snap judgments

Welp, Tuesday night almost seems to be my regular thing by now.  It’s not a bad time, doesn’t really take into advantage the idea of ‘preview books’, but balances spoilers pretty well, or so I think.  Hrm.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #7

Okay, so more Mexican wrestler madness ensues this issue as when Spidey goes back to check in on El Muerto (the guy he hideously stabbed… in the knee apparently… last issue) both of them get to tangle with El Dorado, another uninspired luchador name.  Spidey uses science to defeat El Dorado’s magic gold suit and doesn’t answer the more interesting question of the issue.  And no, it’s not why on Earth Tony didn’t know about the ‘stingers’ Spider-Man now has after all that testing he seemed to have gone through.  You see, Iron Man and Spider-Man are sort of hovering around town and Spidey’s having it out about all his new ‘mystical’-ness.  Iron Man says that magic has just as much relevance as science and Spidey fires back with the idea that, if that’s the case, intelligent design should be taught along with evolution. And then… Iron Man just flies off.  That’s it.  Dammit.  Anyways, Tony talks to MJ about how guarded she is around him since the papers said they were dating (which makes me long for the helpful editor’s notes they used to have in comics.  I bought so many issues because of those…) and May and Jarvis (don’t call him Eddie) go on a date where what looks like Uncle Ben looks in from the windows.  Does anyone really care anymore when a character looks to have come back from the dead?

New X-Men #25

Wait, what’s this on the cover about an ‘ending’?  Hrm.  Well, inside it looks like more Danger Room fighting (special guest star Colossus!), more Stryker and his shadowy evil plot, there’s a nice nod to Evangelion at the end of the book and oh yeah… Wallflower gets shot pretty violently in the head.  This makes it official:  Sentinel Squad sucks.  These big giant robots ain’t doing squat but standing around and watching cable inside their mecha if one phone call and one sniper can get through their defence and pop a cap in a child’s head.  Sure, they might save her by some miracle next issue but this is ridiculous.  And Elixir just got done giving his ‘Everyone I care about is dead’ speech, too.  The book isn’t half bad, it’s just… I wish it got the right kind of attention.

Uncanny X-Men #472

Funny, hoorah for Chris Bachalo getting to do what he does best as far as intricate and stylish reality… but kind of anti-climatic.  By the way, the story in the front of UXM these days still has my attention, as Storm is out there hunting down mutant hunters in Africa and being strong, bad ass and a hero.  I don’t care that there’s no reason she should be hanging out with tigers, she’s on a mission!  Besides, it looks cool and Storm’s kick ass enough to get a posse.  Back at the mansion, people are still giving off that ‘killing time’ vibe when Jamie Braddock shows up like a child’s birthday clown!  He’s wild, he’s wacky, he’s a merry prankster sort of reality-warper and he explains a little bit about why Psylocke is such a weird little character.  Apparently, something big is going to happen, enough for a Watcher to show up at the Westchester Internment Camp (oh, the giant Apoco-Sphinx that’s all over X-Men?  Uhm.  It’s on vacation.) and just when Jamie gets down to business, just when he’s about to reveal something about ‘The Foursaken’, mean looking green hands burst out of his stomach and implode him.  It was so close!  Plot was right there!  Something was going to happen!  The X-Men reflect while the Watcher wonders, like the reader, if that was it, on whether this was the end of the world or just the end of everything.

Cable/Deadpool #27

Buh-Whaa?  Well, the first pages continue to state a fine fourth wall breaking and honest story and again I give thanks to Joe Kelly for starting that clever little trend in the book.  There’s a nice nod to Cable being both very futuristic and kind of barbarous at the same time, good touch.  And then we get the weird.  As far as I ever knew (and a quick search on the ‘net seems to agree with) is that Cable was originally created to defeat Apocalypse, right?  Well, get this:  according to Fabian Nicieza, Cable is responsible is constant ‘resurrections’ of Apocalypse because long, long ago, Cable infected Apocalypse with the Techno-Organic Virus and that made Apocalypse (possibly not En Sabah Nur) immortal.   In the present, Cable helps Ozmandius bring back Apocalypse, a genocidal madman he’d sort of been opposed to since birth, because ‘We need something dramatic and urgent to bring us [mutants] together.’  That’s… pretty urgent there, guy.  Cable throws his weight around Apocalypse (rather weakened and mummy-like since he was popped out of his resurrection cycle too soon) and threatens to bleed on everyone (wait- WAIT!  This might be a reference to all that nonsense in X-Men right now!) and thus infect everyone with his ju-ju, making them just as special as Apocalypse and ending his little tirade on ‘survival of the fittest’ as everyone will be ‘fit’.  Though, doesn’t that sound like a good idea?  Apocalypse kind of shakes a knobby fist at Mr. Man Cable and goes back to his incubator.  I like Ozmandius here, he seems a little time weary as a guy made of rock who has to babysit a returning maniac eon after eon.  But on the whole, I like the book too.  I mean, the theory’s not all that sound, but I’ll run with it.  There’s a lot to chew on here.

