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No introduction today! I’m late and we’re off!
The Rundown – 4 DC and 15 Marvels for a total of 19.
Spoiler Alert
-DC-
-Batgirl #5- Batgirl battles Diesel (some fire-burning guy with gasoline for blood) and fares well, until Batman and Robin show up. This leads to a very interesting confrontation between the two where Batman (Drake) tells Gordon that she needs to pull the plug on this new Batgirl. Meanwhile, Stephanie gets in close with the son of a wealthy man (who seems to be involved in some nefarious things) and she ends up getting shot as a result. I loved the interplay between Robin and Batgirl. I’m really happy with how this title is progressing so far. 1/1.
-DCU Holiday Special 2009 #1- DC has really been nailing it on the head with these Holiday Specials the last few years. I loved the early 90’s Marvel versions because it featured multiple heart-felt stories featuring the heroes we know, including some not so obvious ones. The most recent ones have lacked that and have really focused on the current storylines of the time. Flash, Batman, Superman, Superboy, Martian Manhunter, Deadman, Captain Marvel, Red Tornado, Huntress, Ragman and Adam Strange all appear in here (among others) and while some stories are better than others this really captures the spirit of the holidays. I personally enjoyed the Sgt. Rock story and the Stille Nacht story. Definitely pick this one up, it is worth it. 2/2.
-Red Robin #7- Red Robin hightails it back to save Tam from the Council of Spiders. They manage to evade them long enough before running into Ra’s Al Ghul. Ra’s is immediately cut down, leaving Red Robin to deal with the entire Council of Spiders all by his lonesome. This title is definitely moving along nicely. 3/3.
-Secret Six #16- A much darker Black Alice makes her appearance in these pages and she wants to join the team. Black Alice is just a really cool character and I’m looking forward to how she functions in an already dysfunctional group.4/4.
-Marvel-
-Amazing Spider-Man #614- Electro ends up in the DB building and Spider-Man has a plan to stop him. He will cut off all power into the building. Their ensuing battle culminates in the DB building collapsing, breaking the back of Dexter in the process. JJJ looks on in shock as the paper he built crumbles into history. Electro is taken away but he’s met by Chameleon and Kraven’s wife. This is bringing the awesome. It was a fitting end to the DB, and Spidey’s rogues are being brought back in a very intelligent manner and this gauntlet stuff is really running hard now. 1/1.
-Dark X-Men #2- X-Man spirits away, going into the mindscape. Norman’s psychics try to find him, and they do, but they are all rendered brain-dead by the power of X-Man. X-Man gets up to date with the world and he doesn’t like what he sees. Dark Beast has a way to get to X-Man but what can they do against this omega level mutant? I hope this is bringing X-Man back for good. I like how Weapon Omega and Mimic are being treated here, too, because they aren’t as inherently evil as some of the other guys on the team. 2/2.
-Deadpool #18- Way continues his hot streak with this book, as Deadpool sets up the X-Men to make them look like heroes again, complete with the usual hijinx you’d get from Deadpool. It also showed Deadpool as more intelligent than other books portray. DP’s one of the better written characters in Marvel right now, and it really is a treat to be reading this book. 3/3.
-Incredible Hulk #605- Skaar takes on Mole Man and Tyrannus, which seemed to be set up by Bruce as a test. This gets the New Hulk into the public eye. Meanwhile, Lyra manages to beat Lady Zzzsazz before embarking on her search for She-Hulk. I wasn’t into the story, and the switching between artists was really jarring. It just seems like Bruce is acting out of character. 3/4.
-Nation X #1- This is an interesting mini-series. It doesn’t tell one big tale but a bunch of smaller ones focusing on mutants living on Asteroid M. We see Magneto (dealing with the ghosts of his old home), Nightcrawler and Wolverine on an interesting Road Trip, Ice Man, and Magik telling Peter not to live in the past. All four tales provided great depth to our characters and anyone currently reading X-Men should add this to their reading. 4/5.
-Punisher: Noir #4- Punisher ends in a somewhat predictable way (Castiglione gets revenge on those who killed his father), the police and governor don’t really mind since their main threat to crime is gone. It was predictable but it kept with the Castle character, even adding the wrinkle of jumping through generations. I liked the tag at the end, with Punisher seeing a new evil to take care of; Hitler. This is an acceptable entry into the Punisher mythos. 5/6.
-Realm of Kings: Imperial Guard #2- Here we have the Starjammers and the Imperial Guard teaming up to enter the Fissure and getting eaten by a monstrous living organism that reminds me of a bigger version of the animal the Brood fly in. This hasn’t separated itself from the pack yet in terms of adding anything new to the Fissure. Yeah, it’s filled with monsters we’ve never seen, so what? I do think that what makes me like this is the bitterness between the Jammers and the Imperial Guard. It’s nothing new, but the writing gets it one free pass. I hope we see some real developments next issue. 6/7.
