Booster Gold #0
Which ties into DC's 1994 "Zero Hour" event, which involved reshaping their continuity yet again (is that all a DC big event does?); I wasn't reading at the time and haven't read it, but I know the basics. The crossover amounts to Booster and the Beetles running across Parallax and Extant in the timestream, engaging them in a brief fight, and then getting away to the 25th century, where Booster considers telling his younger self not to cheat at football and ruin his life, in order to save his sister Michelle; he decides against it, but vows to save Michelle just like he saved Ted instead (another plot for the series to follow). The foundation of this arc so far is the reunion of Booster and Ted; by the end of the story, Jaime and Dan have been returned home, and the 27th century fellow departs, although one suspects, we aren't done with him yet. At issue's end, they arrive "home" to find a world ruled by OMACs. The predictable end of this story would be Ted going back to die in order to save history; hopefully Johns isn't that predictable (and malicious, really).
Captain Marvel #3
It's been a while since the last issue; if this is an SI-scheduling issue, okay, but if it's Lee Weeks who's the holdup, that doesn't speak particularly well to his speed. Anyway, after a few issues dealing with Mar-Vell's situation, the book takes a hard turn into the realm of "Secret Invasion"; the Skrulls are coming, in fact, they're all over the place, including the mysterious Church of Hala that worships Mar-Vell as a god, and both of the thought-dead villains Mar-Vell has encountered in past issues, who are both, apparently, also members of the church. At issue's end, Mar-Vell interrogates the still-living Skrull who was posing as the Cobalt Man, who shifts into his regular form and more or less implies that Mar-Vell himself is a Skrull ("You are not Captain Marvel."). Personally, my take is that he is the real Mar-Vell, and that this entire thing is an elaborate Skrull plot to drive him nuts, since they fear what he might. Another good issue, with good interaction between Captain and Ms. Marvel. One issue I have is Lee Weeks; I quite like his art, but, I have to say, I don't think he's suited to this story; from the start, he seemed a bit too street-level for the cosmic shenanigans going on here, but now that the little green men have arrived, they just don't fit his style.
Fantastic Four #554
Millar and Hitch (or Hit/lar as someone innovatively called them) arrive on Fantastic Four, and allegedly Hitch is far enough ahead that there won't be any delays; looking at his art here, I'm actually willing to believe that, because the detail has been scaled back a lot compared to the stuff he was producing on The Ultimates (there are a couple of wonky shots here; one of Johnny has a rather poor legs/torso ratio). As first issues go, he's not so much for starting with a bang, surprisingly; the issue opens with a Back to the Future III-inspired time travel adventure, after which point the characters hang around in the present, before "Mrs. Fantastic" arrives to kick off what is presumably the plot for this main arc, although as yet there's only a hint of what it involves (which Millar already dropped in the interviews that have been posted at the back of every Marvel comic the last week or two). Sue is working with Jan and Jen (heh) on a superhero charity group; Johnny is trying to be a rock star; Ben is angling for a new lady; Reed is called by his ex-girlfriend Alyssa to help with yet another secret government agency that's building an artificial planet. It's fairly pleasant, and about 60% less cynical than a lot of Millar's other work; a nice start.
Wonder Woman #17
Gail Simone's first arc comes to an end; it's been an improvement of approximately 1000% over the preceding issues (Torres' last fill-in rose to the level of decent), although many of the inherent flaws put in place by Heinberg and Amazons Attack still exist. But lets not talk about those. Diana and her super-apes (who are only glimpsed this issue) journeyed to Themyscira to deal with the Nazi invasion, inadvertently stumbling across the members of Hippolytas royal guard, who want to kill Diana. The Captains Nazi were never threatening in the least; Simone has posted that their saying they are all equal to the original was hyperbole, which is a decent explanation, but its not given in the book, and it comes as a rather abrupt reversal of expectations after the end of the first issue promised a brawl with an army of supermen. The royal guard are better villains, with a good motivation; three are recaptured by the storys end, while the fourth and leader, Alkyone, gets one of those "non-death deaths" that basically guarantees a return appearance at some point. Elsewhere, Simone neatly sidesteps the "secret ID hijinks" I was terrified were on the horizon and has Etta already know who Diana is, so big points there. The art in these last two issues has been split between Dodson and Ron Randall (who DC isnt crediting on the front cover, which I think is a bit of a cheat); Dodson hurt his hand, apparently. Anyway, hes off to other things after this, with Bernard Chang and then Aaron Lopresti handling the art; Im quite looking forward to Loprestis stint.
X-Factor #28
In which Rahne leaves for X-Force (conveniently debuting the same week), having never been much of a presence in the title anyway, and everybody else settles into the new post-MC status quo, where Layla is nowhere to be seen. And her absence is deeply felt by essentially everyone; David takes the tack that Laylas smug certainty was reassuring to everyone else, so without her no one has any idea what will happen next. Everyone is pretty annoyed about Rahne leaving, apart from Rictor, who only gets a "Dear John" letter, so he doesnt get the opportunity (ouch). Jamie, meanwhile, has decided to fight the evil future he glimpsed by more or less embracing brute force, multiplying himself into an army to take down a horde of Purifiers (although hes not quite ready to use lethal force yet). Hes about to get more bad news, because Siryn is pregnant with his kid, and, despite Ms suggestion, isnt interested in aborting Madrox Jr., since, apart from the fact that its a baby, its also rather important to the whole mutant race. This was another good issue; Pablo Raimondi returns for one issue before taking another break (and they dont have him doing covers anymore, presumably to save time) to build up more issues, and his art is quite good. David has from the start shown the most creativity in dealing with the fate of mutants post-M-Day, and the newest wrinkle is a feud between two groups of ex-mutants: "pans" who lost their appearance, and "rems" who still have leftover abnormal features. A promising start.
X-Force #1
Conveniently shipping side-by-side with the relevant issue of X-Factor, Cyclops reassembles "Team Stabby" (as one messageboarder called them) to hunt down the Purifiers, who are once again up to no good; and stab they do; this is about as gory as you get outside of a MAX title. The writers, Kyle and Yost, formerly wrote New X-Men, and a bunch of plot points from that run are folded into this book, so you can see that, at least initially, theyre repurposing a lot of the stuff they already had in the works. The events here feed out mostly from their first twelve issues on NXM, when Strykers Purifiers returned in possession of an alternate version of Nimrod. Risman (the new Purifier chief) and his men steal stuff from a SHIELD facility, killing several agents in the process, with the goal of reactivating Bastion (see Operation: Zero Tolerance) to help them eradicate mutants. X-Force is sent to slaughter the bunch of them, consisting of Wolverine, X-23, and Warpath; the latter has just buried Caliban alongside his brother and tribe, and is out for Purifier blood. Wolfsbane, at this point, is not on the team, despite actually wanting to be, for reasons as yet unknown. The most interesting character work here is the Cyclops/Wolverine dynamic; Cyclops is very matter-of-fact in his assessment of the new reality, and Wolverine, while quite happy to kill some Purifiers himself, is quite disgusted with Cyclops bringing other people into the matter. Its a pretty good start (although almost this entire issue is online already between all the various previews posted).
