Comics this week

Like every week, here come some comics! We have 14 books this week, unless my eyes deceive me (for some reason I'm sure they do this week so don't be surprised if we audible in a fifteenth; also, football season has started so prepare for me to start loading everything with football analogies like so much early-run Venom) including, yes, another ending book. Three weeks in a row, right? Can we make it four? God knows we have enough ending soon. Plus side, we have another new book kicking off too. Here goes.

Astonishing X-Men 67
The end of a good book will hopefully lead to the start of another good one. I believe Marvel has Amazing X-Men slated to follow this one up but the point is that this is the end of the series that started with Joss Whedon's defining run where Colossus returned. Certainly sad to see this book go and actually, and this can't be said of too many ending books in general, really interested to see how this one wraps up. I think we'll get a conclusion to last issue, with the weird underground alien creature that zombified people and shared its own emotions with them, but I wouldn't be upset if we didn't get that. This team redoubled its efforts to act more like a team, like a family, in the last issue and I'll be interested to see what that means in the immediate future. Marjorie Liu should get whatever book she wants at Marvel after this; she probably won't but she should.

Avengers Arena 15
Always on this list because still, even after 15 issues, I'm still shocked at how good this book is. In truth, I'm probably saying all the things about this series that I would have said about Avengers Academy during its run if I'd had this blog and also if I had been braver then to admit that it was a really solid book. I was rather against Avengers Academy because of all of the teen angst and emotion running rampant through it but it ended up being a tremendously well-told story about fairly interesting characters. This book started with a bang and kept up the pace, even keeping up the energy and emotional core that Avengers Academy established. Really good book. Excited to see where this week puts us as the book speeds towards its intended finish.

Captain America 11
This is Cap's first journey post-Dimension Z. Sure he's been around in Uncanny Avengers and other books but he's ignored it in those books (with a nice nod to it in Uncanny Avengers; such is the benefit of having one writer on both books). Here he'll have to find a way to deal with what he's been through, with another decade gone but this time only for him (last time he missed decades, the world grew without him, this time he's grown without the world), with Jet Black in the world, and with the possible deaths of Sharon and Ian (he thinks they're both dead, he's wrong on at least one count but good luck proving that). Should be a really defining issue one way or another. What Cap will come out of this struggle?

Mighty Avengers 1
Brand new Avengers series (so maybe there are a few of them already, whatever, they're a big organization, okay?) the initial conceit of which is that these are the heroes left over with the current Avengers in space and the Illuminati doing their own thing. This book, though, could be bigger than that for Marvel. The team is comprised more of various races than other Marvel books, with characters like Luke Cage, Spectrum, White Tiger, and Power Man (okay, so maybe mostly black but hey, that's more varied than most Marvel books, sadly), as well as Spider-Man and a possibly new character in a Spider-Man costume (are we getting a Miles Morales for the regular universe? The Spider-Men series a year or two back opened the door for questions like that). Some people might see this as sort of an overreaction to criticisms that Marvel doesn't have enough representation in their books but frankly, that's okay by me. Any step in the right direction, even if it's a pretty obvious step, can be a good step. Like with the next book I'm going to mention, I'd rather see them blatantly address the issue than ignore it. Of course, that starts with the book being good. Al Ewing and Greg Land will head up the book to start.

X-Men 5
I had already chosen this as my fifth pre-game pick before I remembered it's part of the Battle of the Atom event and now it's too late to slowly back away and sweep this under the rug. I was pretty adamantly against the first two books of this event but, you know, there's always a chance it can turn around. The reason I had picked it was that I really enjoyed the last issue, which delved a little deeper and more explicitly into the team than the first three had had a chance to. The first three were dedicated to the plot that was going on and number four got a chance to pull back and examine who was on this team and the way they were going to interact with one another. I was excited for a new arc and was hoping they could carry whatever else they'd built up into the next issue. Now I'm a little less excited and more wary. We'll see how it goes. It's still Brian Wood and I like him a whole lot, though I just read the description and it says that some X-Men don't believe the All-New X-Men should be sent back in time and I'm furious again.