X-Termination 2, Uncanny X-Men 5, Wolverine and the X-Men 28

X-Termination 2
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Lapham (w) and Lopez, Mogorron, Valdez, Lolli, Ho, Ruggiero, Cuevas, and Martinez (a) and Mossa (c)

It's worth noting in this final issue of the event (which I should have noted a while ago) that there are usually a lot of artists on these books because the book is broken up into chapters (which, admittedly, is kind of random) and that different artists draw each chapter. Also, in terms of my own process, I put pencils and inks all under the "artists" label, for better or worse, so half of that (a) up there is made up of pencillers and half of inkers and they all switch off throughout the book. ONWARDS.
Nightcrawler prepares himself for what he has to do, which is mostly jump back and forth through the portal carrying people. As we saw with little Kurt Waggoner, it's an extremely exhausting task and will leave him weakened, but it's the only way to save people. He brings people back one by one until everyone we've seen recently (which does not include most of the AoA crew) except Dazzler and Prophet remain. Prophet even sends for AoA cast member Harper Simmons (from the 616 originally) so Nightcrawler can bring him back, saying that someone has to tell the story. Dark Beast also hijacks a trip back with Nightcrawler and ends up on the other side of the portal. Dazzler doesn't want to abandon the AoA but Prophet knows it's the only way and refuses to hear her out. He also says he'll fight to win or go down with the ship. Jean swoops in and knocks him out and tells Dazzler to send him to the other side. She's still pretty much in control of the Apocalypse power but she knows she's likely to be overwhelmed by the monsters. Dazzler and Prophet leave. On the other side of the portal, the teams need to figure out how to close off the AoA. The solution, it seems, is for Nightcrawler to grab the "end" of the portal (black swirls on the border that have a physical form) and teleport them back into the AoA. The trip will kill him, but it will close the portal. Nightcrawler redeems himself, even in the eyes of Wolverine, and shuts the portal. The threat passed on the 616, the three remaining members of the X-Treme X-Men part ways and Wolverine offers Dazzler a spot at the school, impressed with her actions here. She wants time to think about it. Prophet and Harper Simmons meet a few weeks later to talk and Dazzler happens to be on the same beach. It ends with a short in memoriam to those who died.
I liked this event a lot. This final book was maybe the weakest, if only because everything turned out okay. I don't mean that in a "I WANT EVERYONE TO DIE" nor a "THE AGE OF APOCALYPSE DIDN'T MATTER, I'M GLAD IT'S A PRISON FOR THE MONSTERS" way. I mean that in a "oh, the plan worked" kind of way. Okay, look, there's no way to say that that doesn't feel stupid. I guess the issue is that the event was so good at taking twists and turns and putting insurmountable enemies against them that a plan working out seemed out of the question. Then it did. Still, it's a solid event that didn't overstay its welcome and gave us a solid story while effectively wrapping up two different series. Good event. Now it'll be interesting to see the fallout from that, with Dazzler probably going to join the school and a William Stryker back in the world.

Uncanny X-Men 5
Bendis (w) and Irving (a and c)

There are problems with Magik's powers after all. She seems to be holding her powers together through the Darkchilde, a fierce and mysterious force that isn't totally unlike the Hulk of magic. Dormammu has taken over Limbo in Magik's absence, berating her for spending so much time away. Magik attacks him but loses until the Darkchilde takes over and wins. Now she's having trouble stuffing it back down, despite a pep talk from Scott. Meanwhile, SHIELD frets about the new team after Scott's on-camera declaration about defeating the Avengers and the sudden emergence of a new mutant who can stop time being on their team. Speaking of her, they're also trying to set up a love triangle or something between her, Emma, and Cyclops, despite the fact that she seems to be a teenager and she's only ever seen Cyclops in his costume, which looks RIDICULOUS. I haven't really gotten into their new costumes in this book but I'm against pretty much all of them. I think Magneto's all-white costume looks okay but there's a weird obsession Bendis has with taking a character's iconic colors and replacing them with white. He did it with Iron Fist too. Neither looks bad, it's just an odd choice. Also, it severely reduces the number of heroes with the green and yellow motif and the number of characters with the maroon motif. Magneto is one of the most famous villains/characters in the Marvel Universe; it's an interesting decision to change the costume. It all represents a new era for the X-Men, sure, but if you're going to have Magneto as a defining member of that team it seems like you shouldn't pretend he's a different Magneto than the one he's always been or than the one he's been recently. On top of that, he doesn't fit the black theme that the rest of the team has. He's a literal white sheep. Well, not literally a sheep. Whatever. Anyway, I've gone off-topic here. Cyclops looks RIDICULOUS. I have trouble believing that the teenager, who dubs him a "beautiful man," could really believe that physically. If it's based on his personality, what she knows is a man who shows up and takes kids and possibly killed his master. I think she's heard all that. It's all hard to separate because plot points get repeated about a thousand times. That's about all that happens. Magik hulks out and is still having trouble controlling it and that girl expresses affection for Cyclops. And some more wacky things happen with the other new mutants. Just wacky.