X-Men: the 198 #4

Absolon Mercator.  Say it with me:  Absolon Mercator.  Wow.  What a name.  So if one of them just got killed, why do they have a flag with ’198′ on it?  Shouldn’t it be ’197′?  Anyhoo, finally the refugees are sick and tired and not going to take it anymore, confronting the X-Men on all this oppression.  They try and calm the masses down for Val and in the end, it doesn’t work.  The Man continues to be evil and Val is given at least the opportunity not to have known how miserable this was all going to get.  Mister M removes the tags from His People and leads them on an exodus out of the Internment Camp.  In the middle of this exodus, we take the time to not only show Squid-Stomach Guy (Johnny-Dee) flushing his dead guy doll down the toilet and getting rid of the evidence (or clogging up the pipes and calling attention to the little doo-dad) but a full page of random plot convenience where Johnny-Dee speaks to Leech who was nice enough to explain how his powers work, then leave.  Back to the story- wait, one last thing.  If I were Empath, I would not wear that costume.  Not because it’s purple and has a big triangle on it, but… okay, actually because of that.  They walk to an island Mister M saw on a map once and he leads His People to walk on water to this tiny little place.  The X-Men show up and continue to try and reason with them, Emma notes that Mister M is not controlling them and Erg is a little empty of mind.  We’re left on the cliffhanger of Mister M making a big showy blue lightning of himself.

Ms. Marvel #2

So, with rather strong feelings about the first issue, I belly up to Number Two with little hope.  Right away, we see an ad for a ‘Super-Talk-Show’ in which Carol Danvers will be featured as Ms. Marvel.  So, guess Civil War won’t really be all that a problem for her.  Her publicist calls to gloat and name drop Peter Coyote.  This shows that her apartment is empty, since she’s fighting the Brood right now and can’t kibitz.  Mind you, fighting the Brood isn’t working out too well, no matter how many things she smashes.  They eventually overwhelm her and just when things look dark, there a sort of bluey-white flash and there’s ‘Cru’, our sort of blue insectoid Predator type of antagonist.  He grabs up Ms. Marvel, who tries to get assure this guy that she’s ‘a friend’, grabs some info from her brain that Ms. Marvel seems rather confused by and helpless to stop and takes off.  Staying behind to clean up the Brood, she learns that ‘Cru’ is looking for Cavorite Crystals, which should he get to, will blow everything up.  Rushing to the scene, she gets there not in time and we’re left to see everything go explody white.  Again.  With lines like ‘God, I’m so weak’ and ‘How could I have been so stupid?’ and that last minute ‘I’m too late!’  I wonder how this woman has survived so long…

Thunderbolts #101

Featuring Songbird, the Thunderbolt’s doorknob!  I have seen that chick kiss so many characters…. anyhoo, it’s actually a pretty good book.  Once all the blarg of last issue’s incredible fight-o-rama, I can kind of get into this.  I love aftermath issues that help restructure a book and settle the characters down for the reader and this one is no exception:  half flashback on what the Hell Songbird’s doing with Baron Zemo while the other half is little moments with each other the team members to see where they stand.  It starts and ends with the same question, ‘Why are we doing this?’  A fine question to ask in this day and age and the characters tackle it head on.  This is a pretty good place to start if you’re new to the book and want to see some action in a well-motivated team book.  Go Nicieza.

Annihilation: Super Skrull #1

Take Garth Ennis, then just suck all the alcohol out of the man, maybe make him from Jersey.  Maybe Newport.  I think this kind of fits somewhere around there.  Old war-horse and snickered-at alien threat, the Super Skrull shows up to kick butt and chew bubblegum.  Seeing this ‘Annihilation Wave’ first hand, he goes to his government as demands actions.  They have no time for his jibber-jabber, so he opens up a can of whoop ass on them.  They declare him a wanted man and he nearly goes down swinging when he’s rescued by a plucky young engineer who knows how totally awesome the Super Skrull really is.  Reluctantly, he takes the kid on as his ally and charts a course for the Negative Zoe.  A course that takes him straight to the Baxter Building and his sworn enemy, Reed Richards.  After telling Mr. Fantastic of the terrible doom that’s destroying entire planets, Reed reluctantly and sort of snarkily agrees to this crazy scheme.  Don’t think too hard or you won’t have fun.

