Free Comic Book Day 2024

Free Comic Book Day! It’s officially been two years since I first started my comic collection, launched a comic website with a blog. I now have roughly 140 or so comics in my collection and it’s climbing, slowly but surely. This time I managed to scoop up a few comics for myself and my two boys got some comics for kids. I missed out on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle issue but I did manage to get the three I was going for which were Image Comics Energon Universe, DC’s Absolute Power and Marvel’s Blood Hunt. The most recent stack episode from the Comic Book Club podcast talked about Energon Universe and how G.I. Joe, Transformers and Void Rivals are all in one universe. I was definitely intrigued because if you recall, at the very end of the last Transformers movie, Rise of the Beasts, they alluded to a partnership between the Transformers and G.I. Joe sector. So I had to pick that one up being a Transformers fan, though I am not sure what Void Rivals is.

The other issue I will be reviewing besides Energon Universe is DC’s Absolute Power, I’ll cover the FCBD Blood Hunt along with the first issue review of Blood hunt. Now as I said, I am only two years into collecting comics, I am fairly new and don’t know much about existing story lines or important events, so I had no idea what to expect. Really I just saw Superman, Batman and another cool looking Batman on the cover and figured this should be good. Besides these few comics, I also bought another copy of X-Men ‘97 so I could use it for a crafts project and a Deadpool & Wolverine themed comic box. Remember gang, don’t just pick up the free comics but also purchase a couple things to help support your local comic shop.

A little different with this review since it’s two books. I’ll be reviewing the cover art, but I’ll just touch on the story instead of a full review:

• Cover Art

• Story

• Overall Rating 5 star rating system from Comic Geeks App

Cover - Energon Universe

What I really like about this cover is its creativity. Megatron looks menacing even though we only see his red lit eyes. He’s got a smoking gun that he most likely just shot off and the ground below him is crumbling with electricity. The orange and yellow colors combine to make a very rich and bright background that illuminates Megatron from behind, with a tiny bit of a machinery/Cybertron peeping through at the top. The title is very creative with the stars in the dark black space, but to me this is the only part I wish was done a little differently. I like the idea but with the machine looking graphics behind it, it doesn’t stand out as much. I think that title treatment would stand out a bit more had the yellow and orange background been extended to the top.

Story - Energon Universe

Overall I like this one but I think if I had read some of the Void Rivals line, I’d understand this issue a bit more. They do a good job at the beginning showing the three titles, Transformers, Void Rivals and GI Joe but I wish there was just a snippet of text that explained each one. The book starts off with some AWESOME action sequences of none other than Optimus Prime and Megatron. Colors, action, text treatment, all of it looks epic at the start. 

This opening action spread is beautiful with its choice of colors

Optimus bests Megatron and as he’s holding onto the ship for dear life, Starscream comes by to “help.” Megatron calls out to Starscream and then BOOM! Starscream blasts Megatron off the ship. Next we get brought to a story of some odd looking creatures and an Autobot named Hotrod but honestly it didn’t make sense to me. Finally we get the GI Joe story which is some high powered action sequences just like the beginning. Pretty much we see Duk wanting to recruit someone named Anastasia Cisarovna, but Colonel Hawk is completely against it. In the end this was a fun little issue to just see the action panels, but I don’t think I can see myself picking up a Void Rivals issue, but definitely interested in knowing where the story is headed for Transformers and GI Joe. Overall 4/5

---

Cover - Absolute Power

Having touched on this cover a bit already we know that there is Superman and two Batmans on it, but it also features a few more characters. Amanda Wallace, who I only remember from the Suicide Squad movies. Then Wonder Woman and one other character that I have no idea who it is but they look like some sort of android. I’m just now realizing that this cover has the same yellow and orange color background that the Energon Universe cover has, maybe that’s why I was so drawn to it. The treatment of the title, Absolute Power could have used a bit of love since it looks like word art but other than that it’s a pretty dope cover with how the characters are laid out.

Story - Absolute Power

Holy shit this issue. Again, I had no clue going into this and man I am so glad I got it. What I really appreciate from the book is in the back they have profile spreads on some of the characters. For instance the two that I didn’t know on the cover were Failsafe, the cool looking Batman but is really a cybernetic killer and genius-level tactician with near-indestructible frame. Oof. Then the other was in fact, the House of Braniac, a superintelligent alien hive mind, whose primary focus on the collection and storage of data, power and culture. Another big oof. 

Ok, definitely need to read up more on Failsafe cause he looks freakin awesome. Reminds me of Batman Beyond.