Wolverine and the X-Men 28
Aaron (w) and Perez (a) and L. Martin and Milla (c)

The Savage Land field trip wraps up as Wolverine meets up with Idie and Broo, who have taken refuge in a cave where Idie hopes to live out the rest of her life (she fears returning to the temptations and evils of normal life). Meanwhile, Eye Boy, the only student who we haven't seen use Wolverine pep talk to help them aside from Glob Herman who is terrible, reveals that he's more impressive than he looked. He can see more than just physical things as he focuses and Sherlocks the rest of the team, citing random physical actions as proof of Shark Girl's abandonment issues and Sprite's need for validation while perfectly shooting down a robot. It's a neat little turn for the character that actually makes him a useful addition to the team. Whether Wolverine suspected that would happen or not is up for debate, but it's certainly happened. He helps neutralize the immediate threats and gets everyone back on task before Dog shows up again and threatens the kids again. They stand up to him this time before Wolverine steps in and allows Dog to beat him up a bit. One of the time traveled bad guys shoots Dog, demanding answers. Dog, upset by the fact that he still couldn't best Wolverine as the best Logan, time travels himself and some of the others who are displaced in time away. Logan is angry that he got away, but angrier at himself for allowing the kids to be taken from him. He has a whole slew of doubts about his abilities with these kids. He passes them all on the assignment and, as such, the course, except for Glob Herman, who ran away. Wolverine suspects, and the audience sees, that he's gone off with Sauron to join the Hellfire Club. It's fine, he was always a terrible character.
I have to say, I'm often kind of suspicious about this book. It doesn't tend to deliver the best characters nor the best stories. It's usually a little more fun-oriented than other Marvel books, though it certainly has its share of tension at times. However, this arc went a long way to characterizing the newest students of the Jean Grey School. Some of them have been around for a while now and some are pretty new, but it's all worth exploring. I would say that Bendis' Uncanny X-Men book needs an arc like this to let us know more about the new recruits they've gotten, but I'm not sure that's for the best, entirely. He's done stuff each issue to try to build their characters through dialogue and a little through action, but they still feel largely indistinguishable from one another. My worry with an arc like this would be that they'd remain indistinguishable and wacky. If he could do an arc that characterized them and made them worth caring about, great. If they're all going to keep their stock personalities, it's far less great. Well done by Aaron to go out of his way to make sure these guys all had a specific personality and a specific interaction with Wolverine. Interesting arc.

Comics this week!

Yikes, twenty books again. This time I think I counted right. Actually, at first I counted 19 but THEN Deadpool Killustrated was apparently there right after Deadpool. Go figure. Another busy week over at Marvels. Let's see what we're looking forward to.

Avengers Arena 8
I really enjoyed last issue's focus on Arcade and I'm incredibly interested to see how the revelations of last time (namely how Arcade is doing all this) might impact the book from here on out. That said, I'm still excited to get back to our young heroes on the island and see what's cooking down there. Hopeless has been writing a great book so far and I see no reason for it to be anything but great going forward. It's continually worth picking up.

New Avengers 5
The team is actually set to fight in this issue, as it's the heavyweights of the New Avengers squaring off against Terrax, the herald of Galactus. Making that fight more intriguing is the fact that maybe the New Avengers are better off losing it. Being heroes, they decide to intercede when they find Galactus eating a world that's set to crash into theirs, but is their heart really in it? If Galactus eats this planet before the planets collide, it saves their world and, ostensibly, leaves the blood off of their hands. If that's not a solution and they manage to defeat Terrax and stop Galactus, what then? Only Dr. Strange seems to have a plan to stop the worlds from colliding, but it would likely cost him his life. Great issue to be coming into and this series is just phenomenal all the way around. So excited to have another one coming at me.

Uncanny Avengers 7
The pressures keep coming at the Uncanny Avengers (who were not really involved in last issue, spare an appearance from an ancestor of Wolverine and a bit of a much younger Thor) as we know that, on top of the Red Skull out lurking somewhere, Kang and Apocalypse might well be conspiring against the team. It's a precarious position to be in as major villains from the Marvel universe converge on an already unbalanced team. This might be the most ambitious collection of threats to face a team so quickly, maybe spare something like Secret Wars which quite clearly never counts in a situation like this. Add to that the fact that the last time we saw the Uncanny Avengers, we saw Rogue seemingly kill the Grim Reaper (the Marvel villain, not the embodiment of death) in front of a press conference. There's got to be something to see with that coming up.

