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The Christmas break is finally here and I was able to pick up this shipment of comics with only one day of work ahead in the week (I got these on Thursday and my last day was Friday). This was a semi-heavy week of books, with 15 Marvels, 14 DC’s, 2 Wildstorms and 1 Platinum Studio which all adds up to 32 books total. I also picked up two trade paperbacks, one of the Batman Vampire tales and the Complete Onslaught Volume 1. I hated Onslaught when it first came out and actually got me out of comics but maybe the years have been nice to it. That’s a review for another day. This week’s TPL is what’s on my plate now, and with this being released on Christmas I just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.
Spoiler Alert
The Main Event
-What If… Civil War- This was a very disappointing What If issue compared to the other ones. It shows two alternate timelines which were both incredibly far fetched in terms of What If. First, the Extremis kills Stark, Cap still goes against the government, more heroes die and the Sentinals and Gyrich take over. Stark is happy he was right. So of course, the Watcher shows him one where he was wrong. He and Cap were fighting and Cap did not attack Stark with the device on his hand after Stark made a truthful comment about the war. This timeline sees Cap and Stark work together with Cap in charge of the SHRA. Things were nice and rosy in this one and Stark cried. Aww, he wasn’t always right. This was sadly a bad one and I was envisioning something different.
-Incredible Hulk #112- The title still says Incredible Hulk but he’s been replaced by the Incredible Herc, or Hercules. Hercules and Cho are together and both are willingly taken in by SHIELD. They can’t just sign a piece of paper and be freed like Angel and Namorita could, no they caused a lot of damage and need to make reparations. Hercules must go through a twentieth century 12 tasks, the first of which is rebuilding Stark tower by himself and Cho must use his brain to make those homeless because of the Hulk get back to NY seemlessly. Cho and Hercules turn their back on this and escape. Cho takes the SHIELD laptop someone showed him and the two of them plan to take down SHIELD. Wow, I thought there would be a lull after WWH but this teamup of Hercules and Cho keeps this title tops on my list.
Marvel
-Avengers Classic #7- This reprinted a tale of Executioner and Enchantress teaming up with Zemo to battle the Avengers and you know how that turns out. They get banished to another dimension after Iron Man returns from his one-week ban. He was banned for missing an Avengers priority call. The back-up was a story of Enchantress, Zemo and Executioner showing up in dimension 6.5 and having to fight their way out of a huge monster. The back up was pretty good.
-Captain America: The Chosen #5- Captain America continues urging on Corporal James Newman and gets him to squeeze through a small crawl space in the underground cave. Cap tells James about how he became Cap, how he fought in the war and how he lived with fear all the time. This is still taking a while to actually get anywhere. The art is nice and the story is fine but nothing has really happened in the five issues. Its like they took a plot (Cap dying but using his spirit to inspire) and just wrote 6 issues around it.
-Foolkiller #3- Nate tells the Foolkiller where to find some of the men he worked with. Foolkiller wents to get to the heart of this operation. Foolkiller goes after Tyrell, one of the collector’s Nate used to work with. He kills him in brutal fashion then goes after the a man named McBride. All the while, the real person who runs it orders Nate’s daughter killed and orders someone called Sickle Moon after the Foolkiller. This is still really intriguing and the brutality makes it all the more stark and realistic.
-Immortal Iron Fist #11- We see the interesting past of Davos and how a failed attempt on fighting the Shou Lao dragon made him disgraced. Xao has found a way to open the portal to K’un L’un and he plans to send a weapon into it, to destroy it. Davos fights in the tournement, loses his hand, but brutalizes the competition. Iron Fist returns at the end of the issue. I thought this was the weakest of the series so far. It seems that too much is going on now and they need to scale it back a bit before they lose any essential plot threads or storylines.
-Iron Man: Enter The Mandarin #4- Tony Stark is shot by Mandarin’s son, Temugin, and Temugin finds out Tony is Iron Man. Tony fights him off Temugin returns home. His father calls him a failure and kills him as Temugin refuses to tell his father the secret. The Mandarin goes from covert to overt and tries to take over a SHIELD satellite built by Stark, and succeeds! Stark builds a new Iron Man armor to take on Mandarin at issues end. This mini-series is turning out well.
