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Last week was a bit of a slow one and this one made up for it in spades. There were 10 Marvels, 18 DC’s and 2 Wildstorms for a grand total of 30 books this week. Yikes! Luckily, classes are over, and work is almost at vacation so I have a bunch of time to read these. I also picked up the newest Toyfare with the awesome Iron Man cover, the first Heroes magazine, the latest Marvel Previews, and a box of the latest Marvel Masterpieces. I opened up 1/3 of it so far and the set looks pretty nice. I’ll write more about it after I collate the box and all the goodies I got. That’s the appetizer for this week, the main course is below.
Spoilers Ahead
The Main Event:
-Sensational Spider-Man #41- This was a much better issue in the One More Day story. The first two were pretty pointless in getting things to here but Peter meets a young girl (bearing a resemblance to a young Mary-Jane) and two alternate versions of him, one a rich businessman who never proved anything to himself, and a pot-bellied game addict who gets lost in other worlds. We meet Mephisto who tells him that his aunt has only one more day to live. He offers Peter a choice, either stay with Mary-Jane or give up their marriage, and all recollections of it, so that May can live. Peter has to choose and only has one more day with either one of them left. I don’t care what the critics say, this issue was amazing and redeems the pretty weak previous two issues.
-Green Lantern #25- The storyline of the Sinestro Corps and their war with the Green Lantern Corps reaches its conclusion, and what a conclusion it was. This was pages after pages of glorious Ivan Reis art with some great Johns script. The Lanterns continue to battle their enemies while the Earth Lanterns bear witness to a stunning page from the Book of Oa. This is just the beginning. After Sinestro and the Yellow rings of power, other rings of power will arise, seven in total. This will eventually lead to the end of the world, and the universe. There is just so much going on here. Hal and Sinestro battle in Coast City and even though he wants them to evacuate, they do not, instead joining their hero. The Guardians and the Corps focus their strength on the Anti-Monitor while Superman Prime wreaks havoc on the Lanterns. The Guardians use the yellow power core of the Sinestro Corps to drop on the Anti-Monitor, exploding and severely weakening him. It also kills Cyborg Superman, and he’s happy about it, to finally feel death. The Anti-Monitor is not defeated so a frustrated Superman Prime finishes the job, knocking him way out of the galaxy. The Guardians now take it to Prime, with one of them sacrificing themselves so that Prime explodes and all you see are his bones. Meanwhile, Kyle and Hal are engaged in hand to hand combat with Sinestro, since all their rings are down to no power. Sinestro thinks he’s won, since the Lanterns are now able to use deadly force but the Lanterns take him down for good. The end shows Sinestro imprisoned, and the Lanterns victorious. Two of the Guardians make a white ring, Superman Prime wakes up in the Multiverse (as seen in Countdown), Crenshaw is found by some of his robots and brought back to life and the biggest shock of all is the Anti-Monitor waking up on another planet, then used by another mysterious voice to become the black lantern battery! This is going to lead to a new threat in the summer of 2009, the Blackest Night. What an amazing conclusion to one of the best story arcs of 2007.
Marvel
-Amazing Spider-Girl #15- This is the fifteenth anniversary celebration of Spider-Girl and it was quite the issue. Mindworm is still trying to get into the mind of Spider-Girl and gets the name of the doctor that her parents will bring Benjy to. Hobgoblin kidnaps him and through Mindworm’s telepathy Spider-Girl comes face to face with all the villains she’s ever faced. She calls on all the heroes she’s met to help save the life of the doctor. She finally saves him and this was one of the best anniversary issues I’ve ever read. This really is the little title that could and that it lasted 15 years is remarkable.
-Ghost Rider #18- This issue brought perhaps the biggest surprise in Ghost Rider history. GR is still hot on the heels of the remnants of Lucifer and now has two angels with him. Ghost Rider finally finds another facet of Lucifer, this time in a being wanted to destroy an entire stadium of people. Ghost Rider takes him out but Lucifer has surprising news for Ghost Rider. He isn’t a demon, he’s actually an angel! He was the angel that did the black ops stuff from heaven. The two angels end up dying when GR learns this and Lucifer offers a deal to him, join him to take down heaven. Ghost Rider gives his answer by blowing up Lucifer. This was quite a shock. I am very interested to see where this goes.
