snap judgments

We got a preview copy of next week’s Thor #4 and I am so sorry.

I’m almost more sorry about this than I am about World War Hulk: Gamma Corps. As much of a huge waste of space that mini-series was, at least it was a mini. At least it dealt mostly with background characters and a few old names only die hard guys are going to care about. This is Thor. Thor.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: like the cover of a Led Zepplin album. Thor should come with righteous fury, battling the heavens from which he came and downing his success with lusty warrior-women hanging off his biceps and longing for the next change to test his godly mettle. Iron Fist has gone from Guy in Slippers to fan sensation just by upping his game and giving us action and adventure at the end of a thing like unto iron. I sell that book simply by showing people one of the last few pages in the trade where two guys kick each other so hard they cause an entire floor of a high rise to explode.

Thor is a no-brainer. He should be making entire buildings explode before breakfast. This issue… not so much. And the thing is, Thor does do something incredible in this issue, he does silhouette himself with lighting crackling in the background, but…there is just something missing. Something not right that maybe doesn’t translate well in single issue, maybe can’t wash the heavy handed soapboxing from the rest of the issue, maybe doesn’t have the same visceral punch I’m looking for artistically. Whatever it is, it’s just falling short of being Thor from on high and I am so sorry that some people are out there thinking that this is what Marvel’s God of Thunder is all about.

He should be about might and magic, epic tales of valor and destruction, things that make our lives small in comparison and let us dream of better worlds and high heroes than a mere mortal could attain. Donald Blake is the lighting rod through which the Conan soundtrack comes to life and rides down the blackest hearts that could only come from myth and legend. I want SO MUCH and, sad to say, I’m getting so little.

Spoilers Ahead, but if you already know that Thor will win any conflict he gets into and that he’s going to find some dudes who will turn out to be undiscovered Asgardians, then there you go.

(more…)

Yeah. So, two Avengers books this week, one on the stands and one in the Preview pile. here one was a day when I would have been happily surprised by two whole books of Avengers fun back to back but now, disappointment looms overhead.

Mighty Avengers heralds its own arrival by being inconsequential from the get-go. One of many such books, it is so terminally late as to render whatever story its telling moot before it had a chance to tell it. Astonishing X-Men threatening to kill one of the X-Men? Well, books on the stands tell me that everyone of them is fine, so the tension disappears. Think Ultron (who recently acquired the power of a thousand AND ONE exploding suns to kick the Sentry’s butt so hard) might actually do some lasting harm to anyone… anywhere? Sorry, all of the Mighty Avengers have been shown dealing with a symbiote threat in a book that came out the week before you. It’s like Marc Anthony’s wife spilling the beans on J-Lo being pregnant; all the glory is gone.

Mighty Avengers #5

God, that’s depressing. Issue #5. I know Frank Cho’s gone on record and apologized for being lazy and taking on more than he was ready for and is leaving quietly but still. This book is laaaaate. Quick recap? They’re fighting Ultron, who is a chick. Also, Iron Man and the Sentry’s wife are dead.

Right off the bat, a big fight. I really can’t say there’s anything wrong with a big ass fight. The Sentry is drawn rather beautifully grieving for his dead wife and gathering some crazy bit inside of him to go fight Ultron, but really mean it this time. In their fisticuffs, they knock Avengers tower askew. Meanwhile, Ares’s plan is to go back to the SHIELD hellicarrier the Mighty Avengers are using as a base to yell at Han Pym. Hank Pym, a man having stood shoulder to tiny shoulder with Thor, a hero who had fought Ares before as an Avenger, is rather intimidated by the big man and his half-formed ideas of how to fight the high tech menace of Ultron. Pym fills in the whole, goes low tech to override Ultron’s control of the hellicarrier, and goes in with Ares to make a really tiny virus and a really tiny Ares to go in and fight Ultron from the inside out. Other people are slowly convinced that this is an idea so crazy… it just might work!

While the heroes have been fighting the big splash page fight, Ultron has been getting nuclear launch codes and proceeds to try and launch them… I think. All I know is that she has them, succeeds on launching one that appears to kill Ms. Marvel as she saves us all from a nuclear bomb, and a bunch of little read boxes tell me “Password Override Denied”. Whether this means that the SHIELD overrides aren’t working or Ultron’s overrides aren’t working, I don’t know but somehow, someone’s gonna launch a bomb.

The Sentry cannot defeat Ultron, so Wonder Man gives it a try. Seems his ionic energy can’t do the trick either and the Wasp’s only lines and appearance in this goddamned book arrive! Doing some field leading, she tells Wonder Man (or Simon because, despite big logo fonts, codenames aren’t really used consistently with the Mighty) to get Ultron out of the city just in time to look over her shoulder on the third to the last page and say “Hank?”

Yes, never fear! Ant-Man is here! Just like on the cover of the comic, so I can’t complain because it’s pretty cool shot of Ant-Man and his insects coming to…. surrender to Ultron and take a little monologuing so Ares and his SHIELD virus-mobile can go down Ultron gullet and hopefully END THIS STORY next issue.

So really, all you need to know is that there’s a big Venom/Carnage-y event the issue after next because Ares has a plan to end this all next issue.   Thank you, Ares.

So, like a lot of you out there, I got horrendously ill this week. Barely made it in on Tuesday to sell some comics, missed new comic day entirely which normally would be a damned shame if it wasn’t for the fact I was able to convalesce in peace as I had completely forgotten that New Avengers #35 came out, not to mention having Mighty Avengers #5 mixed in with the preview books. I didn’t have to list two bad Avengers books in with the rest of my ails!

But today, despite still being full of meds and unpleasantness, I take the bullet and dive headfirst into both. Do you dare take in what could possibly be the WORST installments of each title? Read on!

New Avengers #35

Look at that cover! Venom and Wolverine, all claws and tongue and totally NOT IN THIS BOOK. Not a lick of it anywhere, but that’s nothing new in the world of comic covers so my complaint is pretty weak and we move on. Nope, no Wolverine in this book, but do you know who is? TIGRA! This is going to be great. You see, she’s taking down Jigsaw (who’s doing much cooler things over in Moon Knight if I remember correctly) and stopping him from the rather mundane crime of robbing a bank. Two cops bust in, assess the situation and begin to freak out on TIGRA despite her clearly stating her name, codename and registration and having JIGSAW ON THE GROUND while other people are withn arm’s reach who should have given a little more validity to the facts. The cops fear of furries allows Jigsaw to get away and get his invite to the warehouse gathering of shady criminals and Greer Nelson to get slammed by the Initiative for losing her man and shipped out to Arkansas. That’s right. Two inept cops who are never seen again after they discuss how freaky it was to see a furry chick in a bikini completely ruin a superhero who’s not only been on two sets of Avengers but is a clearly registered hero, most likely sleeping with Tony Stark (hey! if the characters in the book can make that judgment call, so can I) and has at least been a cover girl for a lot of titles these days as Random Girl Hero to balance out the male:female ratio. One strike, you’re out to Arkansas, where I am SURE a furry chick in a bikini will go over a lot better.

