Take It Or Leave It – February 19, 2014

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.

And I made it two weeks in a row! That hasn’t happened in a while. So as I mentioned last week, with a new job and all my schedule for Take It Or Leave It is going to fluctuate. Today I’m lucky enough to be working in New York City, so that’s an hour and a half train ride from Philadelphia. Plenty of time to write up a wonderful Take It Or Leave It for you all to enjoy. This week’s list is nothing but good books that you should probably check out. So lets just get going before I ramble on anymore.

Oh and one minor note, I don’t have Photoshop on my work laptop, so no fancy image with the date on it this week. . .

Alphabetical by Publisher

DC Comics | Image Comics | Marvel Comics

Animal Man #28 This is a fantastic penultimate issue to a series that has been so good in such an unlikely manner. Jeff Lemire is winding down the book and bringing a lot of emotions with him. Animal Man 28 was one of two books this month that had one of those scenes where you almost want to cry. Both out of sadness and out of joy, and that my friends, is the mark of a true master. I’m excited that Buddy will be continuing on his adventures with Lemire in a new Justice League title, but It’s going to be sad to lose this book and the cast of characters that go along with it. One of the worst parts is, I only recently started reading Animal Man, so it makes this ending seem even more sudden. Enough about that stuff though, this issue was really great, it wasn’t overripe with action sequences as you may have expected after how everything ended last month. But it’s got what you wanted to see happen. And as I mentioned before there is a whole lot of emotion driving this book and I can only assume a lot of that is going to be carrying over into next months final issue. I for one can’t wait to see how the Baker family comes out of this, and whether or not they’ll come out of it together. Verdict: Take It Score: 9/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Red Hood and the Outlaws #28 Issue 28 of Red Hood was very much a ‘Back to Basics’ story. After so many months of build up to Jason’s showdown, with the Demon’s Head himself, Ra’s al Ghul. It was nice to bring the team back to their roots and bring back a love interest for Jason. Honestly it had been so long since we’d since Isabel I sorta forgot who she was until after Kori greeted her. So while the issue wasn’t overly plot heavy, it was a really nice transition back to how we met them, well not quite how we met them, but not trying to stop an eternally evil power from destroying the earth either. Hopefully the way this issue played out leads to a some more issues like this, where the team just takes care of business and gets to have a little fun too. Verdict: Take It Score: 7/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Undertow #1 I’m honestly still reserving my full judgment on this book until I get a little more out of it. I hadn’t actually checked out anything about it, the name just sounded interesting. And luckily enough the story that’s being weaved in it’s pages has a lot of also interesting elements at work. It’s not a perfect book, but none are. Well except maybe Saga, yeah Saga is pretty close to a perfect book. That’s not the point though, Undertow has a pretty unique view on such a fabled and kind of overused world like Atlantis. In fact none of the book even happens there, it happens up on earth. But these characters are Atlanteans like in Marvel or DC, they’re totally different and that’s what makes it worth reading. I don’t need another Aquaman or Namor, we’ve got those guys already. Undertow is about the Atlanteans that don’t want to live there anymore. They want something else and something different. So they try to survive on land in what I can only gather is either prehistoric or way into the Planet of the Apes era future. The biggest draw back here was I found the book a little hard to read and follow. When I was getting it I really enjoyed it and by the end I understood what was going on. Getting there was a little tough at times though and not everyone may be willing to stick it out. If you’ve got a few extra dollars this week though, and want to explore something a little different give Undertow a shot, you may just be pleasantly surprised. Verdict: Take It Score: 6/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Amazing X-Men #4 This book is easily my favorite of the X-Men franchise right now. It’s 90% characters I love, and it’s bringing back one of the best. Back when I was talking about Animal Man I mentioned that there was another comic with a lot of emotions in it this week. Well folks here it is, Amazing X-Men 4 really brings the feels in a number of scenes. Nightcrawler is pretty much everyones friend, he’s just that kind of guy. So when they’re find him “alive” it’s a pretty emotional time. His brief fight with Hank, while Dr. McCoy was a bit out of his mind, helped drill home how much it meant for the team to see Kurt again. I’m going to go very minor spoiler for a second here so skip a few lines down if you don’t want to read. The real heavy moment in the book though had to be when Wolverine collapses and remembers a night out with Kurt, only to have Kurt show up moments later and save him in the present. Seriously guys that splash page with, the emotion on both their faces was phenomenal. Ok ok, enough of that though, the book had plenty of other great moments to, which I’m not going to get into here. But come on how about Firestar? Once you read it you’ll get it. There’s one issue left in this opening arc and I can only assume next time will finally feature Kurt going up against his dear old dad Azazel, and it’s going to be awesome. Verdict: Take It Score: 9/10 Reviewed By: Chris

New Warriors #1 I was damn near devastated when Scarlet Spider got canceled, not only was I losing Venom, but I was going to lose Kaine as well. It was a bad time to be a comic fan. But then I found out Kaine and Aracely would be moving over and joining the New Warriors and it was going to be written by Christopher Yost too. Now that’s something I can get behind. This first issue is very much a “Hey guys we got all these characters in different places lets start fixing that”. So unfortunately we don’t have the full team on display yet, infact we haven’t even met everyone. On the brightside they’ve certainly got their mission by the end of the book, and hopefully next month we’ll start to see them all coming together. Now I do have a small problem here, and it’s just a bit of a personal one. I wish they’d used someone other than Nova, I get it they were setting this up in his book, but why not give us another young hero without a book or a team? Oh well Sam’s at least an interesting character and hopefully with so many other heroes running around the book won’t turn into Nova part 2. Other than that little gripe I’m definitely on board with the newest incarnation of the New Warriors. It was even nice that they made mention of the previous team and how they’re pretty much solely known as the guys that blew up Stamford CT and started the Superhero Civil War. I’m wondering if Yost will play on that in future issues, and help bring their names out of the garbage. 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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