-Iron Man and Power Pack #2- Julie is running for class president against a snobby girl whose father is the third richest man in the state. (He’s a rip-off of Donald Trump). Tony Stark is trying to cut a deal with him when Blizzard and Speed Demon kidnap his daughter for a huge ransom. The Power Pack know they need to save her and get to work, all except Julie, who doesn’t see what the big deal is. So the Power Pack take on Speed Demon and Blizzard and Iron Man shows up but it’s Julie who actually saves the girl. She asks Iron Man for a favor, to sponsor her in the class elections. These are always fun little stories.
-Marvel Comics Presents #4- The Vanguard story takes a turn when Stacy Dolan is told she’s off the case and under investigation when ballistics show it was a bullet from her gun that killed the John Doe. The Hellcat story comes to an end when we realize it was some bad magic of Isaac’s when he was helping Patsy write her diary. These are all versions of Patsy running around. They end up with a ring to close the book and get rid of the alternate versions of herself. There was a story here of Outlaw Kid which was confusing (I guess someone is looking to Outlaw after the Kid killed his father but Outlaw ends up saving the person after him). Finally, the Weapon Omega story deepens when we learn the Canadian government is implanting powers of villains onto him. USAgent is suspicious.
-New Avengers #37- The New Avengers battle the Hood and his cronies and it seems all the heroes with the New Avengers was just a Doctor Strange spell. They capture all of the villains (except the Hood, who is seemingly a demon of some sort) but the Hood breaks them out at the end. This issue was alright, it sets up the Hood as a legit villain but I think the title has been sort of stagnant for a while since Civil War. I hope Secret Invasion could breathe some life into it.
-New Warriors #6- I thought this was the final issue but I was sadly mistaken. The New Warriors try to convince Night Thrasher to keep the team going but he’s against it. We don’t know who he is, yet. Sophia shows up and finally convinces Night Thrasher to keep the team running. Some investigators confront Stark with knowledge that he’s funding them, but he denies it. I only wish it were the last issue. This hasn’t been going well.
-Nova #9- Nova is still stuck on the space station with Cosmo, a talking Russian dog. Nova is still fighting the Phalanx virus that’s in him but uses that to stop Abyss, a villain that a team of heroes (The Luminals) were trying to dispose. So Nova stops him and Cosmo gives him a gift. He will transport Nova to the world where the Phalanx were born. Nova is off, but hot on his trail are Gamora and Drax, still under Phalanx control. This was an interesting two-parter in the midst of Annihilation and I like Cosmo as a character.
-Ultimates Iron Man II #1- The long-awaited sequel to Ultimate Iron Man by Orson Scott Card. If you remember, Iron Man was blown up at the end of the first mini-series and now the government wants a piece of the action. Stark and Rhodey decide to go along with it, going inside the robots without the government knowing about to see what’s going on. That seems to be the main part of story but there are a lot of plotlines going on. We have Tony Stark, who can regrow limbs, Howard Stark in jail, and Stane working in the Think Tank Molekevic. This is turning out to be a good one. This can only be good for Marvel, since I know a lot of non-comics fans who loved the first one just because Card was attached to it.
-Wolverine #60- We learn more about a young Wolverine, how he is kept alive and how he defeated Lazaer, the Angel of Death. Wolverine heads to Japan to look for Shogun and a woman named Phaedra. He bumps into Shogun, and kills him by planting a bomb on him, then runs into Phaedra. It seems that the person who ordered the hit on Wolverine was none on than Mariko Yashida’s father, who Wolverine killed long ago. That is an interesting reveal, though the whole issue was pretty lame, with a fight between Wolvie and Shogun that was way too short.
