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This is a really big week thanks to one primary title. Captain America celebrates the 600th issue of the character’s long career dating back to 1941. That is a huge milestone. I hope that it can keep up with that numbering, though it is really more a designer number more than anything, since those 600 issues are spread over the Captain America Comics titles, his Tales of Suspense appearances, his continuation from that in Cap #100, and the 3 other shorter runs in a solo title before this current one came to be. I am really looking forward to Cap #600, which just looks loaded with stories and content. So we have 2 Dynamite titles, 3 DC titles and 19 Marvel titles, though Cap #600 could really count for two books based on its size.
Spoiler Alert
Marvel
-All-New Savage She-Hulk #3- She-Hulk battles Captain Marvel and Daken and is captured by Norman. We see more of her origin, how she destroyed something important in the creation of new offspring in her world. Norman wants to know why she wants to kill him but she doesn’t want to kill him, she wants to mate with him! That’s a funny twist. There’s a back-up of the new She-Hulk that is uninteresting. 1/1.
-Cable #15- Stryfe steals Hope, X-Force finds out who is creating the Chronal Net (Kiden Nixon, of NYX fame), Apocalypse is restored, Cable battles Stryfe and all seems lost for X-Force by the end of the issue. Messiah War has been a really enjoyable so far. 2/2.
-Captain America #600- This is a massive $5 issue that is just jam-packed with stuff. There’s a reprint of Cap’s origin as done by Alex Ross, then the story by Brubaker and a horde of artists. It is really just a whole bunch of the characters we’ve seen in the title dealing with the effects of Cap’s death 1 year ago MT (Marvel Time). We see Sharon finding the gun that she had and claiming that Cap can still be saved. The other Steve Rogers is still around, the female Bucky of the Onslaught Universe finds Isaiah Bradley and these two will play a role in Cap’s universe in the time to come. Crossbones finds Sin in the same prison, Red Skull is going crazy, and the Avengers attend the memorial of Cap which Iron Patriot interrupts. Roger Stern writes a story about some of the minor characters he wrote when he was on the title that is another touching memorial. There’s a good story about a man selling his Cap memorabilia to buy a comic company and put a man out of business who wants to tarnish Cap. There’s a really cool essay by Cap creator Joe Simon about the bulletin board he used with the Cap Images on it. Two are reprinted and look to be in very good shape. There’s also a reprint from Captain America Comics #16 where Red Skull finds out Cap’s identity. Finally, there’s a cover gallery of all the Cap covers since 1941. Oddly enough, all the Tales of Suspense comics are shown, from #1-99, instead of just the ones he was on. Awesome issue and I would’ve paid double for this. 3/3.
-Captain Britain & MI13 #14- Dracula taking Britain last issue was just a trick by Cap and the MI13 to see what Drac’s plans were and have him in a dream-state almost. Drac finds this out and plans to attack right away, but not before the MI13 have another ace up their sleeve in the vampires Drac is using actually working for them. Doom offers Drac an ace of his own, Meggan (Cap’s wife) is on his ship. That is an awesome ace for Drac to have, one that was played up in the Annual. This is a very well-written storyline, with all the plot points being subtly introduced as we head to the conclusion. 4/4.
-Dark Reign: Fantastic Four #4- Reed realizes that in order for the world to be safe, it all falls on him and his brilliant mind. He turns off the bridge and the rest of the FF come back to our world as Norman goes after Valeria and Franklin for standing up to him. The FF are not happy about this and tell Norman this at the end of the issue. I sense a fight coming next week! 5/5.
-Dark Reign: Hawkeye #3- Hawkeye starts getting crazier and crazier, committing murders he doesn’t remember and seeing multiple Bullseye’s in front of him. We knew this guy was insane and this mini just proves that and it proves that in a really well-written way. We can actually see and feel how demented this guy is. 6/6.
-Dark Reign: Mr. Negative #1- Mr. Negative decides to go up against The Hood for control of Chinatown. Of course, since Mr. Negative is the boss of Aunt May at FEAST, Spidey ends up involved and unwittingly ends up as a pawn in the war between the two gang leaders. Mr. Negative was an interesting character when he was introduced and I like how this duel between Hood and Negative is playing out, and Spidey’s involvement in it all. I hope it has ramifications in the Spidey series. 7/7.