Anyhoo, back to the shady gathering of shady figures in a shady warehouse. The Hood has gathered them all there for sale pitch on his new Supervillain Union, saying that by working together they’ll never get beaten by losers like Tigra again. Why should we follow you?, ask other more well-established Marvel characters, to which the Hood responds in cash. “Seed money” to get the apparently suffering villains back on their feet. Because they have it so hard. Flash’s Rogues under Geoff Johns this is not.

As an extra bonus, the Hood offers to do a little favor for Jigsaw, his ‘calling card to the world’. After doing a little research, the Hood tracks Greer Nelson down to Catwoman’s apartment and beats the unholy hell out of her while having her mother on a cell phone to prove he’s really a huge threat to her and her family. You mess with the Hood’s guys (which is… I guess, all the super-villains? Are they going to wear matching biker jackets to prove their allegiance?), you’re dead. Your mom? Dead. And then, he adds, you’ll have to get all emo and crap like Spider-Man because you’re the one who really killed her because you’re a ‘selfish little pig’. Not an actual superhero with contacts with the government who could hide her mother and go after some retard in a cape in the time it takes to fire up a SHIELD jet-cycle. There’s more beating while Jigsaw camcords the whole thing for YouTube, his private late night video collection and … all the rest of the villains the Hood rounded up last time… at a bar?

So, 25 grand to what is depicted on-panel as roughly 39 guys (and gal!) plus the added benefit of a semi-snuff piece featuring a B-List hero at best who’s more known for working with the Avengers than going after any of these guys proper apparently reels the whole crew in. Yay for them. Going back a couple issues, they revisit the Deathlok in a Jar they have on tap and use him to rob a bank under the Baxter Building. Just Deathlok and seven other dudes (and dudette!) break into the joint for a big ol’ pile of money. Deathlok ‘dies’ in the process.

Last couple pages are them dealing with the big Venom event that hasn’t even hit the pages of Mighty Avengers just yet, but hey! There are the Mighty Avengers on live TV in a time sequence labeled “Today” and that the Hood guy? This gives him a grand opportunity.

Where do I even start? I tried to hold back through the recap just to get through the damned thing and not throw my copy against the nearest wall in frustration. This is so forced I’m surprised Bendis isn’t hovering over my shoulder with every pages going “Huh, didja see that? See that? Didja see it?”

Okay, we know the man has a huge thing for the Hood. I haven’t read it, so I can safely assume it’s the greatest new villain since the days of Doctor Doom and Thanos, full of passion and pathos, sympathy and madness and this is totally the character the Marvel Universe needs to shake things up. Whatever. I’d just be a lot more fond of some ‘showing’ and not ‘telling’. There is nothing all that inspiring about the Hood recruitment speech. There isn’t nothing all that compelling about his leadership. There is nothing all that fearsome about his methods. He’s a mid-card crook and could be very interesting there but setting him up as this huge presence amongst characters with more comics and background under their belt than his Spawn cape has little tattery bits to make him more spooky? Not worth, what now, two or three issues? You can’t just have a guy barge on scene, announce himself as the baddest dude on the block and then consider the job a done deal. Yeah, I could have read the Hood mini series or the trade to get a better idea of this guy. but you know what? I’M READING THE AVENGERS RIGHT NOW. It’s Bendis’s job to sell me on this guy and if he’s lazy, it’s not going to work.

Now, go back to the issue and think about someone like Whirlwind or hell, poor Electro standing up at a villain potluck and screaming “We don’t have to take it anymore!!”, rallying people he’s worked with before and taking advantage of the heroes vs heroes theme that’s settled into the ol’ MU. There would at least be a little backstory, some tenure so to speak with the guy and it’d be a lot more believable to see one of their own stepping into the role of gang boss. I mean, they don’t call them the Masters of Evil for nothing right? It’s not like Zemo has the trademark on the name.

Yeah, I can give the story time and maybe he’ll turn out to be really cool five issues down the line but I’m not willing. This is a big deal, this is a rally of villainy we havent seen in a long time and I should be compelled from page one, not ‘Oh, well, maybe the book will get better eventually and I should give the story time to breathe’- HELL NO! I’m tired of it! If he was going to go to everyone individually, pitch it to them personally, flesh out what he really wants out of the deal, earn some respect, be inventive, sure. I’ll give that story whatever it needs to build me a complex and compelling villain (SEE: Alexander Lukin in Captain America). But no, this was a wham-bam-I’m in charge, look at me now and let’s get on with a symbiont invasion.

And how does he show off how cool he is in the issue? Well, last issue he kicked Wolverine’s butt so I guess that’s street cred but this issue, he doles out cash and beats up Tigra, threatening her mom. To use an analogy, there’s this term they use in professional sports entertainment called “putting over” someone by “jobbing” to them. Yes, pro wrestling is scripted and if you’re booked to perform a match just to lose, you’re jobbing. Tigra was brought into the book to lose horribly to the Hood. She got no respect from the police officers at the start of the book, no respect from the people she works for in the Initiative, and was only used in the narrative to show just how ruthless and evil the Hood can be.

But… was it really all that impressive? It was Tigra. While I may have a fondness for Greer Nelson, it’s very clear that Bendis only thinks of her as a furry chick in a bikini. Marvel’s basically used her as a placeholder in several stories where her characterization is so thin she could easily be interchanged with any other Marvel heroine. So why should I care? It’s like beating up the Paladin or Centennial or the J.O.B. Squad. It’s cheap and unimpressive. I’d also like to note that after spending four whole pages on beating up Tigra, the really impressive heist of the bank under the Baxter Building (unless the Fantastic Four don’t actually live there anymore) is given just one page.

So yeah. Craptastic issue, sorry if you bought it.  But could the next Avengers title actually be worse??

Manager Hank and I got to explain what ‘jumping the shark’ was to a fellow employee. You see, as I at least told it, it comes from the idea that once something ‘jumps the shark’ (as Fonzie did on Happy Days), there really is nothing else. You can’t be challenged because what’s possibly going to seem more dangerous (or less ridiculous) than jumping over a shark on a pair of water skies? How can you go back to simple drama or more personal stories? You jumped a freakin’ shark! It’s pretty cool don’t get me wrong, but it’s like that Daffy Duck trick he’d do to end the vaudeville show cartoon where he drinks nitroglycerin and blows himself up. It’s a fantastic trick and brings down the house but he can only do it once.

And thus, World War Hulk. As of issue #4, I can pretty much guarantee that none of the results are going to matter to anyone bigger than the Hulk himself, and even he has to revert back down to a more popular culture standard by the summer. World War Hulk is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing at all.

Why? Thanks for asking! You see, I’d been actually with World War Hulk (though shaky on a few points) up until this last issue. #1 came in to lay down the ground work to those who hadn’t been paying attention and to take out some major structures. This is to show that we’re playing for keeps, or so I think, showing Iron Man taken down with fighter jets and buildings smashed and Black Bolt held up helpless and defeated (which is another story in and of itself, just table that thought). All in all, something that really set the tone of this whole she-bang. This was going to be brutal, it was going to be righteous and Civil War was going to look like the McNeil-Lehrer Hour next to this real war of wars.

