What I Read This Week

The Shield #5 -- The Shield finds himself tanlging with both Nazi robots and The Great Ten in the jungles of Brazil, while Inferno comes face to face with the man he thinks will have all the answers.  Both parts of this co-feature title are working quite well.  The lead by Eric Trautmann and Marco Rudy, is a beautiful piece of superhero histrionics, mixing the modernist with the classic and producing a wonderful hybrid.  (Definitely looking forward to seeing more of the new Jaguar.)  The Inferno backup is a psuedo-noirish X-Files turn, and the bigger story is seemingly starting to break through.  I would recommend this title to every DC fan who is not already reading it.

The Phantom: Generations #7 -- A Bangallan king brings in artisans from Italy to build a monument to the Ghost Who Walks, the Phantom is embarassed by the display.  But when the monument turns out to be something far different, he is forced to swing into action.  Standard Moonstone "illustrated prose," with a fun little story that is unfortunately fairly unremarkable.  Still, I enjoy these little short stories quite a bit so I was very satisfied with this issue.

The Phantom: Ghost Who Walks #7 -- The Phantom takes out some seemingly UN-backed human traffickers on the high seas.  Moonstone does these done-in-ones with pretty good regularity between their longer stories, and they are usually about this same level: good but not great.  The art, by Fernando Peniche, has a very over the top and excessive look to it which I do not care for.  Still, a nice little story of the Phantom slugging modern day pirates.  Also includes a nice summary by Ed Rhoades of the Phantom's various American comic book series through the years.

Re-Read Pile: The Shield, The Phantom: Ghost Who Walks

The Pick of the Pile is The Shield, which is consistantly a great read for DC month in and month out.