DC
-Bat Lash #1- We meet Bartholomew Lash, a cowboy trying to win the love of his, Dominique Wilder. Of course, this woman is also being pursued by a dude named Brubaker. He is courting the heart of a woman that will never love him and has close ties to her father. He tries to hang Bat but Bat is saved by a troop of Comanche Indians. It seems one of the Indians (Two-Moons) was saved by Bat years ago and owes Bat. The issue ends with Bat coming home and Dominique riding to Bat to warn him that his family will be attacked. Brubaker gets the jump on her and takes her to an abandoned house. She’s in trouble.
-Black Adam #5- Black Adam finds another piece Isis’ amulet. In other news, a united nations op gets together a secret task force to take out Adam with a special magic bullet. It was built with pieces of the Rock of Eternity. Atom Smasher of the JSA investigates the ring and once he takes it off the finger of Isis, it disappears. Atom meets with Adam and gives him the finger of Isis. Adam leaves, finds another piece of the amulet (from a tribe worshipping it) and finally a group of the task force gets the drop on Adam. This title is picking up and I wonder how it will conclude, especially since we’ve seen Black Adam in Countdown many months ago.
-Booster Gold #5- Booster Gold continues with the awesomeness. Booster goes to the past to try and stop Joker from shooting Barbara Gordon but he fails. Rip sent Booster there to show him that some timelines can’t be changed and he can’t save Blue Beetle. Booster is bummed to say the least but surprisingly three Blue Beetles shows up to tell Booster they will save Ted with him. Rip interrogates Rex but Rex disappears. It seems he was killed as a baby by Degaton, Ultra Humanite and Despero. It seems they are building an army of some sort.
-Captain Carrot and the Final Ark! #3- I haven’t really been digging this farcical title, but the conclusion was pretty neat. Carrot and the Zoo Crew find a way to get the JLA (justa lotta animals) from Earth C-Minus to arrive and the New Dogs arrive as well to stop the threat of Starro. They use a Kaboom tube to teleport everyone away and they end up on our Earth! Zatanna and Hawkgirl stop the oncoming cruiser full of the animals, and then the actual animals come out! I loved the ending and all the DCU heroes made into animals. I think overall the mini-series was okay.
-Countdown: Arena #2- The heroes want to band together to stop Monarch but Monarch will have none of that. Some stand with him, others against. We see the Ray’s fight, some Blue Beetles fight, one of them having a device the others may be able to use, and finally the Lanterns, who bring Monarch into their battle but Monarch (guess what) disposes of them. The other two Lanterns are dropped in with the other losers when one of the defeated Batmen is now back as a vampire. The fights are way too short, and I don’t think we’ve had a good enough payoff for any of the advertised battles.
-Countdown Presents The Search for Ray Palmer: Red Son- The Challangers find Ray Palmer in the Red Son world but it isn’t the Ray Palmer they are looking for. Ray Palmer and Batman are actually trying to kill Superman and they almost pull it off in the end, but fail. Superman has the Challangers captive and plans to do something with them until the Ray Palmer of that universe frees them. I liked seeing Red Son Superman again, but the story just wasn’t doing it for me.
-Countdown Special: The Atom #1- This is a set of two reprints. It collects Super-Team Family #’s 11 and 12. These are two long issues but pretty good ones. Basically, you’re seeing Ray chasing his wife through the different universes she could be, much like the Challangers are doing now.
-Countdown to Final Crisis #20- Okay, let’s follow along. Brother Eye is infiltrating all sorts of communication and is spying everything that is going on. Una expresses her feelings for Karate Kid. Nope, not misplaced at all. Bludhaven seems to be the new home for Brother Eye. The Challengers know where to find Ray now, though they won’t tell us. Jimmy Olsen turns into a turtle of sorts and finds and frees Forager, who know says that Jimmy Olsen must die. Monarch is viewing the people fight and the rest of the story is in Arena #2. Piper still has a dead Trickster and he hops off the train at the Mexican border with no water in the desert. Mary Marvel and Eclipso fight over one of Eclipso’s powerful crystal. Eclipso takes it back and abandons Mary Marvel in space. Really, there was way too much stuff going on in this issue and I’ve said it before, when they try to do too much it just flounders. The best issues are when they devote about 12-14 pages to a single event and maybe a page or two for everything else. This is like Crash TV where they’re hitting you with things from all angles.
