A good week. A
very good week.
Astonishing X-Men
There are very, very few people in the world who can make an entire issue of people
talking at each other read well. Whedon is one of them. People who feel that Cyclops is such a boring character, read this issue.
moffball said:
If anyone reads Astonishing X-Men and can explain what the heck happened, it'd be much appreciated!
In a nutshell, Emma reveals to Scott that not only is his optic blast control problem merely psychological (as many writers and fans had previous suggested), but that
he himself consciously decided to create this control problem after his accident. He made himself forget about the decision because it was such a painful moment, but he was still the one who made it. Emma tells him to "let go now"...and, for some reason, he winds up catatonic on the bed. I think we're meant to believe that Emma lobotomized him...or that she knew him "letting go" would somehow have this effect on him. I guess we'll know for sure in two months
()...
I wouldn't be surprised at all if, by the end of this arc, Whedon makes it so that Cyclops is finally able to control his optic blasts. If it's connected to a great story like this, I wouldn't mind at all.
(10 out of 10)
X-Factor #6
I love the linkage of Layla's powers to chaos theory...it explains, so well, just why she was immune to Wanda's chaos power and just why she was able to release people from it. Well, actually, it doesn't do that second part, but at least it gives it more context; she's sort of like an anti-Wanda, in a sense, except that...she's not.
Oh, and Jamie shows how badass he could be.
(9 out of 10)
Ion #1
The adventures of Kyle Rayner finally continues. Am I hella biased towards this? Yes. Am I hella loving this issue? Also yes.
Marz is the perfect writer for this. His takes Kyle back to his roots with his painting and also takes him into a new directions with the powers of Ion, and he does it all with perfect respect towards Kyle's history and character. Of course, he made him.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried, though, about some of the future issues. The whole "guy loses control of his powers, goes insane, fights friends, gets back control, yay end of story" shtick has been done before, most of the times well within the Green Lantern mythos itself. At the worst, I'm just worried that this whole thing will turn into Kyle "pulling a Supergirl" and fighting some good guys every damn month.
The art is a bit iffy, unfortunately. Kyle's new mask design doesn't help matters much either, sad to say...at times I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be looking at a mouth or just some white blobs of blobitude. Although I have to say, the art in general was far, far better than I thought it would be, probably because I'd been warned so much about Tocchini's art that I expected far worse. And probably also because I'd just come from reading several volumes of the Sandman, and the art there can be a bit...abstract as well. I really liked the scenes he drew on Earth, actually; they were very tranquil and stylized, very fitting to the tone.
Looking forward to more issues. It's getting off to a good start, I'd say, but we'll see how the rest of it goes.
(9 out of 10)
Blue Beetle #2
Okay, so, yeah, I wasn't expecting that ending at all. Props to Giffen. I just thought it was all going to be fairly routine, not that the rest of the issue wasn't written really well, but damn. That ending caught me way off guard. What was going to be a fairly by-the-numbers teen superhero thing now turns into Rip Van Winkle in reverse. Color me impressed.
(10 out of 10)
Checkmate #1
I wasn't going to get this. Despite loving Greg Rucka in somewhat inappropriate ways, I'm just not that into espionage-government-guns-secret-conspiracy-whatnot stories. Despite knowing that it was probably going to be very good, I was just going to browse through this at the store and put it back. But then, I read it and then decided to buy it. That's pretty much all that there was to it.
I was hoping that we'd get to know Jonah McCarthey a little better following his stint in Wonder Woman, but ooh look, burnt Jonah.
(9 out of 10)
Infinite Crisis Special: Villains United Special
I can safely say that this is the single best Infinite Crisis tie-in special, rivalling several of the best issues that we've had in that series. Get this. Get this
now.
Mass worldwide prison outbreak.
Black Adam vs. Captain f'ing Nazi.
Martian f'ing Manhunter and the worldwide assembly of heroes.
Doomsday.
You probably won't need to read this to get IC#7, but damned if you really, really, really
should read this anyway.
(1835872 out of 10)
