CaptainCanada
Shield of the True North
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2006
- Messages
- 4,608
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 31
Fantastic Four: True Story #2
Paul Cornell and Horacio Domingues' miniseries hits its second issue, as the Fantastic Four head into fiction to find out what's amiss; after rescuing the Dashwood sisters from Sense & Sensibility from an army of goblins, they head over to Ivanhoe and from there rally all the adjacent fictional characters to confront the uncoming goblin army. Cornell throws out a lot of metafictional concepts into the stew, and it's a lot of fun. Particularly enjoyable is the Austen-like Dashwoods interacting with the Fantastic Four and Dante; little Margaret pals around with the Thing, while Elinor and Marianne find Ben and Johnny dashing heroes. And the villain of the piece is revealed to be Nightmare, out to subsume all fiction; not a bad half-year for Nightmare, between this and Incredible Herc, since he's a pretty minor villain.
New Avengers #44
In the Department of Misleading Solicitations, this issue actually has nothing to do with a dark secret of the Illuminati; it sets out to make you think that's what it's about, from the recap page into the first few story pages, but we quickly find out that the "Illuminati" are all Skrull-made clones, who the Skrulls are trying to have act out a scenario. Apparently, the Skrulls don't quite know what to do with all the data they gathered from the Illuminati in terms of making a perfect spy-Skrull, so they need Reed's brain to do it. A succession of clone-Reeds are brought in, with multiple tacks tried to get him to develop the formula they need, until they finally succeed in a clever way. There's a very nightmarish quality to the Skrulls' actions here, producing an assembly line of sentient beings who they slaughter like cattle. Billy Tan's art is pretty strong here; I found him middling on Uncanny X-Men, but his NA stuff is a big improvement (different inking/colouring makes all the difference; that, and his faces seem more expressive).
Northlanders #9
Beginning the "Lindisfarne" two-parter, after the completion of the first arc; this is a pretty simple story (it's a two-parter, after all): a young boy growing up in the greater Lindisfarne community becomes fascinated by Germanic paganism as an escape from the ritualistic Christian community he lives in (ironically, he has a Christian name, while his hated older brother has a pagan one), and summons the gods to help him; in a super-remarkable coincidence this occurs exactly as the Lindisfarne raiders arrive, and the boy cheerfully volunteers to lead them to the monastery. The sack of Lindisfarne was the beginning of the Norse pillaging of Northumbria and the British Isles, and this is an interesting perspective to tell it from. The new artist is good. I think I'll probably follow this in trade once this story is over, though.
X-Force #6
The first arc of Kyle and Yost's new series concludes, and, as a whole, I'd have to say that them leaving New X-Men for this was not a positive thing for the X-Franchise; the replacement, Young X-Men, hasn't come close to the quality of their run, and this book is just too drenched in their darker tendencies to be especially good. The tone here just seems so out of step with the spirit of the wider San Francisco reboot. Anyway, Angel can now transform between his two forms, which strikes me as a good compromise (the Archangel look is quite cool, and in combat it has its uses; the Angel look is great for iconography); Risman is killed, but Bastion and his load of revived villains get away; Rahne's Purifier brainwashing backfires and she eats her evil dad. I'm leaning towards not continuing with this, though the promise of Choi & Oback on art next issue is tempting; Yost has two new X-miniseries on the horizon, one with the Starjammers and one with Storm, that seem like they'll make use of his clear love for the X-Men and knowledge of their history without being so dark and muddy (the latter being a problematic feature of Clayton Crain's art).
Paul Cornell and Horacio Domingues' miniseries hits its second issue, as the Fantastic Four head into fiction to find out what's amiss; after rescuing the Dashwood sisters from Sense & Sensibility from an army of goblins, they head over to Ivanhoe and from there rally all the adjacent fictional characters to confront the uncoming goblin army. Cornell throws out a lot of metafictional concepts into the stew, and it's a lot of fun. Particularly enjoyable is the Austen-like Dashwoods interacting with the Fantastic Four and Dante; little Margaret pals around with the Thing, while Elinor and Marianne find Ben and Johnny dashing heroes. And the villain of the piece is revealed to be Nightmare, out to subsume all fiction; not a bad half-year for Nightmare, between this and Incredible Herc, since he's a pretty minor villain.
New Avengers #44
In the Department of Misleading Solicitations, this issue actually has nothing to do with a dark secret of the Illuminati; it sets out to make you think that's what it's about, from the recap page into the first few story pages, but we quickly find out that the "Illuminati" are all Skrull-made clones, who the Skrulls are trying to have act out a scenario. Apparently, the Skrulls don't quite know what to do with all the data they gathered from the Illuminati in terms of making a perfect spy-Skrull, so they need Reed's brain to do it. A succession of clone-Reeds are brought in, with multiple tacks tried to get him to develop the formula they need, until they finally succeed in a clever way. There's a very nightmarish quality to the Skrulls' actions here, producing an assembly line of sentient beings who they slaughter like cattle. Billy Tan's art is pretty strong here; I found him middling on Uncanny X-Men, but his NA stuff is a big improvement (different inking/colouring makes all the difference; that, and his faces seem more expressive).
Northlanders #9
Beginning the "Lindisfarne" two-parter, after the completion of the first arc; this is a pretty simple story (it's a two-parter, after all): a young boy growing up in the greater Lindisfarne community becomes fascinated by Germanic paganism as an escape from the ritualistic Christian community he lives in (ironically, he has a Christian name, while his hated older brother has a pagan one), and summons the gods to help him; in a super-remarkable coincidence this occurs exactly as the Lindisfarne raiders arrive, and the boy cheerfully volunteers to lead them to the monastery. The sack of Lindisfarne was the beginning of the Norse pillaging of Northumbria and the British Isles, and this is an interesting perspective to tell it from. The new artist is good. I think I'll probably follow this in trade once this story is over, though.
X-Force #6
The first arc of Kyle and Yost's new series concludes, and, as a whole, I'd have to say that them leaving New X-Men for this was not a positive thing for the X-Franchise; the replacement, Young X-Men, hasn't come close to the quality of their run, and this book is just too drenched in their darker tendencies to be especially good. The tone here just seems so out of step with the spirit of the wider San Francisco reboot. Anyway, Angel can now transform between his two forms, which strikes me as a good compromise (the Archangel look is quite cool, and in combat it has its uses; the Angel look is great for iconography); Risman is killed, but Bastion and his load of revived villains get away; Rahne's Purifier brainwashing backfires and she eats her evil dad. I'm leaning towards not continuing with this, though the promise of Choi & Oback on art next issue is tempting; Yost has two new X-miniseries on the horizon, one with the Starjammers and one with Storm, that seem like they'll make use of his clear love for the X-Men and knowledge of their history without being so dark and muddy (the latter being a problematic feature of Clayton Crain's art).
