Hulk 1, Wolverine 4

Hulk 1
Waid (w) and Bagley (p) and Hennessy (i) and Keith (c) and Petit (l)

Bruce Banner has been shot by a mysterious marksman who had been hired to land a perfect shot in the back of Banner's head so it would shut his brain down before Hulk could come out. With Banner down, he's been delivered to the secret organization that hired the marksman in the first place. They've also recruited the world's foremost brain surgeon, a contemporary of Banner's, to remove the bullet from his brain and save the man. The doctor manages to do it but refuses to implant the device the organization wants him to implant, which would allow them to trigger a Hulk-out. When he refuses, he considers killing Banner to spare him from this but doesn't have to worry about the moral implications long since his anesthesiologist, a woman who was, as a child, was saved by the Hulk, revives him in time for Hulk to appear and get out of the area. With Banner out in the world somewhere, Coulson and Maria Hill set out to find him. They eventually do, only to find that Banner is badly brain damaged and, according to his doctor, will never be smart again.

Story
Waid's previous INDESTRUCTIBLE HULK run found the genius Banner using the weapon Hulk as a means to work in a lab and deliver amazing scientific advancements while creating a legacy for himself. Now the roles are drastically changed as Hulk rescues Banner from probable death but not before Banner's brain is severely damaged. No one can argue that this changes things pretty radically. We still have plenty left to understand about the new situation but we're off to an interesting start. 5/5

Character
It's a little hard to get a big read on "character" in an issue where the main character is only conscious and present for a couple of pages. There's still some interesting character work insofar as the brain surgeon goes and insofar as that brain surgeon knows Banner and how he views Banner. It's a sort of third hand look at Banner where we see the surgeon's opinion of Banner from back when they were in school together and from newspaper articles he's read since. Not a ton to be gained with a character like Hulk, who has been around for so long. This is just kind of an interesting way to re-establish our character and his place in the world at the start of a new series. 4/5

Writing
We're still a little too much in the story for a lot to have been explained so far but the writing works pretty well for what it needs to do here. It catches the reader and draws him or her in while still not giving too much information to put the reader off. As I said, it rehashes a little bit about Banner that we don't necessarily need if we're longtime Hulk readers but it at least presents it differently to keep things a little new while still welcoming new readers onboard without much problem. 5/5

Art
Bagley's art works here as he draws lots of characters who will likely never appear again. It gets the point across; there are plenty of people around. Interested to see how the series continues as his Hulk looks pretty great. 5/5

Miscellaneous
It's a bold new direction for the book and one that I think we'll have to wait a little longer on to really make a judgement about it. I liked Waid's last direction and the focus it put on Banner so I'm wary of this new approach but I'm willing to follow Waid as he continues.

Total score: 4/5


Wolverine 4
Cornell (w) and Stegman w/ Baldeon (p) and Morales, Stegman, and Hanna (i) and Curiel (c) and Petit (l)

Before Wolverine set off to join Offer's gang, he cut his ties with the X-Men, angry that they're all over him while he tries to figure himself out, and even goes to Kitty Pryde with Scott's team (the location of which he apparently knows) so he can threaten her for some weird reason. He then meets up with SHIELD Agent Monkton to discuss going undercover in Offer's group. Monkton will go in, as an LMD, to allow Wolverine to kill him in front of Offer to establish his loyalty, hence why Wolverine killed the reporter in the first issue. Now he's firmly established himself as an ally to Offer, who is trying to get into Sabretooth's good books.

Story
Wolverine is a spy for Maria Hill but there is always the worry that he'll grow to like his new teammates (as Monkton warns him) enough to not want to harm them if the time should come. Still, it's a better story than "Wolverine has joined up with a crime boss because he's having a midlife crisis." 4/5

Character
I've found some of the character decisions strange so far but I'd written it off as some sort of unknown plot point to that point. I was right and now I do like what's happening a bit more, though I cannot get past the threatening Kitty business. I just don't follow it. Maybe he's trying to burn his bridges to make his alibi more believable but I'm just not sure who would have checked? This way, he just comes off like a crazy old man. In a way, these sort of freak outs make more sense because you put them in context of a wounded man who has been severely shaken but it almost doesn't go big enough to give that. Instead, he almost comes off as petty and strange. 3/5

Writing
There is still a little over-explanation here, even as the series needs over-explanation to say what's going on. That's not the sort of over-explanation I'm talking about. There's over-explanation in people explaining Wolverine's current behavior. I don't need to hear five different people talking about why Wolverine is so defensive right now. Still, happy to see now that the story is going somewhere rather than just trying to be gritty and different. 4/5