Second issue kept it up as far as throwing heroes at a man destined to win. I mean, they can’t defeat the guy on #2, right? The fights were fantastically illustrated, real meaty slugfests that went beyond showing you the face-offs that Civil War gave you and delivered the blow by blow of a super battle. It probably would have been better if oh, say… the rest of the Marvel Universe was affected by these battles the way that Civil War sent shockwaves through other books; Peter Parker unmaskes in Civil War #2 and Amazing Spider-Man follows suit, Sue Richards leaves her husband as of Civil War #4 and the Fantastic Four title shows you the aftermath (or an entirely different departure, but again, rant for another time). Here, many major heroes go toe to toe with the Hulk and lie in the street in bloody heaps and… the Fantastic Four are on another planet saving Sue. Or Ben and Johnny are stuck with the Zombie-verse. The Avengers (both sets) seem to be just fine in their own books, the Mighty still paused in the world’s slowest fight with Ultronette and New hanging about the Sanctum Sanctorum in a paranoid fit (again, more rants, another time… focus, Carla!). World War Hulk #2 could have been cooler if just a little more attention were paid to it.

#3 was it! #3 was the issue that had me in my seat, ready for something big in the Hulk-verse, so to speak. There is no situation that can’t be improved with an appearance by Thunderbolt Ross in my opinion and his explanation of why the Hulk doesn’t deserve the air God Fearing Red Blooded Americans breathe is everything I love about the character; his stick-to-itiveness, his firm belief in what he thinks is right to the exclusion of all else is what the anti-Hulk side needed. From his point of view, there’s a sense of danger and threat because really, how much can titans slug it out? We need some human contact, as flawed as it is, some history and Thunderbolt firing two pistols into the Hulk’s face as they plummet from a hellicopter is just genius. Of course, the act is futile in the face of the incredible Hulk and a couple more issues, but the sentiment is there and it put the book over for me. By the end of this issue, Doctor Strange is so desperate to stop the madness, he drinks the essence of the extra-dimensional demon powerhouse Zom, I guess thinking that if you can’t beat ‘em…

Okay, that’s pretty hardcore. A guy who’s been relatively hands-off in recent events is taking not only EXTREME action to try and find a resolution, but possibly unleashing forces he had no way of controlling that could easily make a bad situation worse. This isn’t just the act of a desperate man, this is the act of a stupid man and here is where my worry starts.

Issue #4 sets in on the big Demon-Fueled Strange and the Righteously-Indignant Hulk fight and despite the power level and the awesome factor, this is kind of a weak battle. In fact, even the Hulk seems a little tired of all this and doesn’t seem to have his heart in the battle, almost trying to talk Doctor Strange down from this incredibly risky and uncontrollable turn of events. After saving a bunch of people from Rampaging Strange’s destruction (yeah, figure that one out), the not-so-good Doctor is forced to join the rest in the new gladiatorial pit. Rick Jones, the shadow of this book (and sadly just as empty- yikes! another tangent!) shows up to give an ‘AH HA! You’re not REALLY a monster after all!’ moment that was better done in the last issue of the Incredible Hulk with a less interesting character. Hulk shrugs this off and sets about showing the Illuminati what he had to go through off-world while the rest of the heroes in the Marvel Universe just seem to… watch in super-handcuffs. What were once elegantly brutal fights are getting sloppy, where once we had some enthusiasm for seeing heroes fall we find redundancy, and the book has officially lost my attention. Justin time for the Sentry to get off the couch.

That’s right, OFF THE COUCH! Like Mighty Casey at Bat, the Golden Guardian of Neurosis has been sitting back on the couch watching this all go down with pleas from his friends and comrades to get up and do something, goddamnit! And finally, after remembering a conversation in which IRON MAN told him it was OKAY TO PLAY GOD, he leaves his house and is ready to end this travesty of justice.

Let’s face it folks: other books have moved on. As if realizing that the characters involved in World War Hulk weren’t going to make a difference, the tie-ins to World War Hulk have come and gone. Frontline is focusing more on the lives of the characters than revealing half of the secrets that it did for Civil War. Issue #4 was the issue I stopped reading this series and started flipping through it for salient points. While Civil War: Frontline added some dimention to the overall plot and painted both sides of the war with damning evidence (okay, the MySpace Rant wasn’t exactly ‘damning’, per se) and at least contented some questions I’d had. It wasn’t great (those historical comparisons in the back were really lousy), but the main story carried itself through. This, however, is starting to look more and more like a vanity project for Sally Floyd (the woman WHO LIVES BY HER OWN RULES!) that showcases scenes of war and disasters in a four-color smash-’em’-up event. I’m not saying that World War Hulk shouldn’t have major repercussions and that the innocent bystanders shouldn’t have a place in the story, I’m just saying you can’t pull on my heartstrings that some poor old woman lost her house while the Hulk was totally throwing that dude through a building. Don’t ruin the action with sentimentality, wait until the slugfest is over, then show us the misery; otherwise, both lose their impact. Then again, this may be just me.

The very moment I decided I was going to start flipping was at the end, when Ben Ulrich goes undercover to see the Hulk Gladiatorial Pit up close and personal. As he sits with people hungry for violence and spectacle, the opening act seems to be a demon shrike from the Team Aliens fighting a lion from the zoo that s obviously shown to have no survival instincts left in him. It’s a sad sad picture made worse by the audience reaction and their lust for the gore. Ulrich asks the guy next to him who was going on about how the lion was fried and split like a peach is the guy had any pets, to which he replied two dogs and seemed unfazed by the comparison. “We have met the enemy and it is us”, honestly, it’s no big revelation and showing that the conquered can be as ‘evil’ or brutal as the conquering is a common trope of war stories since long before Hulk showed up in a space ship. What bothers me so much about it is that this is the Marvel Universe where I could count on the common man to rise to the occasion. The first two Spider-Man movies endeared me to them by showing that when the chips are down, we rise up to aid the honorable and in need regardless of powers, Luke Cage’s neighborhood threw things at SHIELD agents trying to take their hero down, all of this showing some inherent good in humanity.

Civil War: Frontline gave you Sally Floyd and Ben Ulrich, the humanest of the human, as the conscience in some ways of our heroes at war. World War Hulk: Frontline seems to be showing us at issue #4 out of 6 that there is no way the hope for the future is going to rest with us, so thank god the Sentry got his butt off the couch.

Augh! I swore I wasn’t going to do that! So, sum up: World War Hulk is ending in an issue while the rest of the comics on the stands had it end months ago. With issue #5, we’ve been shown that one man is going to be more powerful than the rest of the heroes combined and settle things in 28 pages that the rest of the series entire couldn’t do. Daniel Way has blown up the Hulk without knowing that this trick? You can only do it once.

Yikes! Still looking a little bare, our traffic cones are still down and the Under Construction tape is still wound around This Old Blog here, so we appreciate your patience. Important info coming soon!

