Turned out to be a larger week than I expected, but not a bad one. Two ANNIHILATION books, the #1 ongoing in the industry that continues to sell better than it deserves, and the second issue of Ultimate X-Men within 4 weeks. And more.
Worldmind suggests attention to Extreme Spoilers.
Any jokes on the date? 7-11? Eh, no? Good.
Dread's Bought/Thought for 7/11/07:
FRESHMEN II #6: Considering that past issues lagged behind, I was surprised that this final issue of volume two seemed to appear less than 4 weeks from #5. The advantages of fill-in artists, I guess; Jorge Correa taking on the last two issues. Anyway, Mr. Fiddlesticks was seemingly defeated by Puppeteer and Leonard Kirk (the last volume's artist who now is a character in the story) and the rest of the Freshmen escaping her father's lab from hell, it turns out that Kirk's living schtizo form had one more trick up it's sleeve, becoming a demonic version of Puppeteer herself. So "Dark Puppeteer" tracks down the kids and not only subjects the team to their worst fears, but pretty much ices Norrin's fangirl lover just 'cause. I was actually surprised she wasn't evil herself, and it seemed rather random to ice her. Correa's art is fine enough as the issue spends most of the time before the fight on the final break-up of the Drama Twins, whose battle rocks the college. Kirk offs himself while Scarlet Knight finally grows a pair and slices up Dark Puppeteer something nasty. The issue ends the kids' senior year, and I wonder if the title will now become, SOPHMORES? Ah, the perils of franchise marketting. I was iffy on continuing with another volume of Green & Sterbakov's property here, but I actually liked the last issue and am wondering where it leads to, now that Scarlet Knight now wants to clone his lost lover. It's wacky and sometimes tacky, but it has been interesting to read and naturally is it's own creator driven universe, which means characters can die and whatnot. Out of all the "non big two" books I read, this is probably the worst, but it's not that bad. The George Lucas quote on the cover was amusing as well. Call it a guilty pleasure for me. Much like THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FARELANE.
DEADPOOL/GLI SUMMER FUN SPECTACULAR: Now there is something you rarely see mentioned in too many Marvel comics; "fun". This little one-shot of summer heaven is from Fab Nic & Slott with art from a whole host of people. Apparently, the GLA are now the Great Lakes Initiative, being the official federally recognized super-team of Wisconsin. They had a CW appearance in CABLE & DEADPOOL, where the latter basically invaded their lair and kick his acons kicked by Squirrel-Girl, who continues her reign of awesomeness here. This time he returns after running into them after an AIM plot to intoxicate all of Earth's super-heroes, and after going through his usual routine of killing Mr. Immortal a lot, decides to be a "reserve" member of their team, and quickly proves to be a funds-sucking, psychotic-yet-daffy mooch. I haven't really cared for Deadpool much, but this issue sort of made me wish I actually did, because he sort of reminds me of the Tick, only, y'know, an insane killer. The fact this guy actually works for the feds and Capt. America was put on trial just shows how upside down the MU is sometimes. In the B-Plot, Squirrel-Girl is informed that her crush, Speedball, is now the ultra-emo-sado-masochist Penance, and good lord, is that plot-point mocked here. I cannot do justice as to how awesome the riff on it is. Squirrel-Girl basically points out the many holes in Baldwin's "Jenkins Logic", and he is played for laughs, which is the only way he works now. She then travels to the future of Robert Kirkman's MARVEL KNIGHTS 2099 and hooks up with the "Avengers 2099" that showed up in his MTU "Legion of Losers" arc (IMO the high point of that series), being the second place where that series is actually acknowledged (the other place being Kirkman's other Marvel books). 2099 Speedball declares, "It doesn't look like the present is safe for characters like us." Amen, brother. Only fan love is probably keeping Squirrel-Girl from being raped and murdered by The Hood in some NEW AVENGERS issue or something. Slott & Co. once again mock the current "dark tones" of the industry now and mark the irony that with the Big Two seeming to show from the heavens that "they are above childish comics", they prove how adolescent they are. Eventually the "evil, evil man" is booted from the GLI lair and order is restored (after his date with Big Bertha, revealing that DP is, of all things, a "chubby chaser"). I think this angle for Deadpool works. He was boring when he debuted when he was sort of taken seriously, and now is sort of a walking punch-line. Someone has to be, I guess. It's $4, but it definately is worth it for the laughs inside. After all the teeth-gnashing assembling line of overly serious and dramatic "events", you need stuff like this to pop the bubble and laugh at it every now and then. Considering Slott's comfort zone is two ongoings, it is amazing he found time to co-write this AND pen an episode of the latest FF cartoon (you can call Slott a TV writer now!). It's more Slott/Fab Nic GLI goodness, really, if you haven't gotten it, you're depriving yourself of some funny. Squirrel-Girl is still awesome; such a shame her boy-crush isn't. Can I nominate Slapstick as a possible replacement?
