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Wow, this is a loaded week! I won’t even waste time with an introduction, just tell you that I had to plow through 29 books this week, 1 from Vertigo, 7 from DC, and 21 from Marvel. Yeah, my weekend was full!
Spoiler Alert
Marvel
-Amazing Spider-Man #595- This is the march towards #600. It’s an interesting issue and an equally interesting set-up. Spider-Man hates Norman Osborn but he always manages to finagle his way into Spider-Man and Parker’s life. Norman wants to bring Harry back into the fold but Harry is completely against it, until Menace shows up showing Harry that she’s pregnant with his kid. So Harry is back to working with his father and when Spider-Man finds out he doesn’t know what to make of it. So we have our set-up, let’s see if it can deliver. The jab to Bush aside (I don’t like mixing real-life politics with my reading entertainment), it was a suitable set-up for the five-part storyline. 1/1.
-Amazing Spider-Man: The Short Halloween #1- This was written by Bil Hader and Seth Meyers from SNL, but I haven’t watched that show in over 15 years so I have no idea who they are. It’s called the SHORT Halloween (a knock on Batman’s LONG Halloween) and focuses on Spider-Man getting confused with a drunk Spider-Man and a group of five absolutely awful F-list villains. It was funny, and it was unique, so mission accomplished for the SNL guys. 2/2.
-Avengers The Initiative #24- I thought I wouldn’t like this, since I usually don’t like the Initiative, but having the black ops Initiative infiltrating Hydra, with Hardball and Scorpion revealing their true nature and turning on the group. Kimodo’s broken up by these events while Osborn offers Taskmaster the position as leader of the new Initiative. That would be cool seeing Norman running these young trainees. 3/3.
-Avengers/Invaders #11- The Avengers gather their forces to battle the Red Skull. They show up to see some evil Nazi troops for next issue’s big showdown. This is more of a talking issue with people musing about the Cosmic Cube and why they shouldn’t be changing history. Still, the last page has me pumped for next issue. 4/4.
-Dark Reign: Elektra #3- Elektra is helped by the Night Nurse, only to have two jokes try and take out Elektra and the bounty on her head. She takes out one of the assassins while Hawkeye takes out the other. He wants Elektra all to himself. I am loving this interpretation of Elektra. 5/5.
-Dark Reign: The Hood #1- This combines the Hood’s criminal life (who is sleeping Madame Masque) and his normal life with his wife and young daughter. Oh, and White Fang shows up at the end! Yeah, I don’t know who White Fang is at all. He is apparently a villain from the Hood’s past. I hope they do some sort of story about this White Fang, otherwise it is just some guy fighting some villain who we don’t really know anything about. I do like the Hood as a character, and his double-life for a villain is quite interesting. 6/6.
-Guardians of the Galaxy #14- Things blow up for the Guardians. Warlock fights off Vulcan and makes an escape before he’s tracked by one of Vulcan’s magicians. Meanwhile, the rest of the Guardians try to talk to Black Bolt only to have Phyla take Crystal hostage when talking doesn’t work well. Both groups of the Guardians head to Knowhere, where both are followed by the Shi’ar and the Inhumans. Looks like the shit is gonna hit the fan and I can’t freakin’ wait. 7/7.
-Incredible Hercules #129- Hebe (Hercules’ wife) is after Herc and wants to find him to the chagrin of Hera. Hercules and Amadeus head to Hades to get Zeus, showing a whole bunch of dead heroes in limbo with a really funny commentary on comic characters dying. Anyway, Hercules finds Zeus, and he is in Pluto’s grasp. Another great mythologically filled issue. 8/8.
-Marvel Apes: Grunt Line #1- Ape X is captured by HAMMER in order for Norman to see how to get to this alternate ape dimension. He gets what he wants when Gibbon and others save him, though things blow up in Hammers face when the apes escape and they don’t get any of the information they wanted. The Apes face their own problem when they end up on a Zombie world. Sucks to be them! I like the Apes, but I don’t know how much more mileage they’ll get from them in the months to come after this. 9/9.
