Bought/Though July 5th, 2006 SPOILERS INSIDE...

[WOLVERINE25TH]

BOUGHT:
52 #9
ARES #5
BEYOND #1
DETECTIVE COMICS #821
FRANKLIN RICHARDS SON OF A GENIUS
INCREDIBLE HULK #96
LAST PLANET STANDING #5
MARVEL TEAM-UP #22
MARVEL WESTERNS KID COLT & ARIZONA GIRL
MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS FF#52
NEW EXCALIBUR #9
PUNISHER #35
RED SONJA #11
SECRET SIX #2
SUPERMAN RETURNS LOIS LANE #4
SUPERGIRL #7
TEEN TITANS #37
THING #8
UNCANNY X-MEN #474
UNCANNY X-MEN #475

THOUGHT:
52 #9 - What can I say except the story just gets more and more interesting as it goes. Or, should I say "stories".

BEYOND #1 - I dub thee: Secret Wars II Redux! A great start with great art and some characters I don't mind seeing getting some recognition again. Plus, what a cliffhanger to leave off on! Hope it keeps it up through all the issues.

FRANKLIN RICHARDS SON OF A GENIUS - Brilliantly funny. I love these strips! They remind me so much of the Mini Marvels of yesteryear (a new one which made a don't blink appearance in some comics last month). Man, Franklin's really a brat in these, ain't he? Three new strips plus a backup that has run in a couple issues a few months ago mean a whole lot of Frankliny goodness. Hope there's more coming.

LAST PLANET STANDING #5 - And so it ends. A new Galactus is born of the Silver Surfer, and the MC2 universe exists to go on another day. That is until Spider-Girl #100 comes out Wed, and then it's all over. Bastards. The mini was good; not over the top, not too subtle, just a classic feeling old-school tale from the one aspect of Marvel that gives us old fans the kind of comics we want that don't exist anymore.

MARVEL TEAM-UP #22 - Evil Iron Man's back! Freedom Ring in a coma! Titannus reborn! Man, the ****'s gonna hit the fan here.

MARVEL WESTERNS KID COLT & ARIZONA GIRL - Another Western updated classic and reprints. The main story was pretty good. So good I wouldn't mind seeing a series of sorts with them so long as these guys were the ones who did it. And reprints...what can I say about reprints except I friggin' love 'em! Best idea. Ever.

MARVEL'S GREATEST COMICS FF#52 - This issue was clever. Remember the Savage Dragon that came out a few months ago with the retro and extremely aged cover? Well, Marvel decided to go one step further and resent this issue in it's entirety completely UNRESTORED. That's right, every flaw a comic would have after 40 years aside from rips or creases is present. My only gripe is they took it a bit TOO far. I've got a couple 60s comics and they don't look nowhere near as bad as this. Plus, just where are those creases and rips? May as well go the full nines, right? Anyways, this is the first appearance of the Black Panther which can either be viewed as a tie-in to his wedding, his role in the next Ultimate Avengers movie or the 40th anniversary of this comic. Take your pick.

NEW EXCALIBUR #9 - A set-up issue tieing the series into Apocalypse vs. Dracula. Chamber's back and all patched up and Excalibur has to decide what to do about him. Not much really happens here unless you're a Chamber fan.

PUNISHER #35 - With all this build up I can't wait to see some mother****ers get what's coming to them. And hopefully Frank's sloppiness won't mess things up for his brand of...Punishment. Baraccuda could be the next Jigsaw for Frank; too bad he's gotta die.

SECRET SIX #2 - Payback for hurting Knockout is really a *****. The bad guys get back together to try and figure out who has a price on their heads. Not to mention it looks like they've just recruited the Mad Hatter. Truly a great follow-up to a great mini. And the art is MUCH better this time out.

SUPERMAN RETURNS LOIS LANE #4 - This one ties in much better to the movies than Lex did. Once again we have a recap of Lois' moments from the original movie and an insight into her frame of mind before she goes and writes that damning article about Supes. Overall, I'd say Lex's was the weakest of the prequels. Hope the actual adaptation is good; my shop didn't get it so hafta wait and see.

