I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I like the new Ales Kot/Marco Rudy Winter Soldier comic. I was kinda expecting to dislike it, or at least to be unhappy with the new direction of the character, and instead I love it and I'm really looking forward to the next issue. I think partly this is because it has a nice indy vibe -- the overall feel of the comic is much more like an indy sci-fi comic than a superhero comic; some of the reviews compared it to Heavy Metal which I think is also accurate -- but also, I was honestly expecting wall-to-wall angst, darkness and manpain, and instead it's entertaining and fun and even funny at times, with gorgeous (if confusing) art. I'm not familiar with Daisy Johnson as a character, but I like her a lot so far, and her dynamic with Bucky is a lot of fun.

Also, the comic pretty much had me when Bucky steals a sacred animal from the Syro planet because "it was alone, and looked scared". (Subsequently he's hiding it under his coat and feeding it off his plate in an alien restaurant. BUCKY YOU WONDERFUL DORK. ♥) There were a lot of neat little bits like that -- I'd have loved to have a few more pages of Bucky and Daisy on his satellite (!!!) or wandering around the Mars space station in lieu of the Bucky-Namor action sequence, but really, it's a much more quiet, interesting, and introspective comic than I was expecting.

I also really like that it's not just Bucky being a fish out of water in the outer-space setting. He actually seems to be adjusting really well; I guess he's always traveled the world for his job, and now he's traveling the universe, and he doesn't seem to be treating it that differently than going to, say, Hong Kong or Copenhagen in pursuit of spy shenanigans. I like that!

(Also, on a very shallow note, I like that Bucky's hair is long again.)

My only real complaint is that I wish the art wasn't so hard to follow -- although I love the actual look of it. And it's complex enough that you have to go back and reread pages to pick up details you missed the first time, which is always a plus for me.

But yeah, ever since this was announced I've been thinking it was going to be very much not my cup of tea, and instead it very much is, so I'm really happy about that. (And now I need to track down some of the other comics with Daisy in them. THE COMICS RABBIT HOLE, IT JUST KEEPS GOING DOWN.)

In completely other news, Tim DeKay was cast on Agents of SHIELD ... playing Grant Ward's brother. *cries* Among other things, it means that the TDK tag on Tumblr is now full of AoS stuff from the Grant Ward side of the fandom, which I had been doing so well at avoiding. Thanks a bunch, casting gods.