-Ms. Marvel #39- Ms. Marvel deals with an AIM faction in Atlanta by sending a meteor into the building, then tells Norman the real story after spinning it to the press. Ms. Marvel ends up stealing some MODOC babies when some energy being shows up for them at the end. An interesting issue. I don’t care for the MODOC stuff, but Ms. Marvel dealing with AIM was enough for this to earn a point. 10/10.
-New Avengers #53- The New Avengers still have Dr. Strange and they look for the next Sorcerer Supreme. The usual corny Bendis dialogue highlights this. They are looking for the Eye of Agomatto and they think it is on Daimon Hellstrom but it is actually with Brother (or Brudda) Voodoo. I didn’t really like the dialogue, as Bendis is kind of growing old with me and reading some of the great stuff on the stands this week exposes his writing somewhat. I just don’t care about Strange and who the new sorcerer is, especially with characters that no one really cares about, too. So Brother Voodoo is the new Sorcerer Supreme? Who cares? 10/11.
-Nova #25- Nova who is now Quasar finds that Worldmind has been undermined by Ego. He uses all his power and wits to take out Ego and regain his powers as Nova Prime. Ego is basically lobotomized and Nova is back to having Worldmind with him. Nova’s brother also looks for his lost friend who was slaughtered by the Shi’ar. Looks like Nova will be in this whole War of Kings thing, too. Another awesome offering from the Abnett/Lanning team. 11/12.
-Runaways #10- Molly goes to visit the X-Men but has a bad time there, even getting kidnapped by a guy who wants revenge on Molly’s parents. Wolverine ends up captured as well (since he was the guide for her day at the Mansion) and frees Molly. Molly decides to stay with her friends at the Runaways. There’s a second story with the team battling evil Serpents, which was quite a fun back-up story. This was a fresh single story, something that the Runaways needed and I hope Yost can revitalize this title after a few bumps in the road after BKV stopped working on the title. 12/13.
-The Stand: American Nightmares #3- This is probably the single best Steven King issue I have read. It features Larry Underwood and his woman, Rita, venturing underneath the pitch black Lincoln Tunnel to get to New Jersey. This was really creepy but it got the emotion across and was just a fantastic issue. 13/14.
-Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine #6- This series finally ended and it really delivered. Wolverine captures Betty and turns her over to SHIELD. Wolvie then finds Banner and wants to kill him. Fury shows up and tells Hulk he has Betty and leaves Hulk and Wolverine to head home themselves with a really funny ending scene. I got to hand it to Lindelof, he did a great job here. 14/15.
-Wolverine #72- Wolverine finds himself captured by Red Skull, who has taken over the world and wears Captain America’s outfit as a prize. Wolverine beheads Skull and heads home to pay off the sons of the Hulk and save his family, but his family is dead because the Hulk sons killed him. So Wolvie vows revenge, a revenge we will see in the Old Man Logan King-Size Special. Ha, what a farce that is. They can’t even finish the thing on time to the point where another issue was released after #72, and it’s not even over! It’s an enjoyable apocalyptic look at Wolverine. I only wish it were on time. 15/16.
-Wolverine First Class #15- Kitty wants to meet Thor and Wolvie arranges it, after a fight with Ulik of course. This was a fun time and with scripts by Peter David you know you can’t go wrong. 16/17.
-Wolverine Origins #36- Daken gets part of the Muramasa blade put onto his claw, then impales Logan when he learns Logan let Romulus run away. Daken didn’t use the killer blade, however. There’s a final tag on scene with Omega Red being brought into some prison. Daken can now kill Wolverine, adding another element to the ongoing father/son saga. 17/18.
-X-Force #15- There’s a lot going on. Cable runs into Stryfe and tries to save Hope. It doesn’t go well as Stryfe takes down Cable, Bishop, Wolverine and Elixir. Angel also resurrects Apocalypse and it looks like Apocalypse wants some revenge on Stryfe. I’m really digging the Messiah War story. 18/19.
-X-Men: Legacy #224- Xavier probes Rogue’s mind after the Shi’ar bail and he fixes the partitions in her mind to get her powers to mature, freeing her of her inability to touch people. Well, it only took about 20 years for her to get her powers under control and it should lead to a new start for her. 19/20.
-X-Men: Future History #1- This is just a handbook style book about many of the current events going on in the X-Universe right now, with a bunch of characters and old stories detailed to help make Messiah War make sense. 20/21.