SUPERGIRL #7 - Yes, I AM confused. Story has me completely lost again. Seems like Loeb and spin-offs from Loeb have that ability.

TEEN TITANS #37 - The Doom Patrol gets taken down a notch and the Titans start to come together. Not to mention some teenage angsty drama coming through the cracks. Seriously, if some DC fan comes along and tells me all the previous Titans were THIS good, I may just hafta go buy all the backissues.

THING #8 - Yet another series which went underappreciated by the masses so hacks like Bendis can reign supreme. It ends gracefully on a laugh during a poker tournament with Ben and all his friends, with three side-stories told throughout in the truly hillarious and character-affirming manner Slott has become known for. If you have yet to read anything by Dan Slott, you're just missing out. He has a new series coming out after Civil War, I suggest you buy it.

 

[Anubis]

Okay, I finally got my comics today. So far i've read

Detective Comics #821 (4 out of 5)
Teen Titans #37 (4 out of 5)
The Thing #8 (5 out of 5)
Uncanny X-Men (4 out of 5)

DC #821 was damn good, as pretty much everybody else pointed out already.

Titans #37 was pretty good as well. Though thanks to f**king GAH I got the ending spoiled for me. *****e.

Thing #8, Fantastic, god damn shame it got canned. I blame all you A-holes that didn't buy it. I hope your franks and beans fall off.

Uncanny X-Men #475 was a nice set up ish. The art was great. Really digging Warpath. But best of all, was the pic in the corner of the cover with the teams heads on it. just like the old days. I missed it so.

 

[SpideyInATree]

Uncanny X-Men #475 was a nice set up ish. The art was great. Really digging Warpath. But best of all, was the pic in the corner of the cover with the teams heads on it. just like the old days. I missed it so.

I really liked that part of the cover as well, I thought I was 12 years old again. I had to slap myself...seriously.

 

[Anubis]

Yeah, they need to put that back on all the comics. So what if it obscures the cover. With the Internet, most of us have seen the cover months before it came out anyway.

 

[SpideyInATree]

Hell yeah! Maybe it will restart the trend again. A book like X-Men needs that anyhow, at least you see who the damn team is without even opening the book. Which helps out a lot.

 

[Anubis]

You know, it does. It really does.

 

[Darthphere]

Looks like im gonna have to buy this.

 

[Anubis]

Anybody else grab that Occult Crimes Task force? It's an image book written by Rosario Dawson. You know, that hot chick in movies like Sin City, MIB II, and numerous independent films where she comes off as kind of a ****? Yeah, her. All in all, it wasn't that bad. Though the pacing was off. It was like panels were missing. One minute she's in the bed, the next she's shooting at floating light fixtures. Wiggy. But I dig the world she's creating. There's even an Occult Crimes task force manual at the end. Fleshes the story out a bit more. The art was okay, if you like that photo realistic style. Which I do, sometimes. It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible. Over all I'll give this ish a 3 out of 5. I'll checkout the next ish and see weather or not I'm gonna drop it.

 

[BrianWilly]

Atom #1
I liked it. Strong premise, solid art, cheesy-ass humor, and an interesting supporting cast. I'll be sticking around for the forseeable future.

Something that was funny to me was the fact that, in the flashback scene to Hong Kong, Ryan and the other kids addressed each other by their English names even though a bunch of kids in Hong Kong probably wouldn't even have English names, much less call each other by them.