But in the meantime, here’s what Marvel sent the store this week for review:

Amazing Spider-Man #544

Man, Joe Q. What happened? Was it the rush? Was it just being overworked? This is just not the level of art I’m used to from a man I seriously wish would do more in the ways of penciling and less in the ways of PR for Marvel. Just enjoy the books and draw the pretty pictures, Joe.
Anyhow, first One More Day issue, yadda yadda, all you really need to know is that Spider-Man is pretty well alone in his sea of troubles, unable to get direct help from IronMan meaning he can’t exactly pop over to his super-pals and get advice on all this misery. He’s very desperate to fix his mistakes, so we’re left off with him jumping away to find out how to save Aunt May. He’s got some support at least, a doctor who’s put two and two together and will keep Aunt May’s locale on the down-low and Jarvis (who totally rules) coming in with a big check from a mysterious benefactor, but this is all Spider-Man and he’s got no other choice than the one they’ve decided for him at the end of the storyline.
Whatever gets me to Brand New Day, folks.

Annihilation: Wraith #3 (of 4)

Now, I first read this while killing time at the store after my shift and I hit a full page reveal that litterally took the air out of me. I was so stunned that I had to clap a hand over my mouth lest I be heard by the customers. And this is the best part- I was shocked over something I had only come to know and respect at the end of Ronin’s Annihilation mini, a book that honestly didn’t do very well. Despite that, turning the page and seeing that one page splash, the big reveal, I was honestly surprised. It’s like I was let in on what could be the accepted downfall of the entire Kree race, and that actually means something. This is some GREAT writing and art.
Wraith breaks free of the Phalanx prison, takes Super-Skrull and his side-kick lady with him and makes a huge decision in order to avenge the death of his parents (add your own dressing like a Bat joke here). Meanwhile, in a very parallel story, Ronin is darn well doomed.

Incredible Hulk #110

Remember when they shot the Hulk into space and Bendis went on record saying that the Hulk was actually responsible for every life ruined by his smashing episodes and counts as a killer and is dangerous and please believe this storyarc isn’t the work of total bastards, etc. etc.? Well, this issue’s job is to discredit all that by proving that the Hulk will not kill, no matter how much you piss him off. Sure, it’s proven by Amadeus Cho (who Rick Jones should smack around in my humble little opinion- what the hell is Rick really doing these days anyhow!? Lazy bastard.), but then we can say that his super-powered math proved it as well and as we all know, if you can prove the worst of actions with math, you have to be right. Everybody thank Reed Richards.

Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin #1 (of 6)

So, been looking for some old school Iron Man, free of SHIELD responsibility, back to the days of secret identities and strong supporting characters? A little bit of pompous villainy and dramatic posing? Go give this a flip through. I’m not saying it’s perfect; it’s like finding water in the desert in a kind of dirty glass. Sure, you’re not too certain of the contents but boy, are you thirsty.

Ms. Marvel #19

Or as we now call it at work: the Aaron Stack show! Whoever thought to bring in Machine Man (especially the Nextwave flavor Machine Man) is a right genius because this book got such a punch of personality from the include that they should win a trophy. Ms. Marvel and her crew are looking around Chile for what’s causing a bunch of kidnappings and brainwashed mercenaries to bust out villains we hadn’t heard of before; Ms. Marvel finds the heart of the story, that it’s all the Puppet Master going into the creepy business of mind-controlled slaves ready for purchase (including super-heroines for implied nefarious purposes). Meanwhile, Aaron Stack, Sleepwalker and Agent What’s-His-Name find out the same thing by walking around ‘in disguise’ and having a quick semi-fight with Arana. The sight of a robot in a mustache makes me look forward to the next issue.

New Excalibur #23

Is it just me or is this book rather complicated? I mean, you have your ‘Dark X-Men’, your evil Captain Britain, your wayward Captain Britain, the Excalibur crew (one of whom is possessing a Britain on the bad side since she’s had a stroke, the other is undercover as an evil Britain and seemingly lost in the role) and all these people are doing things all at once. And that thing is fight fight fight. Eventually, things get to a big dramatic duel between Evil Captain Britain and Good Captain Britain and lo and behold, they’re the same person. Kind of unsurprising considering the rest of the chaos that’s going on, really.

New Warriors #4

Let’s see, more clues that point to Night Thrasher being Bill Foster’s nephew Tom (yes, I know we’ve seen Tom in issues of Incredible Hulk, but that won’t stop the House of Ideas), another version of Tony Stark who seems sympathetic to the New Warriors, some hard training and hard practice that kills off one of the New Warriors right on the waffling Sofia’s doorstep, forcing her to make a choice. Still nothing remarkable but nothing bad, still a book I can’t figure out.

Shanna the She-Devil: Survival of the Fittest #2 (of 4)

Ugh. The weirdest thing is that there’s a story in here. It’s a crime drama about modern pirates and double crossing and what people are prepared to do to survive. This would be a great Icon book or Vertigo mini-series or something that crime drama on the high seas could really work with. You could call it ‘Wrecked’ and focus on the lives of criminals marooned on an island and how they make it out.
But no, they got cheesecake all over a dramatic story and not even good cheesecake at that. Add in some dinosaurs not so lovingly drawn as when Frank Cho’s on pencils, some … weird Nazi ape-men (which normally, I’d be a HUGE fan of), and Shanna the She-Devil as dull as a post and you have a book that could have been so much more if they just decided if it was going to take itself seriously or not.

She-Hulk #21

Dan Slott is an underrated genius. It’s like the dawn broke and we can see the sky clear and in the most beautiful color and all could be well again. He promised that this issue would fix a lot of characterization and plotting problems and it does in a rather wonderful story to end his run on. It even fixes problems within in own book!
Too bad no one will listen. Much like the medieval fool, Dan Slott was able to say truthful things about the current Marvel Universe with that edge of humor. Despite my distaste for the whole Starfox debacle and ‘She-Hulk: Agent of SHIELD’, this lone issue clears it all up and many more that have somewhat broken my heart over sloppy storytelling and a lack of character dignity.
Great, right? Glowing praise? No one will ever use it. This little gem is too farcical and silly to ever be put into use, despite it’s finer points. I’d tell you his brilliant solution, but you’re just going to have to read it, roll your eyes and sigh a little wistfully for yourselves. Trust me, a great way to end a rather solid run on the book.

Tomorrow! NO BOOKS FOR YOU. Labor Day brings us our books on Thursday this week, so this whole post was just a big ol’ spoiler (well, at least I hope it wasn’t). But please, don’t forget to drop by your local comic shop anyway this week and say hi. They’ll be lonely and confused, the comic shop employees internal clock timed to the Diamond shipping list like the phases of the moon with the tide.

Happy Wednesday anyways, folks.

Well, here we are, another week, another set o’ comics. I was surprised to see that Marvel was kind of bogarting the books when it came to the previews this time.  Sure, they put the big issue everyone’s been dying to see since they trotted out ‘Clor’ over in an 8-page preview at Newsarama, but no full issue.

Right now?   I think it’s because they are getting it over with as fast as possible to get JMS back to his navel-gazing story.  At Comic Con, they admitted that the God of Thunder won’t be really integrated with the Marvel Universe until June or so to give Straczynski all the breathing room he wants to put Thor back into place.  Just think of him as a really bad parallel parker; he’s going to need time, patience and a lot of repetition.