X-Termination 2
The X-Termination event concludes here, as does the fate of all the teams involved, most particularly the teams from cancelled books Age of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men. As Nightcrawler and the rest face a universe-threatening foe and near unbeatable odds, who, if anyone, will come out alive. Probably Wolverine. Safe bet there. Gambit's got his own ongoing so hard to believe he wouldn't. And Iceman is Iceman and kind of all over the X-books, so probably him too. But there's a GOOD LIKELIHOOD that a lot of people die and it's hard to predict who they'll be. On top of that, what will become of the Age of Apocalypse itself, as Prophet prepares for the dimension to eternally house monsters who know only death and destruction? What has been a pretty fantastic, action-packed, and suspenseful event comes to a close this week and it's definitely not going to be one to miss.

Young Avengers 4
I was just about to call Kate and Noh-Varr fan favorites, given Kate's recent re-emergence in Hawkeye and Noh-Varr's re-emergence in many fan drawings (probably safest not to try to find those, it's safe to say that McKelvie and Gillen's design, which was meant to brand Noh-Varr as a sort of sex symbol, has worked), but I don't think it's easy to call anyone on this team someone who isn't particularly a fan favorite. Still, Kate and Noh-Varr both have a rather large and extremely interested following and this book will serve as the first time we see them since a brief glimpse in issue one. How they'll fit into this team and how Gillen and McKelvie bring them to life is enough of a reason to check this issue out, but there are undoubtedly plenty more. If you pick this book up just to look at it for hours on end, I certainly wouldn't blame you. Gillen and McKelvie have toyed around with the page throughout the series' short run so far and I wouldn't expect it to end here. Very exciting, very fun, and very creative book. Pick it up this week.

Astonishing X-Men 61, X-Men Legacy 9, X-Factor 254

Astonishing X-Men 61
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Liu (w), Arlem, deMoura, Buffagni, Valdes, and Cuevas (a) and Loughridge and Sotomayor w/ Mossa (c)

The X-Termination event winds its way down with its penultimate issue here. The gaps in the story are being filled in as we know actually know what the monsters are and what their goal is (though we pretty much already knew that). Sage connects with the black box of the Celestials and pieces the story together. The Celestials, in their creation of the universe, created the monsters as an answer to life, a force of death. However, the monsters turned on them and needed to be imprisoned, which the Celestials managed to do by creating the multiverse and sticking the monsters in one of the universes. The evil Xaviers broke down the barrier between the monsters' universe and the multiverse and now they'll come flooding out to fulfill their purpose. The Celestials also created the Death Seed as a sort of second attempt at a force of death, one that was a bit easier to regulate. So Jean, who has just taken on the Death Seed and become Apocalypse, fights the monsters and is doing pretty well against them but Prophet knows that eventually she'll be overcome. The only thing left to do then is to seal them in a universe again. With no time left and all of the monsters (there are tons of them) making their way into the Age of Apocalypse universe, Prophet decides that the AoA shall be their new prison. It will mean the almost guaranteed destruction of that universe, but it will save the multiverse. The only thing left to do is get everyone back out and seal the portal, which AoA Nightcrawler says he can do.
The action continues here and the story is an intriguing one. This continues to be a pretty great event with long-lasting consequences (assuming you care about the Age of Apocalypse) and solid action and character moments throughout. Jean is being corrupted by the Death Seed and will likely die a monster. Nightcrawler is still striving to redeem himself and his newly empowered by the death of little Kurt Waggoner. Prophet is prepared to sacrifice himself and his universe for the continued existence of the multiverse. The final issue, coming next week with X-Termination 2, will wrap everything up (including both Age of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men, as both books have been cancelled) and will show us the final death tally and if there was any sort of deus ex machina to save the AoA. It will certainly be interesting and it's one no one should miss, if they care at all about any part of these three teams.

X-Men Legacy 9
Spurrier (w) and Huat and Yeung (a) and Villarrubia (c)

