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Does the recent cut back help the reading load this week? Well, last week we had 22 books to get through. This week there were 24 books! What happened? The cuts came two months ago so this is huge drop-off from other numbers I’ve seen at the end of the month (I’ve hit 30 a couple of times). The breakdown shows that Dynamite and Vertigo chipped in with one title, DC had 5 (though two will not be appearing any longer) and Marvel had the rest (17, mostly due to a ton of X-Titles). With Thanksgiving past us and the Christmas Season now on, how can I possibly complete this by Tuesday?
Spoiler Alert
Dynamite
-Project Superpowers: Meet The Bad Guys #4- This issue focuses on The Scarab and the Supremacy, which is interesting considering that Scarab is a member of the Supremacy. This is showing the first cracks of the Supremacy, as one of their members thinks that there is a mole amongst them. I wouldn’t say this was an extraordinary issue of Project Superpowers, but it does its job of adding to the characters and it continues its hot momentum it has had since the title took off. 1/1.
Vertigo
-Northlanders #22- Hilda’s alone with her daughter. Her husband’s been killed by the Plague and some of the men in the commune are trying to take advantage of her. Case in point: there’s Gunborg. He’s looking for donations (required of all the villagers) but she’s reluctant and says she’ll bring it herself. The travel is hard and there’s a lot for her to carry and it isn’t helped by Gunborg’s antics. She does make it. She also has a meeting with Thorir, someone who is looking out for her interests, and their secret meeting is watched by someone else. Wood has managed to keep all the brutality of the original chapters while creating probably one of the more enthralling stories this title has seen. 1/1.
DC
-Blackest Night #4- All the Lanterns have united (something that I would later find out occurred in the pages of Green Lantern which came out this week, I wish there would’ve been a warning or at least a little tag saying to read GL first) and arrive on Earth as all the Earth’s heroes are fighting off Nekron and the Blackest Guardian. Things get really messy when Nekron revives Bruce Wayne. This moment of weakness is all the Black Lantern needs to go out and infect the heroes. Only Flash and the Green Lantern are able to evade the Black Rings; for now. This had a ton of action and what I love about this book is that it hasn’t let up once in terms of action, story-telling and holy crap moments. 1/1.
-Detective Comics #859- We continue the origin of Katherine Kane. She was thrown out of West Point for being a lesbian and soon afterwards she met Renee Montoya. After stopping a robber in an alley she encountered Batman. I am really enjoying her origin so far. Meanwhile, the back-up features The Question and it’s more of the same. She beats up some gangsters or traffickers or whatever, with the help of Huntress. Some weirdo with red eyes is looking on at it all. The Question stuff adds an extra dollar to a book that it doesn’t need. The Batwoman story is standing up on its own. 2/2.
-Green Lantern #48- Unfortunately this title suffers since the whole issue dealt with something that was spoiled in the opening pages of Blackest Night. This is just the Lanterns in-fighting until deciding they should team-up. I definitely would’ve liked this more had I read it first. I can’t fault the creator’s but DC really should’ve added a note in Blackest Night to read this first. 3/3, since the story proved its worth, but a big negative 1 for DC as a whole. 3/3.
-Justice League of America #39- I picked this one up by mistake. My mistake was quickly realized as a whole bunch of D-list JLA’ers are resurrected to fight the current C-list cast. The Dr. Light’s square off at the end, too. Let’s face it, I don’t care about these characters and even the Blackest Night tie-in couldn’t save this book. 3/4.
-Justice Society of America #33- The big traitor was revealed and it was…Kid Karnevil. Yeah, a third-rate character from Shadowpact that I would guarantee most readers have no idea who he is. He gives the condensed Egg that contains Obsidian to some one (great ending!) before getting taken down by Mr. Terrific. The JSA decides to split up at the end of the issue. This had great action scenes but the lousy ending kind of soured it for me. 3/5.
Marvel
-Amazing Spider-Man #613- Electro goes back to the Mad Thinker for more of his treatment but Spidey interrupts after creating a homing device to find him. This backfires since Electro is now even more powerful than ever and Spidey is caught in the burning building left in his wake. Furthermore, Electro calls out Bennett, breaking the little agreement he made with him earlier in the issue. I’ll just go out and say it, this is the best that Electro’s ever been written. 1/1.
