James Orbesen Comic Reviews

Pak and Lee are just getting started. While the story crosses over with, not wholly coincidentally, World's Finest #20, I'm ready to line up for another helping of the duo's work. And another. And another. They're a team-up DC needs more of.

It's no surprise that Daredevil is packing up for San Francisco, a city held up as a liberal icon that is also wracked with an accelerating wealth gap, embodied by the Google bus, gentrification, and the tech boom. Although this excellent issue won't offer readers much closure, it never was designed for that. This is the start of something new, yet familiar, in the way all superhero comics thrive on nostalgia, a through-line that has always been present in Waid's run and on full display in Daredevil #36.

Robinson and Kirk just haven't carved out their niche. They're trying to recreate the past instead of simply respecting it. The toys are still in their packaging and I don't think so sudden a relaunch can afford to play so tamely. Again, there are slight hints that something greater might be in the pipe but there just isn't enough here to justify why the reset button needed to be hit, again, so soon.

Wilson, Alphona, and Herring have their full focus on creating a breathing character first, letting the story grow from that, and giving the reader a new, exciting perspective from which to play in the wide open Marvel sandbox.

There could be something to The Mercenary Sea but, at this point, it just isn't there. The amount of material on loan in this comic is unbearable in its current form. Maybe down the line all these overly familiar pieces could be used for unfamiliar effects. Sadly, that is nowhere here.