Anyhow, in the eight pages we see, not only do we get to see Thor lament over the Hurricane Katrina Disaster (which, quick aside – that’s kind of tacky.   I don’t want to read a lot into the preview or anything, but please notice how all the heroes showed up en masse for the 9/11 tribute  to help or just shed a tear, but Black Panther I think was the only comic to deal with the hurricane trauma and here it is in a horrible state that the Initiative doesn’t seem to be handling.  Let’s face it, real world tragedies that can be EASILY FIXED BY THE CAST are a little more than awkward in a comic book.  Just tacky.  Anyhow… ).  And then Iron Man shows up and pretty callously just huckers Thor into the Initiative, seeing him again as less of a friend and more of an asset.  Thor, rightfully, gets mad and we start the lighting and the thundaaah.

That’s a lot to go down in eight pages for the pacing of this book and I just have this tickling feeling that the fight is going to go down quick and fast, leaving Iron Man beaten up but completely healed off panel and  otherwise perfectly able to continue the path he’s been walking since Civil War.  Especially after seeing him escape World War Hulk with a boo-boo or two but able to continue to be the Director of SHIELD and continue to promote and help enforce the Registration Act and continue to be the jerk we’ve come to know and tolerate.   No, your negligence with your friends and comrades should lead to some result, actions should equal consequences and if the super-hero community doesn’t turn their back on him soon, if he doesn’t lose his authority kick… hell, if he doesn’t lose SOMETHING other than his INTEGRITY…

Ah, what do I know?  Here’s the comics I did read in their entirety.

Hey, not a lot of reviews this week, but they didn’t send me all that much. Maybe we’ll make up for it by picking up some comics and reviewing them on Ye Olde Lunch Breake?

STAY TUNED!

Well, they were ‘preview’ now they’re just ordinary run of the mill reviews. You see, I had a good portion of the workload set and ready for formatting (my gift, my curse) when I got to one issue I just couldn’t pull together. What was going on? Why should people care? Is this a return to the Dark Ages for a series that’s certainly had it’s ups and downs? Ah, well. Let’s see where I hit that snag…

Amazing Spider-Man #543

Well, Peter Parker finally admits it; he finally faces down the sad, sad fact he isn’t really a hero anymore, just a pale shadow of who he used to be. After roping MJ into forging documents and taking his Uncle Ben’s name in vain,
You know what? Screw this. No matter what Peter Parker does right now, it doesn’t matter in a few months, what with One More Day and Brand New Day. All this emo crap, this spitting in the face of everything Aunt May taught him, it doesn’t matter because in a few months, it’s all new, all different time. So, long story shot, Peter Parker becomes a criminal and drags his wife down through the mud with him in order to keep his whereabouts and family safe. Aunt May? Still conveniently on the edge of death. Keep going, JMS, in a few issues, you’ll be out like The Other.

Annihilation Conquest: Starlord #2

When this book started, there was only one character I wasn’t all that crazy about: the purple Shi’ar chick, Deathcry. She got under my skin when she was on the Avengers, and still didn’t make much sense to me years later. All I have to say now, after reading this issue, is I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Starlord’s crew breaks in, does a lot of damage and battles all who cross their path and wind up running across some of Ravenous’s crew trying to accomplish a similar task. In the thick of things, start to wonder just how expendable everyone is. This is such an oddball book and only Keith Giffen could really to write it and write it well.

Cable & Deadpool #44

You know, when it was said at Comic Con that they’d be scratching out the ‘Cable’ in the title and scribbling in Wolverine, I thought they were just being funny. Turns out, we may just have a new crew. Wolverine does a fine job starting things off by decapitating Deadpool, leaving poor Bob the Hydra Agent to try and put the pieces back together so to speak for more high flying kicking and shooting action. Funny violence, a lesson learned, Scott making sure to keep up his late son’s pet project and in the end, Logan, Wade and Bob all seem to have been teleported somewhere. My guess? Somewhere funny.
Nicieza has been really bringing a standard to this book, a little lesson wrapped around some hilarity and silliness that only comics can get away with. I dig the book.

Immortal Iron Fist #8

And speaking of books that bring it, we have the start of an awesome action packed martial arts tournament from Fraction and Brubaker! YAY! Anything else? Not really. There’s some flashbacks to show a little more background on Rand’s relationship with K’un-Lun and what an awesome place of kung-fu it is. We have Danny trying to jump back to the ‘real world’ plot and figure out who’s messing with his assets, but he’s is gently steered away to concentrate on what really matters. And that’s a sumo dude totally kicking the ass out of a pile of ‘Shaolin Terror Priests’ to show his prowess. The end of the story comes with a nifty little bracket of how the tournament is arranged, so while away some minutes thinking of all the beautiful combinations.

Iron Man #21

Okay, back to being angry again. When last we saw Tony, he was being held prisoner by Hulk’s Warbound and probably doomed to some gladiatorial nonsense. He was in incredible pain and advising Dum Dum Dugan, acting Director in his place, to BLOW UP MANHATTAN if Hulk gets too much of his way. Pretty tense, huh?
WRONG! This issue, Tony’s back, fit as a fiddle, and dealing with all of his plot pre-World War Hulk. Apparently, the war is over in this book and everyone’s back to normal; at least, no one’s talking about SHIELD blowing up Manhattan. So, there goes the wind in the sails of World War Hulk, folks. Sure, the journey is more interesting than the destination and there was a certain sense of assurity that nothing was really going to happen out of all of this World War nonsense, but… after Civil War, I’m not sure I could have been so secure. There was a chance that there could have been some long reaching plans out of the mini-series, especially with the main members of the Illuminati. Like Tony Stark.
This issue! Graviton does some terrible things, Iron Man starts to have something of a conscience and the Mandarin may be afoot (answer: yes.)

The Order #2

I really didn’t want to like this series. The premise takes a lot of the heart out of the happenstance of becoming a Marvel hero, as far as I’m concerned and falls into that ‘if everyone can be special, than no one really is’ trap of Pixar’s the Incredibles. They got rid of a lot of mutants just for this; to make sure that the super-powered were in the minority and that everyone and their mom wasn’t a mutant. It seems that super-powers can be given or taken at will, so what makes these guys so great to bother with?
Oh, yeah. Good writing. As if anticipating my needs, Matt Fraction is borrowing a device from my favorite comic of all time, X-Factor #87, and that’s the one-on-one character interview. And BAM! Who cares if they have powers? Who cares if this is a bad American Idol style selling out of the American hero? To paraphrase the great Super Chicken, they knew the job was dangerous when they took it; much like Warren Ellis’s Thunderbolts, Fraction seems to understand how hollow this idea all is and comes clean with PR and agents and a Britney Spears-esque heroine who’s just as fucked up as her real life counterpart. But you know what? She’s fighting a bear. And boy howdy, even this messed up little girl can see that’s a hell of a lot of fun. The characters are where this book is settling and the means are simply ends to telling us a really good story.

