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So I was finally early with a TPL and so, with no days off this week, I head to the LCS and pick up a back-breaking 23 books! How will I finish this? The breakdown looks like this: 11 Marvels and 12 DC’s. I can’t delay anymore, let’s get to the reviews.
Spoilers Ahead
The Main Event:
-Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24- One More Day limps on with this story of Spider-Man meeting with Doctor Strange to try and find a way to cure Aunt May. He leaves Strange and meets a strange red-headed girl offering to help. This was not great at all, and definitely worth the build-up.
-Green Lantern #24- Hell on Earth ensues as the Sinestro Corps attack Earth, and Parallax goes after Hal’s brother. Hal fights Parallax and the two of them manage to defeat the Parallax virus! The virus is still alive and to the surprise of the Lanterns, two Guardians show up and trap the virus in four separate re-energizing lanterns. The Lanterns recite their vow and the fight is on, biatches.
Marvel
-Amazing Spider-Girl #13- This is a multi-tiered story where May regrets the actions that caused her brother to be deaf and when she finally thinks she is back on track her boyfriend, Gene, breaks up with her since she just wants to be with him when he wants to be with her. Meanwhile, Hobgoblin meets with Mindworm to plot to take down Black Tarantula and Spider-Girl.
-Ghost Rider #16- This was an odd story for me. Ghost Rider fights one of Lucifer’s avatars. He rides off and sees two more possessed men, and destroys them. Meanwhile, the angels hide from Ghost Rider’s view though Ghost Rider makes a reference to help he has. Blaze’s girlfriend, (Roxanne I assume) finds a dead body in her truck.
-Heroes for Hire #14- Black Cat is pissed when she learns that Paladin is dead, but he’s really alive and offers to help the Heroes find Colleen and Tarantula, for a fee. The two of them are in Madison Square Garden being tortured. The Heroes show up and see Humbug’s new appearance, he is becoming more bug-like. They are really milking this World War Hulk thing in the Heroes for Hire and I wonder when they will return to original stories, or if they will. There doesn’t appear to be a December solicitation.
-New Avengers #35- I love the bait and switch they have on the cover. Wolverine is entrapped by the Venom virus! Open up the book and there is one panel of the New Avengers and the crisis in New York City. The rest focuses on The Hood gathering all the villains together and promising them money beyond their wildest dreams and that heroes won’t be a problem. He even makes an example of Tigra by beating her up and threatening her mother. All this while being recorded. It wasn’t a bad issue but it did have a very misleading cover.
-New Avengers/Transformers #4- The New Avengers and Autobots team up, with Doom aiding them, to defeat the Decepticons and Megatron. The Autobots leave when the Decepticons are defeated and the Latveria war is over, and the Avengers don’t see them leave. They fly off and is their Quinjet a transformer? Looks like a sequel! Eventually. It was a good DDP/Marvel team-up with a decent ending.
-New Warriors #5- The New Warriors continue battling the Zodiac and can only survive when Sofia intervenes. She gets very badly injured but the Zodiac escape. They return back home and Night Thrasher says he is disbanding the team. SHIELD also questions Black Panther about backing the team. This is just like all the other issues so far, not too interesting.
-Nova #7- Nova is still under control of the Phalanx but there’s something inside of him that’s fighting it. The Worldmind is still alive in his head and using 80% of his resources to fight off the Phalanx and even Richard’s inner self is there. They manage to break free and Nova leaves the Kree galaxy, with Gamora and Drax in hot pursuit. As Nova flies off he is told by the Worldmind to fly into a wormhole of sorts and ends up in an uncharted part of the universe. Gamora and Drax follow but are two light years away from Nova.
-Punisher War Journal #12- This was an excellent story featuring Frank Castle fighting for the little people stuck in NYC. He helps a family try to leave but must defeat Mung, a bug-like creature intent on hurting humans. Frank fights this being, with a Venom-symbiote like armor and defeats him! Frank is a hero and escapes New York with the family he saved. This improves on the Front Line theme of being inside the War but not focusing on the main characters and more on a human level.
-Wolverine #58- Wolverine is still brain dead and Strange knows why. Logan’s soul is gone. He steals the body from Tony and SHIELD and enters purgatory to help save Wolverine. We learn that every time Wolverine dies he faces Lazear (an anagram for Azrael, the angel of death) and Wolverine has always defeated him to return to life and even defeated him once on Earth, during World War One. It seems Wolverine lost another love and didn’t defeat Azrael the last time, which is why he is brain dead. This was a very good issue and I really enjoyed Chaykin’s art on it. I am not a huge fan of Chaykin but his style fit this issue.
-World War Hulk Front Line #5- Sally goes back to drinking and meets Ben in time to see him get trampled by New Yorkers trying to leave. JJJ has a confession to make to Robbie but we don’t hear it. Moving onto the second story we see that Korg told Arch-E not to interfere with human meddlings and when a homeless woman thanked Arch-E for inadvertently helping her, his logistics got all crazy and he exploded. Yep, Korg’s programming killed Arch-E.
DC
-Batman Confidential #10- This Joker origin arc continues. Batman has gotten some mobsters to get rid of Joker but they want to torture him first. The Joker is crazy and doesn’t really care about the abuse, escapes and kills them. He ends up getting dropped in a vat of poisonous gas but against all odds escapes, albeit disfigured. This is still very good, though the art can be annoying at times (the eyes especially looking way too far apart).
