Comics I Bought: September 5, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 2 new comics. That's it. No hard cover collections or anything else. Slow week for me:

Savage Dragon - 137

Buffy Season Eight - 18

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

The Incerdible Hercules "Against the World" by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente

I was disappointed with "World War Hulk" but I had heard good things about "The Incredible Hercules" as the "The Incredible Hulk" comic was renamed after WWHulk. Since Hulk is being held captive by S.H.I.E.L.D. (Marvel's premier spy agency) Hercules takes over as the star of the book along with a genius teenager named Amadeus Cho. Since Herc and Cho sided with the Hulk in the aforementioned war they are on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D.

This book is fun. That separates it from the non-fun of WWHulk. We get flash backs to stories of Hercules in the distant past and get to hear him tell the stories that became Greek legends. The plot is no great shakes. It's mostly a road movie with fight scenes thrown in but the dialogue is snappy and the artwork is nice (well, except for the last story in the book that was done by a different creative team and is unreadably bad).

I especially liked Pak's characterization of Hercules. The history thrown in and the presence of Ares, god of war, as his adversary went a long was to making me believe that I was reading a story about a three thousand year old demi-god. As such Hercules is and always has been tied up in the affairs of man. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse but he doesn't panic or whine about it because he's seen a lot of things before. He has an interesting perspective in this book that I haven't seen him have in previous stories.

So if you interested in some nice super hero stuff with a mythological twist pick up this book. Just don't expect much from the last Hulk vs. Hercules "Special" that is reprinted in the back.