snap judgments no, really, there are some comics you really should read

All You Need to Know: Mighty Avengers #6

Alright Christmas shoppers, stay at home.  You've done your bit for king and country and if you show up at the store now, I won't be deterred from making sure you leave with the Frank Miller Library's Sin City Set Two.

Right.  So I was planning on going back and finding all the previous 5 issues of Mighty Avengers so I can actually see what the story looked like as God and scheduling intended but it's just been so LONG.  That's a lot of long box diving and I'm thankfully a site of Snap Judgments.  This issue #6 gives us the finale to Why Is Ultron a Girl Again Anyways? or as Bendis calls it... uhm, there doesn't seem to be a title page outside of the recap page and that doesn't call the story anything but the Mighty Avengers.  Wow.

Looking through it a second time, the story is easy to recap: Ultron has apparently merged with Iron Man's Extremis virus and rewritten his DNA.  Ares gets small, puts a virus in Ultron that should shut her down, dislodge her from and save Tony. hopefully both, everything explodes and everything's bak to normal.  Hey, I said it was easy, not that it made any sense.  Along the way we have an enraged Sentry finally taking it to Ultron with the power of a thousand exploding sun that can rip a techno-organic robot's head off, which sounds really cool until you realize that Ares is in that techo-organic robot and Sentry's not listening to the fact that this could really harsh the Save the Day plan, already in progress.  Thank God Ms. Marvel is there to punch the Sentry off of Ultron, making me wonder why she's been off nibbling her nails about what to do and absorbing a nuclear blast instead of delegating and taking it to Ultron herself.  After all, she supposed to be the Best of the Best(tm) and we all know Sentry shouldn't be your Go-To Guy thanks to being poorly written as a part of his character profile.

Hank Pym's here, in his old school Ant Man outfit which brings a smile to my face,  and is the one that came up with the plan in the first place (a plan that involved shrinking!).  Black Widow coordinates the attack, directs the hellicarrier the Mighty Avengers took over, and even the Wasp manages to save Ares from the villain's inevitable ka-BOOM, but in the end, it's Ms. Marvel who gets told she's a great leader and that just because she's swapping spit with Wonder Man doesn't mean you can't give the movie star some screen time.  Me, I'm gla they reminded me Wonder Man was in the book.

There's an odd moment with Hank and Jan as they have to have a little talk at the end of the book because these characters are back to square one again.  It's hard for me to remember, but I'm pretty darn sure that at the end of Avengers: Disassembled, Hank and Jan were together again at least as friends, waiting to see what would happen between them with a change of scenery.  At least, that's what the Avengers: Disassembled Finale said.  Then House of M went down and they seemed to lead separate lives (Hank Pym was nuts in the HoM: Iron Man mini, Janet was a quick panel or a footnote in the newspaper if I recall correctly).  Then it's Civil War, they're on the same side, Janet even concerned for Hank and saying that making Clor put him undera  lot of guilt and stress.  This sounds like someone who's still invested in their previous spouse; maybe not as in love as when she was young and stupid, but at least one of the few who understands a complicated man.

Okay, there was Beyond!, but I didn't understand how that fit into continuity and why Janet was a rather spiteful woman and Hank Pym was allowed his rebound crush #2 of Firebird.

Mighty Avengers makes the Beyond! characterizations looks lovey-dovey.  Cold, bitch, spiteful, Jan calls either Tigra or her ex-husband a tramp, it's hard to tell with Bendis's thought bubbles.  Hank can't defend his new fling with Tigra (rebound crush #1!) and instead demands that either Jan love him or not, they walk away and we get a flash of an Ultron head on a nearby computer screen.  Something tells me this scene is important, but it just seems like a lot of bitching.

The Sentry's wife is back from the dead, by the way.  I know you were heartbroken, but it turns out Sentry might be able to bring people back from death by touching them.  Just in case you didn't hate him enough.

Tony's fine, no real damage done from the invasion of his naughty bits and the systematic rewrite of his genetic code, so maybe some chicken soup, 7-Up and bed rest should get him back on his feet, but first he has to deal with Spider-Woman breaking into his hospital room with a dead Skrullectra.

So there you have it, folks: the Mighty Avengers in a tale so deadly, so dire, so disasterous they could only call it "   ".

Was it a good story?  I think I might have liked it more if it came out as scheduled; Frank Cho's artwork is disgustingly good despite the ass shot on nearly every page and there are some truly beautiful comic gags and character expressions that makes me think that it all should have turned out better.  The story is simple enough (Ultron shows up, wants to take over the world, gets stopped, we all have pie) and was probably rushed somewhat in its telling to get the reader used to the characters enough so Bendis could move along with Secret Invasion.  Were this a monthly book that came out monthly, we would have rolled our eyes but gotten on with things in a timely fashion.