-Black Adam #3- Black Adam is told by Faustus he needs the amulet of Isis to revive her since her skeleton is not complete. Black Adam goes in search for it and finds the first piece in the possession of Hawkman. They fight and Adam escapes. The JLA are now on his case and learn some group is trying to take him out for a huge payout. Black Adam bathes in water and gets shot as he leaves. It seems that Talia Al Ghul is involved somehow. Not too crazy about the story or the art, especially since we’ve seen Adam already in Countdown.
-Booster Gold #3- Booster and Rip learn of a scheme by some villain to travel back in time to kill the doctor who delivered Jonathan Kent whereby the Jonathan would die and Superman would fall into the hands of the Luthor’s where Lex would kill a teenage Superman out of jealousy. So Booster goes back in time, runs into Jonah Hex, they have a drinking game and Jonah tells him what he knows about the murderer. So the mystery villain, wearing a Supernova costume, battles an inebriated Booster and Supernova escapes into the timestream. Booster takes over the controls of Rip’s ship and they crash into the Flash and Bart who are traveling on their timestream device. Oops. Another awesome issue from the team of Johns and Jurgens.
-Captain Carrot and the Final Ark!- Captain Carrot is at the Sandy Eggo Comic-Con as his secret identity when Salamandroid attacks. He has a plan to take out New York City, I mean, Gnu York City so the Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew head over there to try and stop him when Frogzilla emerges from the water! He even eats up Pig-Iron! This was an enjoyable issue full of tongue-in-cheek references (Birdigo Comics) that make it just a fun read.
-Countdown 29- In this issue, Lord Havok of Earth-8 has captured the Challengers when one of the evil Monitors shows up to get rid of the anomalies, specifically the Jokester. The Challengers escape, the Jokester is killed and Lord Havok and his extremists are recruited by Monarch. Jimmy Olsen runs into The Newsboy Legion. Holly and Harley make it to the shore. Trickster and Piper and with Double Down and DD is worried someone is after them, and someone is in shadows awaiting them. Mary Marvel marvels at her new power with Eclipso. Brother Eye attacks Karate Kid. Standard stuff, nothing to crow about.
-Green Arrow/Black Canary #1- Black Canary is pretty pissed she killed her husband and starts taking it out on criminals. Connor is wearing a Green Arrow outfit and prevents her from killing some one in her rage. She is convinced that it isn’t really Ollie. No one believes her except Batman. Batman and Dr. Midnite perform an autopsy and the cadaver is really Everyman! It seems that the Amazons have Ollie prisoner, and Dinah isn’t too happy about it. Excellent debut issue. We all knew Ollie wasn’t dead but this adds a new level of intrigue on this with Canary battling a bunch of angry chicks.
-Suicide Squad #2- Flag wakes up on a prehistoric land and kills a velociraptor. He was fighting Rustam when he crash landed and Rustam survived the fight as well. They both agree to team up to get out of the jungle alive and learn they share a hatred for General Eiling, a man who betrayed both of them. They happen upon some ruins and wonder if humans or other intelligent beings built it as mysterious eyes look on. Nothing too great and I haven’t liked Suicide Squad so far. Luckily there are only 6 issues left.
-Superman #668- Superman and Batman continue looking for the elusive third Kryptonian. It’s not Superman’s new Son, Chris, though, since he showed up after the collector guy did. There is also a mystery villain planning an attack on Superman and mentions the four kryptonians on Earth, a man (Superman), a boy (Chris) a woman (Supergirl) and a girl?? Well, looks like we know the sex of the missing one at least. The teaser at the end made it seem like we will find out next issue who it is. This was a good opening story and much better than the previous couple of issues. Superman and Batman’s chat in the issue as well as Robin playing around with Chris was well-written.
-Teen Titans #51- The Titans are in the future with future versions of themselves (Connor is Superman, Tim is Batman, Cassie is Wonder Woman, and Ravager seems to be dead?) and they must stop a Starro attack. All the Titans are beaten badly and Tim says he wants to prevent this future from happening by taking a gun from his future self and holding it to his head. Ok. I don’t like the start to this new arc as future stuff always gets muddied and I don’t know how many future versions of characters we need right now. Let’s just stick to the Titans battling evil in the present with the character interactions we all love.
-Wonder Girl #2- Wonder Girl is bothered by Hercules, who insists she must join him for some sort of mission. The Female Furies show up to take out Wonder Girl and Hercules. Boring.
-Wonder Woman #13- This is a solo story of Wonder Woman basically ending the Amazon’s Attack story and getting ready for Gail’s run on the book. Basically, Wonder Woman recounts the events of Amazon’s Attack and being accepted back into public view while the media is still hounding Wonder Girl.
The Awards
-Book of the Week- Booster Gold wins the award, again, this week, for just being awesome, again. Johns really makes this book enjoyable.
-Disappointment of the Week- I’d honestly have to go with Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man this week. For all the build up the title just hasn’t been that fascinating. It wasn’t the worst book I’ve read this week but it’s easily the most disappointing.
-Cover of the Week- Punisher War Journal #12 was a hands-down winner this week. This was just an amazing cover by Olivetti, which features Punisher fighting Hulk seemingly on top of burning buildings. Dig the red eyes on the Hulk! Great cover.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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