Exiles #79

World Tour continues.  And I am such a sucker for Dystopia-verse.  The point seems to be that Proteus, now using the body of Hulk 2099, has hopped to the Maestro ruled word to hop to the next most powerful host… I guess.  Rick Jones, tired and abused, gives him the low-down and the method  and means to do so unwittingly when the Exiles skip ahead, tell Maestro who certainly doesn’t want his body stolen.  A fight ensues.  I can’t really say if it’s good or not, but I can say this ‘World Tour’ thing has gone on forever.

So, you’re wondering where the DC books are. Turns out they didn’t ship them this week, making me wonder about the ‘Preview Book’ process.  Marvel seems perfectly content to throw you any old thing while DC tends to send books they haven’t promoted that much.  Like leftovers.  Mind you, the books are often awesome, which makes me wonder if they just want a more grassroots effect instead of big articles and posters.

Just a thought.

One thing I would be remiss in mentioning (since a review of #2 is due up in a couple hours) is the rather well-recieved Ms. Marvel #1. Now, let me start by saying: YES! ROCK ON! Go Marvel for FINALLY stepping up and putting a super powered heroine in her very own ongoing book! Not that this is a new thing, but still, it’s a beautiful thing. For a company that during the 80′s had a rough looking black woman in charge of a small underground army and one of the most power groups of teens, err, twenty-somethings, this is a step back into the right direction. Heck, if you think about it Shanna the She-Devil was a pretty rough and tumble book outside of the cheesecake.

And Carol Danvers is AWESOME! Seriously, go over to Sufferingsappho.com, and see their salute. Did you know she’s was romantically linked to Wolverine… and she’s STILL ALIVE? Not to mention the Head of Security for NASA, Editor in Chief of a premiere women’s magazine, and freakin’ Chief of Tactical Operations and Superhuman Liaison for the Department of Homeland Security pre-9/11 folks. Wow. Sure, she’s had some horrifying things happen to her, but she’s candid about them and still stronger for them (or so I like to tell myself). She’s a recovering alcoholic, former military pilot, she can check ‘rape’ off her list and she had cosmic powers (possibly cosmic awareness too, but that might have been an allusion to ‘women’s intuition’ apparently) and now, after years of inactivity, she’s being brought back forward into the spotlight. A ‘Woman of Wonder’ for Marvel, so to speak, someone to balance out the lack of using Jessica Drew for anything particularly meaningful or encouraging in New Avengers (let’s face it folks, she’s there for big pin-up shots and to be a total tool for both Hydra and SHIELD, though a personality’s in there somewhere, I’m sure of it), a team Ms. Marvel had the balls to TURN DOWN, even with Captain FRIKKIN’ America giving her the offer personally, saying that she needed to get out there and do this on her own. That’s courage. That’s someone I want to read about. No teams, no setbacks, just her, some incredible gams and a will that is set on justice.

Yeah!

… oh wait. Let’s see, #1 has her fighting Stilt-Man (oh yeah, running gag of the MU giving her some credibility there), engages in a moment of ‘girl talk’ at a cafe in which not only does she put her hair in a scrunchie, but talks about eating ice cream after saving the world. All they had to do was put in a comment about a guy’s butt and you would have your typical ‘how guys think girls talk’ trifecta. Turns out she’s insecure about getting out there again, and goes to hire a PUBLISIST to help her with her image. Not ‘Well, I’m not sure how people will remember me, maybe I should go out and do some heroic deeds to put me in the public eye’, no. A Publicist. These people also apparently handle the FF (which, I will admit, makes sense because they are practically a business team and have marketing and whatnot) and the ‘Astonishing’ X-Men (in a world that ‘hates and fears them’, I guess they need spin). Out on patrol, she gets wind of something strange happening and gets nervous enough to actually make a cell phone call in the air to Captain America (you know, the guy in New Avengers she told she could do it on her own?) for advice. He’s too busy busting Hydra heads to really help (and she drops the cell phone from flight), so the poor little girl’s on her own. Brood show up. She’ll probably punch them.

*sigh*

While I understand the idea of humanizing characters to make them more empathetic … but this has so much potential for good. This could be a different book, a better book, a book I want to put on my pull because the character is engaging and strong, not just because she’s a chick and I like promoting super heroes that are female (not ‘female super heroes’, thanks turning me on to the distinction, kalinara). Greg Rucka got it on his Wonder Woman run, making the character not only a philosophical premise, but making the world around her rich and entertaining. Sitting at a cafe and chatting with Jessica Drew on ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to be’, not as much.

And as much s we may snicker at the use of ‘Ms.’, let’s take a look at what that might mean. Ms. shows that she is not married, but not a younger woman, someone who is old enough to adopt her own title, but doesn’t attribute it to marriage. Then again, I could just be over thinking things here, but does that at least sound like a good idea?

We’ll see what the next issues hold. Maybe some self-assured strength, maybe binging on bon-bons.