I'm a sucker for the "can you blame someone for a crime they might commit" kind of question. It drove the start of Remender's X-Force book and it plays a role in a lot of science fiction, particularly anything with time travel or mind-reading. It's actually kind of interesting that it hasn't really played a huge role in Age of Ultron, made more interesting by the fact that Hank Pym has done plenty of good in his life along with the creation of Ultron. It was mentioned briefly in AU5, but pretty quickly passed over. Now David Haller has to ask himself about it as he sees visions of an incredibly powerful being called Aarkus (we'll get to him in a minute) who lives on the moon by himself, visiting Earth occasionally to read books. With no one to correct these books, he ends up believing everything he reads, including plenty of anti-mutant material. He decides that mutants are a threat to humanity and he takes it upon himself to destroy them, attacking and destroying a bunch of mutants in his first attempt. The X-Men show up at his door to take him down but he annihilates them just as easily. Eventually, Aarkus would wipe out mutants. David knows he's no match for Aarkus in his normal state, but with the power of self-control that being with Ruth grants him he feels that he can shut Aarkus down before any of this starts. Ruth refuses to condone it, even though he shows her his visions, unable to give David permission or encouragement to kill someone who hasn't done anything wrong yet. David, though, has already done it, powered by the hope that Ruth would give approval. He's shut down Aarkus' mind, leaving him in a coma and unable to awaken. Ruth is furious and demands to be brought home (they're on the moon through all of this). David brings Ruth and Aarkus back to the X-Mansion, telling Ruth that she can deliver him to them.
It's a great issue that asks more interesting questions about the morality of David's chosen war. Instead of the reactive X-Men, his idea to snuff out problems before they escalate puts him in a different scope of morality. The X-Men, for all of their failings in David's eyes, are typically pretty firmly in the right, reacting to an attack that has already happened. David reacts to visions he sees in his head of the future, which are quite possibly accurate but can never be fully guaranteed. It's a pretty great idea and leads to a lot of great stories, as this series has shown. We also delve into Ruth and David's relationship here, which is pretty fascinating in and of itself. They both have the ability to see bits of the future and David needs her to feel his best and to be the most in control. However, she's not just going to sycophantically follow him around and power him up, as it were. She has real concerns and real questions about everything that will no doubt make things interesting going forth. Last little note, Aarkus is the Vision of the Golden Age. He's not particularly like the Vision we know today except in look (not color though) and a kind of detached love for humanity. He most recently appeared in Invaders Now, a mini-series from a couple years ago by Christos Gage that featured all the Invaders teaming up to take care of some business from the past. I think it's a great play by Spurrier, integrating other lost corners of the Marvel Universe into this story. Fascinating characterization of him too and with no real need nor desire to explain who he is beyond some of his powers. Also a couple of references to David as sort of Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen fame, shown as the human so powerful he forgets what it's like to be human. Another great issue.

X-Factor 254
David (w) and Kirk and Leisten (a) and Milla (c)

The Hell-Lords storyline is proceeding for what seems like a very long time for a monthly book. My normal problems with it kind of remain which, again, are I think borne out of my own biases. I don't really care about Rahne nor Tier so having Tier narrate and be a focal point of the story kind of makes me tune out a bit. However, other interesting things are happening around the story, including Mephisto kind of dominating the Hell-Lord battle including taking down other frontrunner Hela. Jezebel and Guido return with demon-possessed Jamie to New York to meet up with X-Factor, where they promptly all get into a fight (owing in no small part to both Monet and Guido's past and the demon-headed Jamie multiplying). Tier doesn't want to have to kill the hell lords even though he's the only one capable of doing it. Rahne demands they listen to him and find another way and X-Factor is split on the issue. Jezebel cannot understand his hesitation and ends up frying Rahne for a bit before descending on Tier again, only to be stopped by Layla. That battle, as well as one between Guido and Monet, will likely be picked up in the next issue.
There are a few interesting things going on here but, again, I'm finding this story a little dragged out and a little too focused on Tier and Rahne for my own personal liking. I am intrigued to see what happens with Jamie and with Guido and Monet's fight, as well as with most other members of the team, and I was happy to see a couple of character defining moments in this issue, including Polaris' insistence that Tier step up and do what needs to be done. There's plenty to look forward to as we move forward (hopefully a little faster than we have been moving) but by and large, I feel like the most interesting stories are happening on the sidelines. I want to know what Mephisto's doing and what his plans are, I want to know what Jezebel's rebellion is all about, I want to know what's happening with people like Jamie and Darwin, etc. There are questions here that I want answered and that I'm sure will be answered but I can't help feeling like we're moving a little slowly to those answers. I would be curious to know if some of these books were altered and maybe even slowed a bit by Peter David's health concerns or if the series hasn't been changed because of it. I don't want to put that onus on the book, though, so just know that this will probably end up being a good arc, all told, at the end of it and certainly a fun one to go back and re-read, but it's dragging a bit in the present.

X-Treme X-Men 13, Wolverine 2

Some sad news upfront: Marvel has apparently made the decision to cancel the ongoing Winter Soldier series with issue 19 in June. I'm rather disappointed but not entirely surprised. More on Monday (likely, assuming I write the post in advance; like I said, I will not be around most of next week).

X-Treme X-Men 13
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Pak (w) and Mogorron and Valdes, Tadeo, Cuevas, Ho, and Wong (a) and Loughridge (c)

