, and it’s awesome. Any X-Men comic that features a “fastball special” (the hi-tech battle maneuver where Wolverine gets tossed like a baseball by Colossus) is one for the history books in my opinion. This book will be awesome as long as Paco is drawing it. His art reminds me of Joe Madureira’s run on Uncanny X-Men. Lot’s of bright colors and excellent depictions of mutant powers. The X-Men should not be as dark and as dreary as the Hellblazer books, which is where some creators tend to take them Most of us were first exposed to these charaters in cartoon form, so we expect them to be vibrant, with story lines that are just as clear cut as the lines of the panels. Until now the X-Men have been too muddy, in composition and in story. So I can get behind a plot of “Hey we have to fight these vampire” with some awesome art. Long live Paco Medina and his easier X-Men.

3) Mark Millar’s Nemesis - This is a brutal book. The premise is simple enough, in the real world (our world) there is a virgin-white super-villain who is so good at killing cops, he can hand them a card with the precise date and time of their death. He brings about these deaths in such a manner that it could almost be considered art if not for the immense body-counts. He turns the world around these hero-cops into a giant game of mouse trap, where each player places himself deeper and deeper in peril as he tries to escape the time stamped on that card. Awesome right?

2) The Sentry tears Ares in two and then crumbles Asgard in a show of extreme bad-assery – Siege was a great series. It ended the “Dark Reign” stuff pretty epically, and in just 4 parts! I loved the brevity of this bad-ass brawl; it was over as quick as it started thanks to the force of nature that is the Sentry. He is probably the most interesting Marvel character to have emerged in the last 10 years, and he started as an April fools joke (Google it)! The duality of the character is wonderful, as The Sentry literally is his own greatest villain! Or maybe not, maybe The Void isn’t some separate and dark other half; maybe Bob Reynolds is just a supremely powered being who is so screwed up mentally, that when he has a bad day entire cities crumble and gods get torn in half. Either way, Bob was a threat so severe that he could only be stopped by the re-formation of the original Avengers.

1) Blackest Night – Hands down, the most exciting comic book series in the last 20 years. Never have I clamored to get every single variant cover and side story I could get my hands on. This is DC Comic’s vision of the zombie apocalypse. The dead heroes and villains of that universe clawed their way through the dirt in order to return to the living and literally tear out the hearts of their friends and loved ones. This story was vicious from the very beginning. From the opening brawl between the Flash, Green Lantern, and the newly re-animated evil corpse of their friend The Martian Manhunter, I knew this would be an amazing tale. While Marvel had their Marvel Zombies series set far off on an alternate world, DC actually desecrated their dead, and killed off a lot of its living heroes and villains in the process. If you haven’t read this yet, leave your house now and buy every single volume of what is certainly the best zombie comic book story ever told.