Bought/Thought "It's the Punisher Beeyotch!" Edition for Nov.22nd

[GNR]

Is this the same GW Bridge from back in the X-Force days?

 

[Shockdingo]

In the punisher preview I didn't recognize him without the beard. But yea...what about ol' C n D?

 

[Shadowknight]

Last, and most definately LEAST

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #102: Short version
.....
Basically, Rielly avoided prison after Carnage by offering the feds Peter's DNA, which they used in experiments to make Spider-Soldiers, including Spider-Woman, Six-Arm, Scorpian, Half-Face, and Gwenage.

The silly thing? THEY ALREADY HAD HIS DNA. In one of the early issues, the Wasp showed up outside his school in a van and used some type of serum she said was based on his own DNA to help speed up his healing from some wounds.

 

[Feature]

The silly thing? THEY ALREADY HAD HIS DNA. In one of the early issues, the Wasp showed up outside his school in a van and used some type of serum she said was based on his own DNA to help speed up his healing from some wounds.

Yes, but she works for SHIELD, not the feds. And those two groups have been shown to work against eachother as recently as issue 100.

 

[Dread]

The silly thing? THEY ALREADY HAD HIS DNA. In one of the early issues, the Wasp showed up outside his school in a van and used some type of serum she said was based on his own DNA to help speed up his healing from some wounds.

Yeah, I remember that, during the PUBLIC SCRUTINY arc back when USM was good. Also one of the rare arcs of USM where the main foe didn't unmask him or know who he was (or at least what he looked like under a mask).

Yes, but she works for SHIELD, not the feds. And those two groups have been shown to work against eachother as recently as issue 100.

I thought SHIELD was a branch of the federal gov't in Ultimate and not an independant international spy thing like it is in 616. I mean SHIELD answers to the President and everything like it was his iron fist in Ultimate. That was usually the huge difference, that 616 SHIELD was international and Ultimate SHIELD was pretty much a U.S. agency.

Even still, it does seem silly for Fury to be so anxious to arrest Peter for something he had nothing to do with. As Shadowknight mentions, even without Reilly, they could have concievely cloned him and I'm sure his DNA is everywhere. I mean, he gets beaten up a lot. Couldn't Fury just find out where the clones were coming from and send the Ultimates to take care of them?

I've just lost a lot of faith and patience with this story.

-- I don't read CABLE & DEADPOOL so I didn't know about the Bridge thing. That is a bit of a goof.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Yep, Bridge led the Six Pack (ordered by the United States government along with other major powers) to ruin Rumeikistan and embarass Cable. However they failed and Cable and Domino rekindled their relationship with Irene watching in tears.

 

[Dread]

So Wolverine 48 didn't deliver? Well crap that sucks, I was hoping for a pretty nifty idea being properly explored( we always see him screwed up, but what are his views on it?) Eh I guess I can't expect much from comic hype anymore.
edit: Just read Dread's post.....wow. I'm so glad I stopped reading USM forever ago

WOLVERINE #48 is a little awkward to peg down. I'm used to Ramos' loopy art so that wasn't a problem. Guggenheim understands the character and Logan's narration was good stuff. But the mystical sword guy fighting in Purgatory - thing just seemed a bit wonky to me. It's an explaination that is fairly possible and not as outlandish as other stuff in the MU, but...eh, Wolverine's already had a lot of stuff tacked onto him. I wouldn't call it a bad issue, though.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #102 is bad. I mean baaaaaad. It's mighty convient that Bagley waits until during ULTIMATE CLONE SAGA to announce that he's fleeing the title almost immediately after breaking the Lee/Kirby record on FF. Not to say that this abomination of a storyline had anything to do with it, but...Bags was a "survivor" of the last Clone Saga, even drawing a bit of it while on ASM. Maybe this brought up "old war flashbacks" or something. Maybe he just had to prove he could draw it without suffering a breakdown and decided to flee and leave the ship to Bendis & Immonen. Well, probably not, but hopefully that theory got someone to smirk.

Anyone else like the more aged look of Chase. Made him very creepy that last page oh

I did. Alphona's a good artist.

