Shadowland #3

          Shadow land is without a doubt in my mind my favorite mini since the Civil War. I used to read a lot of Daredevil but I stopped when he got involved with the Hand. I wanted him to be like the vigilantly that he was before, not the head of a group of ninja assassins. So naturally Shadowland would appeal to me , I hope that this is what bring Daredevil away from the hand, and so far Marvel is doing it in a way that is just so fantastic. Shadowland is written and drawn beautifully, and it includes some B list characters that I never get around to reading about, but I still find them interesting. (ex. Ghost Rider, Punisher)
         In this issue Daredevil and the Hand are still fighting Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Spiderman and a whole bunch of different fighters. Punisher comes in and starts shooting at every one giving the fighters time to escape.  Later Master Izo comes in and reveals a secret about Daredevil. Meanwhile Moon Knight and Ghost Rider destroy all the ninjas in the Shadowland prison and all the prisoners escape, and at the end Daredevil goes to resurrect Bullseye when someone else enters the picture.
        Another stellar issue. I have said before I hate it when issues are just giant fight scenes, and I was ready to take away from this issues grade for it, but I went back and read it again, and really there isn't that much fight scene, and I thought that was great. I think I might of gotten confused because the comic had such a fast pace. The fight scene was interesting and just plain cool, and the rest of the book was interesting and just plain cool. The secret was not my favorite thing, what happened was Diggle wrote the story, and now he needs to fix Daredevil as fast as possible. It could have been worse, but it could have been better. With each issue Daredevil just becomes different. He became evil when he killed Bullseye, then even more so when he ordered the Hand to kill the Fighters, and now he's bringing back Bullseye so that he will be loyal to the Hand. That is just a perfect order. I forgot to mention that I wanted Diggle to bring Bullseye back but I wanted him to do it in away that wasn't too fake, like Luke Cage made it to the hospital and the doctors saved Bullseye. I think the way that he's coming back is really good.
     So this issue was still really good, but I cant give it a ten out of ten because of an error with the secret that Master Izo said, but it is still a great comic and I recommend it highly.



Grade: 9.5 /10
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Shadow Land #2

           Shadow Land one was one of the best comics I've ever read. I really liked the story, art, panels, dialogue, and... well just everything about it.  I really hope that Shadowland is what it will take to put Daredevil back to the state is was in a couple years ago.
           In this issue Moon Knight puts himself in prison so that he can infiltrate Daredevil's castle. Kingpin goes to Luke Cage and Iron Fist because he wants Daredevil taken out as well. Then he goes home and summons something that brakes everyone who was in Daredevil's prison, out. At the end Luke Cage, Iron Fist and others go to talk to Daredevil, which turns into a fight.
          This issue was just as good as the previous one. Daredevil did look like a oppressive tyrant last issue, but this time it was very thick. As I've said before I enjoy when authors take a brake from fights and add something else, weather it be some more character insight, development, or personal conflict. All of those are included in Shadow Land. Diggle voiced all of his characters. Sometimes it's just perfect. In this issue the standout was Kingpin. He sounded like he should, and was just the perfect amount of stuck up that he should have been. That and I alway love the funny banter that comes via Spiderman, and in this issue it was great. I've only seen the banter done flawlessly in two series, surprisingly not in Amazing Spiderman. The two series are Shadow Land, and Avengers. I want a little more Spiderman in both of those series.
          Story wise this comic was mainly fallowing Luke Cage and Iron Fist. I really didn't know much about them until I looked them up a couple of days ago, but Diggle did a good job with them in this series. This is the issue where Daredevil goes totally over the edge, and I really like that, because even though I want Marvel to go in the other direction, I can see a path that gets rid of Black Daredevil and brings back the classic red one, but not the sort of path where DD sees the error of his ways and comes into the light again.
         I was shocked to read that some people didn't like Shadowland, and I advise you to disregard all bad reviews for this comic or any other issue in this series and read them.



