Impaler #5
Written by William Harms
Art by Matt Timson
Letters by Troy Peteri
Top Cow
Release date: March 31, 2010

You know what’s a great word? Impale. At all opportunities, the word impale should be worked into a sentence. So I am proud and excited to review Impaler #5, Top Cow’s newest addition to the ever-expanding world of the vampire. At least these ones don’t “˜sparkle’ in the sun.

America has been overrun with a plague of vampires who have consumed the East Coast in a bloody rampage, turning or tearing through anyone they find. These aren’t your garden variety fanged Eurotrash in capes either. Inhuman grotesques wrapped in shadow, giant misshapen monsters with blood sucking tentacles, and winged demons litter the landscape. The story follows the soldier Lt. George Wagner and his fellow troops as they fight to survive, cut off from the rest of humanity, while Wagner’s wife and children flea to New Mexico and stay with a kindly stranger named Tom. Meanwhile, Detective Victor Dailey has been recruited by a man with superhuman powers named Vlad, and is preparing to turn the tide against the undead.

Farscape: Scorpius #0
Story: Rockne S. O’Bannon
Script: David Alan Mack
Artist: Mike Ruiz
BOOM! Studios
Release date: April 14, 2010

Everyone’s favourite Peacekeeping, S&M bondage enthusiast is back! BOOM! Studios is continuing its foray into the Farscape universe by exploring the fate of Scorpius, the masked, wormhole-obsessed Scarran who has dogged John Crichton and the rest of the crew of the living prison ship Moya for years.

Farscape: Scorpius #0 opens on Scorpius as he is exiled to a miserable frozen world of ice by the newly re-instated Dominar Rigel XVI, once again in command of the Hynerian Empire. Left alone, Scorpius is left to reflect on his life, and on those who have exiled him. Though he has the capacity to convert what’s left of his pod into a communications beacon, he knows that even if he was able to establish communications he would have no one to talk to, and his only friend a small crustacean predator he has named John. We even see a small glimpse into the history of Scarran. As a young boy, he was forced by his instructors to play a game to which he did not know the rules and was brought up in an almost Nietzchean environment that praised strength, cunning, discipline, and that the only justice one will find is the justice you make for yourself. However, when a space fleet lands near his cave, he sees his opportunity for escape…

Shadow Prowler
Book 1 of The Chronicles Of Siala Trilogy
Hardcover
By Alexey Pehov
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Tor Books
Release date: February 16, 2010

The first novel of a new trilogy, Alexey Pehov‘s Shadow Prowler, is classic sword and sorcery fiction, practically overflowing with wizards, warriors, thieves, and mythological creatures roaming a rich fantasy landscape. With a certain tongue in cheek humour and the traditional quest story arc, Shadow Prowler carries a lot of appeal for traditional fans who enjoy the high fantasy genre.

Shadow Prowler follows the story of Shadow Harold, a thief given the task of reclaiming a magic Horn to keep the black evil of the Nameless One from consuming the kingdom of Siala. Teamed up with an Elfin Princess, ten members of a legendary warrior troop known as the Wild Hearts, and a goblin jester, they must make their way through an underground labyrinth composed of the bones of the dead to reclaim what’s been stolen from them by demons hoping to unleash their evil master.

Die Hard: Year One
Volume 1 Hardcover
Written by Howard Chaykin
Art by Stephen Thompson
Colors by Matthew Wilson
Letters by Ed Dukeshire
Boom! Studios
Release date: March 24, 2010

There are a lot of unique art forms to North America: Jazz, Rock and Roll, Comic Books. In many ways, they make up the pop culture mythos of America. To this list I would add action movies. The eighties gave birth to a whole new genre of over-the-top, hyper-masculine action films, and reigning supreme on top of that heap is 1988’s Die Hard. With its reluctant hero, its tongue-in-cheek humour, and unforgettable action sequences, it is one of the most memorable American films of the last fifty years.

BOOM! Studios has produced its own addition to the Die Hard legacy with the Die Hard: Year One comic book series, and as an experiment in expanding the John McClane legend, it’s a roaring success.

Cyberforce: Hunter-Killer #5
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Kenneth Rocafort
Top Cow
Release date: March 10, 2010

I was never much of a fan of CyberForce during the late nineties. I found that most of the comics put out in that era looked the same and the characters tended to run together. So naturally I was surprised to read CyberForce: Hunter-Killer #5 and find it so much fun.

CyberForce: Hunter-Killer follows Cyberforce, the underground cybernetic resistance force fighting against the world-dominating CyberData Corporation, and their partnership with Hunter-Killer, an elite force commissioned to hunt down and destroy the rogue Ultra-Sapiens created in the 1940s by mad scientist Morningstar. Cyberdata has produced a modern mobile phone system called JETT that activates the latent abilities in Ultra-Sapiens in order to take the government contract for hunting with their S.H.O.C. troops. In the end, team member Network and Damper are forced to sacrifice themselves in order to shut down the spread of the Ultra-Sapien activation.