The pressure stays on for the X-Termination event with X-Treme X-Men 13. The creature who made it to the 616 has successfully brought down the Dreaming Celestial and imbibed it, but not before the Earth team found the Celestial's memory banks and realized that this creature is intending to bring millions more back that way to destroy the entire universe. Kurt (I'm calling kid Nightcrawler "Kurt" and AoA Nightcrawler "Nightcrawler," for a bit of a key here) helps teleport people back and forth through the portal but the strain of it shows on him. Meanwhile, Jean and Nightcrawler try to snag the Apocalypse Seed back from Dark Beast so that Jean can use it. In the ensuing chase, the seed gets close enough to one of the creatures that the teams can see the reaction to the seed's appearance. The creature shies away from it, so it does seem like using the Apocalypse Seed is a possible method to destroy. Prophet still believes that Jean can handle it so she'd be the natural choice. However, Prophet also decides that it's too late to save both worlds. Simple timing means that only one world is possible to save so they'll have to choose. Dazzler refuses to accept this and they decide that they could save both if all three creatures were in the same place. Sadly, the creature on 616 seems to have no plans of returning to the AoA. Kurt, already affected by the strain of everything, sacrifices himself to teleport the creature in. Dazzler catches him on a light slide as he falls. We're not given any final signal that he's dead, important to note, but it does seem pretty final and EITHER WAY it's pretty sad, probably more sad if the cover didn't have his team surrounding his fallen body. Nightcrawler stabs Beast through the back and they recover the Apocalypse Seed as the book ends.
So a few more twists, a few more turns. At least for now the 616 is safe but they have limited time to destroy these creatures before more show up and the seed seems the only way. The last couple books in this series have a lot of ground to cover, as they need to defeat the enemies, show us the seed's effect, and, presumably, give us a sense of what happens to the X-Treme X-Men and this whole Age of Apocalypse, as both books are officially over now. Two more books left in this event and it somehow seems like both too many books left and too few. It's a weird feeling. I suppose that could be a good thing, though, as it could just leave us right where we want with length. The event continues to be, in my opinion, the best one currently happening at Marvel.

Wolverine 2
Cornell (w) and Davis and Farmer (a) and Hollingsworth (c)

This book is confusing, so let's try to work it out. First off, there's some sort of weird maybe drug deal happening where cops and gangsters alike have joined up and at least one gang member was surprised by this and shot by everyone involved for his surprise. Then we cut back to Wolverine. That in itself raises a few questions. Is the business with the child Alex a distraction? Are the drugs the ones mind-controlling Alex? Are the people behind the drugs behind all of this? I don't know. So Wolverine continues to chase Alex, who is acting very strange but is still not hesitating to shoot people with the new gun. He's acting strangely enough that Wolverine quickly realizes that Alex is no longer in control of his own body. Alex momentarily evades Wolverine and Wolvy starts asking around for information in the street. A homeless person offers him a protein booster that will help his powers for a dollar, which Wolverine accepts, much to the surprise of the homeless person. Instead of rubbing it on his chest, as the homeless person suggests, Wolverine drinks it to "clear his palate." It seems like I'm going into a lot of detail for a throwaway scene, but it is kind of interesting to note and might come back later (Chekhov's gun and all, yes?). It's interesting in the "clear the palate" kind of way, but also in his attitude when he explains what he did to the thing inhabiting Alex, saying that it doesn't really matter what it was because he'll heal from it. So Wolverine and "Alex" have a chat about how much "Alex" has learned about Wolverine before he loses the gun and throws Alex off the building, saying goodbye to Wolverine and that maybe they'll talk again. Wolverine dives after them and saves Alex, allowing the gun to leave his sight to save the child. Alex snaps out of it and remembers Wolverine as the person who killed his dad and starts crying. The entity inhabits another guy who picks up the gun, but new Nick Fury shows up and shoots him before having a chat with Wolverine about how they want to play this. The Watcher shows up as the issue ends.
So there's a lot going on here and it doesn't all fit together just yet. It's still pretty interesting and it promises to keep up the pace as the Watcher makes his appearance. Some payoff's going to have to start seeping through, though, or else all this confusion for confusion's sake will wear a little thin. I like the way Wolverine's being characterized though. He comes off as quick thinking and weathered and like someone who has been in these sorts of situations before. He pretty quickly recognizes mind-control (as I feel more heroes probably should by that point) and does what he can to learn more without hurting Alex. His interaction with Nick Fury is nice because it's not the kind of typical interaction, wherein they have to get acclimated to one another or it's just an exposition dump or anything like that. Instead, Nick and Wolverine talk like two people who have known each other's histories and know each other's roles pretty well. Nick asks which of Wolverine's teams he wants to call in on this and Wolvy tells him that he wants them all to hang back for a bit. Wolverine also takes charge, saying that he has evidence in his shoulder (a bullet that went in and never came out) that will have to be removed delicately. It's the way I suppose I'd expect Wolverine to act. A lot of Wolverine comics prefer to go the surly route with Wolvy, which I think is in his personality, but it ends up kind of overriding some more sensible things I'd imagine Wolverine as knowing to do. Here he's acting sensible and taking help where it's offered, instead of shoving Fury away and chasing after the gun. So let's keep that up.

Comics this week

After 11 new releases last week made it tricky to find five to be super excited about, we return to 17 new mainstream Marvel releases this week and it gets tricky to narrow it down again. The problem with the format of this pre-game business is that we're going to pretty quickly start seeing the same books over and over on the list. I'll be honest, it's not a huge problem. It just means that there are some really fine books coming out from Marvel these days.

