Peanuts #1 and Artifacts #13

One of my favorite comic strips from when I was a kid was Peanuts by Charles Schulz. Some of my favorite television cartoon specials were the Peanuts specials as well. So, for me seeing the Peanuts gang in print again with new stories is great. It's like finding an old friend on Facebook and realizing that you missed that person and used to have a lot of fun just hanging out together. The new Peanuts comic is a collection of short stripes written by different people and is being published by BOOM! Entertainment unders its children friendly imprint, kaboom!

Intermixed in the comic are new strips which are being collaborated on with the Charles Schulz foundation/family to ensure they are Peanuts worthy as well as classic strips from Schulz. The new strips I found to be as funny and delightful as the classic strips I remember. The couple of classic strips that were published in this first issue were much as I remembered the strips being. While I'm not a child anymore, I still enjoyed this comic for the delightful and humorous strips that it contained. It was also nice to see something for children that wasn't speckled with innuendo and things that lead our children to adult hood far too quick again.

I loved the first issue and will probably continue to pick up the series for the entertainment quality it brings as well as the childhood memories it invokes in me. I highly recommend this comic to anyone with small children who wants a lighthearted cartoon strip for them to read or to read to/with them. It's very family friendly and will probably even bring a smile to the children in all of you (us).


Artifacts #13
The final issue of what was originally the limited series re-defining the Top Cow Universe has come and gone, and while I enjoyed it, it was a bit of a let-down. The grand finale and defeat of the antagonist actually has him win but not win. The Survivor (or the Curator as most of us originally knew him) is missing from his end of the world plans as his goal of destroying the Top Cow Universe in order to remake his universe (the previous universe before the current universe) has been achieved, but alas the Darkness was able to stop him from making the journey into oblivion in order to remake the universe. Instead, three people make it into oblivion to remake the universe - Sara Pezzini (Witchblade), Jackie Estacado (The Darkness), and their daughter Hope (the survivor entity for the current universe). With no hope of rescuing the universe other than to sacrifice Hope to remake the universe, Witchblade does exactly that despite the protests of The Darkness.

The Top Cow Universe is reborn, but as is indicated by Tom Judge at the end of this issue, something is not quite right. Even Estacado knows it. This sets up the on-going Artifacts series as well as the new status quo for the Witchblade and Darkness ongoing series from Top Cow. What's not quite right, well, we get a brief view of it as we see where the 13 artifacts have ended up and realize that they are not all where they were before. Some are, but some aren't. Also, we are quickly shown that Jackie Estacado's life, which had previously been one of tragedy and sorrow is now the life he always wanted including having his childhood sweetheart, Jenny, as a wife and a duaghter named Hope with her.

While I recommend the series for the story and for the story to come, I just felt this was kind of a cop out to everything. I would have preferred seeing the universe remade by the survivor and watching a series where the protagonists are trying to figure out what's wrong that they can't quite place their fingers on or them having just stopped him in a more epic finale. At this point, there is of course, the very real possibility that he still exists out there somewhere to come back and try again despite The Darkness slaughtering the Curator at the end of the issue. Hopefully, the rest of the fans feel different about the ending - I haven't had a chance to read any reviews on it yet.

The other thing that has disappointed me with the conclusion of the original limited series (now, the first arc of the ongoing series) is that I think Top Cow has missed an opportunity to capitalize on expanding their line of books. While I appreciate this from a finanical perspective, I was hoping that we would finally get a new ongoing Cyberforce title and possibly even a few other ongoing series in the Top Cow Universe featuring Necromancer, Aphrodite, and any of the many other characters that appeared in this series. Instead, we are getting a single new series which I imagine will utilize a rotating roster of these characters depending on where the continuity is in the direction for the overall story of the Top Cow Universe, which I like, but there were just some characters I were really hoping would graduate to their own series again.

I still recommend the series, Ron Marz (writer) did an amazing job with these first 13 issues despite my let down, and I look forward to seeing his plans for the Top Cow Universe continuing forward in Artifacts now that he has left Witchblade. Check it out if you haven't already.

Thanks for reading!