The Weekly Round-Up #492 With Excellence #1, Black Hammer: Age Of Doom #10, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #32 & More!

Best Comic of the Week:

Excellence #1

– I think I’m pretty much hooked on Excellence, the new series by Brandon Thomas and Khary Randolph.  This series is set in a world where ten families have access to magic, and follow some pretty strict rules about how they can utilise it, and whom they can protect with it.  Spencer Dales was a late bloomer, magically, and that has put his family in a precarious position. When he’s ready to go through the trials needed to prove his worth, he’s older than anyone who’s done it before him, and needs to wrestle with the anger and shame of it.  He also needs to decide if he’ll be able to live by the strictures placed upon his kind, when a family tragedy tempts him to take a different path. Thomas is terrific at setting up unique worlds and experiences for his readers (I miss his Horizon), and Randolph is just a great artist.  There’s a lot to dig into here, and I’m curious by the fact that all the people with magical abilities are black, but it looks like the people they protect are all white. I’d like to know more about how that dynamic works, and look forward to exploring this series fully.

Quick Takes:

Aliens: Resistance #4

– I wish this series wasn’t an ongoing series of miniseries, as the end of this title doesn’t provide a lot of conclusion, and the next miniseries is starting shortly and will be continuing this story.  At the same time, I do like the way Wood writes Zula and Amanda, and that he’s found some new ground in this property.

Black Hammer: Age of Doom #10 – It’s time to get the crew back together and put the world to rights, but only Lucy remembers who everyone is, and it’s not immediately apparent that people want to return to a world where they have powers and responsibilities.  Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston continue to provide a very cool comic.

Captain America #10 – Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Captain America run has been kind of slow moving, while wrestling with some big themes.  This issue provides some much-needed forward direction, as Cap finds himself in a cage match in prison with Baron Von Strucker, his warden, while contemplating all the ways the world has changed recently.  I like that Coates is continuing to make good use of Thunderball, I mean Doctor Franklin, who he started to redeem in his Black Panther run. The next issue should provide some long-awaited action.

Deadly Class #38 – The action shifts back to Kings Dominion, the school for assassins, as Marcus and Maria return to their old lives, only now everything is different.  It’s clear that they have some kind of plan in place, but it’s not clear if they will be able to survive it, as everyone either now wants to be Marcus’s friend, or to take him out.  Rick Remender and Wes Craig have made this comic incredibly loveable and compelling, and with this issue, they recapture a lot of what made this book work so well in its first couple of years, although without some of the humour.  I hope that this book, and Remender’s other titles, return to a more regular schedule now.

Doctor Aphra #32 – It’s been a few months since the end of the last arc, and Aphra has taken on the girl who helped her on Milvayne as a sort of apprentice, although that seems to be dredging up a number of her own issues with her mother.  Si Spurrier is digging a little deeper into Aphra’s past, while still keeping her generally kind of terrible. I like it.

Infinite Dark #6 – I’m afraid that Ryan Cady is losing me with this arc.  The first one was a lot more focused, but now that the threat to the space station that holds the last humans in the galaxy is a little more nebulous, I’m finding it a little harder to care and stay invested in the story.

Invaders #5 – It appears that Namor’s plans and schemes are all revealed, as his efforts to push America and Atlantis to war with one another move into high gear.  I really like the way that Carlos Magno draws the original Human Torch during his fight with Namor. This was another solid issue, although I want to say that I really hope that by the end of this storyline, Chip Zdarsky fixes Namor.

Lodger #5 – This dark crime series by the Laphams comes to its close, explaining everything that happened between Ricky and the man that she’s been trying to find for four years, after he tore her family apart.  This was a more experimental series than Stray Bullets, the book the Laphams have been working on for years, and it was probably a nice change of pace for them. Now that this is done, I’m hoping we’ll see a lot more of Stray Bullets – something like four issues have been solicited and are really late now.

Shadow Roads #7 – This second arc is moving a lot more slowly than the first one did, but stays enjoyable.  The cast of this book is split into three groups at the moment, and it seems that the threat of the Cabal is going to be a problem for all of them shortly.  This title is filling the gap left by the ending of The Sixth Gun, but it doesn’t, at least as of yet, have the same momentum that that title did.

Vindication #4

– This was a complicated miniseries that explored issues of race relations, policing, corruption, and guilt.  It was interesting, but now that it’s over, I think it didn’t quite live up to its potential or the weight of its ambitions. Writer MD Marie could have stood with more editorial guidance, and maybe another issue to provide space to better establish the relationships between characters.  There are a few places over the course of the series where I found myself getting lost or confused, and I often had trouble remembering which character was which, or how they were related to the others. Still, it worked well enough that I’d be interested in checking out Marie’s next work.

X-Force #7 – This is the quietest issue of this series yet, as Deathlok works to get the time portal working and everyone else waits around for that to happen.  There’s a great scene involving Warpath and some farm-related romance novels, and every character gets a moment or two, making this feel more like a series that might last for a while.  In the future, Stryfe tortures Young Cable, and makes plans to achieve his goals. The art on this issue is split between the incredible Dylan Burnett and Damian Couceiro, making it clear what era each scene is taking place in.  This continues to be my favourite Marvel comic at the moment, and I really hope it is going to be sticking around. It’s very good.

TCAF Finds:

Ginseng Roots #1