Think Tank #1
Written by Matt Hawkins
Art by Rahsan Ekedal
Letters by Troy Peteri
Covers by Rahsan Ekedal, Brian Reber, Bagus Hutomo
Created by Matt Hawkins and Rahsan Ekedal
Top Cow Productions, Inc.
Release Date: August 1, 2012
Cover Price: $3.99

We’ve all probably crossed paths with the type of person who’s an absolute genius who just skates through life. These slack-offs are dangerous friends because they suck you into their whimsical little world filled with awesome, irrelevant distractions. Next thing you know it’s the end of the semester; you’ve goofed off all year and now you have to beg your Geometry teacher not to send you to summer school while Albert Einstein over there inexplicably passed with flying colors. Ahem, I digress. We, the idiots of the world, harbor a little deep-seated bitterness.

For what it’s worth, Dr. David Loren, the main character in Think Tank, likely makes any so-called genius who you know look like a douche. David graduated with a PhD from Cal Tech and is scientist at a DARPA-run think tank. There he dabbles with inventions like mind-reading devices, invisibility suits, and portable EMP bombs. An avowed slacker, David just rests on his laurels after inventing the Predator drone algorithm. Colonel Harrison, David’s gruff, all-business, supervisor, gives him a stern warning to start producing results. After brushing off the threat, David decides to follow-through on one of his half-assed and half-finished ideas. Well, half-assed by his standards, anyway. This invention leads to a great cliffhanger that will definitely hook you in for next issue.

Dracula World Order
Written by Ian Brill
Art by Tonci Zonjic, Rahsan Ekedal, Declan Shalvey, Gabriel Hardman
Colors by Stephen Downer, Jordie Bellaire
Letters by Josh Krach
Cover by Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire
Ian Brill (Independent)
Release Date: June 22, 2012
Cover Price: $3.99

As a huge vampire geek I notice the undead and bloodthirsty seem to fall into three main categories within pop culture. There is the vamp with lots of deep feelings who sweats being us hard enough to eternally attend high school, or to get a soul so they can date humans, the hyper-sexualized type who makes us feel less dirty since we are merely humans under their superior thrall and therefore cannot be held accountable for our own actions, or the last and rarest variety: the monster in the night who believes the living are a delicious snack food or a means to an end. Dracula World Order strongly subscribes to the latter school of thought and while it expresses lofty ideas about the current state of political/economic affairs, manages to be a bloody good bit of gory fun as well.

Warhammer: Condemned By Fire #1
Written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edginton
Art by Rahsan Ekedal
Colors by Fellipe Martins
Letters by Ed Dukeshire
Boom! Studios
Covers by Joe Abraham, Jaime Jones
Cover price: $3.99; Available now

First things first, if you’re a computer gamer waiting for the Warhammer Fantasy MMO, you need to go out and find a copy of this book right now, because each copy comes with the chance to get into the Beta for Age of Reckoning, but if you’ve been looking forward to it, you probably have a couple copies already. And if you’re not into the whole gaming thing, you should still pick this issue up, as a good horror tale, in the vein of a good Conan story.

BOOM! Studios has done a good job with the Warhammer license so far, both on the 40k side, and the Fantasy side, which is where we find ourselves for this series. The series follows one of the Witch Hunters of the Empire (this will make sense to fans of the Warhammer universe) as he tracks a heretic across a harsh landscape. He eventually tracks him to a forsaken village that carries a horrible secret. Inside the village, the story takes a turn towards the horrific, ending with the Witch Hunter moving on to track down the source of the horror.