I seriously did a double take when I noticed who the cover artist was for this issue. Greg Land doing a cover that doesn’t make me want to retch? Doing a cover where is all looks pretty good and it’s hard to tell any phototracing was involved? 2012 has comed early it seems. Anyways, we’re onto a new arc with this fantastic run by Jeff Parker and Kev Walker. Plus we have a new member on the team, which always brings excitement to a team book.

Now I don’t know a thing about Hyperion, which I thought it would be a problem. But Parker is able to get everthing up to speed with him in the first page and also handles another problem. involving the guy. Instead of doing a ‘is he, isn’t he?’ storyline on whether Hyperion is evil or not; Parker calls ‘bullshit’ on the whole thing right away and it never really is a mystery right when we get into the thick of things. The writing is pretty good overall but to be honest this really is a tour de force for the art more then the story. Why? Because Parker gives Walker a crap load of Kaiju monsters to deal with the entire time.

No offense to Parker, but it is hard to really judge the writing when you see these massive creatures on every page. Kev Walker gets this huge assignment of drawing these Godzilla inspired monsters and from the moment we see these things (in a gorgeous two page spread) they dominate every single page. He handles the chaos very well and the action is never confusing and quite entertaining to look at. One moment you have Songbird fighting a ‘Bird One’ (Cage’s term) the next you have Juggernaut literally running on water to tackle a beast. It just looks really impressive and I’m not doing it just by trying to review it. You seriously have to pick this issue up to see the impressive, visual display by Walker here.

This is a perfect jumping on point for new readers if they haven’t read this run yet. While this isn’t the most wordy issue for the run, Parker gets everything up to speed with the established and new characters for the team. This issue also shows you why Kev Walker might be the best artist for Marvel right now. The moment you see that two page spread of the Kaiju monsters descending on the T-bolts then you instantly know how special of a talent Walker is. I cannot wait to see more of Walker’s Kaiju monsters next month and how Parker will (somehow) make Man-Thing the hero.