NEW AVENGERS #32: It is interesting reading this after DEADPOOL/GLI SUMMER FUN SPECTACULAR. That special lived to make fun of overly dark, overly serious, everyone-is-emo and heroes-all-infight sort of stories, and this is PRECISELY the sort of plotline that deserves mocking. After the reveal, we have an environment where superheroes can't trust each other, are at the mercy of some overreaching plot they are helpless to stop, and are at the verge of tearing each other apart. Really, how is this in ANY WAY different from the stuff Bendis has been writing for years? The only bright spot is that Skrulls HAVE wanted to invade and take over Earth before, and they HAVE impersonated heroes & government figures before. Only this time, it's being done competantly, and it's being done in the 21st century, which means it will be overmilked for all it is worth, and every shred of originally interesting material will be outnumbered by superficial fluff. Or maybe I am just cynical. This issue is another Bendis-Talker issue. It also has strong continuity...with Bendis' past and current works, like HOM or MIGHTY AVENGERS. Sure, Kirkman and Slott do that too, only they actually treat the continuity of others as being equally important. Bendis treats the continuity written by others with all the care of a toddler with a dartboard; some stories are worthy of his overrated attention, and others are not. For example, he liked BKV's original HOOD story, but McDuffie's developments in BEYOND! are likely not part of the equation. In this case, the story happily ties into the fact that the Skrulls lost another homeworld in ANNIHILATION, but only by accident. Besides, the terran heroes wouldn't know about ANNIHILATION; only Iron Man seems to know, and Mr. Fantastic, who for some reason never told the Four or made a stink about it (protecting the Earth got in the way of his "building prisons to store allies" time). Anyway, Bendis' little team reacts, or more like "freaks out" after the concept of Elektra being a Skrull, and the possibility that their strings have been pulled this entire time. Marvel vows they won't use this "Skrull story" to "undo" screw-ups with franchises, but, quite frankly, half of what comes from Marvel's collective mouths is full of horse****. They will gleefully lie, cheat, and bait-and-switch fans if it means a quick buck. Spider-Man gets in some amusing lines, and Luke & Logan react like they should. Iron Fist & Echo are just "there". Dr. Strange proves unable to muster one spell to save a falling airplane, yet he can apparently trick an entire planet of Skrulls into seeing Galactus in ILLUMINATI. And Spider-Woman pretty much proves to be the weak link in the team, going her own way to deliver Skrullektra to Stark, to see him play his hand. The usage of the term "Skrully" was already run into the ground in Newsarama interviews and gets further run into the ground here; Bendis is the only writer I know of who can both introduce a funny quirk and then overuse it to the point that you would rather jump off the Empire State Building and land on rusted spikes than read it again, all within a single issue of something. "Skrully" or "Skrullish" is the new "Bendis Balloons". Oh, and a team that is almost killed by Ninjas twice in a row is also almost killed by a plane crash, the sort of thing the Mighty Avengers seem to stop in their off time. Perhaps I am pessimistic because while this idea is actually a clever and chilling plot point, I fully expect Bendis & Marvel to screw the execution. They have failed with two events in a row that in theory were interesting; why in the world would I trust them with a plot point that at worst could turn into a "Superboy Prime Punch" to "undo" things Marvel thinks is inconvient. Maybe some of you will find it irksome that I tear into an otherwise fine issue of a Bendis comic for sins of the past and the unseen future, and maybe it is. I admit I have a severe Bendis Bias. He is to blame for some of the worst trends to hit Marvel since hologram covers, among them the decompression fad. He has ruined some salvagable characters and is to blame for the event that ripped all potential out of the X-Franchise. He can ignore whatever continuity he wants, but anything HE writes is Marvel Holy Scripture, which Marvel enforces like the Taliban and dress-codes. What once was a nice noir writer has been enabled by Marvel into an egomanic spoiled brat, who thinks of interesting ideas but often pooches the execution, therefore making them pointless. We just GOT DONE with a massive story where the superheroes all infought and hated each other, all of Marvel is trying to turn that around with "everyone rally to fight Hulk" in WWH and Bendis is still doing the same damn thing he did a year ago, make them all enemies! And instead of being mocked for being behind the ball, he's worshipped by the entire industry. So long as this story remains here, it might be worth reading, but the temptation for Marvel to use it to undo Joe Q's fantasy list of character development he finds troublesome is too much to bare. That said, this STILL is a better book than it was before CW and on it's own terms, it works. The dialogue wasn't too bad here and at least the plane crash was treated as somthing dangerous, and not mundane. But I just fear yet another Bendis Genie getting out and screwing up the sandbox for the rest of us. Maybe I would forgive Bendis for past sins if he didn't keep making new ones. And it is the perennial tone of this book that is beginning to almost make me appreciate the character-lacking, "big splashy fighty pages with former fascist heroes" that is MIGHTY AVENGERS. Yeah, I'd rather another 10 pages of Sentry fighting a nekkid chick than thinking, "Marvel will undo the Parker marriage" with every read through of the word, "Skrully". Yu's art is what you would expect. The concept of Bendis making a point that all of the characters that he either has written poorly (Hawkeye) or the ones of others as proof of being Skrulls is akin to screwing up a character, and then blaming the character for it. I am am bloody tired of reading Bendis stories where all superheroes do is fight each other, bicker, and fail to stop a villain or protect anyone.