Grade: 10/10
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Secret Avengers #2

          As soon as I saw the cover of issue #1, I knew this series would be peerless.  Not because the cover was drawn well, or even because it was written by Brubaker, but because of the people this team included. Moon Knight, Valkyrie, Black Widow, Ant Man, War Machine, Beast, Nova, and Steve Rogers. I like what is being done with Steve Rogers, he is no longer Captain America (I kind of don't like that, but not nearly as strongly as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson) but him being this secret black-op kind of guy is pretty cool. Plus in this issue only for one panel he gets a laser shield. So that's pretty cool.
In this issue the Secret Avengers lose contact with Nova and go to Mars to find him, and to investigate Roxxon. Then the whole of the Secret Avengers is put under attack by (who I think I'm right in assuming) is the Shadow Council, and by ______. This is a spoil free blog.
         This is a great second issue. I would have liked  a couple pages about Moon Knight, he was practically the star of last issue, with the whole "I'm changing my ways" bit, so a couple pages on that would have been nice, but thats not a huge deal. Last issue I didn't really like Valkyrie being on the Secret Avengers, but this time, War Machine was the weakest character. He told Ant Man that he had to earn the name, so he kept calling him Kid, and was very condescending to him, and eventually that just got boring. Also last issue Sharon Carter was attacked by Nick Furry and the Shadow Council, this issue she is just siting at her computer and complaining that they hacked in, which they probably could have done with out busting into the ship. The art in this book was fantastic, a couple scenes with Nova showed his awesome power just in the picture. There was also a different scene where Beast looked into one of the Shadow Council's units eyes and that picture could have been taken out of a horror movie, and I wouldn't know the difference. So this was a good fallow up issue, and I'm very excited for this series, and also is the Moon Knight series any good? Is it worth reading? Or any of the Deadpool series?

Grade: 9/10
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Secret Avengers #1

             All right, I didn't expect much out of this comic, I just bought it because my comic store didn't have Flash #2, Birds of Prey #2, nor did it have Brightest Day #4.  So I grabbed this on my way out. The comic was  amazing. I didn't see the author until after I read it, and I was very happy to see Ed Brubaker's name at the bottom. First of all the role call was amazing. Moon Knight, Nova, The Black Widow, Steve Rogers, War Machine, Beast, Valkyrie and Ant Man. I'm very glad that Steve Rogers is in this series. I will admit that I wish he was still Captain America, but  Bucky is doing fine. I know some of you might find this shocking because I went on rants about how much I didn't want Dick Grayson as Batman, but I don't mind Bucky. Also Steve is doing a pretty good job here.
       This story fit the name of Secret Avengers. They ran in beat up some guys, took what they needed and ran out. That is what I expected, but Brubaker  made it work. In this case the secret Avengers took what they thought was the Serpent Crown. Instead it was a cousin to it. Looks into where Roxxon (the people they stole it from) found this crown. They found out that Roxxon had mineral rights to Mars and was digging there. When they shut down all of the diggers, pretty much disappear. (Read the comic to understand it better) So Steve sends his one guy that he can to Mars: Nova. When he got there he was put under fire by these weird space tanks, he went into a cave and found ______. I'm not going to spoil the story for you. Meanwhile during all this the Shadow council has been fallowing the Secret Avengers. They keep saying they can't lose it again, so I'm guessing the Cousin Crown is worth more than Beast knows.
         This is the best I've read in a long, long time. My only complaint is that Ant Man isn't on the cover. I'm loving Brubaker's work with the Marvel Universe. He is outstanding. The art in this book is just a notch above average, but it didn't really bother me. I'm really happy to see every one on this team (except I don't care to much for Valkyrie) especially... well... especially every one. I don't know if Brubaker made this team, but if he did he is more brilliant than I thought. There was one other little thing I didn't like and that was how Moon Knight has a big emotional scene where he was trying to change his ways . Not because the scene was bad, it's because just like how DC is trying to make Hawk into the Punisher. Marvel is trying to make Moon Knight into Batman. If Moon Knight is a over the edge killing character let him kill, don't make him into Batman, you will crash and burn.


Grade: 9.5/10 (I know, but I just couldn't bring myself to give it a 10/10)
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