Bought/Thought for August 25th, 2010 - SPOILERS

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm so glad I don't watch any reality shows.

 

[WOLVERINE25TH]

The Justice books have taken a bit of a downturn the last couple of months. First, I feel like I'm reading a Bendis comic with all the different thought captions. The teams have no dynamic and feel flat. I enjoyed Society before it went through that drawn-out Gog thing, even digging the inclusion of Kal-L, but League I haven't liked really since it's reboot. There were the occasional moments here and there, but overall the entire run has been lackluster. All-Stars, this is one where I've been digging the backup far more than the primary. I'd've rather gotten an Hour Man/Liberty Belle mini. Generation Lost is the standout book in that franchise, and if it can keep the dynamic it has going after the Max plot has passed, I'd love to see the book continue as an ongoing. Hell, if this is anything like International was I'm definitely adding that to my already overcrowded must-read pile.

Titans I'm enjoying, although I'll agree I'm sick of the Raven plots. It wasn't too long ago we were dealing with her family in Titans, and Beast Boy is seriously getting annoying with his pining and letting his "love" for Raven overpower his judgment. This is a veteran hero? I don't THINK so.

As for Legion, I have a bit of a confusing thing with this title. I came on the book when Supergirl joined the team, and it kinda hooked me. I stuck around through Shooter's run up until the last issue. Now, while the book had kept me hooked enough to keep picking it up, I really feel no connection to the characters. I mean, almost 100 issues in and I STILL don't know all the Legionaires like I do say almost everyone who has ever been an X-Man (including the ones that were for a minute). And Levitz's reboot jut leaves me with that same disconnect, as well as some confusion as it doesn't feel like it fluidly flows from the prior Legion books. Like Phaed said, you must really need to know your history with this team.

Web of Spider-Man has been hit or miss with me. I came on for the Spider-Girl, I stayed for the Jackpot (who is one thing I've liked from BND). Now, the MJ/Black Cat team-up is something I've been pondering for some time. If it wasn't for all the BND elements in the story, I think I would have really, really, really enjoyed it. But, we're dealing with EX-GF MJ and regressed Cat, two things I absolutely could do without. If I ever become EIC of Marvel, I'm putting a magic bullet to the BND concept and having Peter wake up to a Dallas moment. Don't worry, BND fans, I'd bring in all your favorite characters and villains from the run...but the way they SHOULD and COULD have been brought in. That is my promise (or threat, depending what side of the fence you're on).

Speaking of Spider-Girl, anyone who knows me knows what I think about her situation. It's pure SUCK. They've canceled the book, continued the book, canceled the book, relaunched the book, canceled the book, went digital exclusive, reprinted the digital, relaunched the book and then truncated the book. Given how I've felt on this roller coaster, I can only imagine how DeFalco feels. I can only hope Arana is kept worthy of the name she's inheriting (PS I LIKED Arana's book). For my thoughts on the final Spider-Girl stories, check out Spiderfan in the coming week where I'll be reviewing the last 5 issues of Mayday ever.

Darkwing Duck has only one complaint from me: the price. It's priced to turn off the younger fanbase; definitely for the old-timers who watched the cartoon back in the day. But, it's well worth the extra buck so far. Boom has really been rocking with the Disney properties in a way I haven't seen in a long time (I used to read Disney Adventures just for the comics, missed out on some of the standard releases). And with the announcement of a Rescue Rangers book on the way, here's hoping for TaleSpin someday!

And finally, Ghostbusters is another hit or miss book for me. Despite a lot of bad business practices, 88MPH turned out a great product. The art, the writing, everything was just incredible. As a follow-up, The Other Side was a horrible comic. The story didn't fit the franchise and the art was very sloppy. Displaced Aggression showed some signs of improvement, and Con-Volution showed some more after that. If IDW can keep up with this steady progress, they may soon end up nearing 88MPH's level. But, as of now, they're still a far cry off. I always wondered what happened to the issues 88MPH produced and never released. Furthermore, I wonder if it would ever be possible to reunite the creative team on that. Believe me, if I had the bucks, I'd be trying.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Levitz' Legion really isn't a reboot. It's a return of the original Legion.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Maybe in 10 years DC'll get Waid to come back and reboot his Legion, which is the only legitimately interesting version I've seen. I try to like the Silver Age Legion, but something just doesn't click with them for me.

 

[KangConquers]

I dropped it after last issue. I flipped through it and saw a cool moment with Thor, which tempted me, but I knew it wouldn't be worth it. Sounds like I was right.

