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Well, I updated my pull list and about 20 titles have been deleted. That makes my wallet very happy and honestly, the titles I cut won’t be missed by me. In fact, I feel very refreshed right now. Last week was a down week and I think this one will be better. The breakdown is similar to the first week as last week, with 2 Dynamite comic books, 4 DC titles and 14 Marvels. That’s a nice number of 20 and that is a completely manageable number for one week’s reading.
Spoiler Alert
Dynamite
-Project Superpowers: Meet The Bad Guys #3- We focus in on Samson fighting the half-shark, half-man, all-demon named Dagon. It’s a battle of biblical proportions, witnessed by Hydro. He doesn’t quite know what to make of the battle, since he can’t see Dagon. Dagon promises to be back. This wasn’t as good as other PS titles have been, and I don’t know if Dagon is as interesting a villain as the previous two villains we’ve seen in these pages. That being said, under Ross’ direction characters like Samson have a new lease on life and this series has some serious legs. 1/1.
-Project Superpowers 2 #4- Samson can’t believe he was injured by Capt. Future, since only a god can hurt him. As the heroes regroups Masquerade is unsure if she can be counted on. The other “Scarlet Sisters,” Woman in Red and Lady Satan, tell her that they won’t let that happen. So Capt. Future comes back looking for Flame, and mentioning something about Prometheus’ flame. He shoots a hole through Samson and when Masquerade takes control of Future she finds a very troubling fact: that Future is actually Zeus. That was a well-done reveal. This was, and continues to be, awesome. The characters are well-written and little scenes like the ones with the Scarlet Sisters adds another level to the enjoyment of these comics. 2/2.
DC
-Batman: The Unseen #3- Moench and Kelley continue their untold tale of Bruce Wayne. The Invisible Man, who is being called Meat Man, decides not to kill Black Mask, due to their mutual hate of Bruce Wayne. He does kill two people who have wronged him in the past and this time there are witnesses. Batman figures out who the murderer is and plays a hunch as to the next victim. He stops the Meat Man from killing but he can’t contain the unseen man and he escapes. This just reeks of coolness, with a great villain who has the same psychological problems that all of Batman’s best villains have. 1/1.
-Batman: The Widening Gyre #3- Batman escapes from his villain thanks to Robin and we follow Batman on a very interesting tour of the next few weeks. An old flame is in his life, and he’s been going back and forth to her island, spending the days with her and his nights as Batman. He even meets the new masked man on the scene (his name is Baphomet) and their conversation is interesting to say the least. Batman seems a bit changed under the cowl, and Robin calls him out on it. The issue ends on a light turn, with Aquaman learning of Batman’s relationship and heading off to tell the gang. I don’t know where this is going yet, is this about Batman trying to have a personal life, Baphomet turning out to be a villain, or a combination of the two? (I’m thinking maybe the girl hired Baphomet to try and keep Batman away from Gotham and all to herself). Either way, it’s a story that has two distinct themes and both are interesting to this point. 2/2.
-Superman: World of New Krypton #9- Superman calms the fears of the Kryptonians, the Thanagarians and Jemm from Saturn. Wow, what impressive action. I just tuned out of this title with all my event fatigue. This started off strong but now it’s getting lost in a rut of other aliens showing up and doing nothing. Adam Strange pops up at the end for no real reason. 2/3.
-Secret Six #15- Ostrander returns to the character he created to give us a glimpse at the psyche of Deadshot and how the absence of Batman is causing him to question why he’s still alive while good people like Batman and his son are not. I enjoyed this look at the broken psyche of the assassin. 3/4.
Marvel
-Amazing Spider-Man #610- Spidey deals with Raptor thanks to the timely appearance of Kaine. He even preserves his identity and saves his cousins and Harry as Raptor gets away with Kaine. When Kaine finds out that Raptor lied to him about his revenge, he chokes him out. This was the first disappointing issue of Spider-Man that I can remember. It seems like it was the start of a story that never got off the ground. Was Raptor ever considered as anything more than a 3-issue guy that would mention Ben Reilly or was there an underlying purpose? The back and forth for the art pulled me out of the story and it wasn’t as tight as the previous issues have been. 0/1.
-Assault on New Olympus #1- All that’s been building in Hercules has led to this. Cho and Athena are looking for Hercules to warn him of Hera and Osborn’s Continuum. Continuum is the gods way of extinguishing life on earth like a great flood. There’s some really cool stories here, from Hercules fighting Spider-Man after Peter is hitting on Herc’s wife, and Hercules getting the aid of the New Avengers and Spider-Man to stop Hera. The Agents of Atlas (and Venus) make an appearance as Venus starts acting like a siren at the behest of Phorcys. The New Olympus story has started off well, with Hercules literally taking on the rest of the gods to stop the human population from being exterminated. 1/2.
-Astonishing X-Men #32- The Sentinals made from flesh of Dead X-Men allies is defeated, but not after shooting out some Brood from its fingers. It seems that someone is using Hank’s research to try and exterminate the mutant race. Wow, people want to get rid of the mutants? Didn’t we read stuff like this already in recent issues of X-Force? Where in continuity does this take place? And the Brood? Is it a right of passage for young female X-Men members to have to fight the Brood (like Kitty did?). I just don’t get this so far, how it fits in other X-stories and why I should care that people want to get rid of mutants. 1/3.
