Unboxing Comic Bento’s May Box

Comic Bento is a monthly subscription service that promises to mail you sixty dollars worth of graphic novels for the price of twenty five dollars a month including shipping (monthly costs drop a little if you subscribe to more boxes at once).  Each month has a theme this will be a review of May’s Cinematic Adventures theme.  Next Month’s theme is  Navigations through time. 

At the top of the pile  is The Black Widow Strikes an official Marvel Cinematic Universe Tie in.  While this would normally turn me off, I’ve really enjoyed Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of Natasha Romanoff and Fred Van Lente is a strong writer not only with his own creations but with his franchise work with Conan and Star Wars.  This graphic novel includes Black Widow Strikes 1-3 as well as Tales from Suspense #52 the first appearance of the Black Widow.  This is an older collection though as the events take place between Iron Man 2 and The first Avengers flick.  

Next in line are two volumes of the Green Hornet based upon Kevin Smith’s movie draft for a film adaptation.  These two volumes cover the 10 issue run and have gorgeous art by Phil Hester.  I’m  a big Kevin Smith fan and have really enjoyed these books.  The dialogue is fun and the story moves briskly.

Lastly we have Predator Prey to The Heavens and Star Trek Countdown to Darkness.  Countdown to Darkness is a prequel to J.J. Abrams second Star Trek flick with a script by Roberto Orci and Mike Johnson.  On a cursory glance this book is the weakest in the box, but I am also a biased Star Trek fan, in that I did not like the reboot movies.  I am a big fan of the first two Predator films (yes even the second one) and have enjoyed a mixed selection of Predator comics over the years.  The script by John Arcudi places warring Predators in the midst of a war on Earth.  This is a pretty cool set up  and look I forward to reading this collection

So is Comic Bento worth your cash.  The cover price value of all these books is $86.95 though you could probably find them for half of that used on Amazon.  Even so that’s $43.48, well below the box price of $25 including shipping.  As means of comparison Nerd Block has a $20 monthly comic selection that has three single issues and a t-shirt.  I was pretty impressed with this selection and will probably read every book included except for the Star Trek one.

M.R. Gott is a short unsuccessful genre author, who will send you his work for free if you want to review it.