Oh hell yes Dread.

Indeed, the art to PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL was pretty and the first issue was better than I expected. I'll be aboard for the CW tie-ins at least and then take it from there.

 

[Hush]

Dread i have never seen you lash out at a book like you did just then with USM. Im sorry your eyes had to witness such a ungodly, awful,form of writing.

 

[The Apocalypse]

Punisher War Journals Numero Uno!: Not really big on typing a whole lot so i'll make it short and quick. I was really really excited about this book coming out and it was an awesome 1st issue, a ton of action, and hopefully this will be the best civil war tie in at the end of all this. - 4/5

ASM 536: Not that bad, hardly any action scenes, but I like what there doing with Aunt May and Mary Jane with them on the run with Peter. I have a feeling that man that was outside their house is going to do something to them 2. - 3/5

Also bought:
FF The End 2
Daredevil 91
Heroes for Hire 4
CW Frontline 8
Wolverine 48
but I still need to read these tonight.

 

[Dread]

Dread i have never seen you lash out at a book like you did just then with USM. Im sorry your eyes had to witness such a ungodly, awful,form of writing.

I'm sorry USM had to sink to this, too, because I honestly liked the book. After I dropped ASM in the 90's during the original Clone Saga I've never really had a good reason to stick to a book for longer than a few months since; in hindsight I probably would have liked SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED. Even after many people claimed USM was "crap", I disagreed and stayed on, buying it via trades until the SABLE arc, when I caught up and got it monthly.

Some people abandoned or started trashing the book after VENOM's anti-climatic finish, but I actually liked VENOM and stayed on. Some people also reacted likewise to CARNAGE, which I agree was a shoddy storyline that proved all the "Gwen Stacy Syndrome" theorists right by axing off Gwen merely to make a soulless monster like Carnage "look tough" (if he'd axed MJ, THAT would have really surprised me; instead he wasted Gwen's almost inevitable death in a dumb way like that; what a waste), and JUMP THE SHARK was just trash with staples, but the title rebounded with HOBGOBLIN. From there it was hit-or-miss with me, although the annuals usually delivered. But CLONE SAGA, which I was optimistic about the first 2-3 issues, has just become an ungodly horrid mess. It brings back memories of the old Clone Saga and Bendis is galling in attempting to "recreate" what is usually described as the most damning story 616 Spidey ever did, a story that took him over 5 years to recover from, and he's all but made it worse because at least the 616 version took maybe a year to hit oblivion. This one has done it in a few months. I put up with Bendis gleefully repeating flaws in USM which he saw as "formula" for a good long while, and now that the book has steered into a pile of feces, it was time to vent.

USM used to be a book where I could enjoy an updated version of "classic Spider-Man" with some new twists. It wasn't perfect but it wasn't this bad. Even JUMP THE SHARK, which I absolutely loath, didn't take itself seriously. But this mess does and that makes it even worse. It's become a shame that USM, after under 100 issues, has collapsed under it's own weight. Bendis is clearly out of ideas and I am sure we could come up with no end of better writers who could pull this book back, especially as it's a "franchise" book that would never sell outside the Top 40. But this title is Bendis' until he decides it is time to leave, and I doubt it will be for a while.

Comics like this make people not read comics.

 

[GNR]

if there is a downside to PWJ,it's the fact that it's starting out in the middle of CW and stemming from it,i just hope it has legs when it's all said and done

is it true the colored version has ads?

 

[Roughneck]

Is this the same GW Bridge from back in the X-Force days?

It would be odd for there to be another old Blac guy Named George Washington Bridge.

 

[BrianWilly]

I realize that I hardly ever give any books below a seven out of ten rating anymore, and that's just kinda silly. Seven out of ten is a pretty solid rating, and certainly not every book I read is that solid. So from henceforth I resolve to be a lot stricter with my ratings. That's right, I'm going to rate the hell out of these books!!

