Ian Nottingham returns. Jake McCarthy wakes from his coma. Patrick Gleason very nearly gets kissed. And Sara Pezzini gets busted by her boss for stealing a soda from a machine in police headquarters.

Oh, and she mentions she's pregnant, too. All in all, it's a busy couple of pages.

The Ron Marz era of Witchblade continues in volume 3 (volume 12 under the old method of counting), Gods & Monsters. And it's another exciting chapter, filled with sword play, gang fights and a climactic battle atop the Empire State Building (where native New Yorkers so rarely visit).

The volume begins with a rampaging Eastern death goddess who is supposed to be resting quietly on a dusty shelf in an old city curio shop. And then there's a little closure to a previous storyline, in which a young girl was kidnapped and killed. But the majority of the book is devoted to two storylines -- the return of Ian Nottingham, Sara's nemesis from long ago who is now mixed up in Yakuza violence, and the return of Jake McCarthy, Sara's longtime partner who has been languishing for several chapters in a coma. You just know both stories are going to get a little twisted by the time Marz is done with them.

The pregnancy thing -- well, that's a final-page bombshell that leads right into the next book, Eternal, which drops a few bombshells of its own.

Meanwhile, Marz continues to make Witchblade a title to keep reading. I'm heading off to start the next volume right now.