Comic Book Lucky Dip - X-Factor Annual #9

Coming off getting a DC Universe subscription a few months back, I now have a Marvel unlimited subscription, so what does the Marvel Universe have to offer. Well, let’s take a look at this annual issue. Full disclosure, my knowledge of the X-men is limited. I’ve seen Wolverine and the X-men, and the movies. Yes, I haven’t actually seen the 90s show, sacrilege I know, but I was always more of a DC fan. I’m going into this more blind than I ever have before, lets see if this comic really does follow Stan Lee’s mantra ‘every comic is someone’s first’

Comic Book Lucky Dip - Fantastic 4 Life Story #1

We’ve got another lucky dip and oh look, it’s the Fantastic 4 Life Story #1. The Spider-man Life story mini-series was fantastic and brought me round on Chip Zdarsky after being less than impressed with his Jughead run. But this story isn’t by Chip Zdarsky, not is it a spider-man run, instead this story is written by Mark Russel, responsible for the 1970s reboot of DC’s Prez, and the Wonder Twins series as part of Brian Michael Bendis’ short-lived Wonder Comics imprint. The art is by Sean Izaakse with Nolan Woodard on colours. But enough preamble (going into the details of the aims of the Life Story series would be counterproductive to the nature of this format), let’s take a look at this.

Comic Book Lucky Dip - Batman Family #4

Welcome back to Comic Book lucky dip and boy do I have a treat for you this time. I have recently subscribed to the DC Universe app so now my collection of comics covers a lot of DC History. I told the search to select at comic at random, I don’t know if it actually did but it came up with Batman Family #4 from 1976, easily the oldest comic I’ve ever reviewed.

Comic Book Lucky Dip - Detective Comics #1051

Today’s randomly selected comic is Detective Comics #1051. This is the most recent of the comics I’ve reviewed for this but time is meaningless here, this was the 5^th part of the Shadows of the Bat Storyline going on at the time, written by Mariko Tomaki, with art by Max Raynor and with a backup story written by Matthew Rosenberg with Fernando Blanco on art.

Comic Book Lucky Dip: Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis

Welcome back to the comic book lucky dip where I pick one of my thousands of comics at random and review it without explaining the backstory or context to the story. And well, chosen at random this week is a one-shot issue. Tales From the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis. And this is a perfect fit for this format as it’s a one-shot issue so the story is self-contained but also a major misfit because it’s a retelling of an old(er) event comic and per the rules of this format, I must not make reference to it at all [watch me fail at that]

On writing duties we have James Tynion IV who is a decent writer of many books I’ve enjoyed, and a few that I didn’t. On pencils it’s Aaron Lopresti, I hadn’t seen much of his work before but from what I can tell, he never seems to stick around. Might just be bad luck, or fill-in jobs. Matt Ryan is on Inks, not the guy who plays Constantine.