-Dark Reign: Young Avengers #2- The Young Avengers meet the New Young Avengers and learn how Coat of Arms came up with the whole thing based on some sort of weird obsession with Norman. Executioner and Enchantress are the real leaders of the team and agree to “try out” to be on the real Young Avengers. Some snake woman is revealed to be Executioner’s mother. So the mother is evil but I still don’t know who it is. I have to say, I was ready to give this no points but the Coat of Arms segment saved this title. 8/8.
-Incognito #4- Our boy Zack Overkill is captured by some secret government agency and they torture him and then depower him with drugs. They want to keep tabs on him and have him lure in other bad guys. Black Death is involved in this, too. Finally, Overkill escapes when Ava Destruction saves him from Zoe Zeppelin. Another great noir-issue from the pairing of Brubaker and Phillips. 9/9.
-Invincible Iron Man #14- Tony is slowly losing his mind as he deletes it and runs into Crimson Dynamo. He borrows his armor to go to an old safehouse of his in Russia. He heads over there and is met by Pepper. Tony attacks Pepper (because he’s going crazy, ya know) and all this is viewed by Madame Masque, who is working for Norman. Wasn’t she with The Hood though? Continuity aside, Tony’s fall from grace is fun to read. 10/10.
-Marvel Zombies 4 #3- The Hood decides to help out the Midnight Sons just to get rid of the Zombie threat. Jennifer Kale is offered a deal with the devil that she refuses. However, when Man-Thing is killed by some acid rain and Jack Russell succumbs to the Zombie virus, Kale does make that deal with Dormammu to rid the island of the Zombie virus before the island is nuked. I really thought this story had NOTHING left in the tank, but Van Lente has penned probably one of my favorite Zombie stories so far using characters that aren’t well-known in the Marvel Universe. 11/11.
-Mighty Avengers #26- Pym and the Avengers invade the Baxter Building and Pym squares off with Richards in a battle of the brains. Pym shows Richards why he wants the device and when Richards sees it (we don’t) he gives it to him. So Pym creates his device, Salvation Two, using Jacosta as the final ingredient. The fighting is cool, but the Jacosta/Pym relationship and the oddities of Pym, doing things that are questionable, is what brings me back to the title. 12/12.
-Punisher #6- Punisher invades another Osborn weapons stronghold as Microchip V2 learns how cold Punisher is. He doesn’t want to get too close, even too his allies, so he won’t be effected when they die. The Hood lays out the plan to the resurrected villains. The Punisher was really Scourge and that if they want to remain alive, they must kill Punisher. There’s one catch, if they die, they’re done. So one pair kidnap GW Bridge’s wife to get the location of Castle. I didn’t know who these villains were last issue but this includes a great little summary of these unknown characters, their powers, and how they died. I did wonder who this Scourge was so I did a quick look-up in the Marvel website and saw this was a team of people who killed super-criminals. I like that Punisher has new blood to kill, too. 13/13.
-Ultimatum: Spider-Man Requiem #1- I can’t believe that Bagley, after drawing 52 issues of the weekly Trinity, was able to draw pretty much this whole issue. He’s unbelievable with his speed and quality and it makes you wonder about people who can’t even get monthlies out on time, while he gets weeklies out on time, every time. So Spider-Man we believe is dead, just like almost everyone else. Jameson, Robertson and Urich head to the DB to write about the events and Jameson wants to give Spidey his due. He remembers a past event where Spider-Man fought with Iron Man against Hydra to save Mary-Jane (who was interviewing Stark at the time). The past sequences were drawn by Bagley and the current sequences by Immonen. We end with Urich telling Jameson what he’s writing better be good because it’s Spidey’s obituary. I can’t believe that Spider-Man is actually dead but I guess we’ll see. This was really well-done and the Bendis/Bagley combination is always a great pairing. 14/14.
-War of Kings: Ascension #3- Chris Powell tries to take control back of the Darkhawk. It seems that the human brain is something the Raptors can’t figure out. The Darkhawks themselves fight Blastaar and show him they can take the Cosmic Rod from him anytime. He submits to their team-up. The Darkhawk that Powell is inside heads off and kills Lilandra. Powell finally takes control of the suit, but only after Lilandra has been killed and the whole of the Shi’ar are after him. That’s some luck there. Abnett and Lanning wrote this? Is there a question as to what this gets? War of Kings, as well as the Annihilation stuff they’ve done, are the best events that Marvel has had over the last three years. 15/15.
