May 2008 Reads Part II: Best of the Year?

I'll review the rest of what I bought tomorrow (like anyone really cares or reads those reviews), but I thought I'd focus on two comics that really blew me away when I was reading them. I read them back-to-back and so far, they're the best comics I've read this year. They were both sold out at my regular comic store, so I had to go elsewhere and pay full price. They were both worth it. I highly suggest getting both of them, one is a new series, so you'd be getting in on the ground floor. You might have to do some searching to find them, but it's well worth it. Anyways, here we go:

Guardians of the Galaxy #1: On the awesomeness scale of 1 to 10, I would give this a 24. It is that awesome. It basically picks up where Annihilation: Conquest ended. The team features Star-Lord, Drax the Destroyer, Adam Warlock and Rocket Raccoon (who I thought had been tragically lost to the sands of time). If you don't know who Rocket is, he's a raccoon with human-level intelligence. Oh yeah, and he's a demolition expert. His inclusion in this comic alone raised it's awesomeness rating by 10.

The other thing that is pretty awesome about this book is the action combined with the dry wit. Drax is already one of my favorite characters. I think he really embodies the spirit of the book and it's also cool to see him stab and smash stuff.

Their headquarters, brace yourself for this, is located in a severed head of a Celestial that is floating in a crossroads dimension. It's run by a telepathic/telekinetic dog that was launched into orbit by the Russians in the '60s. And he has a Russian accent. This is the part of the review where I say, "What else do I have to say to convince you go out and buy this? It's got an intelligent Raccoon that loves to blow stuff up and Telepathic Russian Golden Retriever in it for Chrissakes. RUN to your nearest comic book store and buy it. Now. Seriously. Go." Before you do that, read the next couple of paragraphs though.

Thunderbolts #120: Wow. That's all I can really say about this one. Ok, I guess I can write a little more about it.

To borrow a term from about 5917 movie reviews, this issue of the Thunderbolts is an "edge of your seat thrill-ride". It starts out with Norman Osbourne walking down to the basement in Thunderbolt Mountain and he's going down there to don his Green Goblin gear to go kick some ass. Yeah, that's right, things have finally gotten that bad and they're about to get worse. The first five pages involve Osbourne talking to himself as he's walking down the stairs to the basement. That's it. And it's some of the most brilliant dialogue I've read in a very long time. His monologue is basically about how unappreciated he feels and what he will do when he is elected President. You read that right, he said when he's President. He is totally whacked out of his mind. Then he proceeds to compare himself to Hitler, only Hitler had it easy because everyone followed his orders, no one listens to poor Norman but he always manages to get the job done. After that tirade, THEN he goes into full-on psycho-killer mode and takes out The Swordsman. It is totally awesome.

Things are finally coming to a boiling point in this "Caged Angels" arc and I really think that the next issue is going to be the craziness. It better be, because after that it's like four months of Secret Invasion tie-ins, and hopefully they'll bridge the gap between Caged Angels and what happened in Secret Invasion #1.