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This is the first real edition of TPL for 2010! Sure there was a special edition posted last week but that was really just a 2009 year in review. This was a very slow week, which is something I like to see. It means my wallet doesn’t take a beating and I can read through the issues fairly quickly. This week there were only 6 DC titles and 12 Marvel titles, which combine for 18 total books.
Spoiler Alert
DC
-Blackest Night #6- Ok, so this actually came out last week but there was no way I was getting to the comic shop during the holidays for only one book! There was a really cool twist in this issue. The rings are now looking for both dead people and resurrected heroes, including Green Lantern, Flash, Superman, and Wonder Woman. WW and Superman fall victim to the rings, but Flash and GL literally outrun the rings. To further compound things is the fact that the planet of dead that we last saw John Stewart is also heading towards Earth. The Lanterns are now desperate. One of the Guardians dons a ring and he creates rings from the other colors to search out bearers. Luthor gets an orange ring (avarice), Scarecrow gets a yellow ring (fear), Mera gets a red ring (rage), Wonder Woman gets a violet ring (love), Flash gets a blue ring and Atom gets an indigo ring. Ladies and Gentlemen, your new corps! This was the best issue of the series so far and it just kicked so many kinds of ass. With hindsight being 20/20, this was worth it for me to pick it up on December 30th. 1/1.
-Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2- This has been a different mini-series so far. It isn’t one narrative thread but has been two single-issue stories featuring Wonder Woman that enhances her role in the event. Because of that it hasn’t been crucial to your enjoyment of the story but it has been one that I like to read because of the different angle it shows. For instance, this issue focuses on the all-out brawl between Wonder Woman and Mera that we only saw briefly in Blackest Night #6. We end with her getting the sapphire ring after finding love in her dreams with Bruce? That’s interesting. This has become the best of the tie-ins currently out right now. 2/2.
-Blackest Night: Weird Western Tales #71- This was a cool concept. DC decided to revive some of their titles in honor of all the dead rising thanks to the Blackest Night event. This one focuses on some of our Western characters rising from the dead in the current times (Jonah Hex, Bat Lash, Scalphunter, Super-Chief, and Firehair) and we see the relative of Quentin Turnbull confronting Hex and getting gunned down by his own ancestor by issue’s end. This was definitely a cool addition to the BN family and even though I wasn’t familiar with most of these characters the writing made it easy to follow along. 3/3.
-Blackest Night: Suicide Squad #67- The Fiddler is resurrected, the Secret Six are sent on a mission that was set up by Waller and the Suicide Squad to get Deadshot to work for her, and then more zombies rise. This is continued in Secret Six this month. I didn’t quite enjoy this as much as the other BN revival title but it was certainly going for something different. WWT was a standalone while this is trying to set up another story. In that regards I can see where it’s going but it lacked the punch that a single-issue story would give you. 4/4, but barely.
-Red Robin #8- Red Robin manages to use all his prowess to escape what should be a deadly situation and then he destroys the computers of the League of Assassins. He does all this while saving Tam, showing that this guy can get out of any situation. The Council of Spiders have a new prey – Heroes, and they are heading to Gotham. This was starting to get unbelievable with RR facing insurmountable odds and it almost became comical to me. This was a downer for me, and I think this will be the last of this book for me. 4/5.
-Superman: World of New Krypton #11- So Strange and Superman further investigate the mystery, including an attempt on Alura. They manage to get one of the Labor Guild people to find the number suspect in a hidden place in New Krypton. Of course, they find the guy and the military descends upon them, the Labor Guild thinks they’ve been sold out, Zod is back in control of the military and now Kal is accused of being a traitor, again. The mystery is cool, the fact that Kal is now the perceived traitor again is just a tired plot point. Man, can this thing just end so I can sell it on E-Bay? 4/6.
Marvel
-Cable #22- Cable and Hope desperately try to escape Bishop while Cable deals with heart attacks, I think. Hope’s powers are developing, too. They lose Bishop for a while but end up getting shot at by crazy New Yorkers in some sort of Mad Max era. This is the usual stuff from the title. It’s been the same story now for the past 20 issues so don’t expect much. I’m really waiting for the shoe to drop on this book and have it be something than Bishop chases Cable and Hope. 0/1.
-Deadpool Team-Up #897- This is an uninspired story featuring Deadpool and the Ghost Riders going to a freakshow to exorcise their demons, literally. The writing was forced at places, the jokes missed on all marks, and the art was nothing to shout home about. This is what overexposure will do to you and this was an easy cut on the monthly list of books to read. 0/2.
