BATTLING BOY
Battling Boy (Paul Pope)
How can you not love the child of mythical god sent to a planet in order to learn to be a warrior. Writer Paul Pope taps into a bit of the Shazam/Captain Marvel mythos for Battling Boy. A young boy gifted with incredible powers attempts to understand himself, his abilities, and how best to protect the weak with them. Unlike Shazam, Battling Boy has little control over what he can do, and it tends to only come out at times of high stress. With only one book finished in the series, Paul Pope has made Battling Boy intriguing enough to hook for the second volume.
THE MOVEMENT & CHANNEL M
The Movement (Gail Simone, Freddie Williams II)
It’s not easy to start a whole new superhero team from scratch, and even less so when the first impression of the book is that of a ham-fisted cash in on a muddled real-life social movement that meant well but fizzled. However, while Simone’s series doesn’t quite seem to have found its voice quite yet, the potential here is copious, and the characters involved – the supremely competent emotion-rider Virtue, the weirdo rat-guy Mouse, the not-Hawkgirl winged rage-case Katharsis, the conflicted double-agent Tremor, the late-blooming Vengeance Moth and the Burden kid who thinks his metahuman power is actual demonic possession (not to mention the revamped ex-Gen13er Rainmaker) – make for a very interesting mix. It’s a dysfunctional team story about angry young people who are fighting for change against institutionalized corruption, but fight each other as much as anyone, and we’re confident Simone can soon galvanize these cool moving parts into a truly compelling whole.
LUCKY THE PIZZA DOG
Hawkeye #11 (Matt Fraction, David Aja)
In the issue that cemented David Aja as a genius, an entire issue is told from the point of view of Lucky, the dog Clint Barton rescued from the track-suit “bro” mob. This dog is a good boy.
GORR THE GOD BUTCHER
Thor: God of Thunder (Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic)
This was an odd choice because the story Gorr came from was absolutely loathsome. Jason Aaron’s Thor was the most long-winded, uninteresting, and clichéd story to come out in 2013. That being said, Gorr The God Butcher was a really fascinating villain. Betrayed and disillusioned by the gods, Gorr embarks on a lifelong mission to torture and slaughter each and every last God. With a sleek and sinister look, Gorr could have been one of Thor’s greatest enemies, had the story surrounding him not been so awful.
THE WHITE MAN
Deadpool #13 (Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn, Scott Koblish)
The “inventory issue” gimmick in this year’s Deadpool comics has been a glorious treat, as Koblish turns in pitch-perfect send-ups of previous decades of comics, right down to the printing mistakes. When they took a trip back to the 1970s, where Deadpool had an afro, bell-bottoms and insisted on joining the Heroes For Hire despite Power Man’s angry objections, they decided that since Marvel has a Purple Man, it made sense that Luke Cage would have a villain named The White Man. Sure, the joke was beaten into the ground by the end of the next issue (hell, into the sea, actually), but he’s still a fantastic new character with a bright future ahead of him!
