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This was a very light week, in fact looking at the stats I keep for TPL, it’s been my lightest week since April 30th, before Final Crisis or Secret Invasion even hit. In fact, I knew it was going to be light this week so I didn’t pick up the books until Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday evening I had finished them. This gave me a good two-day cushion to get through last weeks Marvel Masterwork Golden Age Marvel Comics Vol. 3. It’s always tough getting through those because of the anthology style and for the fact that some of the comics in there are just silly. Anyway, this week we have 1 Wildstorm, 5 DC’s, and 9 Marvels. See, a light week. Of course, next week I project 30 books, followed by 26 and 31. Yikes.
Spoilers Ahead
The Main Event:
-Marvel Apes #1- I was looking forward to this for a while, and now that I have it, I wasn’t disappointed. It takes the interesting idea of Marvel Zombies and combines with a concept so absurd it can only be fun. So our star is the Gibbon, an ape-like super-powered guy who never could make it, either as a hero or villain. He is with a young scientist who thinks that he may be from a different universe. So she tests him and boom! He’s sent to an all-ape Marvel Universe. These are all apes. It’s just funny. So Gibbon actually does some good and is offered to be in the Avengers and now we have our plot twist. These Avengers are pretty brutal when it comes to justice, and Gibbon is conflicted. Great concept, great ending to actually have a story, and we may have something here. 1/1.
-DC Universe: Last Will and Testament #1- This is a Final Crisis tie-in that kind of isn’t, at least it doesn’t have the solid sidebars on the cover. It was written by Brad Meltzer and I consider it one of his best works in DC. So the world is ending tomorrow, thanks to the Crisis, so what do you do? Some look for revenge (Geo-Force on Deadshot), some want to be with family (Batman, Robin and Nightwing, with a tease of Nightwing becoming the next Batman), and some even help out (Capt. Cold stopping a crime). The story’s main focus is Geo-Force confronting Deadshot in a classic battle, where Geo-Force does get his revenge, but also his redemption. It was just a well-crafted cinematic tale, with a real insight into these heroes and what makes them tick. 1/1.
Marvel
-Amazing Spider-Man #570- Spidey gets to FEAST as soon as he can to find Venom fighting the Anti-Venom. Spidey is shocked to find that Anti-Venom is actually Brock. Brock starts burning Venom by killing the symbiote inside of Gargan, and soon AV turns on Spidey and starts going after the left-over symbiotes in him! Peter is in trouble. Meanwhile, Menace makes an appearance to threaten mayoral candidate, Bill Hollister, and Menace confronts Norman Osborn at the end. This is probably the best that has come out of BND, with the JR JR pencils (giving it an epic feel) and the good writing makes this a recommended title. 2/2.
-Ms. Marvel Annual #1- This is a pre-Secret Invasion tale where Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel have the Stan Lee TM hero vs. hero battle, when they discover a common foe to fight (some robots being controlled by sentient androids based on the same person) and take him out. Reed does his best to emulate the writing of Lee’s Spidey and his Spidey is snarky enough, but the lack of an interesting villain hurt this one, and if you missed it you didn’t miss much. 2/3.
-Secret Invasion Front Line #3- This is our ground level look at the Invasion, and it continues with Skrulls attacking, regular people doing heroic things, more people we meet for the first time getting killed by a subway gang, and it’s more of the same as the previous two issues. I’m not too crazy about this upon rereading it. 2/4.
-The Twelve #1/2- This is the first of the Marvel Reprints TM this week. It reprints five old Golden Age tales from Daring Tales, USA Comics and Human Torch and features Fiery Mask, Mister E. and Rockman. The E and Rockman stories were just ridiculous, but the Fiery Mask ones were passable. This is nothing but reprints so if you don’t want them, don’t get them. If so, the stories weren’t all bad but I’ll pick up Golden Age tales for four bucks any day of the week. 3/5.
-Universal War #3- Universal War was one of the best three-issue mini-series I have ever read. And that isn’t a lie. It has a biblical theme, with the main story dealing with not only time travel but the consequences of time travel and a great look at time travel paradoxes. They troop is stuck in the wall and are shocked to learn they went back in time and actually try to save Balti. Of course, it was them trying to save him that led to his death. Crazy stuff. Awesome stuff. Highest recommendation. 4/6.
-X-Men: Manifest Destiny #1- I guess this is another status-quo altering X-event? This is a four-issue mini-series, with one main tale (that continues) and a couple of back-ups. The main tale has Iceman and he deals with Mystique, and the back-ups have Boom-Boom and Shan of the original New Mutants. The back-ups weren’t worth the price of admission since I thought the art was terrible, and I would say the Iceman story wasn’t really great either. Take a pass on the first part. 4/7.