DC
-Batman in Barcelona: Dragon’s Knight #1- I don’t know where this one-shot came from, but it was pretty damn good. Batman follows Killer Croc to Barcelona and acts as a knight taking out the dragon of legend. This was just all-out Batman action without any lingering storyline plots and just Bats kicking ass. I thought this was a really enjoyable one-shot, and I hope writer Mark Waid can deliver some more of these. 1/1.
-Batman: Gotham Gazette – Batman Alive?- This is the follow-up to the ‘Gotham Gazette – Batman Dead?’ one-shot, focusing on the same characters coming together in the wake of Batman’s disappearance with the most interesting thing being Vicki Vale piecing together that Batman was actually Bruce Wayne. This ties up the whole Battle for the Cowl thing nicely, though I wish it would’ve set up the new Bat titles coming out this summer. 2/2.
-Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink #1- As the title implies this focuses on Ink, a character we saw briefly in Final Crisis. He was a villain but is now a hero. He likes the heroism until he’s brought in for a murder he didn’t commit. He doesn’t know it but us readers know it was Ink’s son who did the murder and he seems to be possessed of some sort of evil demon now. This reminds me of the Spectre mini-series a while back where Spectre had to mete out some vengeance to host Allen’s son. Ink is a rather interesting character in the wake of Final Crisis and the fact that he wants to be a hero just for the perks is an interesting twist. 3/3.
-Justice League of America #33- Dr. Light heads to fight off Starbreaker as the rest of the League show up. Apparently Starbreaker killed someone called Dharma and this is supposed to mean that all hell is breaking loose. It’s bad enough I don’t know that many characters from DC, but throwing in Milestone characters into the flagship team title of DC seems counterproductive. I also heard McDuffie is leaving the title and the reasoning behind it seems dubious at best. I don’t know what to make of it. I wish DC put out some sort of primer issue on these Milestone characters to make me at least care about them and what they can do. Despite this fact, I found this issue enjoyable and Hardware was written well. I credit McDuffie with making this work so far. 4/4.
-Justice Society of America #27- This is the first issue post Geoff Johns, and it is written and drawn by the great Jerry Ordway. We see an old foe from the World War II era who once battled the JSA (Kung) and he takes the core group and drops them in Hiroshima as the Atom Bomb was being dropped. The rest of the JSA don’t know what to make of their disappearance and the ghostly presence that surrounds them. Ordway has continued some of the subtle plots Johns started but has also made these characters his own. 5/5.
-Superman #688- Mon-El learns his power failure is due to side effects of the “cure” Superman offered him. He doesn’t have much time to live, only about one year. In the midst of stealing Convikt-17 (I think that’s who it was) Mon-El realizes he doesn’t want to die and wants to live. Mon-El is turning into an interesting character and he’s a decent replacement for Superman for the time being. I wonder if he’ll make it out of this series alive. This is my favorite of the two Superman titles so far. 6/6.
-Trinity #52- And we’ve finally reached our end. The Trinity recounts their efforts in defeating the Crime Syndicate (timely arrival of their allies), Morgaine is defeating and captured, Despero is captured by the Lanterns and all the other plotlines are tied up very nicely. I loved how this was a contained 52-issue series that doesn’t force you into buying new titles to continue the story. Yes, there may be titles to spring out of this featuring some of these characters, but this was an entirely contained story and a well-told, well-drawn one at that. 7/7.
Vertigo
-Northlanders #17- This is a standalone issue featuring two Vikings (protectors of their towns) fighting to the death. To me it was the weakest story so far since I didn’t really get into the characters but still a great Viking story. 1/1.
Awards
-Book of the Week- The Stand #3 was just an amazing work of art and clearly is the winner here. I pretty much wrote all my feelings about it above and it was just awesome.
-Disappointment of the Week- There’s only one real winner and that’s New Avengers #53. I just don’t like the Sorcerer Supreme storyline at all.
-Cover of the Week- I have to give props to Mark Bagley and his awesome work on Trinity overall and in this case Trinity #52. This was a really cool tri-fold cover featuring Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in just classic poses.
-The Bottom Line- I’m just wiped out. It’s 11:00pm on Monday (the last full week of school!) and I’ve written about 29 books. Just another splendid week.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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