"Kirkmanverse"

Over this past weekend my brother, a friend, and I drove down to Kentucky to visit with a buddy of ours. While there we stopped by Pet Shop comics (not sure the exact location but it's near Shepherdsville) and since we had plans to pretty much spend the weekend sitting around playing video games, watching football, and eating Sonic I opted to pick up some stuff to read. For some reason I've been on a Robert Kirkman kick the past couple weeks. I'm not sure if his ill advised rant simply piqued my interest in him enough to get me heavily back into Invincible or what but I've been pouring through back issues of that title lately.

Last week I had grabbed issues 7 and 8 of Brit and I really enjoyed them so I decided to see if I couldn't come up with the first six issues. Unfortunately, the guy didn't have them, however, he did have the one shots so I grabbed those. I also decided to pick up the Astounding Wolf-Man trade. This was an odd pick for me as I had read the first issue, hated it, and just recently decided to give it another shot and while it seemed significantly improved from the first issue it still wasn't doing it for me.

I read all three one shots and the Wolf-Man trade on Saturday afternoon and I liked 'em all. The Brit stories are extremely rough but they're fun to read and it's interesting to watch Tony Moore's art improve with each one. Wolf-Man seems to be just slightly off. I liked it, and it has an interesting mythology wholly it's own but it's lacking. I think one problem was that in this first trade we get seven issues that never really go any where. The story seems to be sitting in place spinning it's wheels with the occasional shock cliffhanger thrown in to make it seem like it's racing along to... something. It never gets there, at least not in this book, and we're left with a book that is the comic equivalent of getting your car stuck in mud.

It might sound like I'm not a fan but I did actually enjoy reading Wolf-Man, I just really got bored with the lack of forward momentum. I'll probably just keep following it in trade which is completely the opposite of how I feel about the Brit ongoing series. Though it isn't written by Kirkman, you can still feel his presence over the title with the dense plotting and nearly cliched comic book situations. I've realized something about Kirkman over the past week and that is he can take a comic stereotype and turn it into something shiny and new like no one else. Brit is great fun. Probably the best indie comic I've read since I first happened upon Invincible.

So it seems as if Kirkman is thriving with his creator owned stuff. I'm certainly digging these three titles and if you're not picking up Invincible or Brit you certainly should give 'em a try.