Sensational Spider-Man #40

Now, by this point, I’m fed up with Spider-Man. He can go jump off a cliff as far as I care. Mary Jane could be a Skrull and Peter can decapitate her as a means of serving divorce papers, whatever. Whatever it takes to get me to Brand New Day, when the real stories can start again. I’m tired.
Then I get one of these. Just a little Dixie cup of Gatorade in the long run to Brand New Day. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa hasn’t been my favorite guy as comic writers go, but after Civil War, the guy really picked up the ball on a couple issues. This one is no exception as with wariness I read that Peter Parker was hella mad about his aunt and needed to go “hurt” something. After Friendly Neighborhood and Amazing, I wasn’t sure if he’d be breaking random Joe Criminal or himself, but instead we get Peter Parker blowing off some steam by hitting a dumpster a good distance from public view. SMART GUY! There! That’s being reasonable, right? Don’t go take your shit out on the Kingpin (who’s basically doing what expected when you blow your cover) or J. Jonah Jameson (who has every right to want to punch the crap out of you, but should be allowed to behave like an adult). . Go kick a can! Go to the gym! Scream at the beach. Be healthy.
Then God shows up. Or at least… it’s implied. No white-bearded father here, God shows up as a derelict and takes Spider-Man on a journey of “Yes, life is goddamned hard, but suck it up, have faith in the right thing and things will work out for the best.” Peter is reminded that yes, hi family and friends do get hurt, but he also saved OCEANS of people in the process. Sure, his life’s kinda sucky, but SOME PEOPLE HAVE IT WORSE. Quit your crying.
Okay, God’s nicer than that, but hey. He’s God. Peter goes back from this, hopefully a little wiser and Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa gives me a warm cup of milk and puts me to bed with a happy ending.
Go read it.

Thunderbolts #116

This book continues to use the context of the events of Civil War and the Initiative in ways no other title seems to do. Mind you, some of them are are in World War Hulk mode, some go off planet or dimension, but trust in Warren Ellis to revel in a dark futuristic world that’s only a shade off from the world we know and love. So much happens in this issue, conversations are just packed with story and detail and info, even the little commercials he slips into the book, so I’m only going to talk about the two big points and let you go read and enjoy the book.
First: Penance can still be riled about what he’s supposedly embraced. You know, the reason he put on the dumb spiky suit and became just another emo kid who’s going to blow up because he can and revel in his pain and listen to Linkin Park? Yeah, apparently he’s still touchy about all that as when some poor fool named “Hellrazor” shouts out from his cell on the ridiculousness of Robbie Baldwin being a “child murderer” and now in the employ of the government, Penance does “Hulk Level Damage” to the entire cell block. My guess is that Hellrazor’s dead for calling Penance on getting to kill people with no serious repercussions. Ha. Eventually, Penance is taken down from his temper tantrum and Osborn wants to end this farce right here, right now with a big ass gun, but Moonstone convinces Norman that he’d have his own little personal Hulk (like a personal Jesus, but better) if he kept him around and had the right triggers put in. Because this book is all about using people (and I mean that in the best of ways), Penance gets to live another day.
The other big point in the book is the reveal of a androgynous person in a motorcycle helmet calling themselves Mindwave (no hyphen). Apparently, he (or she) is an unregistered mutant telekine (telekinetic, but cooler sounding) and she (or he) proves this by blowing up a bunch of stuff at a police precinct and knocking around the cops. The book ends with Mindwave quietly submitting to the authorities (personally suggesting the Thunderbolts) amongst the wreckage they created. So, incredible amount of telekinetic power, a mutant unregistered we might not have seen hanging out at the X-Mansion and most likely a mole for someone to get into Thunderbolts Mountain. Well, whatcha got Ellis?

Wolverine #56

Filler issue, all about Wolverine in a pit being shot with a heavy caliber machine gun at regular intervals. Ripping adventure, this one. But you know, it’s not a bad story, even though the idea is pretty predictable. We focus on one of the men behind the gun and watch as Logan gets inside his messed up head and eventually gets free. Nice little psychological story about a huge loser and less about Wolverine, though there is an epilogue with freshly goth-punk’d Wild Child and Romulus beaming about their polaroids-of-Wolverine-shot-up-a-bunch collection. Ehn.

World War Hulk: Gamma Corps #2

So this is the issue that tells the reader why all these guys want to put the hurt on the Hulk so badly that they were willing to go through body modification and genetic horrors to form a super group. A couple of them have some pretty interesting plot lines (the father of the Jim Wilson, for example) and others more or less try to capitalize on the Hulk’s previous body count by making innocent bystanders out for revenge. Now, the woman who, with her son, got trapped in wreckage and lost two limbs and her kid, that’s actually pretty fair and believable. The member of the Circus of Crime who got jumped out of the gang by thinking he could take on the Hulk, a little shaky. But the family who’s son suffered a massive stroke in the womb and was born autistic or… something unsaid, that’s a little pushing it. Anyways, doesn’t matter, they’re all freaks at the command of General Ryker who’s miffed that he wasn’t targeted in World War Hulk. You see, he thinks the Hulk would be concerned about things that happened issues and issues ago and come find him, but Hulk doesn’t care, so he shoots a missile at him. I’ll keep reading, mostly for the women who lost her limbs and son and Jim Wilson’s dad, but I’m not taking this all that seriously. Come the end of World War Hulk, the Gamma Corps will be the answer to a trivia question.

X-Men #202

For three days, I read this issue, taking it to the back room on my lunch and pouring over it. I tried making a diagram, I tried keeping a tally sheet, I asked co-workers and all I have to say is I have no idea what this is all about. I’m sure Mr. Paul O’Brien is going to be able to sum it up a lot better because he’s got a head for these kinds of things, but man. Even after my years of reading confusing X-Books, I just can’t seem to see what Mike Carrey is getting at. In short, the X-Mansion gets attacked and broken into (again, making the Sentinel Squad outside PERFECTLY USELESS), this time by Exodus and crew who are looking for Destiny’s Diary. They find out that not only is it not a little book with the words ‘Destiny’s Diary’ on it kept in Kitty Pryde’s sock drawer, but it’s been mind shielded from the X-Men, probably by Emma Frost. Emma Frost, who’s currently paralyzed and buried in rubble with Cyclops, Beast and Wolverine (who has a zippo so we can have some light in the scene). While they are trying to get out, Emma is psionically calling Cannonball and Iceman, who are flying around in the X-Jet trying to find out what’s going on. Good luck there. Meanwhile, Sinister, the Mauraders and Mystique are also trying to find the diaries and it looks like Sinister has Cerebro.
Yeah. At least the backup story is picking up for a little, as Beast and Dark Beast go corpse hunting in Genosha. Digging up dead mutants (dead from … wow. YEARS ago! We’re talking Grant Morrison’s run dead!), they are testing genetic samples and while some bits of science-talk are a little sketchy (why would a depowered mutant corpse have to lose their wings?), we get to the final answer that no, the X-Gene is really really gone. Gone gone, not hiding, not asleep, not dormant, just gone. So, Beast wants to see if injecting former mutants with the X-Gene might restart the whole process; yes, this would be forcibly rewriting DNA and with all the grave robbing, experimentation and outbursts of anger, don’t think that this is escaping Dark Beast at all. Next issue, they go talk to Bishop and see if they can’t score some Mutant Growth Hormone for medical purposes.