Essentially the story starts with Failsafe and Amanda Wallace trying to achieve something with the use of electro-metas but we don’t know what exactly they’re doing or why. They bring in a super named Haywire, or Dylan Moore, to a small observation room with a metal ball figure in the middle and ask him to shoot it with all the electric power he has. Well long story short, they drain him til he ‘pops.’ It’s pretty wild. We’re shown a vision of the future thru another super named Dreamer, but it’s not good; Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the Justice League look to be in shackles. The final story in the back we see Superman approaching a robbery of some sort. The criminals get scared about going back to prison, so one of them shoots their gun at Superman. I’m expecting the bullets to bounce off and kill them or something, right? Absolutely Wrong is what this issue should be called, because I was so off. Superman gets hit by the bullets, sees blood and the final shot we see is Superman falling to what we can only presume will be his death. Phew. What an issue and it was free! Overall 

---

Recent Posts

Review: Poison Ivy #1

We are back with another comic book review. This time with something a little bit different, Poison Ivy issue #1. Totally was not ready for this but what a pick up. Click the link If you want to check out last week’s review of Batman: Fortress #1. A reminder I will be reviewing the following:

• Cover Art

• Story

• Overall Rating 5 star rating system from Comic Geeks App

All right so why did I pick this one up? Well for one I had the intention of picking up some women led comics and as I walked into my local comic book shop I saw a whole row taken up by Poison Ivy variant covers, though I think that mainly had to do in part with it being PRIDE month. I took a little walk through the rest of the shop and checked out the comics available then ultimately came back to Poison Ivy’s shelf and picked this issue up.

Cover Little bit of a creepy vibe from this cover but I think that’s what really drew me into it. Up until now, the comics I have been getting are all of superheroes, not villains. To see Poison Ivy front and center with a plate of meat that she is eating made me think Oh, she means business! The tag, “Humanity Had Its Chance” also gave me some thoughts that this could be a look at a villain unleashing all hell on everyone. But it’s nice to see the full character on the issue and then to have her surrounded in a bunch of plants and flowers is a nice touch. As if she were making death look pretty.

This is where we see Poison Ivy use her parasitic mushrooms to just brutally murder these guys. Epic.

Story In the opening pages we get a sense of how ruthless and evil Poison Ivy is along with a bit of overview about her. We learn she is now back in a physical body and that this story is not about revenge but instead about love. Interesting. The setting is Wyoming with two farmer guys driving around in their truck and coming upon a group of dead cows. They are trying to make sense of how it happened and what is covering the cows mutilated bodies. In comes Poison Ivy saying that it’s a class of parasitic mushrooms and gives them a taste. What follows is a couple badass panels showing one of the men enduring a horrific death and transformation into mushrooms.

She then gets back in her truck that she borrowed from a couple, but really she killed them and has their decomposing corpses in the back. All throughout the book we have Poison Ivy narrating what is going on and giving us a bit of background info. For instance we learn of her having a falling out with Harley and things ending over something, not sure what.

For a second I wasn’t sure who this was and then I figured it had to be Harley.

From what I gather, Poison Ivy is just mad at the world/humanity and is determined to destroy everything in her path. We get another notion of this when some dirty old sleaze balls harass her after leaving the bar and end up paying the ultimate price for it. I thought these panels were also really awesome not only because of the action but i really liked the colors used in this spread as well as the last the panel in particular that shows her blowing some type of smoke or dust.

Love this panel because of the purplish/pink evening tones paired with another brutal killing.

Towards the end of the issue we get a better sense of what or why Poison Ivy hates humans so much. Instead she explains that she doesn’t hate humans, but hates humans as a whole collective species. She goes on to say that they are an invasive species and so that’s why she hates them so much. She accuses the humans of using up all the resources on the planet and suggest extinction is the best scenario moving forward because the earth deserves to live and not be destroyed by the human species. As you can see in the image below there is a full page dedicated to an awesome Poison Ivy covered in plants and her hair being magnificent. I’m not sure if that’s like an actual form in which she can take or if it’s how she envisions herself.

Now this part I was a little confused at, not sure if this was something that actually happened or this is something she envisions her body as.

Overall Rating I give this a 4/5. Pretty hyped for this series and hope to learn more about this other form she can take. Had there been a little bit more info on her relationship with Harley ending and her form I would of given this 5 out of 5. Hopefully we learn more in the next issues.

---

---

Recent Posts

---

If you’re a cannabis consumer like me and like to keep track of your consumption, be sure to check out Chronicle.