The Dark Hunters: Exclusive Collector's Booklet

Here's one I've had sitting around in the to-be-read pile for a while. This was a promotional item I believe I picked up at the 2008 New York Comicon.

Title: The Dark Hunters: Exclusive Collector's Booklet
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Date: 2008
Writer: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Artist: Claudia Campos

This is a manga series that ties in with Sherrilyn Kenyon urban fantasy fiction. Actually, this particular book is a preview ashcan for that series.

Starting with a legend from ancient Greece of a powerful ruler and warrior who was betrayed and left to wander the Earth as an immortal creature of the shadows, the story quickly jumps to modern times and a woman who is trying her best to stay out of the way of her supernatural-connected family.

Unfortunately, supernatural entanglements have a way of being, well, entangling.

Nice dialogue, including a cute Anne Rice joke thrown in there. The action just gets going when the book goes to cliffhanger, but that's fine for a preview quickie like this. The witch-family seems amusing, and there are plenty of hints at the depth of the story to come.

Rating: 7/10

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1 (New York Comiccon 2008 Edition)

Another leftover promo book that I picked up at Free Comic Book Day 2011. This one is a NYCC promo from 2008.

Title: Iron Man: Legacy of Doom
Issue: #1 (New York Comiccon 2008 Edition)
Date: 2008
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: David Michelinie, Bob Layton
Penciler: Ron Lim
Inker: Bob Layton
Colorist: Moose Baumann
Letterer: Artmonkeys Studios
Editor: Molly Lazer

This is a "lost" adventure of Iron Man, a series of events that Tony Stark discovers was wiped from his memory. The first third of the story is a pretty tedious setup along with a recap of a very silly-sounding previous story that had Stark and Viktor Von Doom doing their take on A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court. I suppose that story needs to be dredged up every so often if only to prove the point that you can't improve on Mark Twain.

Apparently this is a sequel to that story. Stark gets summoned to Latveria with the threat that "millions of lives hang in the balance", which I suppose is a threat that Doom could make pretty much any time he wants. Stark takes the bait, and then has to fight some soldiers who are attacking Doom's castle. This sequence serves no purpose other than as a kind of random encounter of the type you see in poorly plotted D&D adventures.

Once the soldiers are dispatched with no actual casualties, we get down to business. Doom is on to a sinister plot by Mephisto. And Iron Man has "proven adequate against mystic dangers in the past" (Wait. What? That makes no sense at all; Iron Man is like the least mystical hero in the Marvel Universe).

Anyway, there's an amusing bit of counter-trickery involving a device to return Doom and Stark from Mephisto's dimension, which is actually the only good moment in this book.

Then it's off to Hell, which resembles the mine cart roller coaster at Jordan Furniture's "Motion Odyssey Movie (MOM)" ride. With some rather unthreatening-looking blob creatures in what is basically another random encounter. Then the big plot twist is revealed, which is surprising in the sense that I wasn't expecting it because it was way TOO obvious and I figured there had to be something more clever going on.

Nope.

Rating: 3/10