Take It Or Leave It – November 27, 2013

Welcome to Take It Or Leave It, where each week we pick out some of that week’s newest comics and give you our opinion on whether it was worth the price and you should take it, or if it was better left sitting on the shelf.

This week, Take It Or Leave It was going to be smaller, but then I looked at all the great books that came out and I just kept adding more to the list. So lets get to this and start talking about them!

Alphabetical by Publisher

DC Comics | IDW Publishing | Image Comics | Marvel Comics | Zenescope Entertainment

Aquaman #25 Aquaman 25 is quite a bittersweet ending to a pretty amazing story line. This marks the end of the line for Geoff Johns time on the book, for now at least. Johns made Aquaman a character worth reading, and less of a joke to comic book fans around the world. And issue 25 continues that as he wraps up Arthur’s battle with the Dead King of Atlantis. It’s been a pretty wild ride to get here, and while it’s not the most exciting ending, this issue does a great job of wrapping things up and opening up plenty of opportunities for the next writer to do something of their own. Let’s just hope the next person on the book can bring the same level of humor and excitement to the King of Atlantis as Johns was able to. And if not, at least we were given a good send off and a great 25 issue run. Verdict: Take It Score: 8/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Teen Titans #25 I like the Teen Titans, but I don’t like it nearly as much as I want to, if that makes any sense. The story just jumps around to much, and at this point it’s hard to remember what happens from issue to issue. I suppose it doesn’t help that things happen to these characters in others books that I don’t read like Superboy. Aside from that though it’s intresting what they’re doing with Kid Flash, he’s been such an enigma since the book launched, and we’ve known something wasn’t quite right with him. And now finally after so long we are finding out exactly what he did. This was a pretty strong issue in that light, we got a lot of conflicting emotions from all the Titans about Bart’s past, hopefully next issue can keep that up. Verdict: Take It Score: 7/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #28 City Fall is over, and boy what a ride it was. Leo was evil, the Turtles and their allies were essentially broken and Shredder was slowly taking over the city. Luckily nothing lasts forever, and as anyone could expect the Turtles pulled something off in the end with the help of several others. It was great last issue the big reveal of Bebop and Rocksteady, but seeing them in full action and actually winning was even better. It brings back all those fond memories of the ’80s cartoon that this book is so good at invoking. The end of the issue leaves another surprise with us that if I’m not mistaken is a direct reference to the first movie. It’s got me excited for next month, and frankly every month after that! Verdict: Take It Score: 9/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Saga #16 Saga is a wonderful book, where nothing really happens, but so much amazing stuff happens! I know, that makes absolutely no sense if you haven’t been reading the book, and that’s the problem right there. You’re not reading this book yet, you should definitely go remedy that immediately. This issue picks up where we left off, The Will is in bad shape, our ‘heroes’ are still keeping a low profile and, well being a family for the first time in a long time. Oh and Prince Robot is finally showing up. The story is catching up to where they were months ago before go into the flashback and it looks like next issue things should get really serious. I just can’t say enough nice things about this book, and you can pretty much go read any other review and see the same thing. So do yourself a favor and jump on the bandwagon already! Verdict: Take It Score: 9/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Infinity #6 Oh Infinity how I wish you didn’t suck so hard. For a couple issues there I had real hopes for you turning a corner and getting better. Alas, your official ending was no better than anything else in this convoluted story. The ending just felt so anti-climatic, and knowing Hickman we won’t see any sort of outcome from this for years. I don’t hate these big event stories, I think they can be a lot of fun. Lately though most of them haven’t been, and Infinity is the worst of the bunch so far. If you’re dead set on knowing how this story ends then go ahead and read it, otherwise just forget about this story. Nothing important happens, and I’m sure every damn book that tied into it will make reference to it, so you really won’t miss anything. I will say one good thing about this story as a whole though, it gave us a great Wolverine and the X-Men Annual featuring Kid Gladiator, now that was a good read, shame everything else made me wish I could unread it all.. Verdict: Leave It Score: 2/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Scarlet Spider #24 Oh Scarlet Spider, how I’m going to miss you. It’s great that a book like this got a 2 year run, I just wish I could have gone on longer. Can’t we just cut out some of these terrible Avenger and X-Men books and keep a little room open for Kaine? I grew up a fan of Scarlet Spider, the earliest issues of Spider-Man I ever read as a kid, before I really knew what was going on, featured Ben Reilly as Scarlet Spider. I know that Ben and Kaine have nothing income other than being clones, but it was that nostalgia that drew me to the book, and the amazing stories that kept me coming back. On the bright side Kaine will be showing up in New Warriors early next year, still being written by Christopher Yost. I just hope we still get to see some of his supporting cast, that’s what helped make this book so good. I guess I should say something about issue 24 now though. The issue pretty much deals directly with the outcome of Kraven on Kains friends, as we saw at the end of last issue, not everyone is to happy with him. So much so that they found out just who exactly Kain used to be. That’s not all that this is about though, plenty of other very strange things start happening, it’s nice to know Chris didn’t just sit back and let the last couple issue go by, he’s looking to take Scarlet Spider out with a bang and as sad as it’s going to be, I can’t wait to see how it all ends in Scarlet Spider #25. Verdict: Take It Score: 8/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Quest #1 Quest #1 has the privilege of opening up the next big story line for Zenescope, that being the Age of Darkness which will lead us right up to the milestone 100th issue of Grimm Fairy Tales. Zenescope’s books always tend to have a grand scope when you read them, and with Unleashed having just finished up they’re not wasting anytime jumping into the next disaster on the horizon of the universe. Now Quest #1 doesn’t set up much, but it’s still a really fun read. The dialogue between the characters feel real for a group who aren’t really all friends, but are still stuck traveling together. And even when here’s some terrible stuff going down, we get a nice dose of humor to lighten the mood. I do wish this might have shed a little more light on how Age of Darkness will be effecting the Grimm Fairy Tales Universe, but there’s still 4 more issues and several other books to come to delve into this conflict so for now it’s worth sitting back and enjoying the ride. Verdict: Take It Score: 7/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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