-X-Men Origins: Beast #1- This is a cool origin of the Beast, dating back to being captured by El Conquistador. It takes the back-ups from way back in Uncanny and makes sense of it, and I would recommend this for those who want to see how Beast originally became and X-Man. 5/8.
-X-Men: Return of Magick #1- Reprint-o-rama (the second Marvel book to do that this week) gives us X-Men Unlimited #14, New X-Men #37 & X-Men Divided We Stand #2. I don’t know why I bought this since I had all three stories, but there were no problems with the stories and if you don’t have them it is a nice introduction to Magick. 6/9.
DC
-Detective Comics #848- Hush is a bad guy, and he shows this by ripping the heart out of Selina Kyle. Selina seemed to know who Hush was under the mask. Batman was sent on a fool’s errand to save a boy from Scarecrow, but he is just flummoxed about what happened to Selina. I like where this is going, another villain literally tearing at the soul of Batman. 2/2.
-Nightwing #148- Nightwing saves the woman that Two-Face used to love, puts her in a safe-house and goes home to get stitched up by an Alfred who looks to be fed up with what’s been going on. Nightwing leaves and returns to see pretty much all of Batman’s rogue gallery waiting for him in the safe house. I don’t understand the RIP tie-in yet, but its been good enough for me to come back. 3/3.
-Secret Six #1- I liked this as an IC tie-in in, and one of the only mini-series I kept in my collection. Reading this one just reaffirmed why. We have an interesting villain (a mobster who isn’t seen but extremely powerful, who kills people in a treasure chest), the Six being sent on a mission to transport a villainess from Alcatraz, and Huntress warning Animal not to, or they will face the man in the box (cue the Alice in Chains song). Great, witty writing, especially between the Six (the scene with Animal Man and Deadshot was great) and closure on Vandal and the death of Knockout makes this debut a winner. 4/4.
-Trinity #14- The CSA world is in chaos after the evil Trinity is gone, and the JLA are worried about the Earth-Prime Trinity acting more like each other. John Stewart’s weird cyborg abilities help them build a device to get them back home, and Enigma shows up and forces them to use it, as Despero’s goons makes contact with Superman and he ends up scarred on his head. The second story deals with the rest of the JLA dealing with the Sun person and defeating them all, but TVM escapes with the final artifact from an old Wonder Woman foe. This was the most pedestrian issue so far, but having the final piece collected and the fun writing of the characters earns this a point. 5/5.
Wildstorm
-Storming Paradise #3- This continues to keep my interest, a tale of a Japanese army fighting against the Americans. We see the arrogance of the Americans and the never say die attitude of the Japanese, who start mounting their offensive in this issue. It is just a great read and for the history buffs its exciting to see what could have been if the atom bombs didn’t end the war. 1/1.
The Awards
-Book of the Week- This has two legitimate contenders, DCU: Last Will and Testament and Universal War #3 and I have a really hard time picking. Man, this is a tough decision. I have to pick one though, and Universal War is given the nod. It was just awesome. I recommend both, but read UW1 first. Denis Bajram becomes the first person in TPL history to be the writer/artist of Book of the Week, getting his name into both writer and artist column.
-Disappointment of the Week- I would like to give it to Marvel as a company, as they went a very generous 6/9. I’ll give it to a title though, and Ms. Marvel Annual #1 was just a slow title. Manifest Destiny was bad, SI: Front Line wasn’t great, but for an Annual of an established star being so forgettable is a bigger disappointment.
-Cover of the Week- Trinity #14 (Jim Lee) is the winner this week, though it wasn’t like this was the greatest cover ever, just in a slow week sometimes there are slim pickings. Not a resounding praise for the cover, but Lee is always solid.
-The Bottom Line- DC and Wildstorm were both solid this week, and I have no problems with either. Marvel was surprisingly underwhelming this week, and I had a big problem with Marvel this week, in terms of the books released and the prices of them. First of all, 9 comics, 2 of which were reprints didn’t help, so only 7 new comics. Of course, I didn’t need to get reprints but why have two released in one week anyway? Next, the pricing, 7 of the 9 books were 3.99 or higher. That is just too much for too little. Manifest Destiny and Ms. Marvel were wholly unneeded. Maybe the first week of school is having an affect on me, or maybe I am making excuses for Marvel. I just think Marvel had a bad week in terms of planned books (too many reprints) for too high a price.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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