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It seems like so long since I last did the TPL. I finished it quite early (before the weekend) and as I start this on Thursday at noon it has been about a week since I last read any books. This is another light week and again I thank the five Wednesdays that are here this month. Only the big two companies are represented here, with DC dropping 2 titles and Marvel dropping exponentially more with 18. I also picked up a new Marvel Premiere Hardcover which I should get to sometime this week.
Spoiler Alert
-DC-
-Batman #697- Batman and his friends battle off the Black Mask’s troops and Batman takes down the Mask himself. We see his true identity (Dr. Jeremiah Arkham) which is a cool reveal. Was it the mask that made him crazy or working where he did that made him go mad? We tie things up and Catwoman has taken a new protégé (Kitrina Falcone) as Catgirl. Tony Daniel’s first arc has done a great job making readers believe that Dick is Batman and I think the character is in capable hands right now. 1/1.
-Green Lantern Corps #46- This was just an epic fight issue. Things are going crazy as the Rainbow Lanterns battle the Black Lanterns. Guy has the idea of Tholian Web (from Star Trek: TOS) that takes out a bunch of them. Ice makes an appearance to try and woo Guy, as does John’s refrigerator girlfriend. They are eventually disposed of and the Lanterns end up on Earth where they find the Anti-Monitor, who is powering the Black Lantern of Power, tries to escape. They manage to stop him and are going to bring the fight to Nekron now. What a fantastic issue full of action and great moments that just makes me more amped for the conclusion of this epic. 2/2.
-Marvel-
-Amazing Spider-Man #625- This was a good issue. The new Rhino challenges the old Rhino so he can ascend to the role. Rhine refuses, wanting to just be with his wife. He actually agrees with Spider-Man to be a coward and enter into witness protection. The New Rhino finds him and makes the mistake of attacking Rhino and killing his wife. Rhino blames Spidey (of course) before donning the suit again and utterly destroying the new Rhino. I love the way that Rhino was handled and he has a real reason to hate Spider-Man now. His character was handled so well you could feel his pain when his wife died. Poor Spider-Man is caught in between it all, as usual. 1/1.
-Avengers vs. Atlas #3- The timestream is seriously messed up, which the Avengers and Atlas realize after fighting off the Hulk. Marvel Boy figures it out but he gets zapped back to his past 50’s self. He transmits the information to Giant-Man before disappearing and it seems that Kang, and some weird being, is causing this. The Venus back-up was great (she reads letters from Marvel characters looking for advice) and this whole mini-series has been a blast. Atlas are mingling with the old-school Avengers and Parker knows how to handle Atlas so well. 2/2.
-Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth #9-Deadpool is sent out to capture a zombie so he does (Zombie Cypher which is funny when you think about it). Unfortunately, as he and his pals leave the other Zombies find out about them and they are ready to get their eat on. Deadpool making it with one of the lady scientists lent itself well for some comedic moments and who knew that combining Deadpool and Zombies would be a winner. 3/3.
-Doomwar #2- Things were set up so well last issue that this one almost writes itself. Doom continues using his wits to unlock the door (tricking a Wakandan into being virtuous to get past the last safeguard) and get the vibranium as Shuri and the X-Men try to take back Wakanda through brute force. The issue did what it need to do; Doom is back in the MU in a big way. 4/4.
-Guardians of the Galaxy #24- I was talking about Magus being the ultimate evil last month but I think I’ll have to update that. Phyla and the rest of the gang are fighting the Magus’ soldiers and trying to escape. During the fight Phyla sneaks away with Maelstrom to see what is in the mysterious cocoon that Magus is harboring. Phyla opens it to reveal the new avatar of death: Thanos. THANOS! That is awesome. The rest of the Guardians are busy trying to get onto the Kree council and manage to sneak on thanks to Groot, king of his land. Another great issue of the Guardians. 5/5.
-Hercules: Fall of an Avenger #1- The intro of a two-issue mini-series finds a whole lot of Hercules’ friends gathering to eulogize their lost ally. Athena shows up at the end to kick everyone out and then names Cho the new leader of the Olympus Group. The second tale finds Namora and Venus traveling to all the different corporations and homes that Hercules owns to tell the people the bad news. The back-up shows Herc in a new light, not just as the big brute but a guy who cares. Both stories knocked it out of the park and part 2 should be just as good. 6/6.
-Marvel Boy: The Uranian #3- Marvel Boy gets used to life on Earth as the Uranians plan to come back and put Earth under their control. Marvel Boy is captured but freed by Woo and the Uranian scheming is brushed under the table fairly quickly (Marvel Boy just stops talking to them). The book itself carried a $4 price tag and it did have 3 reprints in the back but I would’ve preferred to see those reprints used as pages for the story and explain a little more clearly Marvel Boy going against those Uranians who schemed against him. It just seemed like an empty finale that could’ve been better. 6/7.
-Nation X #4- We end with a Doop story (which was done by Allred and was a lot of fun), a tale of the White Queen and the Cuckoos diverting their mental powers to something more fun, Warpath stopping some kids from stealing food (though he was eating it himself!) and Ororo convincing Namor that being on Utopia is not beneath them. This was a well-done mini-series showing some of the lighter side moments on Utopia and focusing on characters that wouldn’t really have anything to do in the X-titles. 7/8.
