Cars #1
Written by Alan Porter and Mark Cooper
Art by Fabricio Grellet
Colors by Digikore Studios
Letters by Deron Bennett
Covers by Allen Gladfelter
BOOM! Studios
Release date: February 17, 2010

Cars #1 takes us to a post-apocalyptic future, where the cars have gained sentience and wiped out the human race. They now rule over a desert-like wasteland, participating in terrible cross country races and demolition derbies in order to crown King Engine.

Okay, so that’s not completely true.

The comic book adaptation of the multi-million dollars Pixar blockbuster, Cars #1 continues the story of Lightning McQueen, a race car in a cartoon world where there are only cars, no people. Of course, there’s no explanation as to why this world is the way it is, but that’s fine. In fact, the biggest weakness of the Cars comic book series, which actually begins with Issue #0, is that it assumes you are already familiar with the Cars film. If you’ve never seen the movie, it will take you some time to get familiar with the characters.

Cthulhu Tales #11
Written by Chris Sequeira, Christine Boylan, Michael Alan Nelson, Shane Oakley
Art by Milton Sobreiro, Roger Langridge
BOOM! Studios
Price: $3.99; Release date: February 4, 2009

BOOM! Studios brings us another four wonderful tentacle-filled tales from the universe of H.P. Lovecraft, exploring everything from corporate climbers to brain surgery patients to trays full of tasty, terror-filled bite-sized morsels.

Incorporation follows Glenda, an up-and-coming accountant in a multinational firm Wilcox-Gamme. We get an inkling of what’s to come right on the first page as Glenda finds the now ubiquitous Cthulhu statue in her new desk, and that’s precisely the weakness in the story of Incorporation. The story and dialogue are formulaic, the characters two-dimensional. Glenda is your typical ball-busting corporate climber, while her co-workers are portrayed as weak-willed sycophants who could never keep up with her. She begins to have visions of evil in her spreadsheets and while I won’t intentionally ruin the surprise ending for you, I think it’s obvious that there’s little surprise in here at all. Even the art of W. Chewie Chan is stilted and uninspiring. The concept of the multi-national corporation as evil cult is simply played out, and doesn’t bring anything new to the Cthulhu table.