X-Men: First Class #3

Ahhhhh. Nice way to end the day, let me tell you. So, like the Gallant to X-Men #202′s Goofus, X-Men First Class wraps up it’s first two-parter with the X-Men sent to Monster Island by a grouchy Xavier to what seems their certain doom. Back at the mansion, Xavier comes home to find the kids gone and Mastermind (apparently turned to stone in their foyer?) trying to get his revenge by impersonating the Professor. The kids figure this out first and confront Mastermind on the whole sham and in true villain form, tells of his whole plan long enough for Xavier to get on board and send in his big glowy head for the rescue. That’s right, GIANT HEAD FIGHT. Obviously, Xavier wins the telepathic battle giant head fight and the X-Men are rescued. That’s how you do it.

Happy Wednesday, everybody.

I’m flagging this one out of the usual preview books (which did eventually come in, thanks UPS!) because this is the last issue of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.  Peter David was brought on the book and had a rough time of things right out fo the gate;  the Other divided the brand new title between a bunch of writers, it was tossed between events like a leaf on the wind, dealt mostly with time travel and alternate universe stories and generally tried to be the little man with the broom at the end of the Peabody & Sherman parade.   For the most part, I’ve wanted to like it but have been held back by storylines connecting to events I’m not fond of and the general direction the character has taken in recent years.  Being written by Peter David, I was hoping for lighter fare.  With the name Friendly Neighborhood, I was hoping for some family fun.    And yet, here we are.

Last issue we find out that Peter Parker found out that J. Jonah Jameson fired Robbie Robertson and is going to go do something about it… son.  Sorry, got on a roll.  Anyhow, after seeing Amazing Spider-Man, I got a little worried when the issue starts out with Jonah going to see the Robertson family with a broken hand and a black eye.  Peter recently went on a rampage and kicked the holy hell out of the Kingpin, would he be so ruthless as to do the same to his old boss?
WAIT WHY AM I EVEN QUESTIONING THIS!?!  This is FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD Spider-Man!  There is nothing friendly or neighborhood about a gangland style beating! (Yes, make your own joke about neighborhoods here)  Have we gone so far that I have to wonder if Spider-Man is going to totally flip out and stab people on an issue-by-issue basis?  Horrified, I kept turning pages.
Spider-Man lures J. Jonah to an abandoned boxing gym that came from a crime boss he brusted awhile back.  Worried, I keep reading.  There’s generally a lot of flipping about and yelling between Spider-Man and Jameson respectively as Spider-Man reads Jonah’s actions like a book.   Spidey tries to get Jonah to budge on the lawsuit or the rehire of Robbie and to the best of his character, Jameson isn’t having any of it.  And that when Spider-Man tells Jonah to hit him.
Wha?  Peter Parker takes of the mask (I flinch!  Oh, Peter, don’t Kingpin this guy!) and eggs Jameson on to hit him.  And, surprise surprise, after enough taunts and valid reasoning, Jonah does.  Big splash page, Jameson just decking little Peter Parker.  As the beating continues, I could not tell you who I was rooting for.  After breaking his hand on the guy, they call it a day.  Peter gives Jameson a roll of film with the whole event (?) and says to print it.  After going back to the Bugle, the film is crushed under Jameson’s foot and … he runs into a door.  Something funny had to be in the book.
In the end, we learn that this was all just a ploy because Parker is SO EMO that he wants people to punish him for every one he didn’t save and the rather miserable turn his life has taken.  You can poke Jonah with a stick and get he same effects as a bee’s nest, so thus the pounding.  Jonah had no real reasn to fire Robbie, so that was a ploy too; firing a friend would get Parker’s attention and force a meeting between the two.  I feel really used.
But that’s Spider-Man for you, even a friendly neighborhood one.

Look! Look on the cover! It’s the wives-slash-significant others of the Illuminati! Maybe we’ll get some back story on how they kept these REALLY IMPORTANT PEOPLE ignorant of the Illuminati meetings! Maybe we’ll get a coffee clatch of chicks catching up on what the heck this Illuminati’s been doing all this time. Maybe we’ll have some deeper story about doing it or family and how they affect what major decisions are made!

Or maybe we’ll get the Illuminati bitchin’ about their love lives.

Oh boy. From Doctor Strange asking “Is there any amount of yourself that you can give that is sufficient for a woman?! Is there?!” I knew this issue was gonna be a keeper. By the by, Xavier admits not not having found that answer (and he’s dated outside the species, says the rest of the gang, getting a Jerry Springer like ‘ooooh!’ from our studio audience) and our resident futurist complains about how hard it is for him to get him some. Black Bolt makes some… unfortunate gesturing, and then BAM! Namor.

Okay, remember how I said that this was going to be the Year of the Night Nurse? Did I even say that? Well, I thought it was going to be but, man, I was wrong. But in the right section of the alphabet as I can’t think of an appearance by Namor I haven’t liked yet and this is no exception. While Reed tries to commiserate about how hard it is to keep them wimmins happy, Namor says point blank what we’ve all known about Reed for years: he keeps Sue in a cage.

“She loves you completely,” he says. “But you met her, dated her, then you accidentally gave her powers that forced her into your tower. That tower is a cage, created by you for her. But she has come to terms with it. She still loves you… she’s not going to leave you.” Wow. “You should listen to me. You need to dedicate part of every day to her and your children. Every day.”

Ladies and gents, Namor tried to prevent a major disaster in Civil War from occuring with sound advice. Later, he punches Marvel Boy through a wall. Is there NOTHING that man can’t do?

Before they get on to this business though, Iron Man has to have the last word by swearing he can “top all of you” by admitting to sleeping with Madame Masque. Why does he suddenly blurt this out? She’s on the cover. And they need to make fun of the fact that Tony had sex with a female Doctor Doom.

ANYhow… we go back to Marvel Boy, in this case the Grant Morrison one who wants to declare war on Earth. He’s in prison right now, but the Illuminati want to nip this thing in the bud and while they pass on Namor’s idea to “beat the #$%@ out of him and teach him not to speak until spoken to”, they want the direct approach: Professor Xavier.

Yep, Iron Man tries to wheedle a mind wipe out of Xavier, who has to explain to Tony that he doesn’t do that anymore and exactly how complicated that kind of thing is. No, we don’t just force our will on others because we think it’s the right thing to do, Tony Stark.

It’s just such a weird start to the book that I’m sure has more meaning to it than how it begins, but the whole little ‘chuckle’ at the front and Xavier having to explain that no, changing people’s minds is not “all he does” because then mutants wouldn’t be so damned hated and feared now, would they?… it just took the wind right out of my sails.

And then it came to me; the clouds parted, angels sang and wise words rung in my ear.  You see, there was an issue similar (but much more jovial) to Doctor Strange lamenting his lot in life and all the things we struggle with seen through his eyes.  And it started with a beautiful splash with very important captions decorating the Alan Davis art:

“No matter how startling,” Stan says, “Everything you are about to see is a work of pure fiction.”