There is the potential Bendis could pull out a gem of a story and make this work, and Marvel won't overuse it. All this is possible. But is it likely? Given past evidence? You make the call.
NOVA #4: Something should be said for an ending that I honestly didn't see coming; cover teasers for the next issue showed that someone else would be wearing a Nova costume, but as they say, the devil is in the details. Fresh from fleeing the screwy Marvel Earth like the plague, Nova responds to a distress call from Kree's planet Hala, but gets there after the PRELUDE issue, when it basically is too late; the Phalanx have taken over and the last "super-empire" in the universe is now slave to the cyber-organics, who have been elevated from C-List X-Men sparring partners to universe-challenging threats. The irony in all this is that CONQUEST, as this issue and WRAITH make apparent, is dealing with a plot point simular to NEW AVENGERS' Skrull arc. As the Phanlanx can take over both man and machine, ANYONE could become one of their puppets, and you may not know who to trust. In Nova's case, as soon as the Kree Sentry robots prove useless to stop him, the Phalanx bring out his ex-lover, Gamora, now a slave to their will. It has the "trust no one" angle of the Skrull thing, yet there is no fear of using this to "undo" things; the threat merely is what it is. Also, I'd trust Abnett & Lanning a little more than Bendis. Main Marvel has underwhelmed with 2 events in a row, while ANNIHILATION just hit a home run. The interesting thing here is, Gamora doesn't act completely like a brainwashed stooge. Some of her personality comes through; not only her cunning tactics, but regret for having to kill Rider. And at the end of the issue that is precisely what she seems to do. She teleports robots into his flight path and then forces him to collide with the barrier that the Phalanx have erected over Kree space, causing him to essentially crash to another planet in a fireball, leaving a charred corpse. The worldmind then connects with a generic Kree woman/soldier who happens to be there. Don't get me wrong; Ko-Rel has a decent introduction (even if she fits some single woman soldier cliches, like having spunk and some lost kid somewhere). But in a way it felt like something DC has been doing for a while; offing characters and then replacing them with someone more PC, in this case an alien woman. The title says NOVA, not RICHARD RIDER, which means as long as anyone is a Nova, it can continue. The jury is somewhat out on whether Rich is actually dead, but he looked rather toasty to me. I came onto the book for Rich, not Generic Kree Woman #422, so I will give this another issue and see what happens before I decide to drop it or not. My pull list is already full. If it is death for Rich, it's REALLY been a bad year for the old New Warriors, and at least he went down better than Hawkeye or Scott Lang. At least he got to save the universe and tell Tony where to stick it. The Phanlanx at least has proven itself a credible threat in a short period of time, almost making the ANNIHILATION Wave look simple. And it proves that the same characters who saved the universe last go around won't be doing it this time. The question is whether that will make a better event or not.