Art
I like Stegman's work a good deal and I like the way he draws action particularly, an important aspect for a Wolverine title. I was a little put off at how ugly Wolverine tended to be in this book but then thought about it more and actually almost preferred it. Wolverine was never meant to be a poster boy sort of good looking guy. Bob Hoskins was nearly cast to play him in a movie, you guys. Like everyone, his look changes frequently, but it has certainly erred more towards good-looking and gruff or animalistic in recent days. Making him kind of ugly doesn't hurt this book. I still, though, hate the new design of Sabretooth and don't understand why every would-be crime boss has to be a GIANT. 4/5

Miscellaneous
Still a little bit slower than I'd like this book to be moving but I am happy that it's moving in some sort of direction. It's hard to get past the somewhat slower tone of the book still but knowing that it's not trying too hard to reinvent the wheel certainly helps things.

Total score: 3/5

Wolverine 11, Savage Wolverine 11

Wolverine 11
Cornell (w) and Davis and Farmer (a) and Hollingsworth (c)

Wolverine is still mortal and his chances at becoming invincible again are seemingly dwindling, both as Fury and his team use the Host to try to attack the virus and as Wolverine's new series rounds the corner. Context clues, you guys. Anyway, he and Kitty are still trapped in the mall with human security guards and members of the Hand and Sabretooth's strange gang (including Lord Deathstrike and the Silver Samurai) still coming from all directions. To add insult to actual injury, apparently the weird acupuncture guy who showed up before also opened avenues of pain previously unknown to Wolverine. Wolvy has always felt pain but he's pretty used to it by now. Unfortunately, this guy amplified Wolverine's pain, making his fighting that much more reserved. The intense pain is making him more feral and, in his moments of clarity, he decides to set out by himself to lure the other villains to him and protect the people he's with. It's by himself that he's attacked by the Silver Samurai as the issue ends.

This mall thing feels like it's been going on for months and I know that it hasn't. One of my biggest issues with this series has been the pacing of the stories and of the individual issues, which have dragged tremendously. There's an excess of exposition, needed or not, and it's crushing the flow of this book. I will say, particularly on the heels of the new WOLVERINE book announcement, that I think that Alan Davis' art isn't necessarily the best fit for Cornell's somewhat slow book because it makes Davis' art feel slow and dramatic, but not in the good way where it actually creates drama. Overall, I think the book itself is just slow, which is too bad because I think there are some decent ideas in here and some neat little character pieces here and there (I continue to not need Wolverine's super secret group of smart friends or whatever they are. Happy he's been pretty reserved with using them). I'm hoping that the start of the next series will find a more dedicated book, one that's more sure of itself and that needs less explanation, then. I also hope that it sees a bit of an adrenaline boost from Stegman's art.

Savage Wolverine 11
Jock (w and a) and Loughridge (c)

Wolverine has found a lab on this mysterious planet that seems to answer some of his questions about exactly what sort of experiments were going on here. Like Wolverine's young friend, who he seems to have named Kouen, the lab is full of more children in stasis meant to be a new Wolverine, as it were. Almost immediately upon seeing these kids, Kouen enters and is even more immediately speared through the chest and lifted up off the ground by one of the creatures running the lab. Wolverine yells while the man soliloquies about how all of these children are imperfect copies which can be disposed of now that Wolverine himself is here. Meanwhile, Kouen learns that he can heal and bares his own claws and frees himself from the pike, giving Wolverine an opening to run over split the man in two. Wolverine and Kouen talk about the children in stasis and Wolverine admits that, since they're only kids but their skeleton is metal, their bodies likely won't hold up. Kouen produces a syringe that the scientists had said would cure the children, which Wolverine doubts. He tests it on himself and reveals that it's just poison, a powerful poison at that. Kouen uses the poison on the mainframe of the tubes to end the lives of the other children before they can suffer his pain. He and Wolverine escape the lab and wait for more scientists to show up, as the man warned they would, ready to attack.

Really beautiful and fairly haunting final issue for Jock here. There was a neat thing happening with this run where it was a little hard to kind of follow and keep up, leaving a sense of mystery and a sense of the ominous to it. It wouldn't have worked long-term, I don't think, but this was a fairly short arc and thus the mystery has the perfect amount of time to kind of sit and make you curious before really clearing up. Of course, not everything cleared up (who were these scientists? Where is Wolverine? How did they bring him here? etc.) but I think we don't need everything cleared up. This is a story, and an interesting one at that, and it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Unlike WOLVERINE above, this set of issues has moved remarkably well, allowing exposition to pave the way when it's needed but preferring to show and not tell, which also gave Jock, who is a tremendous artist, a chance to shine. I read this issue through once a couple days ago so that I would be ready to review it but I read it through again when the time came to actually review it. Typically I do that with books but oftentimes I'll end up just flipping through the book the second time to remind myself of things I wanted to say or little plot points here and there. This time I read the whole book through a couple more times to get the whole feel of the book. It's a really good story and I think a great show of Wolverine as a character. Solid stuff.

