I’m off on holiday to Switzerland as of this Saturday, so there’ll be no blogging next week, but in the meantime here are some reviews of books I got last week that I’m going to try to write while watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Let’s go!

ANTI-VENOM: NEW WAYS TO LIVE 1: The ever-reliable Zeb Wells gives us the first part of a mini featuring the Once And No Doubt Future Eventually Venom, with art by Paolo Siqueira, who’s been strutting his stuff recently on the main Spidey book. It’s actually a pleasant surprise, with hints of the better aspects of the lethal protector set-up shorn of the 1990s earnest grimness. Wells gives us an Eddie Brock who’s convinced, as he was in New Ways To Die, that he’s a force for good, but whose natural nasty streak can’t help but threaten to manifest itself. Siqueira’s also hitting a home run here, with art that’s got a bit of Barry Kitson and a bit of Terry Dodson and a good helping of its own charm. A well-judged cameo appearance by the Punisher rounds off what is, all in all, a pretty great package all round.

X-MEN LEGACY ANNUAL 1: Now, I don’t want to sound like an old fuddy-duddy here, but I remember the days when an annual was a comic that you could pick up and read without it folding into the main book. If anyone who reads X-Men Legacy decided to pass on this annual, though, they’d be pretty much out of luck when they went back for the next issue of the regular series, because this is part one of a four-part story (and not one that continues in other annuals, either – ah, Shattershot, you were generally terrible). It’s the new direction for this book, which appears to be that Rogue is acting as camp counselor for the cast-off kids of Young/New X-Men. That’s fine by me – characters like Rockslide, Hellion and Anole are some of the best the X-books have generated in the past few years. Regular series writer Mike Carey has really made Rogue his own over the last few years, and seems to have a pretty good handle on the kids that are featured in the new team line-up too, which bodes well. Daniel Acuna’s art is a bit of an acquired taste, and it’s one that I run hot and cold on – it’s undoubtedly expressive, and he’s great with facial expressions, but looking at it is a bit like looking at people on a really overcast day when you’ve got a migraine. The backup strip is a fairly generic Gambit affair, with hints that Carey may address the Gambit-as-horseman-of-Apocalypse thing from Peter Milligan’s run, but on its own merits it’s pretty forgettable.

BRAVE AND THE BOLD 27: J Michael Straczynski finally gets round to starting his run on this book, and in the first of what looks like is set to be a continuing set of bizarre team-ups (November? Batman and Brother Power the Geek, which is a beautiful dream Mark Waid once had), Bats hooks up with Robby Reed and his H-Dial to foil a plot by the Joker. One wrinkle – for most of this issue, the H-Dial is actually in the possession of a low-life who’s been paid to help run interference for the Joker, but who wishes he could be more. It’s a nice conceit, but does rather sideline Robby for the majority of the issue, leaving him moping on his hotel bed while Batman teams up with Joe Random Scumbag. It’s a difficult thing to mess up, you’d have thought – Batman and Dial H for Hero should make for a Bob Haney-style anything goes team-up, but instead we get a nice enough idea executed fairly competently. Two things stick out from this issue – one, Jesus Saiz should get to draw the Joker again, and soon, and two, Batman is not a motivational speaker and should definitely not be making the speech he makes at the end of this issue. An underwhelming start to the run.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 605: Ah, Spider-Man, a guy for whom dating is something that happens to other people (and when it’s not, it never ends well). Fred Van Lente gives us two chapters of this over-sized three-part story, dealing first with Peter’s former beloved Mary Jane and filling us in on what she’s been up to between the point when we last saw her in the Paper Doll arc up to the wedding of May and Jay, then carrying us through Peter’s disastrous break-up with Michelle Gonzales, before handing over to Brian Reed for True Tales of Internet Dating Terror as Harry tries to convince Peter to get back on the market. Van Lente and Reed complement each other well, to the extent that without the chapter headings you’d never know where one ended and the other began, but Van Lente has the edge for two reasons: 1) his first story has Mary Jane fighting the White Rabbit, and 2) it’s drawn by Javier Pulido, who remains fantastic. Reed’s chapter is illustrated by Yanick Paquette, doing credible impressions of both Terry Dodson and Gene Ha and acquitting himself credibly. An extra-length, stand-alone issue with three stories and multiple creative teams for a slightly higher price? Surely this is what an annual is meant to look like?

MODOK: REIGN DELAY: Ostensibly a Dark Reign tie-in, this is Action Philosophers artist Ryan Dunlavey’s take on Marvel’s best, biggest-headed supervillain, originally published on Marvel’s digital comics site. Dunlavey writes, draws, colours, and letters this story, which is either an extreme level of achievement or an extreme level of showing off. Telling the story of MODOK’s assignment in Norman Osborn’s new Initiative, as the ‘protector’ of the great state of Pennsylvania, it’s about as daffy as it’s possible to get with the character, and when you consider that we’re talking about MODOK here, that’s pretty daffy. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that there’s a great gag on every single page, but there honestly is – Minion Designate Mother is a fantastic sight gag, and the spectacle of MODOK having his head flushed down the school toilet is worth the price of admission alone. It’s rare to get a genuinely comic comic, but this is one of those rare examples.

So, that was what I read this week (along with Vengeance of the Moon Knight and Beasts of Burden, which we talked about at the podcast – still available for your listening pleasure! – and X-Factor and Ex Machina, which I figure would both be pretty much the same as the last reviews I did of them so if you want to see what I thought, scroll down the page). What about you?