Thanks to too much time to think, too much time between issues, too much booty, and too little explanation for the very very obvious (WHY WAS ULTRON A GIRL!?!), people might pick up the trade but this first tale of four-color action-adventure Avengers is going to be forgotten outside of the absurd (no, really, why was she a girl?  Why did that make sense?).

All You Need to Know – New Avengers #37

So here I am, back from a little self-imposed exile from home and computer (stupid non-disclosure agreement!) and to what do my wondrous eyes do appear by Avengers books from far and near!  I didn't get a chance to hit up a comic shop while I was LA last week so when I came back to Home Sweet Shop back up in my hometown of Santa Barbara, there was a brand new New Avengers, as if it had waited until I was gone to sneak back up on the shelves.

No such luck, you little brat.

The thing is, I could go page by page on this issue and still come up short because ... not much happened.  We catch our heroes facing down the Hood and Pals with their magical back up and it's just as predicted, they're using Doctor Strange for a holo-emitter.  Mind you, it could have been a really awesome illusion of Marvel's heroes but in the end, poor Doctor Strange has become more of a utility belt than a cooperative member of the team.  Then again, you tell me if you can point to the guy in charge of the New Avengers? Anyhoo, we're getting another reflective narrative from the Wrecker as Maria Hill interogates him for SHIELD (SPOILER: the bad guys lose!).  He tells her the fight goes down, the Hood and Doctor Strange square off and hoorah!  Doc calls the Hood on being in possession of a demon and how incredibly STUPID it is to throw powers about that you don't understand or control, especially of the demon sort.  It's like the guy's Sorcerer Supreme or something!

Through a bit of awkward paneling, I finally figured out that Doctor Strange confronts the Hood, the Hood goes into demon form, fires a ... magic bolt of energy which... Doctor Strange deflects and then the Hood disappears.  It's awkwardly staged and I'm sure if we saw the script we could see where the panels were supposed to go but... yikes.  It even looks like the rest of the heroes and villains are stopping mid-fight to figure out the same sequence, but once it's over, we're treated to a bunch of quick cuts highlighting a particular hit, sound effect or exclamation.  One after the other after the other, it's downright Adam Westian.

Not that there's anything wrong with a good 'SPAKK!' or 'FAKOOM!'; I rather like ingenius use of sound effects in my action sequences.  It just doesn't fit what I'm assuming is the tone for a book like the New Avengers, Bendis's less four-color of the two Avengers titles he writes.  I thought that New was more for intrigue and behind-the-lines action, heroes hunted and hunting criminals that the government can't see, sending out Wolverine for 'little talks' with informants, that kind of shadowy feeling that Bendis can really put over in a book.  Cutting a gun barrel in half with a nicked katana with the SFX shot 'SLICE!' just doesn't fit with the vibe set by previous issues.  Also, HOW THE HECK DOES HAWKEYE DO THAT?!

Anyhow, the crew is taken down sans Hood and Spider-Man leaves a friendly little note on the human flunky in the crowd for SHIELD and here we are.  Maria Hill can't get any info out of the Wrecker (who keeps reminding us he took on Thor - WE GOT IT ALREADY!), so she shuffles him off to containment where the Hood busts him out and swears DARK VENGEANCE.

I can't hate the issue because really, there's no 'there' there, so to speak.   Plot moves forward in a timely fashion and Leinil Yu gets a little action in, but since SHIELD is no match for the mighty Hood, the whole mission of the New Avengers (put away Hood and/or Pals) is rendered moot.  Hey, who knows, maybe we'll get to see the Hood beat the crap out of Echo and threaten to kill her family - OH WAIT.

All you need to know?  The Hood can't possibly understand what he's gotten himself into and the New Avengers have a guy that can cut through a gun barrel with a nicked katana.

Later today:  the Mighty Avengers ends!  No, really!  Honest!

The Day That Would Never End

Long time no see as, not only do I have a BIG THING I'm doing going on right now (that I sadly can't talk about right now due to a non-disclosure agreement), but for awhile, I just read comics I liked.  Read this blog long enough, you probably already know the pull list and I thought to myself, 'Do people really wanna hear me gush about Marvel Adventures: Avengers'?  Nothing important, no big segments from events, nothing to write home about.  Then I got called out.