Marvel news - Young Avengers and Wolverine and the X-Men ending, Wolverine and F4 relaunch news

The first bit of news here is the heartbreaking news - Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie will be ending their run of YOUNG AVENGERS, effectively ending the fourth volume of YOUNG AVENGERS (it might just be the third? I don't really remember and I'm too broken up to check), with issue 15. It sounds like this was a decision made by Gillen and McKelvie, not by Marvel, as addressed on Kieron Gillen's Tumblr. All along they've referred to this ongoing story as the first season of YOUNG AVENGERS, leaving themselves with enough story and enough of an opening to keep going if they wanted but also giving them a backdoor if they wanted a way out. They're taking the latter and, while I accept and maybe even kind of adore their choice (go out strong, make sure you don't let it sit too long and stagnate), it's still heartbreaking news. Brilliant book all the way through, will definitely cherish the final few issues. I will also say that it doesn't come as a HUGE surprise because they've definitely been very guarded about their plans after the first season's conclusion, which certainly has the feel of a goodbye issue.

WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN will also seemingly be coming to an end in February with issue 42, as reported by Aaron on his blog. In the very least, it will be Jason Aaron's last issue with the book, whether or not that exactly means the book is ending. He was hoping to run this book and AMAZING X-MEN side-by-side but it seems like his work schedule is catching up to him and he had to let one book go. I'm not terribly upset about this one.

Meanwhile, it's been confirmed that WOLVERINE will be relaunching as a part of All-New Marvel NOW in February, following the conclusion of Paul Cornell's "Killable" arc on the current WOLVERINE series. The relaunch will feature Cornell still writing but swapping out Alan Davis for Ryan Stegman. While I like that move (I prefer Stegman's work to Davis' by about a mile), I'm still not totally into Cornell's WOLVERINE as is and I'm not sure how I feel about him continuing the run. This new series will apparently feature a shift for the character, though, as Wolvy seems to be coming out of this arc still without his healing power; the teaser image proclaimed "MORTAL" and Cornell has said that it will impact the way he works, giving us a more strategic Wolverine rather than a more guns-blazing Wolverine. Could be interesting, though this one promises to also put Wolverine on a team of not-so-good-guys so we'll see. According to the article linked above, they've apparently also announced a Fantastic Four relaunch that I think I missed. OH NO WAIT, I remember seeing something about it. Hang about.

James Robinson, who will also be leading the new ALL-NEW INVADERS series (pumped), is relaunching FANTASTIC FOUR with a bit of a strange bent to it, from the summary. The FF are evicted from the Baxter Building, Johnny is powerless, Thing is arrested for murder, Dragon Man is sentenced to death, Franklin's imagination is running wild, Val is on her own, etc. Weird, right? We'll see how this goes too.

Secret Avengers 36 and Superior Spider-Man 1

Secret Avengers 36
Remender (w) and Scalera (a)

I intimated in yesterday's post that I was excited for Secret Avengers this week because I thought it was the final Secret Avengers issue of Remender's run and the run that started with Brubaker and had a touch of Warren Ellis in the middle, also known as a damn near perfectly constructed book. Turns out I should maybe put any amount of research into posts like that but whatever, we were being casual, it was free-flowing, fun and friendly times. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that this is not the final issue. That'll be next time (probably).

That makes this issue the penultimate issue of the series and of this arc. Remender sure knows how to go out with a bang. X-Force proved that well enough for me. There is a sense with some of the Avengers titles that the Avengers only get together for the biggest of the big problems and therefore every one of their adventures has to be huge and all-universe encompassing. While I think there's certainly an argument to be made for that case, it does wear when, for the third arc in a row, the world is at stake and only one team can stop it. It makes it, don't make fun of me for saying this, less believable. Okay, comics aren't wholly believable all the time, but I mean it makes it harder to believe within the parameters of the Universe we're discussing. Secret Avengers has certainly benefitted from the "secret" designation because there's something inherent in there about "it probably won't doom the world, and even if it does then it would have been a behind-the-scenes doom anyhow so no one had to notice." In books that have to go to the world-shattering arc every time, a finale doesn't really feel special. Secret Avengers, though, feels like there's something much bigger than anything experienced before in the title. We really are dealing with a huge problem that feels huge and, more importantly, feels bigger than anything else we've dealt with in this book. It's like a long-game that's been played between three writers that's finally paid off and it feels good. It's also a great culmination of some of the things Remender's started in X-Force and in Venom that I think a lot of books don't really get to play around with. We're fortunate to have these awesome pseudo-tie-ins that don't REQUIRE the previous readings (or the later readings, if you read about the Descendants and Father in X-Force) to understand, but they definitely give a wider scope.

