The following is a selection of comics released this week (6/23/10)* that focus heavily on women in comics – whether that be characters, creators, or even readers.

The books are rated as BUY, TRADEWAIT, or SKIP.

*It should be noted that this list will focus on North American/English releases as that’s mostly what I have access to.  Additionally, as I am in general unfamiliar with Manga, I will not be including Manga titles in my lists.  For some great reviews and discussion of Manga titles I urge you to check out Danielle Leigh on CSBG.

Maybe it’s just the heat, but I found the comics pretty depressing this week…

AMERICAN VAMPIRE #4  Scott Snyder and Stephen King (writers).  Rafael Albuquerque (art). Dave McCraig (colors).  Vertigo.  40-pages. $3.99

This is still a good little book, but it’s the weakest of the story thus far.  Pearl is still a solid female lead and though she’s a bit overly sexy in this issue, it’s mostly with purpose.  I’m still going to list this as a BUY, but I hope the writing on the Snyder story gets back to business as usual as it felt a bit off/forced/cliche this time around.  Tentative BUY, if only because the first three issues have been so strong.

HERALDS #4 (of 5).  Kathryn Immonen (writer).  Tonci Zonjic, Emma Rios, and James Harren (art).  Nathan Fairbairn and Ronda Pattison (colors).  Jelena Djurdjevic (cover).  Marvel.  32-pages.  $2.99

I guess we’re finding out why comics come out monthly and not weekly.  Issue number one had one artist, issues two and three had two artists, and now issue four has three artists…I get it, drawing an entire book (and inking it) is time consuming…but it seems like they (Marvel) could have thought ahead a bit here so that we didn’t have to have SO MANY artists.  Fortunately, Rios is quite good, so her addition here is not unwelcome…but it doesn’t help the overall cohesiveness of the book to have so many changing art styles running around unchecked.  The artists all do their best…and it’s good work, but it IS a bit disjointed.  The story is still working well enough for me, but it’s definitely a frustrating read to a degree if you don’t know much about Nova/Frankie Ray (which I don’t).  The premise assumes a certain amount of knowledge of the character that I’m not sure is fair for a mini-series…I thought we’d get more details for those out of the loop as we moved along, but we’re almost done and those details seem unlikely to come.  That said, it’s still the most fun reading I had this week, and it’s full of badass ladies that I almost never get to read about, doing their thing (although they do seem to need to get saved by Reed Richards in this issue…hrm.).  BUY anyway.

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