As for Captain America: I really, genuinely hope Brubaker never touches Baron Zemo ever again after this arc is over. I could begin to rationalize his actions when he was mostly behind the scenes, manipulating things from afar. But this issue really reduced him to a straight-up cookie-cutter, cackling arch-villain. It was painful to read. The arc as a whole is fine and would probably even be enjoyable if not for Zemo's involvement, but every panel with him is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

This every month Corp...

Despite your love for ambiguously heroic Baron Zemo, he's still Captain America's #2 villain; that's his most important role. Just like you can never really turn Magneto or Venom good permanently, it wouldn't make sense to turn Zemo good forever.

It's a shame you can't get past this little Zemo hang up. Sorry, I just see this every month and I'm always like.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

It's not a little hang-up to me. Personally, having read Captain America on and off for a while, I had barely any idea who Zemo was by the time Thunderbolts came around, so I know him primarily as the reformed villain. His loss as a Cap villain means absolutely nothing to me. Cap's still got the Red Skull, Arnim Zola, Crossbones, and dozens of others. But feel free to not read my posts if it's so upsetting to you.

 

[KangConquers]

It's not a little hang-up to me. Personally, having read Captain America on and off for a while, I had barely any idea who Zemo was by the time Thunderbolts came around, so I know him primarily as the reformed villain. His loss as a Cap villain means absolutely nothing to me. Cap's still got the Red Skull, Arnim Zola, Crossbones, and dozens of others. But feel free to not read my posts if it's so upsetting to you.

Fair enough. I never really cared about Thunderbolts one way or another. Zemo has always been a Cap villain to me, and I always knew he would revert to a supervillain again.

As for those you listed, Brubaker's already overexposed them. Skull, Zola etc. were part of a 42 issue mega arc. It was time for someone new. Brubaker tried to create a new villain and it didn't work, so bringing back Zemo is 100% natural. Zemo is like Cap's Doc Ock, his Braniac etc. He's Cap's #2. That's where he belongs.

You don't have to get nasty about me disagreeing with your opinion, and I generally (like 98% of the time) enjoy your posts. I just disagree about the Zemo point.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I wasn't nasty. Sorry if it came off that way.

 

[Dread]

That's interesting, Corp. Here you know Zemo mostly from the THUNDERBOLTS era and not before, while I knew Zemo from before that era and skipped it. Our Zemo experiences are like yin and yang.

I don't think Corp was "getting nasty", BTW. I mean if that segment of Brubaker's story gets on his nerves, it'll come up every month unless Brubaker manages to execute it in a way that pleases him, and given Corp's prior experience, Brubaker has an uphill task, especially since his ambitions are not always subtle.

Zola and Crossbones don't count as much as Cap villains because they're basically minions of Red Skull, same as Sin or Mother Night were. Given that Sin now has a red skull of her own, it would make sense that she'd take over her father's name. At least with that story, Brubaker wouldn't have to tear down an anti-villain.

Usually with Capt. America, a villain either worked for Red Skull, or worked for Baron Zemo. There was almost nothing in the middle that lasted for any significant length of time. If a villain had replaced Zemo as #2 rogue and then Brubaker decided to just ditch that villain and shove Zemo back into that role, I might have taken more issue with it, but that hasn't happened. No one replaced Zemo. So much so that for about 5 years, Brubaker had to link EVERYTHING to Red Skull (who was Lukin for a while, but we all know the Skull won out). There was literally nothing else to link to, no other viable threat. Nothing. It's like removing Brainiac from Superman's rogues gallery. Besides Luthor, who else is left as a boss villain? No one. The rest are grunts or brainless muscle. And readers have zero patience for anyone new, that is why creators tend to kill off new villains within their own runs, if not the first arc. Look at how much whining there was when Dan Slott wanted to make Unspoken a major threat. No one gave him a chance because he was new, and thus couldn't be "important". That's why the same rogues get run into the ground.

That all said, Zemo's motivation in Brubaker's story is still a mystery and the crux of the entire arc for me depends on how that's handled next issue. It is possible he could botch it; SECRET AVENGERS reminded me that Brubaker, despite his talent, can be at bat with the bases loaded and a 3-0 count and still strike out in the end.