This issue focuses on the two separate entities in Secret Avengers that we've seen over the last two issues or so; the Hawkeye, Captain Britain, Beast team that had gone to World 666 to obtain the Orb of Necromancy to defeat the Descendants meet up with Spider-Man (Peter Parker Spidey. Had a bit of a gut-wrenching moment when I realized that) when they return to 616 and find themselves in the middle of a full robot uprising, and the Black Widow, Venom, Valkyrie team protecting Parvez at the Core, robotkind's capital city with Black Ant coming to fight them. There are some great character bits in here (Beast remarks that "I prepared for this exact eventuality the very day I learned you would be part of this team, Pym. 'Hank Pym is joining?' I thought. Well I'd better have an E.M.P. disruptor prepared in case of a robot invasion." It's one of the best things I've ever read) and Flash allowing Venom to take full control to attack Black Ant, who he had risked his life for on the last mission, has a true weight to it. Comics being what they are, you have a pretty good feeling that the world will be okay after the finale of this series, but there are definite ramifications that can come through so I'm more excited than ever to read it. I think it says a lot about a series that you can anticipate some sort of ending but you still can't wait to see how it happens.

Superior Spider-Man 1
Slott (w) and Stegman (a)

This is it. The new era of Spider-Man begins with Superior Spider-Man 1. It's definitely a new era, that's clear from the costume, from the tone, from the art, everything. However, we're still in the loving and capable hands of Dan Slott. This is why, in my very first post, I expressed sadness but also confidence. Dan Slott knows what he's doing, he knows his characters, and he knows his comics. Otto Octavius inhabiting the body of Peter Parker, even with Peter's memories and responsibilities, is still Otto Octavius inhabiting the body of Peter Parker. He's colder, he's more of a strategist (not that Peter didn't often strategize, he just didn't typically work steps in advance), and he's more used to relying on his brain than his body. That's a great aspect of their differences that I don't think I would have noticed had it not been for this new Spider-Man twist. Peter's brain was always in play, like anyone's is, but he wouldn't solve a problem with his brain until his great power had been exhausted. He worked more on instinct and on the idea of "hey, I'm a superhero and being a superhero has these perks," exactly the way a person who had become a superhero as a teenager would. Otto Octavius, on the other hand, was brilliant and manufactured his powers later. His brain was at play first and foremost, powers afterwards. It's something I wouldn't have even latched on to consciously before reading this issue. I might have eventually worked my way to it but I truly don't think I would have thought about it. That's why Dan Slott is to be trusted. I care tremendously about characters and prefer to think/write for characters AND I have a pretty good sense of Spider-Man as a character and I wouldn't have come up with what Slott did effortlessly.

Some variants are too great to ignore
Skottie Young is a national treasure

This book must have been a fun one for Slott for another reason. Like Remender being able to tie his work of the past couple years in with some well-placed arcs and characters peppered in along the way, Slott can dig out the characters he's invented or popularized or used in the past to create his own starting point for his new creation, Superior Spider-Man. Otto's first mission puts him up against a new Sinister Six consisting of the Living Brain, Overdrive, Shocker, the Beetle, Boomerang, and Speed Demon, at least half of which Slott has invented or re-popularized. They're also a true threat, but not so much of one that you wouldn't believe a new Spider-Man could handle. There were times where I laughed audibly (something I don't really do unless truly caught by surprise) because Otto worked the way he absolutely should have worked. He runs off from his first fight because it wasn't worth it. I was so taken aback that Spider-Man would run away, but then not at all taken aback that Otto would.

This is a different Spider-Man with the same face in every way. It's a bit jarring but not as much as I would have expected, something Slott should be very proud of. Is he more violent than Peter? Absolutely. Is he less heroic than Peter? Yeah, because I'm not sure anyone's more heroic than Peter. Is he smarter than Peter? Well he definitely uses his logical brain more, sure. Were the personal life bits the most uncomfortable I've been reading comics in a long while? You bet. Is this a Spider-Man book with all those parts changed? Definitely. It still reads like Spider-Man, it still looks like Spider-Man, it still is Spider-Man. Not in a cheesy or hokey "nothing has changed after that big change" way, but in a "this is working" kind of way. And there's a twist here that maybe shouldn't be seen as a twist because who isn't expecting this to happen eventually, but it'll be fun to watch it play out, as was the case with Secret Avengers. Good day to read comics.

If the rest of the week brings me comics like today, I'll be a happy blogger. See you tomorrow.