-Green Arrow/Black Canary #3- Okay, let’s see if you can follow along here. Black Canary needs to show she can lead the Furies by having an endurance fight. Meanwhile, Conner and Ollie escape, give the signal, and Black Canary and Speedy follow along. Before leaving, Dinah learns that they wanted to kill Ollie but someone else wanted him so they kept him alive and replaced him with a double. The double was fine until the night of the wedding because he couldn’t perform sexually. He cracked and tried to kill Dinah who killed him. Damnnnn. Anyway, the woman who wanted Dinah was really Granny Goodness and as the Ollie, Conner, Dinah and Speedy drive away in their boat, a blast comes from the sky, blasting Conner through the heart. Bye-bye. It isn’t a GA/BC book without someone dying every three issues. I love the art by Cliff Chiang but the story has been a bit odd, maybe even tongue-in-cheek, with the impotent Everyman and another Arrow dying.
-Green Lantern Corps #25- This is the post-script if you will on the entire Sinestro Corps battle. We basically see the Green Lanterns going back to their regular routine. Guy and Kyle have a nice chat, Guy finds a newly resurrected Ice (she was resurrected in Birds of Prey) and wants to start things with her but she says she needs more time. Kilowog enjoys a meal with his family. One is building sculptures of all the deceased, another is just happy to be back and I think you get the general idea. Of course, the issue does deliver one final surprise. One of the Sinestro Corps members is fleeing from the Lanterns and lands on a planet. Someone breaks his neck and takes his ring. That someone? Mongol. Damn, that was awesome.
-Nightwing #138- Nightwing fights Robin and tries to convince him not to go into the Lazarus pit. Nightwing eventually gets him to relent, after much turmoil on Robin’s part. Damian hitched a ride with the White Ghost to get to Ra’s and when Nightwing, Robin, Alfred and Talia arrive at Nanda, it seems Ra’s is about to take Damian’s body. Not a bad tie-in, better than the Robin one, but the lack of Batman is kind of odd.
-Salvation Run #2- The villains are still arriving in droves with Joker starting to take control of things. He murders Psi-mon in cold blood to rally the troops together. Hellhound is another casualty after his injured body is fed to some lion lizards. Things take an interesting turn when Flag double-crosses the villains on the Suicide Squad and ship them off with the final batch of villains, including Catwoman, Lex Luthor and Chemo. Luthor arrives and starts rallying the villains to his cause, making it an interesting set-up to Luthor vs. Joker. The mini-series has been interesting so far.
-Suicide Squad #4- Waller figures out a way to put her mind in the body of Chemo, Flag learns he has a son but doesn’t want to meet him since he hates kids. Waller watches Blackguard and White Dragon fight to see who is better and White Dragon wins, then goes after Waller since he’s a racist. She has his armor booby-trapped, though. Captain Boomerang Jr. has a run in with Deadshot, Waller negotiates with Marauder and General Wade Eiling to join the squad and the big surprise is dropped at the end, Rick Flag is not really a Flag, the memories were implanted in his head.
-Superman Confidential #10- The New Gods continue fighting on Metropolis and Superman just can’t take it anymore and tells them all to leave. Darkseid shows up to tell Superman to stop interfering and Darkseid starts shooting Superman with his eye beams, but Superman doesn’t back down. The Infinity Man shows up and the New Gods leave. Highfather says that Earth is part of the fight now whether Superman likes it or not. I guess this is a prequel to what will happen in Death of the New Gods but overall it wasn’t too great.
-Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Ion #1- This is a tale of the Lantern Corps now, since the war is over. Kyle Rayner goes to the Oans to learn he is no longer Ion. He meets the new Ion, Sodam Yat, and gives him a little lesson in using his powers when Rayner’s old foe, Alex Nero, shows up. Rayner lets himself get in trouble so Ion can save him. Rayner heads back to Earth and says he’s not in a single sector now but will stay with Gardner. All four earthmen Lanterns together again. Thus, a new beginning.