I actually read the free WOLVERINE SAGA, finally. It was a promotional giveaway to promote WOLVERINE #1, which is an exercise to try to correct Marvel's woeful botching of the Wolverine titles. To recap; after Millar finished OLD MAN LOGAN, it was decided to switch WOLVERINE into being Daken's book, to continue WOLVERINE: ORIGINS as that was always intended to end at issue fifty, and to make WOLVERINE: WEAPON X into Logan's "main" title. Jason Aaron had written a few Logan stories on WOLVERINE before OLD MAN LOGAN and even for some mini's or whatnot. The problem was that Marvel promoted WOLVERINE: WEAPON X not as THE Wolverine book, but as the 3rd Wolverine book at $4 a pop, that evidently no one wanted. Sales tanked out of the gate. Readers eventually figured out that they'd been baited and switched on DARK WOLVERINE, and sales bled out. WOLVERINE: ORIGINS, a finite maxi-series, became the flagship, which was embarrassing. This bungle, perhaps, worsened what was already Wolverine's fall from the peak of popularity since his solo film dismayed critics worldwide. It's possible that even if Marvel had marketed this well, Wolverine STILL would be at his lowest point in sales within a decade, if not more. He literally sells better in Avengers, in X-Men, or alongside Spider-Man, than he does alone. That hadn't been so since the early 80's. Thus, the Wolvie books are being reshuffled, with WOLVERINE getting a fresh #1, Daken getting his own book, and X-23 getting one, too. Marvel runs another risk of using kids to dilute Wolverine, much as all the Hulks have eventually dragged his books down.

A saga book is just a recap, so I'm not commenting on how that's written. What got to me is the recap of the material I'd missed. Wolverine's section basically covers all the material from ORIGINS and ignores anything that happened in WEAPON X, which is pretty damning. At any rate, ORIGINS has seriously messed with options for Wolverine stories. The fallacy of the character was that his origin was a mess, when before Way, it could be chopped up rather evenly. Logan was born over 100 years ago. He fought in WWI & WWII, met Cap and saved Black Widow as an infant. Spent time in Japan. Those few decades between that and Weapon X were free territory. Then after Weapon X, it was Dept. H and then the Hulk and the X-Men from the 70's, onward. Now? After ORIGINS, any story about Wolverine's past has to include Way's mastermind Romulus, who is just an absurdly stupid villain who is nothing more than an over-sized, recon copy of Logan himself; his Stryfe as it were. Romulus was now behind everything in Logan's life, and even, apparently, the creation of X-23 (and of course Daken). It hampers any stories to tell dealing with Logan's past in the future, and saddles him with, basically, a secondary version of Sabretooth (who at one point was thought to be Logan's dad). He uses these stupid claw glove things and his design is just lazy all around, as if based on some unused sketches of Wolverine by Andy Kubert with Photoshop. Romulus, and many of Wolverine's enemies in general, seem like parodies of GILETTE razors; just add more razors to make them better, and so thus Romulus' gloves have, GASP, FOUR TO FIVE ADAMANTIUM CLAWS!

As for the kids? Daken is so lousy he makes X-23 look genuinely original and thought provoking. She's a very boring, one note character who only reacts in two manners; emotionless and raging berserker. Her origin, at least, is interesting. She herself, is not. Daken, on the other hand, has a stupid design, stupid claws, bad hair, reacts in a stupid or irritating manner at every turn, and his origin is pretty bad, too. Part of me imagines he was created solely to give Wolverine a bad kid to balance out X-23, who has become a heroine. Unfortunately, both serve to make Wolverine less unique, and that's amazing given how many Wolverine impersonators arose after his creation (like Wild Child).

Fortunately, other writers seem to be using Daken, but no one but Way seems to want to touch Romulus with a ten foot pole, and it's possible in a few years it may be hand-waved away. At any rate, Wolverine as a franchise is far from his prime, and now would seem to be the time to retrench and focus on one book, not make it a Wolverine Family of titles. But then again, if Marvel could read trends properly and realistically as seasoned, veteran adults and professionals, Deadpool wouldn't have 5 books a month.

 

[KangConquers]

I wasn't nasty. Sorry if it came off that way.

The "Feel free to not read my posts" thing seemed kind of nasty.

 

[WOLVERINE25TH]

It's a reboot of the series, I meant, not the characters...of which we know have to know 3 versions...two of which are active.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I liked when Superboy went to the future and hung out with the second Legion. That was a really good story. "Foundations," I think it was called. I always meant to get more of the second Legion's stuff, but I think it was mostly out of print. Then Johns came along and I figured it was a waste of time to even bother anymore.