Bought/Thought 2/13/08

ASM 550: Man BND keeps getting better and better. Reading this issue made me feel like i was a watching an episode of the Spider-Man TAS. Good old fashioned adventure, mystery, and fun exactly what i've been waiting for all these years. Next ish promises some revelations about Jackpot.

New Avengers 38: You know, its issues like these that remind me why Bendis is a force to be reckoned with. This is by far the best NA in a long while. No action but pure excellent dialogue between characters especially Luke Cage and Jessica. I realize that Bendis works extremely well with artists like Gaydos, who give characters a very realistic, noir-ish look. I havent read FF4 yet, but this so far is pick of the week for me.

 

Just so you know, it's looked down upon to start this thread without any actual thoughts.

 

Yeah, this was basically a "Bought Thread 2/13/08" until kguillou came along.

 

Not to mention that he fu^%#^%#cked up the date on the thread title...

 

Since when were actual thoughts a pre-requisite around here.

Ba-Dump-Bum

 

Oh, Canada........

 

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 let’s 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 Hippolyta’s 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 it’s 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 story’s 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 isn’t crediting on the front cover, which I think is a bit of a cheat); Dodson hurt his hand, apparently. Anyway, he’s off to other things after this, with Bernard Chang and then Aaron Lopresti handling the art; I’m quite looking forward to Lopresti’s 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 Layla’s 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 doesn’t 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 he’s not quite ready to use lethal force yet). He’s about to get more bad news, because Siryn is pregnant with his kid, and, despite M’s suggestion, isn’t interested in aborting Madrox Jr., since, apart from the fact that it’s a baby, it’s 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 don’t 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, they’re 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 Stryker’s 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. It’s a pretty good start (although almost this entire issue is online already between all the various previews posted).

 

Team Stabby is a great alias for X-Force lol. Loved the first issue though. Seeing X-Men kill warms my

 

^^^Surely you mean X-force?

My LCBS didnt have any X-force or New Avengers, which was weird.


Picked up FF 554 on an impulse. It was pretty good. Hitch's detail has gone down a bit, but overall its still nice art to look at. This story seems like its going to be pretty epic. Do you think its gonna be contained within this book only?

Also got X-factor. twas good.

 

Yes, X-Force

 

I'm a tad behind, but did "X-Force" explain why Hepzibah isn't present? I thought, after I saw the preview, that she would die in "Messiah Complex", but that did not seem to happen.

 

Nah, the recap page just said she was "severely injured"

 

Whoever came up with the name Team Stabby should take the rest of the week off. Tell your boss I said so...

 

anyone else get the vibe that jackpot isn't MJ... and is actually Betty Brant, for some twisted reason?

 

You're like the bizarro version of me.

 

Anyone else notice that Spidey is out of the Black Costume now in New Avengers? So much for that NA Spidey is a skrull theory...or is it?

 

Nah, I'm pretty sold on it being MJ lol

 

it's just getting tooo obvious that it is.. i mean he flat out asked her.. and she didn't even flinch

 

wasn't it too obvious that the marriage was going to be erased out of existence? Look how that turned out.

 

ya but this is just getting wierd... im expecting a twist, one that gets us even more pissed off

 

wouldn't being beated over the head with obvious facts and art and endless "suspense" only to find out it was the same @hit you knew from day one piss you off enough? Does Joey Q need to personally kick your nuts in for you to be happy?

Look at the one reveal we've already had with Mr. Negative. The guy was literally a negative image of another character. Christ, to a dog the two would look exactely the same. They're going out of their way to show this "new" peter parker isn't much into the brain type thinking things.

 

joey Q's already inverted my nuts man

 

New Avengers 38 definitely blew me away. Bendis took a concept that I didn't particularly care for in the first place (not really interested in the Cage marriage) and crafted a great story out of it. Probably the best issue of the series thus far.

 

crap NA came out? i knew i missed one... didnt see it at my store for some reason