-Nova #35- The Sphinx is all-powerful and who can stop him? Well, Nova and Reed can. Reed performs calculations that will allow the Sphinx to be sent back into real space before he’s finished reconstructing it and that causes him be defeated and seemingly waste away. Their pocket universe is disintegrated and everyone returns to their homes. Nova and Darkhawk return to their time but with a new addition – Namorita! I’ve always liked Nova and his battles with the Sphinx and this is just another addition to that feud. 8/9.
-Realm of Kings: Imperial Guard #5- Gladiator shows up to help wipe the cancer beasts off the map, Plutonia and the Green smart guy become Raptors during the battle, and the Starjammers end the menace with a Venom Symbiote sent to the Xavier-esque ship. Gladiator returns home and agrees to make nice with the Kree for the good of the universe. This was nothing ground-breaking in terms of what was done but it got the Kree and Shi’ar from point A to B and back together so it did its job. 9/10.
-Siege #3- This is in the midst of the great battle between the Avengers and the Dark Avengers. Thor tries battling Sentry but Sentry is slowly and surely “losing it.” Iron Man makes his reappearance and he shuts down the armor of Norman. That seems to get the Sentry completely messed up and he just obliterates New Asgard. Norman is unmasked (and what is with that green face paint?), possibly a symbolic end of his reign but now the Sentry is completely out of control and he must be stopped. The art and the general direction of the story was great, although some of the dialogue tended to border on corny, especially in the opening pages. If you fix up that dialogue and you have a great book and not something that borders on greatness. 10/11.
-Siege: Embedded #3- Embedded rumbles on with Ben stowing away on a HAMMER ship with the Keller dude who is pushing Norman’s views on his television show. The ship goes down and Keller continues his biased reports and the cameraman buddy of Urich (Will Stern) arrives in Oklahoma as Asgard is destroyed. I feel like this series has run out of ideas and is stretching a three-part series to four to coincide with the proper main series. 10/12.
-Spider-Man: Secret Wars #4- Finally this series ends. I just felt it was a bad idea to begin with (Secret Wars from Spidey’s point of view) and with the shackles of an All-Ages read you couldn’t go in depth with certain moments. It doesn’t cater to either audience. The people picking this up for the first time have no idea what is going on, and people who know the Secret Wars will find this a waste of time with nothing new to offer. So Spidey gets some of the power so Doom can see what wielding the power is like and thus knows he will be defeated. It didn’t even make sense! What a waste. 10/13.
-Torch #6- The Torch has only days to live thanks to the Mad Thinker’s red mist. The Thinker has ended up at a Nazi paradise that is somewhere in South America and is forced to work for the Nazi running the compound. The Torch and Toro end up there as the Torch decides to use his last days to find the deepening mystery of Toro’s mother and his origin. This has taken a new, interesting turn and I think the last two issues will offer a satisfying conclusion. 11/14.
-Wolverine: Origins #45- So this Ruby character was really just a ruse by Wolverine to draw out Romulus. We got our action scenes in Ruby fighting Wolvie and his cronies and we see the true mastermind behind this plan: Deadpool. That last page was cool but I feel rooked in having Ruby here for three issues and not lead to anything. I can’t really recommend this on the basis of what I paid for. 11/15.
-X-Factor Forever #1- Well, if you can have X-Men Forever, why not X-Factor? And why not bring back Louise Simonson? In some ways I think this is better than X-Men Forever. For instance, you have Louise write a great introduction on how she left the team and where she possibly could’ve been going with the book. We have the original X-Factor, all mired in their own romantic dealings. Apocalypse is around and he’s using Caliban find Cameron Hodge to get revenge on X-Factor. Ship is starting to have malfunctions and it could be because the Celestial Gammenon is returning to Earth. The first issue was an excellent set-up, the Apocalypse origin as a back-up was great and this is going to be a fun five-issue arc. 12/16.
-X-Men: Legacy #234- The fall-out from Necrosha is completely ignored here which takes me out of things as a reader a bit. It’s a Rogue solo story where she’s trying to help out the young kids at Utopia and even uses her powers to borrow the Cuckoo’s abilities as they look for the Phoenix entity. This seemed like a fill-in issue since it didn’t build to anything new and was just a Rogue character study that may have been more useful in an Annual or as part of a larger arc. 12/17.
-X-23 #1- X-23 is out in New York with Wolvie and Jubilee but runs off on her own. She manages to find her old gang (Kiden and all) and X is put through a mental wringer someone called the Gamemaster. I mention how the character study of Rogue was not useful in a monthly but this was certainly where it should be for X-23. It was avoided in her book (X-Force) but this provides a good (and longer) avenue for an X-23 story that adds the story of X-23. 13/18.
-The Bottom Line- Marvel was very disappointing this week. I don’t know what it was. There were way too many issues that had no pay-off whatsoever for the reader. Marvel Boy, Spider-Man Secret Wars and Siege Embedded were useless mini-series fodder and Wolverine and X-Men really didn’t deliver what a monthly should. A 15/20 makes it a 75% success rate and that really could’ve been a lot better. Thankfully some of these bad books were mini’s which should conclude shortly. I can only hope next week is better.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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