Comics from July 16th

Captain America #40

Brubaker's run has obviously been incredible, but even its biggest fans such as myself have at times been a little annoyed by the slow pacing. In this issue fists are flying pretty much non-stop which is not necessarily my style, but it works for this book after a number of excellent but relatively slow installments. As you can see from the cover this is the issue where we finally get the big Cap vs. Cap showdown. These scenes were really well done, and I look forward to seeing the next interaction between these two. However, what I enjoyed the most in this issue were the other two fights, one physical and one verbal. Like last issue, Sharon and Sin stole the show for me, but the arguments amongst the trio of villains were great too. This whole big storyline is coming to a close with #42 in September so were are likely to see some fireworks, but we can't be sure just yet of which players in this game will be fighting it out. Before that though we have to see how Brubaker handles the big cliffhanger he gives us on the last page. Needless to say Steve Epting drew the hell out of this book.

Scalped #19

Unfortunately, Guera didn't do the pencils for this issue, but fill-in artist Davide Furno did a solid job. I thought he did an okay job on the last issue also, but something about his pencil work this time around just seemed slightly better perhaps because it wasn't as sketchy across the board, at least to me. Aaron starts off by giving us a great scene which flashes back to an aspect of Dash's life that is rarely [if never before?] touched upon in the series. Hopefully we continue to get some more about that situation in later issues. The rest of the issue centers around Carol, her past, and her relationship with Dash. We get some great panels which focus on the similarities between Carol and Dash, and others which help to give us a lot of insight into the two and their relationship even though they barely speak to one another. Aaron also provides us with a great cliffhanger for the final piece of this two part arc. You can go ahead and add Carol to the list of characters in this title that Aaron has made me care immensely about. What the excellent issue #18 did for Officer Falls Down and previous issues have done for people like Red Crow, this issue does for Carol. Start reading this book people.