Pull-O-Rama: June '10

[Stephanie]

It’s time for another comic book Pull-O-Rama, where we present an assortment of recent comics and let you know how much they rock, whether they’re not quite up to par ... or if you should skip them altogether. This time we'll flip through the pages of iZombie #2, regain missing time in Red Hood: The Lost Days #1, and watch a drunken Hercules converse with plants in Twilight of a God #1.

iZombie #2

Chris Roberson's new comic from Vertigo zaps a little freshness into that stale brain taste. Gwen Dylan tends graveyards for minimum wage during the day, burying the recently deceased, and then snacks on their brains at night once a month, when she starts looking peaked. Gwen is a highly functioning zombie, and a professional gravedigger. What's worse than feasting on brains? Mints do little to dull the bitter aftertaste. With every bite of gray matter she takes, she swallows an extra serving of fiber and dead guy memories. Sometimes, the memories she recreates on canvases in her favorite crypt hint at murder, and it's her job to play detective.

iZombie offers more than a look inside the head of walking dead girl. Along with the occasional ghost sighting, mummies and vampires also roam the streets and woods of Oregon, and in come experienced ghosts hunters to put an end to their mischief. Chris Roberson (Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love) infuses a lot of energy and life into a fledgling book about the exploits of the mostly dead, undead, and totally dead. His characters drip with fleshy personality, and artist Michael Allred (X-Statix, Madman) illustrates them with a trendy, almost Beetlejuice-esque style. The bright colors surge together well while still distinctly popping off the page. Pop culture coats the comic with an addicting and sweet outer layer, and puns that could be bad ("Dead Fred," "Working Stiffs") burst with unique charm. iZombie crashes the afterlife-party, and makes a perfect comic for those craving a good horror fix that's light on the stomach.

Red Hood: The Lost Days #1

Batman: Under the Hood writer Judd Winick dives headfirst into the secrets of the Lazarus Pit in the six-part limited series Red Hood: The Lost Days, bent on uncovering the truth about the most ill-fated Robin: Jason Todd. After the Joker beat him to death and mutilated his remains in a warehouse explosion, Batman buried the second Boy Wonder, and considered Jason's untimely end a failure of his own, one that should be ratified with a more unforgiving outlook on crime-fighting. This prologue issue, "The First Step," prepares readers for the misunderstood character's story, clearing the mysteries surrounding his return to Gotham and his ascension as the new Red Hood.

Batman's once flame, Talia, and her villainous father Ra's Al Ghul, bring home Todd's reanimated corpse. He's not a zombie per say (see iZombie #2 above for more information on the living dead), but the damage he sustained from his death still lingers, preventing him from making any progress at mental recovery. Jason reacts merely to stimuli familiar to his past self: muscle memory from fighting, and the need to eat and keep warm. Despite Talia's efforts to revive him, she ultimately sentences him to a fate that alters his existence forever: the Lazarus Pit.

Artist Pablo Raimondi (Battle for the Cowl: The Underground, X-Factor) succeeds at capturing the delicacy of Jason's reappearance as well as the emotion present in or missing from each moment. Red Hood: The Lost Days #1 invites readers to pursue Jason, falling deeper into the Lazarus Pit that eventually corrupts him. Winick develops a powerful stand-alone issue, but not necessarily an important one so far.

Hercules: Twilight of a God #1

What happens when the Olympian Prince of Power falls to the trials of ... old age? The Prince of Power spends his 75th year as the Andromeda galaxy's champion under the watch of his son, now Lord Arimathes, as he gorges on booze much to the disapproval of his doting grandchildren, who help administer the medication that offsets his dementia. One year prior, Hercules' adventures ended when a debilitating accident left him incapacitated. The hero's final days are numbered, and his good friend, Skyppi the Skrull, now suffers from a lethal form of tuberculosis.

Soon Hercules will receive the "Hero of the Realm" award for saving the Ciegrimites from the world-devourer Galactus many years ago, but the prime minister of Port Anteris, Mr. Spincor, believes Arimathes' father to be a nuisance and embarrassment to the Wilamean democracy. Spincor means to disrupt the celebration by sabotaging Hercules' medication, but fails when a certain green friend comes to his rescue. Of course, when trouble is averted another problem takes its place, and this one threatens not only to destroy the entire galaxy, but also to kill the Lion of Olympus: Hercules himself.

Bob Layton pens a lighthearted tale full of easygoing humor (fashioned on the page by Layton and fellow penciller Ron Lim, and colored by Michael Cavallaro), and while the first issue of the four-part Twilight of a God keeps the entertainment riding high, sometimes the comic feels less naturally written and a little too aware of its own silly antics.

Good or bad, you can check out all of these comics in the Impulse Creations shop. Want to pick next month’s Pull-O-Rama comics? Email your suggestions and why to wita.onemetal@gmail.com.