Bought Thought 10.15.08

[KangConquers]

I really didn't like MA 19 that much. It was definitely the weakest of the Avengers SI tie-ins so far.

That's what I keep hearing, which is strange, cause I love Mar-Vell, and I think Marvel Boy becoming Captain Marvel will be fascinating.

 

[iloveclones]

Well, I stand corrected then. I figured since that was one of the sub-plots, that it was playing into it.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

That's what I keep hearing, which is strange, cause I love Mar-Vell, and I think Marvel Boy becoming Captain Marvel will be fascinating.

Does he get the costume and everything?

 

[Anubis]

Maybe he's that *****e with the space man gun in that pic for Slott's upcoming run.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

That costume didn't look very Captain Marvelish to me. Plus, I'm still hoping it's [blackout]the real Pym[/blackout].

 

[Brainiac 8]

Maybe Slott can save him.

 

[Phaedrus45]

Just letting you guys know, Monster-Size Hulk was AWESOME! It's Hulk as I like Hulk, and features four stories. (Well, one is only two pages long, so it might not count, huh?) These stories are all old school, when Banner used to be on the run from the military, and the Hulk wasn't that smart. The first, featuring Frankenstein, is the best of the bunch; but, the other two main ones, featuring Werewolf and Dracula, are pretty good, too. (The Dracula one is a short story written by Peter David.) Pick it up, as it's only $3.99. To me, that's a good price for all new stories, especially when you realize you're paying $3.50 for only 18-20 pages of stories with titles, like Dynamo 5.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

That's actually just how I don't like the Hulk, myself. I've always favored interpretations other than his savage, stupid green version, like the angstier gray Hulk, the professor Hulk, and Planet Hulk. Basically, the further you can get from rehashing the Banner-on-the-run plot, the likelier I am to enjoy your Hulk story. So I'll have to pass.

 

[WolfCypher]

Then Rulk is right up your alley, ain't it?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I should've specified that I like good stories, as well. I did give Rulk a shot because it was different from the typical Hulk formula, but upon reading it I found it really wasn't. It's (a) Hulk getting chased by SHIELD instead of the military and performing ******edly outrageous feats of strength instead of having any sort of actual personality beyond "pissed off brute." Basically a typical Hulk status quo story in a new wrapper.

 

[BrianWilly]

His Spider-sense wasn't working (because of AV) and the bullets were programmed to target his spider chest emblem. I think he can be forgiven...

To further clarify this: on top of his spider-sense working, the reason they were able to do this is because his emblem already had its own tracking device on it; the one that makes his camera always focus on him whenever he's moving around (Peter Parker: inventive genius. STILL ****ING POOR). Osborn found the signal in the prior issue when he found the camera, and traced it to Spidey's emblem, and then devised bullets that would follow the signal like his camera does.

So yeah it's not as if the T-Bolts just all of a sudden came up with magic bullets that somehow hit spider-emblems.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

It's funnier to believe they did, though.

 

[BrianWilly]

I'd lol.

 

[Manic]

And we're back...

THE FLASH #245
Wait... Wally and Linda have a super-lab in their basement?

The story of Wally's power downgrade continues. Much like his days as a teenager, Wally is stuck running at the speed of sound, and any attempt to go faster could give him a seizure. The best theory is that when Wally used his powers to stop his kids from aging like dogs, it somehow took a bite out of his own powers.

As a new Flash reader, I've actually felt pretty welcomed with these past couple of issues. This issue gave me a few flashbacks to Wally's teenaged years, and what his relationships are like with the other Titans. I also learned that Linda is an expert in velocibiology, and built a laboratory in the West household basement that makes other mad scientist labs look like home chemistry sets.

The one thing that upsets me is that I decided to jump onboard the Flashbandwagon when I heard Barry would be coming back, but I jumped on right when Wally started losing his powers. Now my current exposure to the Flash is going to be issue after issue of Wally caption-thinking about how fast he used to be.

----------

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #19
Holy crap, are we still in the middle of the Kingdom Come stuff?

When was the last time this book came out? A year ago? I didn't even remember what the storyline was. I'd hoped I'd missed a few issues, and this whole Magog thing was over. Okay, we get it: Gog makes Magog, and Magog creates a world where superheroes are all horrible 90s Image characters. Frankly, when this is all over, I hope Magog dies. I don't want that alternate future mucking up the JSA title every month.

I'm still trying to figure out what Gog's secret is, by the way. For some reason, he seems to be ignoring Mr. Terrific and Citizen Steel completely. The first theory was that he was ignoring Mr. Terrific because he's an atheist, but Citizen Steel is a believer who wants Gog's help.

----------

YOUNG X-MEN #7
What is it with all these damn living islands?

In their first official mission, the Young X-Men are sent to investigate the disappearance of a crew of construction workers on a small uncharted island. The island, it turns out, is like a less hostile version of Krakoa. This had the potential to be one hell of a major storyline for the Young X-Men, but is instead put on the backburner because (dum Dum DUM!) one of the Young X-Men isn't a mutant.

Now, back on the X-boards, I got into a bit of a debate about Ink's powers. I said that Ink's powers made absolutely no sense in mutant terms. So far, Ink's powers have worked thusly: whatever he gets tattooed on his body, he suddenly has the power of. He has a biohazard symbol on one hand, and he poisons anyone he touches with it. He can fly because he has wings tattooed on his back. What's the problem with this? This power sounds more like magic than a mutation. Tattooing symbols on yourself to gain the ability of what that tattoo represents? It makes no sense. Technically, if the tattoos allow him to manifest powers like that, then he should've been able to manifest those powers beforehand.