-Marvel’s Greatest Comics #1- This is just a collection of some of the best Marvel trades out there with comments by people who work at Marvel. This was free, what else can you ask for?
-Marvel Holiday Special #1- I don’t remember a Marvel Holiday special that pushed the company line as much as this one. There were four stories, if you will, and I just got a feeling that this was more like a what’s going on in Marvel now than a true holiday special. The first story was actually a nice one of Spider-Man and Wolverine teaming up and Spidey’s cake is ruined. Wolvie bakes Spidey a new one and the picture is accidentally sold to JJJ. Oops. That was a good one. There was a two-page Hembeck reprint of Marvel characters in a Santa Claus suit. The third and fourth stories featured the Loners in a secret Santa gift-giving event and an editor sending a reporter on a job. The editor was secretly a Skrull. Both stories were just taking a new concept and a new storyline and throwing it in the faces of those buying this trying to read great stories like the ones we’ve seen in the early 90’s version of the Holiday Specials. This was just a disappointment. Bah Humbug.
-Mighty Avengers #6- This is the conclusion to Ultron taking over Stark’s body and turning him female. Ares infiltrates the body in miniature form and finding the core operating system of the being. He destroys it, Wasp saves him, Sentry shows up and is pissed, and the enemy is thwarted. Stark is back to himself. He’s recovering when Spider-Woman shows up with the Skrull body. The conclusion was foregone since this bad boy has been so delayed but the execution was pretty good. I loved the Bendis script, with the exceptionally funny thought balloons and the Cho art was kick-ass.
-Punisher War Journal #14- This should’ve been inlcuded last week but I didn’t pick it up last week for some reason. I’m not too sad I missed it, though. Frank goes after Kraven Jr who has a whole bunch of animal themed villains. Kraven Jr. turns them into mindless, well, animals and after taking out the Punisher puts them all against him in an odd sort of hunt on a sinking ship. Weird story.
-She-Hulk #24- She-Hulk deals with the repurcussions of her fight with Absorbing Man and the damage done to the Mall of America. It seems the insurance company is a bit pissed about it but her boss won’t stop using her. She-Hulk leaves knowing her boss didn’t let her go but she’s pissed at her and she meets some random dude who blows up the bar they are in. She ends up saving the insurance agent we met before who “forgets” what he was going to tell his bosses. We also learn a bit more about Jazinda and her father wanting to kill her. This was an important issue to set up She-Hulk and Jazinda in how PAD will write them and will work well in setting up future arcs.
-Wolverine: Firebreak- This was a very good one-shot issue where Wolverine saves a family that has broken apart due to the husband cheating from a chemical fire that Hydra has set up. Wolvie is blinded and uses the father as his eyes and eventually helping the father become a hero and in the end repairs their marriage. I liked seeing Wolvie help out the troubled couple all while blinded and the way he handles the Hydra agents was perfect.
-Wolverine Origins #20- This is the conclusion to the Wolverine/Captain America story. Wolverine had to save Strucker and kill Captain America and he’s a bit torn about it. He fulfills the agreement by seemingly double-cross Captain America and having their plane crash right into the arms of Baron Zemo. Strucker escapes and Cap is pissed at the traiterous Wolverine. Wolverine didn’t tell them about Bucky and Bucky shoots down the Nazi troops which allows Cap and Bucky to escape. There’s an epilogue of Deadpool being paid to go after Wolverine. I liked this. Origins has definitely gotten better after the first few arcs. Dillon and Way are coming into their own on this issue.
-World War Hulk Aftersmash: Warbound- The Warbound continue fleeing from SHIELD and all is going well until Hiroim is teleported away. The rest of the Warbound blame SHIELD and Waynesboro, who was leading the attack. They try to follow Hiroim and end up in the desert. SHIELD descends upon the rest of the Warbound and start firing. They escape but are careful not to harm anyone. We go back to Hiroim and see a massive gamma barrier appear and the Leader is behind this new Gammaworld. There’s a back-up tale of Wayneboro interrogating Miek and learning how Elloe double-crossed him when he was a hiveling. This was a serviceable debut issue.