Avengers Arena 7
Guys, I just watched The Hunger Games on Netflix last night. It was too long. Anyway, I'm a little interested to see how knowing some of the source material affects my enjoyment of this series. I don't expect it to have a huge impact, as I knew the gist of it all back when Arena started but I'm interested to see if I'll pick up on things I wouldn't have otherwise now that I've seen it all (I'm mostly interested in the comparison between Arcade and that one guy in Hunger Games). Also, you know, I'm just excited for this book. Excitement and twists at every turn. I love the pacing of the book so far, allowing us to see a bit from every group before letting us view all groups in one issue. Well constructed series so far.

Hawkeye 9
Hawkeye is one of those books that comes out every month and feels like we haven't seen it in ages. I constantly ask myself when the last time a new Hawkeye issue came out and am stunned to find it was some time in recent memory. I don't know what the cause of that is but if I had to speculate I'd say it's because I always want to be reading Hawkeye. I feel the same way about New Avengers, particularly, and I'm getting that way with Captain America. The problem with the five-months-in-advance solicits too is that we've known a particular plot point is coming but it feels like it takes forever to get here. This issue suffers from that (or perhaps benefits, we'll have to see) as we've known that some Hawkeye-Spider Woman relationship stuff is going to come up this issue, as well as some Hawkeye-Black Widow and Hawkeye-Mockingbird. It's the meeting of the friend-girl, the work wife, and the ex-wife, as Marvel has been saying. Very exciting to finally get some insight into all of that.

Secret Avengers 3
This book is going to hang out on the pre-game list a little bit longer as I'm having some trouble getting a handle on it. I found both the first and second issues to be better on a second read through or after a lot of time thinking about it. However, that meant that neither of the first two issues particularly blew me away. I still love almost all the characters involved in the series and I'm looking forward to seeing Hulk and Winter Soldier meet up with the Secret Avengers, as we've been promised, as well as a new Iron Patriot (particularly as we move ever closer to May's release of Iron Man III) and I'm interested enough in the plot that they've put forth to certainly be intrigued by the series, but I'm still grasping at the shape of this book as a whole. However, after two issues, maybe it makes for a better book when you can't immediately suss it out. We'll see where that leaves us this week.

Uncanny Avengers 6
On top of this being a great title overall, I received a promotional poster at my comic book store that featured the cover of UA 6. It's a dark image with Apocalypse facing down Thor (in their, I believe, first meeting) while a town burns behind Apocalypse. I was particularly interested in this issue after reading issue five, which had a bit to do with Kang taking the two children of Apocalypse and his horseman (horsewoman?) Pestilence and plotting to put some things in order in time. However, beyond that there's very little mention of Apocalypse and it certainly didn't feel like things were falling into place that quickly. Still, matching Thor against Apocalypse is an interesting plot point and character battle made even more interesting when you realize that Kang is involved and Red Skull is somewhere in the background of everything. Three major Marvel villains all within arm's length of each other doesn't bode well for any Avengers team.

X-Treme X-Men 13
The X-Termination event continues and I don't know that I have to explain my excitement for this again. I'm very happy with the way this event is turning out and I'm anxious to read each new issue. The pacing is strong, the threat is real, the characters are intriguing, and the story is compelling. All signs of a good comic and a good event. I've also written about this event every week for the past month or so, so there's probably not much else for me to hype here. Strong week, hopefully it all comes through.

Age of Apocalypse 14, Age of Ultron 4, Thanos Rising 1

My apologies again about no proper review yesterday. Life very suddenly got fairly busy for a bit and I have to push off the things I don't get paid for doing. So if anyone wants to hire me to do this (looking at you, literally anyone), I'm here.

Age of Apocalypse 14
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Lapham (w) and Araujo and Arlem (a) and Peter and Loughridge (c)