-Criminal #2- Tracy Lawless continues looking into the recent murders that trouble his boss while he’s completely oblivious to the Army agent that is looking for him. Tracy goes investigating and finds a possible link with the Triad. We readers meet a new character named Evans who seems to be in deeper with this. Was he the killer and why was the priest saying that Evan’s doing God’s work? Could the killings be unconnected and just a religious zealot doing the work? This book really gives you a lot for your money, as we’re treated to two really good essays, one on director Peter Yates and one on Australian Noir. What a fantastic title that Brubaker has created. 2/2.
-Dark Avengers: Ares #2- Ares and his Shades troops go after his son, who Hera told him was barely clinging to life. Ares finds where his son is but it’s not Phobos, it is Kyknos, a son who Ares left to die. He’s alive and he sends some undead Hydra soldiers after Ares and his troops. Ares allows his troops to escape but he succumbs to the horde of troops after him. I’m surprised how good this is. We have another element of Ares’ character introduced here and Ares is becoming one of my current favorites in Marvel. 3/3.
-DarkTower: The Fall of Gilead #6- This is everything that I’ve been waiting for. Gilead falls, its citizens are killed, and Roland is one of the few survivors. This was a LOTR epic, with Roland and his ka-tet throwing everything they had at Farson. The hordes of Farson were too much to overcome, and the traitors in the midst of the House of Eld only added insult to injury. The final scene of the Eld house flag flying away was an appropriate end to this chapter. Definitely the best single issue of the DarkTower series. 4/4.
-Dark Wolverine #80- Daken has a set-up to take out the villains who beat him up the first time but again he goes against Osborn and ruins the whole planned thing. Daken does this so he can kill the villains on his own for his own personal revenge. These most recent issues made Daken look kind of like a chump. Was he really beaten by those crap villains? If so, that’s a huge knock against the character. Now, if they revealed that Daken did this on purpose to get to Osborn then I would be happy. Well, they didn’t imply that and I don’t think we’d ever see Wolverine treated like this. 4/5.
-Fantastic Four #573- This is a single-story issue, and it’s a decent one. Franklin, Valeria, Ben and Johnny arrive on Nu-World to find it’s overcome by robots and a black hole. It seems they’re time is moving faster than our world. Of course our heroes are able to save themselves, though I think we’ve seen the end of Nu-World. Hickman gets what makes the FF fun, crazy out of this world action that keeps the characters grounded with what is important; their family. Hickman gets that and his four issues so far have been better than anything I’ve seen from this title since the days of Waid and Weiringo. 5/6.
-Guardians of the Galaxy #20- The Guardians are in disarray, having lost basically half their team to stop Magus. Now they are going to look into what’s going on with the fissure in the universe. On Knowhere they agree that the Luminals will help, but they go off on their own and something has snuck through the fissure that threatens the Guardians. This continues with the great action and I think the new direction of the book is a direction that I am on board for. 6/7.
-Hulk #17- Red Hulk fights back with the help of Thundra and he battles the Red She-Hulk. Hulk doesn’t get any of the information he needs and I am getting tired of this book. It’s all smoke and mirrors and eventually something has to be paid off. I will stick with this until the Fall of the Hulks and no longer. The art was okay, but I’m not following the story as well as I would like. 5/7.
-Incredible Hercules #138- Athena tells Cho that she’s prepping him to be her next champion, but this comes at the expense of Hercules’ life. Hulk gathers his friends (the Mighty Avengers and perennial book-movers Spider-Man and Wolverine) to stop the Olympus Group and their Continuum device. Ares is out of the equation thanks to Aphrodite but Thanatos arrives on the scene and bad things are in store. The Agents of Atlas back-up features Venus getting her senses back and the rest of the Agents showing up at the Olympus group headquarters and encountering a troll in the caverns beneath the building. I love that the Agents are in this book, too. The odd inclusion of Wolverine and Spider-Man aside this has been a groovy book in terms of its mythological backgrounds combining with a modern-day story. 6/8.
-New Mutants #7- The New Mutants deal with the risen Hellions and a Doug Ramsey who is fighting off the little spark of Warlock that is inside of him. The New Mutants rejoin the X-Men in the main battlefield as the Hellions retake Ramsey. The Warlock body at the bottom of the river seems to come back to life by the end of the issue. This has everything I like in books, lots of fighting, an interesting story and good art. What else could you want? 7/9.
