Comic book fans are well acquainted with Kevin Smith. His films “Mallrats” and “Chasing Amy” contained oodles of great riffs on classic characters, and just about every year he stops in for wildly popular Q&A’s at the San Diego Comic-Con.

In 1998, Joe Quesada hired him to revive Daredevil, resulting in a popular run that re-established the character and led to mammoth, defining runs from Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker and opening the doors to let Hollywood writers such as Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski to get runs on major comic characters. After acclaimed runs on Daredevil and Green Arrow, Smith became notorious for delays on his other comic book projects, one of which was delayed so long after only its first issue that it was finally canceled years later. But hot of the heels of one of his finest movies, Smith is back in the comic book world with a promising new miniseries, Batman: Cacophony.

*Minor spoilers after the break*

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In case you happy-go-lucky kids are interested, I want to try and wrap up some of last week’s comics for you. Why? Because I forgot to do it on Sunday (Weekend Whiz) and mainly because I like to think in the back of my head that someone out there likes to read mini-reviews.

I want to cover a lot, so let me smear the boogers out of my nose real quick and get this instant-twist-off-winner series of reviews started before it’s over.

Lightning fast reviews for you:

• Amazing Spider-Man #567
• Captain Britain and MI: 13 #4
• Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #2
• Secret Invasion: Thor #1
• Secret Invasion: X-Men #1

And we’re off! Gotta love all those Secret Invasion stories!

**spoilers, as always, after the break**

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Trying out a new feature that I am hoping to write every Monday called Rapid Reviews. I intend to review the remaining comics from the previous release week that I read. These will most likely be the smaller comics, the ones that we didn’t find required a full review or just ones that we didn’t get a chance to write a full review for. So check out the reviews below and leave a comment to let me know if you like/dislike this form of reviewing.

Black Panther #39

Black Panther #39 began their Secret Invasion tie-in this month. Really bad-ass story which reminded me of an epic battle movie, like Lord of the Rings. The writing is excellent by guest writer Jason Aaron who will be doing the entire Secret Invasion arc. I was slightly disappointed in Jefte Palo’s art. It seemed very old school to me and just isn’t the kind of art I like. Bottom line: great story and I look forward to the continuation of the Secret Invasion arc, despite the lackluster art.

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I’ve been meaning to read Supreme Power for the last year and a half and somehow I just never go around to it. Lucky for me, I managed to pick up the three trade paperbacks of the main series when I was at Wizard World Chicago, so I decided to start reading the first TPB and ended up flying through it followed by the 2nd and boy was I impressed! J. Michael Straczynski can seriously write a badass story and the art by Gary Frank is simply amazing. A great combo if you ask me.

This story is Marvel’s second rendition of the original Squadron Supreme, which had it’s basis on DC’s famous heroes back in Avengers #85. It’s all fun stuff, but you can read the wikipedia article if you want more info on that series.

**spoiler alert for the first 12 issues**

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