The X-Termination event keeps right on moving as one of the creatures plows into Earth to feed on the dreaming Celestial and two stay in the Age of Apocalypse to feed and to search down the Apocalypse seed. The beauty of this event, unlike some others which will be reviewed next, is that it really does feel like most anything can happen. This is like events in the Ultimate Universe where the stakes feel real. Alternate universe versions of Wolverine and Hercules and Jean Grey and Cyclops don't have anywhere else to be after this series (especially with the cancellation of Age of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men) so they really can die. There are several members of the Astonishing X-Men who also don't necessarily have appointments after this book so truly nothing is sacred here. This issue goes completely in on that idea, as Hercules sacrifices himself to save the Wolverines and to delay the creature that attacked Earth from gorging itself on the dreaming Celestial. People can die and there's no guarantee that they'll come back or that we'll see some kind of a miracle cure. And these aren't totally throwaway characters either; both AoA and X-Treme X-Men have been running for over a year now, certainly enough time to build up characters and relationships that will strengthen any kind of death or sacrifice.
The first team dispatched to Earth (Hercules, both Wolverines, Northstar, and Kurt Waggoner) arrive to find the creature feeding on the dreaming Celestials, thought to be one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Northstar suggests they sit back and wait it out to see if the Celestial, now awake, can't solve the problem himself. 616 Wolverine, though, demands they continue attacking, citing that the creature fed on Charles Xavier and grew bigger for it and asking what would happen if the Celestial COULDN'T win. It's a great question and one that makes itself more pertinent as, by the end of the issue, the creature, after incapacitating both Wolverines and killing Hercules, forms a link with the Celestial and starts draining it. Meanwhile, in the AoA, Jean leads a team consisting of herself, Nightcrawler, Dazzler, Cyclops, Iceman, and Dark Beast to the Apocalypse seed. They talk about how best to use the seed before Jean has Nightcrawler secretly teleport the two of them (and the seed) away. She feels Nightcrawler's the only she can trust on the team, though he feels responsible for bringing the creatures here. All kinds of emotions to go around. Jean tells Nightcrawler that Prophet thinks she should use the seed to control the Apocalypse force. He speculates it won't control her and she'll be able to use its power. Before they can begin to do it (amid Nightcrawler's protests), Dark Beast finds them and steals the seed for himself.
There's a ton going on here and, again, with the stakes so high and feeling so real, this book can go just about any direction it wants. Like with Astonishing X-Men last week, the book is an incredibly quick read for how dense it is. There's a lot happening here and certainly a lot of people, but you can get a better sense of who everyone is and their personalities this issue. You leave this issue with the growing sense of dread associated with so many mid-event books but without that thought in the back of your mind that everything will obviously have to straighten out a bit by the end.

Age of Ultron 4
Bendis (w) and Hitch and Neary (a) and Mounts (c)

MEANWHILE, this event has felt very much since panel one like everything is going to be fixed at the end. I have some sympathy here because the Marvel Universe is absolutely huge and there are so many interlocking parts that fit just so, so it's often difficult to make a widespread change that feels meaningful. The Ultimate universe kills off heroes in events left and right and then just brings new heroes in later. If that happened in the 616, people (myself included) would throw a fit. So there's no real winning. Instead, the best that a writer can hope to do with an event in this universe is to tell a story worth telling. That also means giving an ending that, even though everyone knows (or has a sense of) how it will end, is still unexpected. I would say it also means knowing your limitations and the limitations of your audience's patience.
I've said several times throughout this blog's three month+ existence that Brian Michael Bendis likes to play a game where he tells a three part story in about ten parts. I think it's happening in most of his ongoings (All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and formerly Avengers and New Avengers) as well as in his limited series (Daredevil: End of Days and now Age of Ultron). His ongoings are a little bit less guilty of this, though I think he feels more comfortable with an issue or two per arc where nothing of significance happens (or one thing of significance happens amidst a thousand lines of back-and-forth dialogue). Age of Ultron has just wrapped up its fourth book and I don't think it was particularly bad. I don't think the writing was as quippy as Bendis tends to write it, which is a huge relief, and I think a good deal happened. However, this comes on the heels of a couple books where not much happened and, speculating here, right before a couple books where not much will happen. There are ten issues to this series and, like I said, it's hard to play around too much with the foundation of the 616. That means that, with all of this world-wide destruction and hero-death all over the place, the audience likely inherently knows that everything is going to be reset by the end of the series. It's very early-Marvel, with Stan Lee's insistence that every issue leave the book the same way it found it. No sweeping character changes, no character deaths, no broad overhauls on the image. Page one, Peter Parker is a nerdy boy with spider powers, page twenty, Peter Parker is a nerdy boy with spider powers who has just learned some sort of lesson. However, it tries an audience if they know that this is going to happen and they still have to pay forty dollars for the entire series. That's forty dollars to, in the end, see things likely be set back the way they were.
Luke Cage and She-Hulk stand in front of the Vision and Ultron guards with Cage offering She-Hulk to the robots. Vision seemingly breaks free of Ultron's control for a moment to tell Cage that Ultron is controlling them all through the future. She-Hulk stops playing possum and hurls Cage out of the tower, hoping he'll be able to tell Tony everything they heard and saw. She is quickly lasered through the head by one of the Ultron guards as the Vision looks on defeatedly. Cage (one of Bendis' favorite characters) fights Ultrons in the air and in the building he lands in (question: Cage has unbreakable skin but does he also have unbreakable bones? Because there's no way his joints wouldn't have just shattered there), overwhelming many of the Ultrons and getting thoroughly beat up in the process. The Ultrons nuke him. Meanwhile, Black Widow and Moon Knight find Fury's plans for end-of-the-world scenarios and decide to head, on his recommendation, to the Savage Land. Red Hulk accuses Taskmaster of trying to run out on him and kills him, taking the Ultron tech with him to the Savage Land (I don't know why he chose to go there, it's ill-explained). After the nuke goes off in New York City, our group of heroes decide also to go to the Savage Land (again, ill-explained). When they arrive, they find that Cage barely survived, then took a Quinjet to the Savage Land (because I guess this is just the known hero-evacution route) and crawled to Ka-Zar to wait and tell Tony everything he saw. Natasha and Moon Knight show up, as does Red Hulk, and they all decide to kill Ultron before he can be what he is in the future, leading us all to speculate that there's gonna be some time-traveling. Forty dollars for the whole series, without the tie-ins.

