In lieu of my edict to not post television show reviews until a certain concept or arc can be reviewed in whole, you'll also notice that I haven't been posting comic book reviews either. There's a two-fold reason for that. For one, most of my comics are ordered from Midtown Comics, and unfortunately I keep getting them later and later as the weeks go by. This doesn't bode well for timely reviews. The other reason? I felt that my short descriptive reviews were getting a bit repetitive. I was praising the writing of Mighty Avengers, while flushing James Robinson's writing skills down the toilet (plus bitching about the lack of any real story in Blackest Night). This was getting tiring for me. If you want to hear me bitch and moan and occasionally praise some comic book issues, follow me on Twitter. Otherwise, this blog will now review comic books based on story arcs or hardcover/trade paperback collections.

Now let's talk about a gorilla, a robot and a space boy.

I didn't read the original Agents of Atlas series from a few years back, so when I read the Atlas story in Dark Reign: New Nation, I didn't really care for it. It contained a bunch of characters I've mostly never heard of, and I was already tired of the inference that Norman Osborn was going to be the villain in every single Marvel book.

Here we are a year later, and after several of my Twitter friends kept praising Jeff Parker's work on Agents of Atlas, I decided to pick up the first hardcover collection and give it a try.

First let's talk about Jeff Parker. I didn't even know this guy wrote comics. I ended up following him on Twitter because I thought he was just a fellow comic fan. I didn't realize until a few month later that he actually wrote them too. Parker is a great person to follow on Twitter. Why? He actually communicates with people. And by people I don't mean a select circle of fellow comic writers while ignoring the thousands of fans following him. Parker communicates like a normal person on Twitter, and seems to actually try to respond to fans and friends alike. That's rare for this Twittersphere.

Now let's talk about Agents of Atlas. We have a gorilla, a robot, a space boy, a goddess, a mermaid and a former FBI guy. I'm seriously unsure why I ever doubted this concept. These are golden age characters in a new light and Parker does several things right.

First, they're good guys leading a group of bad guys, while pretending to be bad guys in order to do good. You still following me? Instead of fighting Osborn, they pretend to partner up with him in order to work the inside angle. It's definitely refreshing when compared to the rest of the Dark Reign tie-ins.

Next, Parker mixes his current tale with flashbacks to the 50's to keep that golden age feel going. It gives us much needed back story about this teams exploits, and the flashbacks directly tie into the main story, allowing us a broader look at this team.

What's great about this title is that it doesn't try to be too deep or too "meta" with its stories. The robot is a robot. The goddess acts like one. Namora acts like her cousin. The gorilla is the comic relief (as he should be). The Uranian, meanwhile, is the typical brains of the operation. This isn't to say that Agents of Atlas is filled with cliches. It's more a homage with high quality writing. Parker has done a fantastic job and hopefully Marvel will continue to support these characters so that other comic book readers - who might have dismissed them at first - start to catch on.