DC
-Batman and the Outsiders #3- Batman, Metamorpho and Katana show the JLA that they are not always right and they may not always be the best equipped to handle everything. They show up Geo-Force and Hawkgirl and Hawkgirl leaves. Geo-Force is the newest member of the team and he joins the newest recruit, Batwoman, who doesn’t wear clothing around the house. Two people show up at the end to Wayne Manor and want to meet Wayne’s boss, Batman.
-Birds of Prey #113- The Birds of Prey fight a young girls who wants to seemingly destroy a building of her father’s enemies. The Birds try to stop it but when the truck becomes a transformer and explodes, Superman shows up to scold them. Superman says he will keep his eye on them since they were careless and caused untold deaths. Ouch, this was a bad defeat for the Birds, one we haven’t seen in a while.
-Catwoman #74- Catwoman gets out of the predicament she was in last issue and goes to a secret hideout to rest. She cuts her hair and meets with Calculator, the man who double-crosses her. She forces him to tell where her assailaint is hiding and she goes out to look for him, but not before she’s picked up by Deadshot and the crew to be sent away and shown in Salvation Run. Of course, we knew she was already captured and this just showed how she ended up that way. I wonder how the monthly will deal with this.
-Checkmate #21- This one focuses on the history of Mademoiselle Marie and Jospehine Tautin’s connection to her lineage. Sasha sends Jospehine on a mission to rescue the daughter of a prominent politician in order to get the troops out of Bialya. Checkmate was asked this as a favor from the UN and Jospehine goes on the mission since the father of the kidnapped girl is her former lover. This issue started out a very interesting plot that I hope can remain that way through this storyline’s duration. I liked seeing the history of Mademoiselle and Josephine’s connection to it.
-Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman #1- The crew ends up in the Superwoman and Batwoman world where all the genders are in reverse. Wonderman is pissed at being arrested after killing Maxine Lord and gets her Amazons to attack Washington DC. Superwoman and Batwoman and all the rest of the heroes stop them but the Challangers can’t find Palmer, of course. They head off and the mini-series is finally over. This was just a big commercial for the various multiverses but this issue was fun to see the different genders.
-Countdown Arena #3- Let’s see, more alternate versions of our heroes fight each other while Monarch looks on and the Supermen think of a way to escape. They use one of the Firestorms to use the device built last issue and gather some heroes to fight Monarch. This has been pretty pointless mini-series so far.
-Countdown to Final Crisis #19- Piper still carries Trickster’s dead body along and Piper hears Trickster talking to him. The Challangers arrive at a planet which is supposedly perfect. Holly and Harley meet with Hippolyta who has an idea for the two of them to infiltrate Granny Goodness and her dealings in Themyscira. Olsen meets with Forager and it seems the Source is in Jimmy’s eyes. The Piper and Trickster stuff is just getting creepy now, but the issue was pretty decent.
-Countdown Special: The Atom #2- This includes some more reprints. It is a continuation of the two issues from last week. I didn’t finish it in time for TPL but I am sure it is fine. I don’t think these things are reprinted anywhere else.
-Detective Comics #839- This ends the Ra’s Al Ghul resurrection and it pretty much limped to the conclusion. Ninja’s fought, Ra’s used White Ghost’s body (who was actually his son) and the monks in Nanda Parbat are pissed that everyone is there and use some weird magic to get them to leave. The only thing that redeemed this for me was the mention of Christmas at the end. That is nice now because it was released on the week of Christmas, but reading in trades may make it lose that uniqueness. The 7-parter wasn’t all that great.
-Justice League of America #16- If you check the March solicitations you’ll see a 12-part maxi-series beginning about the Tangent universe. This is an introduction to it. The Lantern of Hal Jordan which is now in Guy’s possession is a portal to the Tangent universe and two of the heroes manage to get through, specifically, The Atom. Canary, Red Arrow and Stewart GL show up and send him back to his universe. They think all is good and well except for the second here who is there, Flash. Guess where this is continued? Yep, Tangent: Superman. Pointless waste of a good JLA issue. There is a nice back-up of Red Arrow helping at a soup kitchen and running into an old villain he didn’t remember.
-Metamorpho Year One #6- This would end the Metamorpho origin. The JLA test Metamorpho to see if he would be a good hero and he passes the test. Metamorpho doesn’t want to join the team and just wants to get cured. I guess he will fight crime only if he’s brought to it. I liked this.
