Kissed By Fire

Victor Gischler & Roberto Castro “Red Sonja/Conan: The Blood of a God” (Dynamite, 2016)

What do you want from a story with Red Sonja & Conan? Battles, fights, repartee, some drunken misadventures, a bit of horror perhaps?

Did I forget anything?

Gischler & Castro give us all that in this short (4 issue) story arc.  Sonja & Conan team up to fight the big bad.

This doesn’t meet the high standard that Gail Simone set with her run on Red Sonja, but both story & art are competent & give the hack & slash that you are looking for.

Science. Bad.

Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra “Manhattan Projects Deluxe Edition Volume 2” (Image, 2016)

Is Manhattan Projects maximum Hickman?  I haven’t read enough of his work to know with any sort of certainty, but it feels like that is the case.

Instead of superheroes we have scientists.  And not just any scientists but some of the greatest minds of the mid-20^th century.  And because it’s Hickman, it’s mad science, because they are fundamentally evil.

It’s big and crazy and you just never know what will happen next.

The art errs on the side of minimalism but is wonderful in a very modern clean sense.  Nick Pitarra is seriously overlooked as a contemporary artist.  His work is somewhat similar to Jamie McElvie, but I find it to be less static.

This is a wonderful collection of volumes 3 & 4 of the Manhattan Projects.  You’ll want to start at the beginning, but you definitely want to be reading this.