-Captain America Reborn #4- Things are getting clearer for what Doom and Red Skull have planned for Cap. Doom finds Cap in the timestream and brings him back to the present and now Red Skull is in control of Steve. Sharon is there to witness it all. Well, we have Cap’s body back at least. I don’t think Red Skull will remain in control for long. Is it just me, or is the return of Cap been a bit subdued and not as great as his death was. Was his return always planned like this or was it rushed out? I have a feeling we’ve seen Skull take over Cap’s body before but I can’t be sure. This has been a bit underwhelming so far but it’s been enjoyable and I can’t fault it in that regard. 2/4.
-Deadpool Team-Up #899- What I love about Deadpool comics is that they have a real fun feel to them. They tell a complete story (usually an inane one) with fun writing along the way and it’s sole purpose is to entertain. This team-up pairs Deadpool and Hercules as they take on Arcade and Nightmare. The way Deadpool gets through adversity here is classic Deadpool. 3/5.
-House of M: Masters of Evil #4- It all comes crashing down for the sapien hero, The Hood. Magneto frames one of his associates for murder and now he has an all-clear to invade Santo Rico. Some of the humans leave, others stay and the ones who stay (including Hood) are killed. The revolution is dead, long live the revolution. Magneto did make a martyr of the Hood and his name lives on in underground sapien leagues. This was a great twist on the character of the Hood and how he became a hero while still being what we would call a villain. It’s the shades of gray that make villains interesting. They think they are doing right but their views are totally skewed. 4/6.
-Marvel Zombies: Evil Evolution #1- This was a combination of the Marvel Apes and Marvel Zombies universe. It’s monkeys versus zombies. I had fun reading it and the Prime Eight that preceded this was adequately explained and summarized. Monkeys vs. Zombies. Where else but Marvel? 5/7.
-Nova #31- Nova heads out to find the wanted Darkhawk. He’s wanted for killing Lilandra. Nova finds him and after a misunderstanding they talk it out. However, the planet they are on starts getting destroyed and they are separated. Nova is then attacked by the other Darkhawk and realizes that there is more than one Darkhawk. Abnett & Lanning are really setting up a great cosmic universe and all these characters are intertwined. Plus, they aren’t leaving plot lines unresolved from their big events. 6/8.
-Psylocke #1- Why not have a mini-series for Psylocke? I guess this is going to talk about her revival. She heads out to Japan (with Wolverine who quickly leaves) and she declares that Matsu’o is going to die. That’s great. Only I don’t know who Matsu’o is and it wasn’t adequately explained here. Wikipedia tells me he was responsible for Psylocke’s body swap back in X-Men #255. Like I said, it was vaguely mentioned and immediately kind of put me off to this. 6/9.
-Strange Tales #3- The conclusion to the indie-feeling Strange Tales was the best yet. There’s a samurai version of the Hulk, a FF April Fool’s Day tale, a Morbius/Beast battle, and a really interesting Molecule Man/Nightcrawler confrontation. This was the perfect length for tales like this and Strange Tales may be one of the better mini-series that Marvel has done in quite a while. 7/10.
-The Torch #3- The Torch is being controlled by AIM but he’s started to get aware of what he’s doing. Toro breaks free and stops the mind-control. Unfortunately for our heroes, Mad Thinker’s mind control serum has spilled out into the water and infecting Atlantis. A mind-controlled Namor? That’s not good. What is good is that we’ve brought in another one of the Golden Age Trinity. The story has been excellent so far and why not bring the Torch and Toro back to the Marvel-verse? 8/11.
-Ultimate Spider-Man #4- MJ is attacked by saved the Hood and she freaks out when talking about it with Peter the next day. Peter is pulled away from the drama by the Hulk attacking the Queensborough Bridge, but it is just a ruse by Mysterio to subdue Spidey, which he does. There was WAY too much dialogue here that wasn’t anywhere near as engrossing as earlier Ultimate Spider-man issues and the art is just terrible. The heads look like Stewie Griffin heads and it’s completely against what everyone else has drawn Peter Parker to be. 8/12.
-X-Men Origins: Iceman #1- As usual with the Origins stories, this just retells the origin of Iceman to newer readers who may not know the nuts and bolts of the how the character became who he was. It really summarizes the events of the back-up stories in the Silver Age X-Men comics. This was well-illustrated and I thought did a fine job with Iceman’s origin. 9/13.
-X-Men vs. Agents of Atlas #2- This just wraps up the story with Atlas and the X-Men stopping their mind-control and teaming up to find Venus. She’s branded by Aphrodite and targeted by Phorcys (which we’ll see in Assault on New Olympus). It had good action and it finished off what we saw in the first issue so it did its job. 10/14.
-The Bottom Line-
Sigh. Well, what can you do? I trimmed this down and still 5 books were not worth the money. One was a surprise (Spider-Man was a rare miss) but the rest had serious issues that need to be resolved. World of New Krypton has run out of steam, Astonishing X-Men can’t regain the footing it had after the first arc of Cassady and Whedon and Psylocke’s first issue didn’t grab me in. On the plus side, Jim Ross is on a roll with his Project Superpowers books and his Torch mini-series and his stuff has been a bright light these last few months. Strange Tales also deserves a shout-out for being just full of wild concepts and ideas. I did feel slightly rejuvenated this week and this thing is on time so I hope this can only mean things are looking up. Of course, a large part of that has to do with the comics coming down the line and how good they can be.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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