There's a lot of bruhaha over this guy replacing Ray, and I'm sure that if I were a bigger fan of Ray I'd be more irritated, but as it is I just can't see what the big deal is. Ray Palmer has a perfectly legit reason for not being around, and it's not as if he's being forgotten or disrespected. Ryan namedrops him about fifteen times in this one issue, literally worships him, and I'm thinking we'll see clues to his whereabouts eventually in this series. Sooner than one might expect, considering what Brave New World suggested. Despite what everyone seems to think, Ryan's not just an Asian Ray clone; from what I've seen of him throughout the years Ray is the epitome of an accomplished, confident professor and scientist who's got the universe figured out. Ryan is a goofy-looking foreigner who seems to have just stepped out of college or something and has no idea what to expect from this world. The difference between them may as well be as pronounced as the differences between Clark Kent and Peter Parker.

Honestly, Hal Jordan tried to destroy the universe, got replaced by an upstart kid, and is now once again Green Lantern in the JLA and guest-starring in half the titles in the entire DCU; I'm thinking that a little time off is not gonna do Ray Palmer in. If you're absolutely sick and tired of DC's overpopulation of legacy characters I can see where this wouldn't hit it off with you, but I don't seem to have crossed that shredhold yet.

(8.9 out of 10)


52 Week 9
Week nine? Already? Damn.

It hurts me in all kinds of places that Natasha Irons gone and got herself bitten by the malicious Crazy Woman Bug slowly yet inevitably spreading throughout the hordes of comicdom. Watch out ladies, you may be next. I've always liked Natasha and I really liked her as Steel 2.0, and it looks like not only is her stock plummeting but that her prospects for making it out of this year as she once was is getting lower and lower.

All in the name of a good story, right?

The space crew's subplot takes a bit of a different turn; I theorize that they're going to spend the rest of this series running across the stars away from said bounty hunters, all the while reintroducing us to just what the DCU spaceverse is like right now.

Plus points for fireworks during the 4th of July.

(8 out of 10)


Teen Titans #37
Watch out, we've got dramangst incoming.

Getting Robin and Wonder Girl to pair up -- and I use that term very lightly in context of how it played out in this issue -- after Superboy's death is a bit of an obvious move, and I won't really know how I feel about it until we explore it further. It's certainly a normal reaction to grief, and I'm almost hoping there'd be more to it than just that.

I'm not sure I like the fact that Niles Caulder gets off here with what amounts to just a stern lecture from his "victims." I mean, I'm not so familiar with the Doom Patrol but if even half of what the Brain insinuated about the doc is true, and adding to that the viscious psychological abuse that he's been heaping onto his crew, then this guy's a supervillain no different from any other d**kheads that have had to be put down or put away. And by the end of this issue, all he gets is a "Don't do it again, or else"? Dude. It's not even as if he was even repentant or something, he was just caught in the act.

Other than that, it's a decent issue. Good action, good dialogue, though I swear every time I see the words "kick butt" in text, it gets even dumber than it was the time before. I'm beginning to like Rose and Kid Devil more and more, and the scene with the various Titans "confessing" to Cyborg was real nice.

(7.5 out of 10)

 

[GNR]

Ares #5-Very fitting end to this great mini.Good mix of action and emotion,especially the battle between Ares and Alex.So out of the greek gods,Zeus and Apollo were the ones who died?I assumed Herc,Achilles,and Ajax were still alive in the end.I hope Ares leaves the badass Mohawk and armor when he makes his way into the MU later this year.

Thing #8-The last page says it all."That's it?"I love these stories where the MU is brought together for something more than a typical team up.This is one of those stories where you really get the sense of community and friendship among the MU heroes as they go about everyday situations.The 2 page splash at the beginning was a delight to read and look at.Damn those GLC taking Herc's team name!!!

Hulk #96-Loved it.More fleshing out of the supporting cast which is a must in stories like this.Hulk's crew has really grown on me in the past 5 issues.Miek's flashback was a heart-tugger to read,good to see him get his hive back.The art was a real smooth transition as well.Hulk also continues to grow into a badass warrior.

Moon Knight #3-Juiciest issue by far.Lots of story here and a great "re-introduction" to the character by re-telling his origin.Lots of the gore we have come to expect from this series as well.Finch nails it with the silent panels once again.Looking forward to Moony VS Tasky.