-Wonder Girl #4- Wonder Girl battles the Furies, and loses, but the Furies leave when they think the God-Hunter is upon them. It wasn’t the god-hunter but it was Aristedes Demetrios, the Olympian. He and his golden fleece help Wonder Girl. They go to rescue her mother and the Furies say Wonder Girl is undermanned. Luckily, the Titans were with her. Actually, this was better than the previous three issues.
-Wonder Woman #15- I wasn’t too impressed with the first issue but this one was really good. We learn the four women that Hippolyta visited last issue were her personal guard who revolted when she announced she wanted a child (who would be Wonder Woman, of course). Wonder Woman is in human form battling Captain Nazi and finds out, after transforming and using the lasso, that a group of Nazi’s are headed to Themyscira to destroy it and steal its technology. Wonder Woman tries to court other gods to help her, but none will bite, except one, who I don’t know (it appears to be a Native American of some sort). Hippolyta is defending her home when the members of the Nazi team meet with Alkyone, one of the personal guard who was the most outspoken of Hippolyta having a kid. She offers to help the Nazis. Very awesome issue. My faith in Gail is restored.
Wildstorm
-Gen13 #15- The Gen13 kids are out and about in New York City. Grunge is with a group of “artists” who really just cause trouble and he ends up getting chased by the police, Freefall is told she will be the new model with a different image and gets money to help the kids stay in NYC, Burnout is staying with some college students, Rainmaker is taking pictures of some kids, and finally Fairchild is convinced that they are being followed and tracked. It turns out she’s right when we see a camera in the shower watching their every move. Hmmm. I’ve really enjoyed this title since its inception, though not much fighting has been going on.
-Stormwatch PHD: Armageddon #1- We get a bit of a history on John Doran, a police officer with Stormwatch PHD. He is taken by VOID into the future and sees the devestation that is about to fall on them. We see what the other members of PHD are up to and finds some great information on how this happened. It seems a huge amount of villains (thousands of them) fought and unleashed a massive amount of energy that altered the planet. John learned he died fighting and when he returns back home he knows he has to stop it. This is the first time we get some real information on what happened and there’s only one chapter left to round everything together. One interesting plot point is that the man Doran meets with tracks Void’s energy signature, possibly to go to the present? I thought this was one of the better Armageddon titles.
The Awards
-Book of the Week- This is easily Green Lantern #25. This eas just a perfect ending. I don’t know if it was the best major storyline of 2007 (I liked World War Hulk) but the fact that there weren’t many tie-ins and was really self-contained makes it easy to collect and should be in two trades. If you missed it you are doing yourself a serious disservice by not picking it up, it was that good. This conclusion was just perfect, with everything being tied up and then a new set of strings being drawn at the end to tie up in the summer of 2009. Just a great ending.
-Disappointment of the Week- I was scrolling up the titles I have here on Word and was hard-pressed to find a title I didn’t like this week. Until I got to New Warriors #6. This title is just killing the New Warriors legacy even worse than Civil War did. I was hoping this would be the last issue so they could end it quickly, but no, it seems the bleeding will go on a bit more.
-Cover of the Week- Oooh, a lot of good ones here. Dan Jurgens takes the prize with Booster Gold #5. It has the Joker taking a shot of Batgirl and Booster Gold with their reflections in the camera. This is a nice homage to the cover to The Killing Joke as well, which is what the issue was based on. This cover really captures the essence of the book and was the most eye appealing one of the 30 I picked up.
-The Bottom Line- I was underwhelmed a bit by the books in November and wondered why I purchase 30 books a week, but it is weeks like this that keep me in the game. Almost every title was at the very least enjoyable and I loved poring through the issues this week. This may have been one of the more enjoyable experiences I’ve had in doing the TPL, and that is thanks to some of the great DC titles I read this week, especially the Sinestro Corps stuff. I don’t crown a company of the week but if I did it would definitely be DC this week. Great job, guys.
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