The idea that Tony Stark, futurist billionaire, needs to validate himself in a room full of the most powerful and intelligent men on the planet by admitting to sleeping with a facially scarred villainess?  Fiction.  The fact that he even brought out the moral decline of his character by suggesting they just mind control an adolescent alien instead of talking to him and coming to a more rational decision?  Fiction.  The fact that Doctor Strange needs to know how much of himself he has to give the woman he loves in order to make her happy when any chick magazine on the stands’ll tell you to love someone with all of your heart?  Fiction.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Marvel heroes for their flaws.  The human element is why I read these books and the fact that these brilliant men can’t find love because being so smart is nearly a hindrance to their own humanity… I get it.  I just don’t like it when they’re whiny about it.  Tony jumping in with his comment to “top you all” seems so out of character for a man who put this whole thing together, why is he trying to be the big dog in the yard?  Why is he down to “oh, just mind wipe him, it’s what you do, isn’t it?”

What’s wrong with Tony Stark?

Hoo boy, is Comic Con over!  Now I sit, alone at Metro, waiting for a ride back home…. and reading preview books.  Pardon my spelling, but without further ado…

(the new) Fantastic Four #548

This is actually a pretty fantastic issue (thank you folks, I’ll be here all week). The Wizard has a grudge against Mr. Fantastic being the better man and so now he’s devised this plan to prove him wrong, which included getting a new Frightful Four back together (the Trapster, Hydro-Man and Titania, since she’s got red hair), taking the Invisible Woman hostage and blowing up the FF’s rescue ship. Not a shabby plan… but Black Panther’s here to save the day with quick thinking. They rally, show up to save Sue and it’s on like Donkey Kong. Action! Adventure! Humidity (take that, Hydro-Man)! And, with some quick thinking on the Wizard’s part on how to take care of that pesky know-it-all Black Panther, THE RETURN OF THE KLAW!

Sure, it’s a heavy on the Black Panther side, but you know… I’ll forgive that for showing some fun villain and hero action in a day where most mainstream Marvel heroes are threatening to choke fools and/or making situations worse.

Ms. Marvel #18

Now, I haven’t been a fan of Ms. Marvel since her series started adn she just seemed to fall into mistake after mistake. Her last storyline left her with tons of “whoops” and very little to show for it. So that’s why they brought in the big guns. At Comic Con, Brian Reed said that Machine Man would be joining the cast in all his Nextwave glory and he was not kidding. Not many can be Warren Ellis, but he does a fine job of giving some humor and anti-BS to a book that really seemed to cater to the whims of a woman not really cut out for the jobs they keep giving her. Sleepwalker also joins as a wet behind the ears recruit who will be our audience’s viewpont on this wacky situation which is… the Puppet Master! Giving up evil villainy (so he says), he’s gone into the slave trade, kidnapping chicks and selling them as living dolls. Apparently, he’s getting a super-heroine collection for the utra-kinky, and we end with underage Araña showing up as the latest part of his collection.

Hey, Machine Man’s in it! Yay!

New Warriors #3

Night Thrasher may be Bill Foster’s nephew (last seen in Incredible Hulk #107 ready to watch the Hulk beat up the guy who had a hand in his uncle’s death); in any case, this New Night Thrasher can grow really big and that’s our clue. Also, Wolverine shows up to confront “Wondra”, Jubilee’s new alter-ego and to make sure that she knows what she’s doing here. All signs point to “Not really” as people are starting to question this dude who’s funding all this New Warriors business. Thanks to some loving starting shots of the last New Warriors are gross and dead and unpleasant, it might just be that Dwanye Taylor just got really small during the blast as nothing remained of him but the tattered remnants of his uniform. Starting to show some meat on this story, but I’m just not getting that the New Warriors are doing anything but just existing. Where is all this vigilante crime stuff they’re doing? Where’s the good that can come from being a rebellious teen? Besies the anti-Stark and SHIELD graffiti they apparently put up on Stark Tower with no one noticing? Still not entirely sold here, though showing Tony in a SHIELD uniform since he’s the FRIKKIN’ DIRECTOR is a great idea.

Shanna the She-Devil: Survival of the Fittest #1 (of 4)

Sorry. This is going to be short since I just can’t get past this artwork. Something about it just peels my eyes and I can read the story without wondering if we can get the inker a thicker pens so the action doesn’t look so transparent. Because boy, there’s a lot of action here. The book barely stops between a bunch of pirates hijacking a boat that gets attacked by a giantsquid who’s pirranha friends crash the pirate boat that lands them on Shanna’s island where they’re chased by dinosaurs until they are chased by beees and … *phew* I’m tired just typing all of this. And I know I’d like the story if my brain could just get past this art…

Spider-Man/Red Sonja #1 (of 5)

That’s weird. Second story page in is a two page spread of Spider-Man kicking crooks in the face while talking to MJ on his cell phone. That’s surprisingly awesome for a simple, barely understandable crossover book. I mean, Red Sonja? Really?? No, really, this is actually a pretty fun little book. Hyborean villain, Kulan Gath, takes over some poor fool through an amulet, turns New York into something more his style and then- best part- puts Red Sonja in the body of Mary Jane to make sure that Spider-Man is far too busy chainsg around his wife, mind controlled to try and stop the Spider-Man, to bother with his evil plans. Continuity be damned! They harken back to the old Red Sonja/Spider-Man crossover, but nothing else touches this funny little adventure book. I had my doubts but this is some good stuff.

Thor #2

Thrill as Thor, God of Thunder, BUYS REAL ESTATE! He buys the land after he brings Asgard back by shouting really loudly and doing a lot of weather effects, and so now Asgard looks like a weirdly medieval castle. He pays off the local yoakles with armloads of gold to keep the land then decides to go and find the Warriors Three. According to the teaser for the next issue, he finds Iron Man instead. Despite Iron Man being in World War Hulk right now. *sigh*

Uncanny X-Men #489

On one hand, we have Kurt and Professor X on the hunt for Magneto, knowing that he’s confortable enough to wander about after being blown up in a hellicopter after that whole ridiculous New Avengers issue to be walking around, visiting gravesites. Oh, and geting called out on YouTube. Masque is getting braver and braver with these random mutant-ing attacks and Storm is assembling some X-Men at the FF’s place, much to Johnny and Ben’s chagrin. They go into the tunnels and find the leftovers of a confrontation with Sentinel Squad O.N.E. That’s of course when a Sentinel is going to show up on the scene instead of… I guess Sentinel Squad O.N.E’s ground troops… and think that Storm, Queen of Wakanda and public member of the Fantastic Four, totally just killed some guys. A fight ensues, Skids of the Morlocks comes to just in time to show some SHIELD creds and tells the Sentinel to stand down.
Meanwhile, in the Endangered Species back up, Beast encounters Dark Beast for a good talk about what he’s destined to become without morals and Dark Beast gives his goody two shoes counterpart the keys to the old Neverland project from the old Weapon X series, effectively gving him an eeeeevil laboratory. Not a bad piece of the back up, but still a little odd to find within all this.