While the narrative was in the first person it still had the debut of the new team and them rescuing Echo. Personally I loved it, probably my favorite book of the week and Leinil Yu's art was fucking amazing.
New Thunderbolts #111:
Now that the mission is underway, the team is finally put into action.
I find it incredibly hard not to root for Jack Flag out of the sea of asshole superheroes seen in this book. He's a pretty obscure Marvel character and I didn't know of him before now but Ellis does a great job with all the characters here with the exception of Swordsman who gets some fucked up type of revenge.
Ghost Rider Trail of Tears #1:
This is a story about a Ghost Rider who lived around the time of the American Civil War as well as a little after. Garth Ennis and Clayton Crain return again coming off of their previous limited series of the Johnny Blaze version.
Anyway, it's hard to say which of the two make characters (Travis or Caleb) will become the Ghost Rider but I'm highly enjoying it and Clayton's computer painted art. It's very well textured and captures the gritty battlefield setting and the nicer days after.
Uncanny X-Men #483:
I'm still enjoying Vulcan's journey as an unlikely Shi'ar ally.
The whole Deathbird/Vulcan relationship is pretty much an obvious (although pretty messed up) coming of age story of Vulcan discovering poon and becoming so entranced by Deathbird that he's gotten pussy whipped. One has to remember that he's still a young kid who had accelerated age and hasn't really experienced things he should have before his untimely death in Krakoa. The good thing though is that while he'd been under Deathbird's spell he's eased up on the whole "anger phase" and is beginning to think more rationally regarding the whole D'Ken deal. Admittedly, Ed makes Vulcan's powers a pretty convenient fix for D'Ken's condition but at least it's explained further with the use of the comatose psychics.
What I really liked about D'Ken's return was that he knows he has no chance at beating Vulcan but he still acts like the arrogant SOB that he is, just with more caution and knowing that he can make an ally out of someone of Gabriel's caliber instead of an enemy. Which is not to say that he won't stab Vulcan in the back either but it's another case of unlikely alliances and the whole "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" rationale.
Clayton Henry's art didn't look so exciting before Frank D started to color it but boy does it look even better now. It's a fairly restrained but incredibly solid art style and during these Vulcan solo issues totally works, I even like his action scenes which are violent but full of motion (the Imperial Guard vs Vulcan and Deathbird/Vulcan vs Shi'ar troops).
I can't really say that Ed's stuff has been "decompressed", it's just that he has a different style to Mike Carey's and it's a different type of story since it's an entire SAGA rather than moving ahead in smaller arcs so there's eventually going to be alot of payoff to the Shi'ar story and it'll read just as well collected as Mike's stuff does.
8/10
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