52 Week 29
Another solid week. How many times have I said that about this series?

I liked the JSA story here, if only because I like Alan Scott's family and would like to see more between him and Obsidian, whose reaction in this case is pretty understandable, if not actually agreeable. There's some pretty clear statements that DC is making here regarding iconic older heroes and newer, young Gen-Y upstarts, but I'm not quite sure what it is yet...

I don't know what I think about Veronica Cale's characterization here. Obviously Rucka is involved so she can't go that wrong, and it's not her overly sexual direction that I'm concerned about here -- in the past she's obviously never been shy about using her looks to get her way, within reason -- it's that in the past, she would have never considered herself a supervillain or evil in any way. Of course she had no illusions about who she was and the methods she employed, but imo she would have considered working right alongside such men like Sivana and Morrow as beneath her and very likely would have been far more contemptuous of them. She had nothing but contempt for Dr. Psycho, for example, and I don't see what's the big difference between him and the scientists on this island.

Steel's back to normal. "Huzzah" or "Uh oh"? What's nice about this series is that you're never quite sure. Next week: the Bats!

(8.9 out of 10)


Connor Hawke: Dragon's Blood #1
The really good thing about having a character's longtime writer come back to write the character again is that there's no question that the character will be treated with respect, will be very well understood, and well be portrayed as the fans like him/her to be portrayed. This was the case when Ron Marz returned to handle Kyle Rayner recently. The bad thing about having a character's longtime writer come back to write the character again is that, very often, events and progressions which happened after said writer stopped writing the character will be forgotten, ignored, or mishandled. That's unfortunately the case in this instance as Chuck Dixon comes back to write Connor Hawke.

Connor's back at the monastery where he grew up and hanging out with Eddie Feyers, which at once seems a bit odd considering what he's been doing for the last few years. It's not out of character for Connor to return to the monastery for solace or reassociate with Eddie of course; it's the motivation that seems odd, the motivation being that he's feeling adrift and conflicted towards Ollie. But the idea of Connor still having a lot of unresolved father issues regarding Ollie just rings hollow right now. Sorry, but it does. I realize that it was a significant plot point throughout Dixon's run, but that was when he thought his father was blowed up good and he would never have a chance to properly resolve those unresolved issues. Since Ollie's return, writers like Smith, Winick, and Meltzer had done incredible things in reference to those very issues, and while Connor may not have been on the shiniest of terms with his father the last we've seen him, I think it's fair to say that he's long since moved past the point where he'd have scary dreams with his dad shooting him with arrows and calling him second best. And I can't, in all honesty, drum up that much enthusiasm for a miniseries that's likely going to be filled with those ideas. It made sense when Ollie was dead. But nowadays when Ollie's just a phone call away and more than capable of (if not actually willing to) hearing his son blab about his issues, it just rings hollow.

With that particular tidbit out of the way, how does the rest of the issue stand up? Well, it stands up mostly as an introductory issue, which means that we got a lot of exposition and set-up, which means not a lot actually happens and a lot of characters are introduced that we don't really care about yet. Which is just fine; this is just the intro, and it does its job well. I'm looking forward to this archery competition and all of the wackiness that's bound to ensue.

And the ending of the issue was a real treat; Shado's back, and of course everyone knows that Shado's the mother of Ollie's other illegitimate child, which promises a lot of fun angst very very soon. For all my rantings about Connor's father issues, Ollie's infidelity and basic ****in' ways is one of those issues that actually makes sense for Connor to still be hung up about, given that it obviously influenced him directly and is one of the few things we've seen to actually get him full-on pissed.

And hey, props to the artist for actually remembering for once that Connor is mixed.

So I give this issue a...

(6.8 out of 10)

...with the acknowledgment that it might, and probably will, get significantly better.


Wonder Woman #3
And ironically enough it's often the new, untested writers who will remember the most about a character's continuity and put it into their stories.

I was frankly and pleasantly a bit surprised at just how much of Wonder Woman's history and post-Crisis canon that Heinberg managed to remember and put in here. Oh sure, he glossed over Hercules' rape of the Amazons in all but the most subtle of subtexts, but to fit in "Harold Campion" from Byrne's run? Hell, I'm not even sure that Byrne remembers he once had Hercules be Champion. When all of WW's post-Crisis history seems to be in a bit of an upheaval following Infinite Crisis, it's good to see much of it still intact.

