Unusual comics post from me this week, since its been largely Marvel stuff that’s been catching my eye over the last couple of weeks. However with GL and GLC due later in the month, not to mention Final Crisis kicking back in at the end of the month, I don’t imagine it’ll be long until normal service is resumed

Captain America #42 wraps up Brubaker’s The Man Who Stole America arc, as well as many of the plots he began at the start of his run. With Bucky just having publicly launched himself into the limelight as Captain America to stop the Red Skull’s daughter assassinating the presidential candidates, he has to ensure she’s stopped, while The Falcon and Black Widow attempt to save Sharon Carter from the Red Skull’s stronghold.

Its a nice tie-up to many of the plots Brubaker’s been running. It was nice to see Bucky and Black Widow hook up at the end, and it’ll be interesting to see how Sharon’s memory loss is dealt with in later issues. I also liked the Red Skull’s fate: that scene really captured his horror at being trapped as he is. There’s still a few outstanding questions however, the exact plan that the Red Skull had involving Doom’s time machine for example. It seemed to be key to transferring the Skull to a new body, but what exactly they were trying to do remained a bit vague. We’ve also still got the 50s Captain America out there. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this series goes, now that Bucky’s establishing himself as Captain America.

One of my other favourite series to rave about is, of course, Avengers: The Initiative. Following up on last month’s issue, the Skrulls have arrived at Camp Hammond in force, and with most of the recruits out fighting in New York, only a few trainers, and Ant Man remain. Its yet another great issue from Dan Slott, and I just loved Ant Man. I missed his solo series from a couple of years back, but I’m definitely going to have to check out the trades. I loved his reluctance to play hero, and how his first reaction to trouble was to hide. I especially loved how that proved to give him an advantage against the Skrulls as he remains undiscovered while they took down the other heroes. It’ll be interesting to see what he’s discovered about their plans.

Well, we’re now two episodes into the first series of the new Knight Rider, and so far I’ve been enjoying it a lot.

The second episode was probably the stronger of the two so far. The first serving more to setup the arc-plot regarding Mike’s past in black ops and, of course, explain his name change to Michael Knight. This allowed the second a bit more free reign as an adventure of the week type story to throw in some nice character moments (loved the scenes with Mike and KITT watching the western) with the first episode having set things up.

Both episodes have been high on the action quota, and the second especially harked back nicely to the feel of the original series, with Mike travelling to a remote town, getting involved in street races and, as I mentioned, some nice building in the friendship between Mike and KITT.

Its also interesting to note some of the changes Gary Scott Thompson’s brought in. The “KITT cave” makes a lot of sense for the scale of the operation (realistically one engineer maintaining KITT in the back of a truck isn’t likely) although the humour from the supporting techs is sometimes forced. The arc plot with Mike’s past is welcome, and much in the style of Doctor Who, seems to be something being drip-fed into episodes for the regular viewers, while the episodes themselves remain stand-alone, probably building up to some revelations in the finale.

The changes to KITT are a bit of a mixed bag. I definitely appreciate the reasons they changes KITT’s attack mode. In the pilot, it wasn’t instantly obvious which car you were looking at in a particular scene without checking closely (the spoiler usually being the quickest give-away), and there’s no doubt this is a more aggressive-looking attack mode. However I prefer the sportier lines of KITT in his regular mode, and the blue underlighting (forming the Knight Research logo) is really just a bit over-the-top. However the good news is that the attack mode is also being used quite sparingly so far, with the Shelby remaining the main “hero” car of the piece which I definitely like.

I do miss the iPhone-inspired screen from the pilot, but the new HUD works well. Although there have been a couple of times when Mike’s been driving and its clearly obscuring his view of the road. It perhaps needs to be more obvious that KITT’s driving while Mike’s using the screen (safety first ). KITT’s new vocaliser (for want of a better term) seems a little busy to me, but I do love how they’ve included the three bars from the original series in it.

How the series fairs in the modern age of networks being quick off the mark to cancel shows remains to be seen, but, while its still finding its feet, Knight Rider strikes me as filling a gap in the market with some good “switch your brain off and enjoy the ride” action.