WRAITH #1: Yet another writer from LOST works for Marvel, and supposedly he's more reliable than the ULT. HULK/WOLVERINE guy. Photojones2 has criticized this book as essentially providing a knock-off of the role that Drax played, as an assassin/soldier who is virtually unkillable being swept up into a war merely because he wants to kill one man, and in that sense, that is true. Wraith is a new mystery character who wears a Kree equalivant of the shroud that Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" character wore and has a very cool morphing weapon that shifts from a gun to a sword and finally a whip, like something out of SOUL CALIBER. Wraith himself acts to stereotype; man of few words, being mistaken for a rebel and through sheer prowess gained the notice of a dangerous enemy, and can cut through dozens of enemies with one attack. He is Kree and yet not Kree, alive and not alive, and all this. Not much has been said, but the next issue is set up to yield answers. I've gotten so used to a #1 issue barely providing a teaser as to what is happening until #2 or #3 that it rolls off my back now. It also shows that Ronan, a hero of the last event, is "missing" because the Phalanx have posessed him, too. I will reserve some judgement about Wraith until I know more, and admittedly he seems to have that "coolness" factor to him, like Dante from DEVIL MAY CRY. Of course, Dante and characters like this either take off or overstay their welcome. I'll reserve some judgement for now. Again, ANNIHILATION CONQUEST is proving that new handful of characters are going to be movers/shakers, just the jury is out on whether this allows them to match the original. Right now, while I am having doubts that it will, I still am aboard. Hotz's art reminded me of some stuff I saw during the 90's, but isn't bad.
OMEGA FLIGHT #4: This mini's been selling as well as IRON FIST and GHOST RIDER so unless these last two issues dip, count on Marvel being willing to give Oeming an ongoing. The story continues of the Great Beast Demons empowering the Wrecking Crew as they seek to destroy the Earth, same as they destroyed the world of Beta Ray Bill, who has been plucked down in the middle of the Omega Flight showdown. Talisman, U.S. Agent and Arachne show up on the scene to help Bill against the crew, but when Sasquatch gets posessed, Julia's little girl proves to be the saving grace by freeing Collective, who dons the Guardian suit and buys the team some time. Count the Collective as something created by Bendis and used merely as a plot device who now, in the hands of another writer, being made into an actual character that bares some interest, not unlike Layla Miller (proving my notion that Bendis might be a far better editor than he ever is as a writer; and in true fashion he refuses to work that gig). Collective Guardian essentially channels energy to smash or do whatever he wants, but he refuses to ice Sasquatch, which is bad now that demons are posessing his full might. Sure, this may be yet another random collection of B-Listers into yet another team, and isn't as original as IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN or THE LONERS, but I still enjoy it because it has solid superheroics from Oeming and great art by Kolins. Execution is everything, my friends. It is something some writers, like Bendis, fail to grasp but others, like Oeming, seem to manipulate as easily as clay into art. In addition to that, Oeming has taken a team of villains who have fallen by the wayside as jokes for years (ironically, Wrecker was the last villain Bendis treated well) and made them into credible, dangerous, and downright nasty threats again, even before they got a boost in power from Tanaraq. And unlike the NA's, who can barely defend themselves against ninjas or save themselves from a falling plane, Omega Flight not only saves themselves from a chopper crash, but rescues dozens of civilians too. Finally, Micheal Pointer is in a simular spot as Penance, someone who is near-suicidal wanting to attone for some horrible sin, only unlike Baldwin, it isn't complete bull. This book shows that what some might call as generic can still be exciting and a joy to read. Sure, the team isn't all Canadian, but the "we're all Canadian" schtick with the team has worn thin, so I don't mind a new angle. Even if it is an older, more timeless angle. Hopefully if/when Oeming gets an ongoing with this, Arachne's boyfriend The Shroud can show up. Sure, he's not a team kinda guy, but neither was Spider-Man, and look where he's been for 3 years.
And I do like how Kirkman is finally using Psylocke, instead of letting her drop after Millar ended his run (yeah, THAT long ago). He is respecting the continuity of the book, and has dedged up villains from BKV's run like the Fenris Twins, who are behind a spree of Sentinal attacks. He even introduces the Ultimate MLF and it doesn't stink. But this book has clearly fallen into B-List and is the one Kirkman struggles with the most, that no matter what he does, seems to reak of going through the motions. Ironically, it is his best selling title. Any issue with art from someone better than Oliver or Alixe is better in my book. Things are coming together and it is interesting, but not as much as prior runs of the book. Alas, Ult. XM has become a case in point that people can use to show why the Ultimate line is running out of steam, bleeding readers and strip-mined of all of their innovative ideas and writers. Some good elements, and a book that slowly improves as it goes at this point, but the whole does not equal the sum of it's parts. I totally don't buy Scott wimping out like this, especially after his bas-assness in past Ultimate issues that Millar & Bendis built up. At least Ultimate Bishop has better hair than his predessors (they found a style between "80's rock bushy", afro, or bald for a black guy; heaven have mercy!). Right now this is still the worst Ultimate book I read, although I haven't thrown it away in disgust like USM. 