I honestly love Heinberg's characterization of Diana. It's just enough like Rucka's that it doesn't nearly feel like a completely different character -- and I'm looking at you, Johns and Waid -- but with some genuine progression and added depths built onto the preexisting Diana. She's still the same confident, intrepid woman she once was, but there's also a shade of doubt and uncertainty and insecurity that colors everything she does. She says "Wonder Woman is a symbol. She's not me." but it's almost as if she's trying to convince herself. For someone who used to know the truth about everything, this is a very interesting turn.

Before Heinberg started this run, pretty much my worst nightmore for Wonder Woman would have been for her to return to her Diana Prince roots and turn into a secret agent character-type character again. But now I see Agent Prince in action and it's really sort of fun and interesting in that not-quite-campy way. I like Agent Nemesis in the series too, in that generic male costar sort of way. On the one hand I hope that whoever continues this book after Heinberg really keeps this whole Department of Metahuman Affairs angle, but on the other I keep seeing ways for other writers to screw it up. So we'll see.

Also props to the Dodsons for making Circe much more visually intimitating that the leather-clad dominatrix that she'd become in recent years. Not that I mind the prior interpretation, but there's something about flowy robes and bling bling for a sorceress that's really cool.

Does the lateness of the book bother me? Yeah, it does. While the book's quite good, it's honestly not that good as to require months upon months of delays. The story and the art are both top-notch, but it's really not as if either the writer or the artists are just swamped with that much work right now. In a nutshell, there really should not be any reason for this book to be taking this much time getting out. But as usual with books like this (Astonishing X-Men and Heinberg's other title Young Avengers to name a few), most often the good parts of the series takes the edge off the lateness.

(8.7 out of 10, minus a bit for the lateness)

 

[BrianWilly]

Some Marvel books...

Amazing Spider-Man #536
So much for the "Why didn't Iron Man build safeguards in Pete's suit?" debate. And so much for the "Iron Man built safeguards in Pete's suit which is why he got beat up by Z-list villains" argument.

Peter's speech to America was nice, and a very moving moment of "YOU GO SPIDEY!" except that, well, don't you just wish this was the speech he was making at the beginning of this event? It's been remarked upon more than enough that Spidey supporting this act and unmasking in the first place was just incredibly stupid of him to do, running contrary to years upon years of characterization; the character was frankly far too experienced and far too intelligent in this exact matter for him to have done it, especially out of some sort of blind faith in Tony and "the system." He really should have known better, and there's no reason why he didn't...in essence, he sold out big time. So now, finally, Peter reclaims a bit of his balls and dignity and integrity, and I guess it's nice to cheer for him...but lest we forget, who exactly were the ones who chopped off those balls and sold his dignity and trampled all over his integrity in the first place? Peter himself, or more specifically, Marvel and JMS. Why should I cheer for someone who got exactly what he deserved, and why should I commend JMS for "fixing" a character that he broke in the first place? I get that a character has to fall in order to redeem himself, but there's a profound difference between a fall of hubris and a fall that's just stupid and careless in the first place.

I do like Pete's interactions with MJ and May in this issue. I think we've received more "We're both so proud of you, and know that your Uncle Ben would be too"[/paraphrase] speechifying from MJ and May than we're ever going to be able to stomach, but in this instance it was fitting.

Oh yeah, and Tony acts like a big ol' *****ey villain. Just another Wednesday for him.

(7.6 out of 10)


Civil War: Frontline #8
How odd that most people seem to be enjoying this particular issue significantly more than the ones before. To me, it was just more of the same; some out-of-the-blue conspiracy theories, some reporters snarking at each other, blue people who are sort of there for some reason as yet unclear, and more and more reasons not to support the registration. Just in case it wasn't quite clear yet that the pro-reg side is being led by utter *****ebags, Agent Hill gets to lay into She-Hulk, who's been one of the more staunch and determined members of the pro-regs more or less from the very beginning, for being a possible turncoat. 'Cause, y'know, she shows sympathy for Speedball or somesuch. Can't have that, can we?