-Shadowpact #20- We see Blue Devil fighting in Hell and being rescued by some hell hounds. He’s on the cover and his storyline is basically second in here. The main thing here is the focus on Eve, Ragman and Nightmaster are still in the Nightshade dimension. Nightmaster learns he has new uses of his powers from his father, who can appear in astral forms for short periods. They end up closer to the city surrounded by some sort of light. Nightmaster learns that the city they are heading towards is where he became Nightmaster. I want to see more about Blue Devil.
-Superman #671- This is a sad turn for Superman. Lana Lang is kidnapped by some bugs looking for Lex Luthor. These bugs are taking people hostage to give to their queen. Superman shows up to stop them, gets beat and captured, then breaks free. He tries to get information from them and they explode. He finds out they are from the moon and heads over there to look for Lana. Wow, giant bugs. What has this book come to?
-Superman/Batman #44- Superman and Batman watch some people film a movie about them and laugh about it. Livewire shows up to try to extort money from the actors when Superman shows up. He tries to save the day but Livewire almost kills him when she destroys some kryptonite the director had on the set of the movie. Batman and Flash put a stop to her and pull all the kryptonite out of Superman. Superman decides that he doesn’t want to be vulnerable anymore. He wants Batman’s help to round up all the kryptonite in the world and throw it into the sun. Batman runs a program to find all the kryptonite and finds a surprising amount of it on the world. This was a great set-up and shows a vulnerable side of Superman.
Platinum Studio Comics
-Hero By Night #1- This was a mini-series a while back that I guess I missed. This tells the origin of the series on the inside cover and then we start. The old HBN wakes up saying the ring that gives him powers must be destroyed. Meanwhile, we see the new HBN wondering if he should become an actual hero or just put the costume and everything away. He goes out that night to stop crime to see if he really wanted to be a here and after falling in some garbage and trying his best to sound threatening, he still does some good, gathering cheers from the onlookers. He decides he is going to keep on doing this. This was a fantastic first issue. I never read the mini-series but the two paragraph intro told me everything I needed to know and it was very interesting. This reminds me of the old Silver Age Spider-Man comics, a regular guy becoming a hero and making the best of it.
Wildstorm
-The Programme #6- The US tries to nuke the Russian superheroes but they fail. Max is upset he killed Senator Joe and how his programming was messed with so he can’t even do what he was supposed to do. When the Russians make it known they weren’t killed and start running amok in Vegas, Max decides he needs to stop them. Unfortunately, all he has ia Steely Dan shirt to wear. Yeesh. He also learns Senator Joe is still alive and may be able to help them stop the Russians. This was the weakest issue of the bunch in my opinion.
-World of Warcraft #2- I’m buying these for my dad, really. So the amnesiac warrior finds himself fighting with his other captured warriors in the annual battle royale tournement. Everyone is surprised at how well the human fights and the fans in the crowd annoint him some sort of prophet they have heard of. This is actually becoming enjoyable. I know nothing about WoW but the comic is enjoyable.
Awards
-Book of the Week- I battled with this one because most of the issues weren’t that great, and Hero By Night was in the running until I read Incredible Hulk. Man this issue kicked ass and Greg Pak shows he is not slowing after World War Hulk. Excellent stuff.
-Disappointment of the Week- There were a lot of things that were disappointing this week, like the Marvel Holiday Special, JLA #16, Detective Comics #839, and What If but I think the one that stood out in my mind the most was Superman #671. The other ones I could find some value in, but Superman fighting bugs? Damn. I don’t know where to begin.
-Cover of the Week- Catwoman #74 definitely wins this week. It is a beautiful cover of Catwoman (showing some cleavage), taking off a mirror to reveal a hidden safe. Adam Hughes really knocked it out of the park with this one.
-The Bottom Line- I left this week with a big disappointing taste in my mouth. The last two issues I read were What If and Marvel Holiday Special and I just didn’t care for either. I think when I sit here and look back on it I will realize that this week (aside from a few bright spots) was phoned in for the holiday week. Oh well, November was a really good month so one bad week won’t kill me. Merry Christmas everyone.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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