“Haunt #3”

After the first two issues of “Haunt” introduced us to the Kilgore brothers and the mysterious mercenary Cobra, Kurt’s co-workers finally give the details of Haunt’s powers to Daniel.

A few weeks ago, I commented that co-writer and inker Todd McFarlane’s artwork, which, aside from giving it a frazzled look, didn’t do much.

But his writing skills are—in my opinion—holding this series back.

Of course since Robert Kirkman also writes this book, there is no way anybody could know for a fact who had certain ideas or wrote specific dialogue. But anyone that has read any Kirkman or McFarlane book can easily point out which writer is in the driver’s seat.

For example, Kirkman takes a lot of time and effort creating emotional attachments between his characters and the readers as seen in “Invincible” and “The Walking Dead.”McFarlane’s writing style is more focused on revenge and violent characters. With the fast-paced action, manic violence and two-dimensional characters, you know McFarlane is in charge.

Hopefully this week’s comic will be much better that the previous two, and have more Kirkman than McFarlane.

“What If? Secret Invasion”

Continuing with the Marvel “What If?” tradition, this issue spotlights what could have happened if the Skrulls Secret Invasion had ended differently. The first story, written by “Underworld” scriptwriter and actor Kevin Grevious sheds light on how the war would have ended if Mr. Fantastic had died before he escaped from the Skrulls.

The next story doesn’t really venture into new territory when it goes into what might have happened if the Skrulls’ invasion hadn’t been discovered and remained secret.

As with all “What If?” stories, the writers are given the freedom to do whatever they want to characters that they couldn’t do in the mainstream.

I’ve read a couple of “What If?” stories and a few of them are really interesting while most are pretty mundane.

However, the Secret Invasion was a very big story arc and might be interesting to revisit.

“Dark Avengers Annual #1”

As soon as Marvel Boy figured out that the New Avengers were actually the bad guys, he escaped, but Osborn still wants him because he could be a powerful asset to the team.

Superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Chris Bachalo join forces to bring you this critically acclaimed, giant-sized issue.

Although I’m not reading “Dark Avengers,” this annual along with others gives potential buyers a little sample of what’s going on in that series and if they like it, they can start buying them.