In Passing...Cold Heat to Crickets

Crickets #1
Sammy Harkham

I haven't really read anything by Sammy Harkham before, so this served as a great introduction. I read the back of the comic first, with a mini-story featuring the Golem character from within, and I immediately took a liking to the art and the big dopey character. The story, simple as it was, was really cool, with plenty of great moments. An overall great, though brisk, read following a group of characters who meet in the forest. A

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. #10
Warren Ellis & Stuart Immonen

I'm not sure that this worked as well as the creators had hoped. Five of the Nextwave characters are attacked by an ultra-lame villain who imposes personal hells on their minds. Elsa Bloodstone's scene was the standout as usual, with a Mignola-inspired environment, complete with mimiced art, while Machine Man had a funny couple of pages as well. The rest of it kind of fizzled, although they were interesting attempts at unusual storytelling. C

Cold Heat #1
Ben Jones & Frank Santoro

One of the first offerings from Dan Nadel's new PictureBox Inc., I, like Patrick said to me following my completion of the issue, wanted to like this more than I did, especially in wake of the battle PictureBox had with getting distributed by Diamond. This was a cool little comic, however, that felt more like wading through a dream than reading a linear story, even if a story was in there. A young woman, Castle, is fired from her internship and goes partying. That's about it, although there are some other little complications that occur amid the crayon-colored, experimental pages. I'm definitely looking forward to more. B+