-Spider-Man: Secret Wars #1- This is an All Ages version of Secret Wars with Spidey as our main character. I bought it to see how it went and I am undecided after reading the first issue. This issue starts in the middle (with the gang under the mountain) and it heads back and forth between present and past and Spidey questioning the Hulk. Hulk confronts Spidey about it afterwards and he tells him to man up and tell him things to his face. The storytelling method of switching between past and present didn’t work here, as huge gaps of story were left out to get to the point under the mountain. I think this will be like key moments of the original Secret Wars told here with a lot of elements missing. As a story it just didn’t work. 6/8.
-Uncanny X-Men First Class #6- The X-Men continue battling the Knight of Hykon. Lilandra has troubling news for the team, they go from planet to planet, the six of them, fighting it out and always ending the life of the planet. In fact, it was their fighting on the sun that led to Phoenix becoming Phoenix. In fact, Phoenix is the only one who is able to even stand up against these knights and that brings all six of them together to converge on her. The X-Men may have an ace up their sleeve in Nightcrawler, who has found himself in their secret interdimensional trophy room with Xavier. This is doing what Untold Tales of Spider-Man did; it keeps things in continuity while adding little touches that expand on those stories while keeping these stories fresh and original. 7/9.
-Web of Spider-Man #3- We start with a Rhino tale that doesn’t add anything to his character (he’s dumb, but he finishes his job). Luckily Spider-Girl is in this comic to save it. May looks for her clone (aptly named April) and Simone; both of whom were kidnapped by the Goblin. April betrays May by telling Goblin she will lure May there into a trap and May falls for it. I will keep buying this as long as May is in here, and I need to catch up with ASM Family to get the complete ASG run! There’s a back-up of JJJ Sr. and May that showed that even though they are old they are still having fun. This issue was worth the price of admission only because of May, and nothing else. 8/10.
-What If? World War Hulk #1- This is more like it! Manhattan and the heroes on it are destroyed in the midst of World War Hulk and this allows the Skrulls to decisively take over. Banner is still alive on Manhattan and Vision recruits him into their group to end the Skrull threat. Little does anyone know that the Skrulls still have a sleeper in the rebel group (Wasp) and that sleeper decisively puts an end to all humans that pose a threat. Hulk is the only one alive and if he can’t have the world than no one can. He summons Silver Surfer to get Galactus to destroy the world and Galactus does. Surfer leaves as a herald leaving Hulk as the man for the job. This was told from the side of the Skrull and it had a fantastic ending that played on the He Loves You thing and this is the creativity that was sorely lacking from last issue. 9/11.
-Wolverine: Under The Boardwalk #1- For once I got a Wolvie one-shot and wasn’t immediately disappointed with it. Wolvie gets a mysterious text asking to come back to the boardwalk where he was once beaten years ago by a mob boss. Memories flood back as Wolvie tries to piece together the seeds of the mystery. He manages to solve what was going on, and ties up the story in a nice gesture at the end. This won’t be remembered in the Wolvie mythos at all, since it was a one-shot title, but it shows Wolvie as a troubled soul (which he is) who can’t escape his past. 10/12.
-X-Men Forever #13- Kitty and Ororo are trapped with Magik as the other X-Men make their escape. Kitty is drawn to the dark side with Magik which isn’t a surprising development given what has happened in this series. A Beast/Jean romance is also possibly teased. This isn’t bothered by an extra 17 years of X-Men continuity between 1992-2009 that the other X-titles are so it is actually simple to follow. We have the characters we all know facing things they never had before, and Claremont seems rejuvenated here. Sometimes his Exiles work seemed too clichéd and sometimes sloppy but I’m able to get into the characters here and like his great run on the title in his past he’s able to keep many different stories running at once. 11/13.
-X-Men Noir: Mark of Cain #1- Xavier is freed from prison, strange things are going on at Genosha, and the Cyttorak Temple is involved. This was actually hard to follow and looking at it one day after reading it I find I have no idea what was going on. This could be a problem with X-Men titles. Whereas with Spider-Man, Cage, Punisher and Daredevil you only have one person to focus on, here you have almost dozens of characters to “noir-ize” and sometimes people can get lost in the shuffle and characters could be introduced with no real backstory or origin. I’m just not that into this yet. 11/14.
-X Necrosha: The Gathering #1- This one-shot is similar to the Nation X mini-series. We have small stories focusing on how Selene gathered her group of mutants and why. It’s great to see Blink back in the fold, and this is a truly devious group of villains that the X-Men have to deal with. This is a necessary Necrosha X tie-in to read to get some more info on these characters. 12/15.
-The Bottom Line- This was a very solid week for both companies. The Bat books in DC have been nothing short of awesome lately and next week we have the regular Batman title as well as an 80-page giant that should be interesting. Plus, DC’s Holiday Special was a great treat that gets me in the mood for Christmas. I actually brought up all the rest of my Holiday Specials and I want to write some sort of review of them before Christmas this year, which I hope I can get to. Marvel was pretty solid, too, but I find there are too many books going pointless. One I won’t be getting in a few months (Hulk, I am dropping it after Fall of the Hulks), and two are mini-series (X-Men Noir and Spider-Man) so it shouldn’t clutter these pages for much longer. The X-Titles have been red hot, What if finally delivered and Spider-Girl is rocking (as usual) and that leaves me happy for the week. Well, this is late so I better end this and start on next week’s, which is due in only 4 days!
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