Pick Of My Pile for the weeks of 7-22 and 7-29.

Hello Chums,

Now that I'm back from the Comic-Con, I've been reading a steady stream of books. I'm finally starting to get caught up on my weekly reading. Here are two weeks worth of books.

Week of 7-22:

Marvel:

The Incredible Hulk #600. Even though I'm not currently reading The Hulk, I could not resist this milestone issue with the Ross cover. This thick, 100 page monster is filled with a lot of Hulk goodness: New stories by Loeb and McGuinness, Stan Lee and Van Lente. This issue also features part 1 of Loeb and Sale's Hulk Gray. And of course the 600 covers gallery. Nice!

the Amazing Spider-Man #600. What? Another issue #600 milestone book the same week? Yes, and with another Ross cover! This issue has a 60 page story by Dan Slott with art by John Romita Jr. Great story. The issue also features stories by Stan Lee, Mark Waid, Bob Gale and Marc Guggenheim with art by Mitch Breitweiser, all good. What I don't understand is why they featured fake covers instead of the 600 issue cover gallery. That's not cool.

Immortal Weapons #1 Fat Cobra. The break out star from The Immortal Iron Fist, Fat Cobra, gets an origin story! Good stuff. Written by new Marvel superstar Jason Aaron.

Halo: Helljumper #1 (of 5). This issue, written by Peter David, is off to a good start. Let's hope it's better than Bendis' Halo tale.

NEC:

The Mangalicious Tick #1 (of 4). The Tick in some Manga feudal Japan story. One word: Terrible!

Dark Horse:

Dethklok versus The Goon (one-shot). A rock band named Dethklok is (magically?) transported to The Goon's world. Let the madness begin.

IDW:

Star Trek: Spock Reflections #1. This mini-series follows Spock after the events of the new Star Trek movie.

DC:

Wednesday Comics #3 (of 16). Continuing on with part 3 of the featured 16 strips. Mandatory reading.

Jack of Fables #36 (Vertigo). I'm still not caught up on Jack after The Great Fables Crossover.

The Pick Of My Pile this week is Spider-Man #600. Yeah, there wasn't a cover gallery ( almost unforgivable), but the Slott / Jr. Jr. story was very good. It really felt like an anniversary story.

Week of 7-29:

Marvel:

Stephen King: The Dark Tower: Fall Of Gilead #3 (of 6). It's really amazing that Richard Isanove's art work looks so much like Jae Lee's. Now why couldn't Lee do it?

The New Avengers #55. Finally, no Doctor Strange mystic non-sense. Now it "appears" that a real story arc has started. We'll see.

Ultimatum #5 (of 5). Finally the end of this non-sense. I did like the nice Finch art on Wolverine melting down and Dr. Doom and Magneto's end. Very cool panels. It's too bad the story was terrible.

Fantastic Four #569. The last of the Millar and Hitch run. Unfortunately the arc ended with a mild let down. I do think that over all their run was pretty good.

Dark X-Men #1. This first issue shows how Norman Osborn gets Namor, Mimic and Dark Beast to join his team.

Dark X-Men #2. This issue features Norman recruiting Cloak and Dagger, Weapon Omega and Daken (Wolverine's son) to the team.

IDW:

Star Trek: Mission's End #5 (of 5). The end of this very weird story arc with intelligent spiders and centipedes. This is Kirk's last mission aboard the Enterprise as captain. Now he's off to be Admiral Kirk.

DC:

Wednesday Comics #4 (of 16). These strips have all been good. My stand out favorites are: Kamandi, Strange Adventures, Superman, Metamorpho and Batman.

The Pick Of My Pile this week is Dark X-Men #1. Check out my sweet San Diego Comic-Con variant. I enjoyed the 3 individual stories especially the Namor and Mimic stories.

K.R.C.

D.L.