-Secret Warriors #10- This issue really just deals with the journey of Phobos being accepted by the rest of the Gods. It recalls events from the Ares mini-series. Thor’s on the cover, but he never appeared in the book. This issue focused solely on Ares and his son, so if you don’t like those characters then this is a skip. I happen to enjoy these characters so this was all good to me. 8/10.
-Spider-Man: The Clone Saga #3- The Jackal is defeated when Kaine breaks free after Jackal implies that he will clone Gwen Stacy. Kaine kills Jackal in cold blood but the real villain is still in the shadows watching on. Jackal reveals that Peter is really the clone, but neither Ben nor Peter really care. Peter decides to hang up the webs after his aunt and wife are cured and he’s ready to start his family. So far, I don’t know how much has been altered from the original. From what I recollect I think it’s been spot on, but it was after the whole Peter’s the Clone deal that things went to hell in a hand basket. I really like how Nauck seems to capture the feel of a mid-90’s Marvel book art-wise. This has helped me appreciate the Clone Saga a bit more. 9/11.
-Ultimate Avengers #4- Captain America is finally captured by the Avengers. They don’t want him interfering in their business with the Red Skull and the Cosmic Cube that is only 40-hours from completion. Ultimate titles have a knack for really being drawn out in terms of plot but the art of Pacheco has been excellent and like the New Mutants book this has been easy to follow with a decent story, lots of action and good art. 10/12.
-Uncanny X-Men #517- Magneto has returned but he’s a bit weaker than he usually is. The X-Men deal with the Predator X monster’s that have appeared and they are taken out in quick 22-page succession. The only real big plot point here was that the Phoenix Force left the Cuckoo’s and Scalphunter has been apprehended by Danger. The way the X-Men defeated the Predator’s was handled in a way I really liked, with Namor and Atlantis forces taking out one, the X-Men working as a team to take out another three, and Rogue absorbing the New X-Men powers and just demolishing the fifth. It’s hard for me to get past Land’s art but in this case I could thanks to Land’s great handling of the team. 11/13.
-Web of Spider-Man #2- We’re treated first to Electro’s origin which includes a new wrinkle: an early encounter with Magneto before his villainous ways began. The Spider-Girl story was awesome, as usual, with May finding out that her clone is captured and Tombstone (who had put her in a coma before) was now dead and Spider-Girl is blamed. The same awesome Frenz/Defalco/Buscema collaboration has not dropped off since the original What If issue 11 years ago. Finally, JJJ makes an appearance and hires a fan that had kidnapped him. JJJ is crazy. This book is working as a place to show off the newest villain appearing in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man to supplement the story as well as our monthly dose of Spider-Girl. I’m a fan of this book. 12/14.
-Wolverine First Class #21- This seems like a fill-in book since the cover has nothing to do with the interior, a class of Wolverine and the Professor showing Kitty that the training doesn’t end when she walks out of the Danger Room. The story was really awesome, but I wonder why the cover was misleading. In fact, it says that Williams drew it in 2008. Maybe they didn’t have a cover ready for the story? That’s not really an issue for me because this story rocked. I heart PAD. 13/15.
-X-Men Forever #12- Colossus has returned home to find out that his sister has been kidnapped. So Kitty, Gambit and Little ‘Ro tag along to help but the man who kidnapped her (Cossack) has turned her back into Magik and that’s not good. Meanwhile, Rogue, Jean and Beast all deal with their own issues in the wake of Logan’s death and Charles deals with the ramifications of mutants’ early deaths. I gotta hand it to Claremont, this has been working for me and I find this is in some way easier to read than Uncanny X-Men, maybe because I stopped reading books in 1996 and so I missed about 8 years of continuity in the book while this is coming off stories still entrenched in my memory. 14/16.
The Bottom Line
This was a very bad week for DC’s Justice teams and both books have made their final appearance in this review (for the immediate future at least). Both books went out with a whimper, too. DC’s other books remained strong, thanks to the strength of Blackest Night. Dynamite and Vertigo were solid, as usual. Marvel had a very impressive week as well, with Hulk and Dark Wolverine being the lone duds. It’s 10:52 right now and I just want to get this posted. This December sees 5 weeks of Wednesdays but I don’t know how much will be coming out the 30th, since a quick look saw one DC book and no Marvel books. So everything is loaded into the four weeks. Oh well, it should be a good month of reading! Catch ya back here next week.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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