-Marvel Boy: The Uranian #1- This is a retelling of Marvel Boy’s origin. He helps the US but is arrested by them. He escapes and ends up in New York and meets a man from Timely comics where his experiences will become comic stories. He makes his big appearance at the end not as The Uranian but as Marvel Boy. I felt this copied a lot off the early Sentry character and his first mini-series but not in a bad way. Having Marvel Boy go to Timely was a cool moment for followers of the character who have read his Atlas Age stuff (like I have). There are two reprints here from the Atlas Era, which I’ve read and reviewed already and so I’ll skip here. Fans of Marvel Boy will enjoy this, but I don’t know how much mileage it’ll get from casual fans. By the way, this is what a $3.99 book should be like, your full story and some reprints relevant to what’s presented.1/3.
-New Mutants #9- Ok, so Magik is really a clone and Doug is accepted by his teammates. Warlock is still regenerating (and providing the best dialogue in the book) as we end the Necrosha X stuff early. There’s some demons from Belasco’s world that appear to have arrived on Earth and bad things are in store. I wasn’t crazy about the art in this book (the faces were way too sketchy and I didn’t think it was all that crisp) and the story seemed half-hearted. The X-titles have been very unmemorable this week. 1/4.
-Siege #1- We have our next event at Marvel and this one doesn’t seem to be as huge as Dark Reign, Secret Invasion, and Civil War. It has the two four-issue mini-series as well as the Avenger tie-in books. So this is the stars. Norman and Loki set up Volstagg to blow up a football stadium to set Norman on the path of war with the Asgardians to rid them from the US. Norman unleashes the opening salvo, attacking Asgard, and defeating Thor on live television. Cap is watching on TV and he’s not happy. This is the start of the return of the heroes. Bendis and Coipel have teamed up again for another awesome opener and this is an event that seems short enough to make it easily accessible and understandable. 2/5.
-Siege: Embedded #1- This is almost like the Front Line version of the Siege. Here Ben Urich teams up with an old cameraman colleague to head out to Asgard to see why all the media have embedded themselves in Oklahoma (where Asgard resides). They want to see Norman fail. They also get a bit of good luck by running into Volstagg and bringing him along to Oklahoma. This was a great start, too, and I like the Front Line, street reporter, aspect of the book. 3/6.
-Spider-Man: Noir – Eyes Without A Face #2- Spidey Noir continues to impress with Spidey going hard after the Crime Master, who is just some guy in a mask. Spidey investigates the disappearance of Robbie Robertson and the role Octavius and Crime Master play. He visits one of CM’s dive bar’s that has a torture shack and when he returns a second time for clues the Crime Master gets the jump on him and Spidey is felled by the Sand Man. This is awesome stuff and the Noir stuff is actually getting better as it goes along. 4/7.
-Ultimate Spider-Man #6- So Aunt May has turned her place into a halfway house for runaway teen heroes and Peter’s life is all a mess. Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake now go to Peter’s school (haha, Spidey and his amazing friends) and of course that day Pete is attacked by a robot sent by Mysterio to find out who Spidey using DNA from his blood. We find out the identity of the Hood and it’s Kitty Pryde, but are her powers causing her injuries now? She is bleeding from her nose, which is the universal sign for some sort of brain trauma. This is the first time I got into the actual story of a Spidey book and the teenage awkwardness here is something that made the first USM series enjoyable. The art has got to go and these round faces are way too distracting and I hate how the hair is transparent on some characters where you can see their eyes underneath their eyes. I’m gonna give it a point thanks to the strong story. 5/8.
-X-Factor: Nation X #1- Madrox and Cyclops meet as X-Factor mingles with the X-Men. There’s a woman who is writing a book, but she’s more angelic/demonic than anything (called the others) and it’s a book of the future and past and the X-Men may be in dire trouble but really when are they never? I liked the interactions between the two teams (especially the stuff with Shatterstar and even the casual relationship of Dazzler and Longshot). Cyke and Madrox agree to disagree although this book of the Others says that will be their downfall. This was the usual stellar stuff from Peter David. 6/9.
-X-Men Noir: Mark of Cain #2- Mr. Holloway (the Angel) is in prison thanks to the Cytorrak transfer gone wrong. He promises the warden (Emma Frost) that he will escape and sure enough he does that, ties her up and escapes. He’s felled by Xavier and his all-new, all-different crew of Nightcrawler, Storm and Colossus. He’s bound and tortured so he can reveal the secrets of the crystal. This was easier to understand than the debut issue and thus I enjoyed it more (obviously). I think I have a grasp of what is going on and I’m digging the interpretation of Xavier and his now evil mutants. 7/10.
-The Bottom Line-
Both Marvel and DC threw in some clunkers on this first week of January but I start this first edition of the TPL hopeful. Yeah the crap was bad (especially the X-titles) but I see titles I won’t be getting anymore to shore that up. The bad was bad but the good was outstanding. Blackest Night #6 starts off the year with one of best single issue titles I’ve read in a while for an event comic. The Siege stuff started off well and I am again hopeful that the four-issue mini-series will keep things streamlined. Noir kicked ass and Peter David is just Peter David. It’s the start of 2010 and I think things have started on the right foot.
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