(6.5 out fo 10)

 

[GNR]

It would be odd for there to be another old Blac guy Named George Washington Bridge.

Just asking.

 

[Doc Destruction]

Dammit, now I have to get the Punisher book. Less money for me!

 

[Darthphere]

Dont fall for the peer pressure.

 

[Nasty-B]

Don't be a hater, it's a great book.

 

[Dread]

One more thing; in the "Why are they late" dept, the latest issue of MAD magazine has several comic book artists drawing an article called "LESSOR KNOWN SUPER-VILLIANS". Last year they did something like this with heroes.

This month two of the artists are Cassaday and Dodson. Why is that a bother? Because both are on books that are either always late or have to be perennially rescheduled because of slowness, so seeing them draw ANYTHING ELSE while they already have enough work doing issues that NEVER are timely just smacks in the face of anyone who believes in a "work ethic". Kind of like when I saw that Cassaday cover for HUNTER/KILLER #8. I just looked at it and went, "okay, I wonder how many panels of ASTONISHING he could have drawn while doing that. How much later will that book be now?" Same with Dodson and WONDER WOMAN. Comic books are the only gig where you can be months late on your employed project and be free to do side gigs for another company; lateness has never stopped Dodson from a WIZARD cover or something.

I mean, if your boss gave you a job, and you were weeks behind schedule with it, and your boss found out that you were performing a gig for another company (Cassaday's alterior art has been for Top Cow/Image and MAD, which is owned by DC), a COMPETING company, WHILE YOU WERE MONTHS BEHIND ON HIS COMPANY'S PROJECT, what do you think would happen? A reprimand, at the very least. But in comics, it's just business as usual. The industry caters to writers who ALWAYS AND FOREVER will put their TV/movie work before their comic work (which, although they'd never admit it, they only see as a "paid hobby"), or artists who, as mentioned above, never let a late book distract them from doing other projects. And then when they, both Joe Q and Dan DiDio, have to give yet another excuse as to why a book is late, they give a "what, me worry" explaination. The answer is that for all their "imaginative" or thunderous words at fans, they're apparently spineless for controlling their talent. When Marvel gives you a contract, you're supposed to be THEIR employee, after all. But maybe I'm making the mistake, like some posters do, of trying to compare comics to other actual businesses.

 

[Shockdingo]

Oh yea, anyone know what in the blue-bog covered crap, happened to the rest of the hyped Wolverine vs Hulk (Ultimate) That book is going to come out in completion when I'm 84

 

[The Punisher]

Dammit, now I have to get the Punisher book. Less money for me!

Yeah man buy it. It was well worth it and the a great first issue.

Dont fall for the peer pressure.

You say this and yet all the reviews are good so far. You'll never know if a book is good or not unless you read it. Read it, then say what you think.

 

[Horrorfan]

Oh yea, anyone know what in the blue-bog covered crap, happened to the rest of the hyped Wolverine vs Hulk (Ultimate) That book is going to come out in completion when I'm 84

Dont be silly....it will never be completed


Dread, you need your own comic based tv show. You kick ass. You could do reviews and interviews with talent, real ball busting ones, and you could grill late artists and have your audience (ie us comic fans) put our questions to them. That would rock, because someone needs to tell these part timers how disrespectful we find it.

You awere 100% on how I think they see things too. The only one I think takes his duties remotely seriously is Joss Whedon, and even his scheduling can be iffy.

 

[Darthphere]

You say this and yet all the reviews are good so far. You'll never know if a book is good or not unless you read it. Read it, then say what you think.

Far too logical.

 

[hippy fascist]

Yeah man buy it. It was well worth it and the a great first issue.



You say this and yet all the reviews are good so far. You'll never know if a book is good or not unless you read it. Read it, then say what you think.

Darth hates loads of books he hasn't read, I think he just enjoys having something to hate...he's so full of biterness

 

[Darthphere]

And bile. By the way I read The Boys.....