-Wolverine: Origins #37- Wolverine tries to set up Romulus by trailing him to an old prison, but Romulus has stayed one step ahead the whole time and Wolvie didn’t realize he was walking into a trap and that Omega Red was waiting for him. Daniel Way has done a great job with this Romulus character since the beginning of this series. This man in shadows has remained in shadows but shows that he has even more guile than Wolverine by setting up yet another trap for him to fall into. 16/16.
-X-Men: Legacy #225- Xavier heads to the base of the Acolytes and defeats them by talking to Exodus. This was a talking issue with Xavier telling the Acolytes that, “hey, mutants are almost extinct, we need to work together or all die off.” Most of the Acolytes go with Xavier, though some remain on their own. After reading some of the more action-packed issues this felt like it was lacking something, but this is showing a new side of Xavier and his approach to helping out mutant-kind. 17/17.
-X-Men: Origins – Gambit #1- This is an origin of Gambit and how he was exiled from the guild in Louisiana and how he led the Marauders to the Morlocks for the Mutant Massacre. There was nothing groundbreaking here but was a nice way for new readers to know a little bit more about Gambit. 18/18.
-Young Allies Comics – Marvel 70th Anniversary #1- The main story here is an awesome one of Bucky finding two of his old Allies friends who are still alive and chatting with them about old times. I am a sucker for WWII veteran stories like this so this gets an easy recommendation from me. It’s kind of bittersweet a story like this. We are losing so many of the WWII veterans’ everyday and slowly but surely that “Greatest Generation,” is dying off. I don’t know if America was ever as patriotic as during those times. People joined the military by the busload to combat Hitler and the Nazi forces threatening to take over the world. I don’t think that sort of union of a whole country toward a common goal will ever occur again. 19/19.
DC
-Action Comics Annual #12- This is an origin of Flamebird and Nightwing, or Thara Ak-Var and Christopher Kent. They were tied together from separate worlds (Thara on Kandor and Chris in the Phantom Zone) so it was meant to be that these two would fight together in Superman’s absence. There’s a lot of story going on here and for $5.00 it tells a really full story. You may not know these characters but that didn’t matter, that’s how strong the writing was. 1/1.
-Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #2- The Japanese superheroes are growing on me. They are brought to a new apartment and taken away from news. This is done so that they can’t see what’s going in Japan. They soon find out but have to stop a mind-control drug from being unleashed on the world first. The Twitterati posts make this series for me. I really like this one so far. 2/2.
-Superman/Batman #61- Superman and Batman battle the Mash-Up super-villains now when Batman realizes the villain is Doctor Destiny who is trapping Zatanna and Raven in his dream-world, too. Of course Batman and Superman finally defeat Destiny. The Mash-Up stuff was awesome. 3/3.
Dynamite
-Masquerade #4- Masquerade deals with the bleak emptiness of the urn and upon her escape realizes she can take over people’s bodies. That will play into the new series. Masquerade also ties up loose end with her life as we close the mini-series. It was a self-contained story that will still have repercussions in the Project Superpowers universe. 1/1.
-Project Superpowers 2 #0- Black Terror and his gang of heroes gets word from the Scarab that the president and secret cabal called Supremacy (which Scarab is in) want to nuke Manhattan, the home of the heroes. So Black Terror decides to mount an offensive against the Supremacy before this can happen. The heroes are actually outmatched, and their actions of invading DC has caught the eye of the Inheritors, the former sidekicks, and they also want a piece of Black Terror. This was a really cool set-up to show where things are going for the second chapter of Project: Superpowers.
Awards
-Book of the Week- I’m going to give this award to Captain America #600. It was just so jam-packed full of stuff that it’s astonishing you could get all that awesome stuff for only $5.00. The memorial of Cap is well worth the money.
-Disappointment of the Week- I’d have to say this winner will remain blank another week.
-Cover of the Week- Project Superpowers 2 #0 was just an awesome cover, especially the image of Black Terror and his sword in the middle of the Pentagon. It’s just visually striking. However, that doesn’t win the award because it is only the middle of a three-cover image. Captain America #600 is the real winner this week. Alex just drew another awesome image of Cap, with the old Cap in the background.
-The Bottom Line- Well, the awards are all in and we have Captain America standing above the rest in the Book of the Week Count, with 7 titles overall, edging out Spider-Man, which still has 6. This week was a lot of fun to read and get through, although I was kind of going against the clock to get this finished. Cap #600 comes highly recommended from me.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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