Devi No. 1
Virgin Comics
There's something suspicious about the way this book credits film director Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth, The Four Feathers) as "creator," but it's written by Siddharth Kotian and drawn by Mukesh Singh (Other weird credits: Deepak Chopra and Sir Richard Branson join Kapur under the title "Chief Visionaries").
Regardless of who did what in this first issue of the first book from this brand-new publisher, the Virgin line of Indian mythology-influenced comics is off to a moderately solid start.
The first half of the story retells a prehistoric myth about the title character, a human given the powers of the gods to help them defeat the rebellious, bat-shaped god Bala; while the second takes us to the present, where Devi and Bala resurface in very different forms, ones that recall more standard superhero roles.
The mythic stuff seems much stronger, and gives Singh more and cooler stuff to draw, but it's too early to write the story off just yet. Kapur's second "creation," Snake Woman, also debuts this week, and two more books in a similar vein will follow this summer.
Transformers: Evolutions No. 1
IDW Publishing
Since their early '80s introduction, the Transformers have turned into just about everything: toy lines, several cartoon series, an animated film featuring voice work from Orson Welles, scads of comicbook series and, up next, a live-action movie directed by Michael Bay (shudder!).
While Transformers comics have always been pretty terrible, offering grown-ups nothing more than a bit of nostalgia, this new series from indy publisher IDW has a pretty compelling hook to it: What if the Robots In Disguise came to Earth in a different time period, and had to adapt to the technology of other eras?
In other words, it's a Transformers period piece. The heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons were slugging it out on prehistoric Earth when the Ice Age hit, and they called a time out to hibernate for thousands of years. When they wake up, it's in 19th century America, at the height of the Steam Age.
So rather than cars, laser guns and jet planes, the Transformers must turn into trains, cannons, biplanes and steamboats. The story is pretty goofy—tall-tale hero John Henry and Mark Twain both appear—but artist Guido Guidi's design concepts are all golden.
Solo No. 11
DC Comics
The concept for Solo was a simple one: DC invites an artist to work with whatever writers they want, use any DC characters they want and generally do whatever the hell they want for about 48 pages, and they'll publish the results.
It ended up being probably DC's best book, so of course it's been cancelled. This is the second-to-last issue, but at least they published it long enough to get this one out, as this is the Sergio Aragones issue.
Aragones is of course best known for his work in Mad Magazine (now owned and published by DC) and his long-running Groo The Wanderer, but in this issue of Solo he focuses on a new hero: himself.
With his pointy handlebar mustache, Aragones has the look of a winning cartoon character, and he stars in the best of the 10 stories contained in this issue, including a sober reflection on the differing histories of the Mexican-American war on different sides of the border, a hilarious recounting of how he may have contributed to the death of British character actor Marty Feldman and a story of his initial attempts to break into New York publishing.
At the beginning of that final story, the cartoon Aragones tells us it would take volumes to relate his odyssey to become a cartoonist in detail. "But I'll do it one day, I promise!" Based on how well this short story—and this whole book—turned out, let's hope he does it one day soon.