Well, Ink's not a mutant. The twist? His tattoo artist is. Now, as long as they say Ink's tattoo artist has the ability to imbue psionic-based abilities onto others in general, I'll be fine. But if they say it literally has to be done through tattoos, I'm going to crap a chicken.

Oh, and Dust is apparently dieing. Is it a terminal disease? A result of Magma turning her into glass a while back? Only time will tell.

And as usual, someone needs to give Dani her powers back. One lightning bolt from Thor to wipe away Wanda's hex and awaken the valkyrie powers. That's all I'm saying.

----------

UNCANNY X-MEN #503
Damn. Cyclops got b****es coming back from the dead for the juice.

So it turns out the kinky Red Queen is none other than Scott's first wife, back from the dead! No, not Jean. I'm talking about Madelyne Pryor, Cable's mom and the wife Scott ran out on to be with Jean. Scott... he doesn't have a great track record for fidelity. Pretending to be Emma, Maddy telepathically creeps into Cyclops' mind, and apparently gives him some of the best psychic ***** he's had in a while.

So while Scotty was getting his brains F'd out, it was up to Pixie to save the day. What? No, I'm serious. Pixie saved the day. She flew up behind Empath while he was busy trying to put his psychic whammy on the rest of the X-Men, and she elbowed him in the face, knocked him to the ground, and tried to choke him. Now, let's no pretend Pixie is an especially strong waify little pink-hair Welsh teenager. While she was choking Empath, he clearly had little problem using his powers and verbally taunting her about her father's death. Now, I like to think that dark section of Pixie's soul took over, because while she was in the middle of crying about her dead dad, she whipped out her magic soul dagger, stabbed him in the face. Of course, since her dagger is made entirely out of magic and a piece of her soul, it didn't do any physical damage. She did, however, manage to curse Empath with blindness. So good for her.

I'll skip over all of my nitpicks about Greg Land's art, and just say that I'm still not a fan.

Oh, and Brubaker & Fraction made Cannonball talk in normal English. Others clearly hear his Kentucky accent, and he still says "I'm" instead of "Ah'm". Know why? Because Sam says actual words, even if characters on the page hear them differently. Anyone who knows my hatred of phonetically spelled comic book dialogue should understand why I loved this brief moment.

----------

Still to come:
-Astonishing X-Men #27
-Booster Gold #13
-Captain Britain and MI-13 #6
-X-Men: Worlds Apart #1 of 4

 

[CaptainCanada]

Astonishing X-Men #27

There's a peculiar lack of urgency regarding the story here; there's a lot of characters throwing jokes at each other (so, something Whedon knows a lot about), but to no particular end (Whedon is better at that, usually; Ellis himself too). It's nice to see some follow-up to Beast's involvement with Agent Brand. Ellis also duly follows up on Hisako's addition to the team (and makes some jokes about her uncreative codename; Dread would approve); most significantly, if there's any real character work in this run so far, it's in tryign to justify Cyclops' current characterization. #26 featured Cyclops explaining his views on killing to Storm (which was well-done), and in this issue he screams and swears at Agent Brand over jurisdiction, and then later tells Wolverine that he's tried being reasonable but that this seems to be the only way of getting things done. Ellis gives it the old college try, anyway. Bianchi's art, I honestly don't know what I think about it. I can be beautiful, but it often seems unsuited to superhero work.

 

[Anubis]

Jesus Christ, what have they done to Wally Flash.

 

[WolfCypher]

I blame Barry's return. Seriously, Barry's time has gone. Wally IS the Flash!

 

[Max J Power]

Astonishing X-Men #27
I really like the atmosphere Ellis creates for science fiction. The plot of this arc has been a little slow, but it's interesting. And this issue in particular has a lot of good character moments, especially for Beast and Cyclops (with his new personality). I sort of like Bianchi's artwork, but it seems like maybe it doesn't fit the book. If the art is the reason for the lateness, I wouldn't be upset at all if AXM got a new artist.

 

[Marcdachamp]

To further clarify this: on top of his spider-sense working, the reason they were able to do this is because his emblem already had its own tracking device on it; the one that makes his camera always focus on him whenever he's moving around (Peter Parker: inventive genius. STILL ****ING POOR). Osborn found the signal in the prior issue when he found the camera, and traced it to Spidey's emblem, and then devised bullets that would follow the signal like his camera does.

So yeah it's not as if the T-Bolts just all of a sudden came up with magic bullets that somehow hit spider-emblems.

Peter then webbed the emblem to Bullseye, letting him take the hit. Very cool.

 

[Mr. Green]

That's what I keep hearing, which is strange, cause I love Mar-Vell, and I think Marvel Boy becoming Captain Marvel will be fascinating.

It just didn't say anything that we couldn't figure out from the last issue of SI. Captain Marvel (the Skrull) flipped sides and went against the Skrulls. This just explained more of his though process and a few action scenes we didn't already see. Nothing new that was worth the price of the comic.

I really liked everything in NA and MA up until this though.

 

[Mr. Green]

I blame Barry's return. Seriously, Barry's time has gone. Wally IS the Flash!

Did any of Flash: Rebirth come out yet?

 

[WolfCypher]

No, unless there are tie-ins I'm unaware of.

 

[Hush]

SO I bought Ultimate X-men Volume 6 today and it was as good as the first time i read it when i borrowed it from my buddy.

 

[Anubis]

K..

 

[Hush]

Did I do something wrong?