You see, I stopped reading One More Day when the little girl showed up on the last page of the second issue.  Thanks to the internet and the general disposition of the EiC, I honestly just want this whole affair to be over and for Brand New Day to start so Spider-Man can get back to fun and adventure.  I don't want to see the marriage break or even stand at this point, just get me to the main event.  But... as a co-worker pointed out to me, this is important.  This is Marvel event history here.  This is something that is going to change the face of a major character and there's a certain amount of responsibility to keep abreast of the situation in order for me to exert any amount of power in regards to being a self-proclaimed Marvel aficionado... I got to know these things.

Whether I like it or not.

So, let's read this thing, shall we?

For the record, I got the 'Variant Edition' cover, that has a rather depressed Peter Parker expertly painted by Marko Djurdjevic.  That's it, just Peter with a mopey face.  If you can judge a book by its cover, I'd say this one will look awfully pretty, but read rather boring.

Right.  Inside, we start out with a suspicious little girl.  Setting aside the act that I hate that plot device, she seems to know SEEEECRETS about Spider-Man who seems awfully tired by this point.  Don't worry, Spidey!  Just a issue to go, right?  The little girl seems to alude that she might be Peter and MJ's kid (comments about taking after her dad's smarts and mother's beauty) while Spidey's either totally falling for the oldest trick in the book (evil disguised as a little girl) or so out of it by this point with rage and hate and angst and years of bad books, he's just sleepwalking by this point.  The little girl turns around, calls him selfish and an idiot for focusing so much on his own problems and stomps off towards a dark alley.  Spidey follows after her because it's not safe for a little girl (oh yeah, sleepwalking through this one) and runs into a HUGE NERD HA HA reading Atlas Shrugged.  MOre sleepwalking through the obvious when the nerd explains that the people that get into his job of working in video game design are escapists.  People looking for the chance to be a hero in a fictional world because they didn't get the chance in real life.  If the nerd had the chance to be a real super-hero, he'd be grateful.  Spider-Man sleepwalks from this revelation to the next and gets a ride from a guy in a limo.

There's a weird line about Spider-Man not being a drinker ("It's not that I don't drink.  It's that as a rule I choose not to."  Doesn't that mean he doesn't drink?) and the guy in the limo gets in his guilt trip on Spider-Man by saying that being rich and inventing a bunch of things didn't make him happy because he never got the girl who really loved him.  The next creepy conversation is with a shadowy woman in red (Ghost of Spider-Yet-To-Come?).  And here's where we go back to something JMS seems really fond of: the moment where Peter's bitten by the Spider.  This ever-so crucial moment has made two major points that I can recall in his run on the book (his first major theme on the book and, your favorite and mine, the Other), so here we are again, wondering what would have become of Peter Parker should he have not been bitten.

The previous guys?  Totally Peter from alternate realities sans spider bite.  OH SNAP.  The Woman in Red reveals that without the spider bite, Peter always ends up alone.  OH SNAP AGAIN.   The Woman in Red?  Totally Mephisto.  OH SNAPITY SNAP!  Marvel's semi-Satan doesn't traffic in souls anymore, so Peter can just put that away.  No, now Mephisto is into misery, souls in pain and boy howdy!  Jackpot right here.  Looks like he's asked both MJ (stashed at the motel that's been right next to them) to give up their marriage to save Aunt May.

Peter wakes up and is on his way to telling Mephisto, the most helpful and honest of Joes to shove it when Mary Jane Watson-Parker stops him so that they can hear Mephisto out.  Thanking her for the chance to continue his dramatic monologue, the terms are basic (marriage or Aunt May), they get 24 hours to make the decision.  Anticipation is low because again, I read up on things on the internet and have been anticipating this announcement like Quicksilver watching an all stuttering Spelling Bee.

After this new content is a reprint of the Mephisto entry from the latest Official Handbook (six pages?  Wow.) and Silver Surfer #3, the first appearance of Mephisto where we see that he has a thing for ordaining, hurting women you love and striking some awesome dramatic poses.  I mean, it's neat to read and some great art, but I could have kept the $1 extra the book cost and just settled for the main story.

Was Sensational Spider-Man #41 good?  No, not really.  I don't want to punch it on the stands (something I witnessed a disgruntled fan do and will now remain my standard of comic reading despair), but the opinion I had of the book hasn't changed after reading it.  Now, I'll admit I went into it biased to blue blazes and it would have taken a Hail Mary pass to change my opinion, but JMS's admission that this is all following orders is no surprise.  The concepts of meeting less-successful and rather bitter alternate selves isn't what I read Spidey for.  This should have been over and done with a lot sooner than this and considering how vocal Quesada's been on how much he doesn't like a married Peter Parker, it seems all rather over and done before it started.