Thanos Rising 1
Aaron (w) and Bianchi (a) and Peruzzi (c)

With an Avengers 2 on the way in 2015 (and likely some minor tie-ins before then, including a possible major tie-in in 2014 with Guardians of the Galaxy), Thanos comes fully into the spotlight with Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi's Thanos Rising. This series will apparently showcase the long life of Thanos, the mad god who has a weird thing with death. I'll be honest, I'm not super-aware of Thanos history. I've read about him in some Guardians of the Galaxy stuff and some Avengers stuff, but I've never read that much with him in it and I've never really sought his stuff out. I know that he's Eros' brother and I know a bit about Eros and the eternals and what not, but it's all pretty cursory knowledge. So I'm happy with this chance to do a little bit of background reading before I see him plastered all over the Marvel Universe.
That said, I was surprised at how human this first issue attempted to make Thanos. He started as a normal-ish boy, disfigured by a mutation and often death-threated. His own mother tried to kill him the first time she laid eyes on him, as did doctors who delivered him. They all claim that he has death in his eyes. However, he grows up relatively normally, with many friends despite his looks (normal villain procedure is to make him completely friendless and bitter with the world, so this is an interesting change-up) and a massive intelligence. He has flashes when he sleeps of his mother (now in a mental asylum) attempting to kill him, solved simply by no longer needing to sleep. He is also very skittish around death, violence, and blood. However, when a new girl walks into his life and points him to a cave with some miraculous gems, things start to change. He brings his two closest friends to the cave, where they're all separated by a cave-in. Thanos promises the creatures in the cave that, no matter how hungry he gets, he won't try to kill and eat any of them. Finally he digs his way out only to find his two friends dead and fed on by the same creatures he spared. He runs out in anger, sadness, and disgust. He withdraws himself a bit until the girl shows up again to prod him into taking vengeance on the creatures that killed his friends. It's Thanos' first slaughter.
Again, pretty interesting to watch a villain, especially one so lacking in humanity in every way, who started off so happy and innocent. It's a side of Thanos you don't really expect. It's an interesting decision though to recast one of the Marvel Universe's strongest and seemingly most heartless villains as someone sympathetic. We'll see how the rest of the series turns out and how the Universe wants to play Thanos as a whole as he comes more into the spotlight.

Astonishing X-Men 60, X-Men Legacy 8, Uncanny X-Force 3

Astonishing X-Men 60
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Liu (w) and Buffagni and Arlem (a) and Sotomayor and Loughridge (c)

This event, as I think is the nature of it, is pretty confusing. I wonder how someone who hadn't been reading these three series would feel coming into this event and bouncing between books to try to figure it out. Fortunately, that's not a problem I have to worry about. The three cosmic beings that entered through the portal and killed head-in-a-jar Xavier remain present and, it turns out, absorb and emit energy. The absorption rate seems much higher, as they physically grow with enough energy added to them. Dazzler attempts to attack them but they drain her powers pretty quickly, leaving her weakened but she's stopped before dying. The Wolverines attack and find themselves rebuffed by an aura around the entities. Their healing factor isn't fast enough to keep them in the fight too long and the healing factor of the three beings is too fast to allow them to make a dent. Northstar runs through their chests and temporarily stuns them, giving enough time to pull the Wolverines out, and Bobby manages to freeze them temporarily using just about all the power he has. However, by all means, these three seem practically unbeatable.
While weakened, Karma tries to get into their heads but it ends up reverberating back on her. She announces their thoughts: they are cosmic beings, enemies to the Celestials, and were trapped outside of dimensions by the Celestials, but all the recent transporting between dimensions has weakened the borders and allowed them through. Karma is expelled from their minds and, like everyone else, weakened. Sensing more power in the 616, one of the beings goes through the portal to its Earth while the other two stay behind. One heads for the city and the Apocalypse seed, the other begins to devour the portal. Prophet quickly splits the heroes (and dark Beast) into teams, one team to stay and fight in the AoA and one to head back to the 616. There's a sampling of each crossed-over team in the new teams. Sabretooth and his dad attack the portal-eating being, seemingly sacrificing themselves to create a diversion while people sneak back to Earth.
I said this event is so far confusing. That doesn't mean it's bad. In fact, once you kind of get a grip on what's happening, it's pretty riveting and, despite all the action and all the characters and all the exposition and shouting, it's a really fast read. I do think, though, that it's a smart idea to separate the teams a little bit so that not everyone is together throughout the event. As we hit the half-way point of the full event (including the prologues), I think this book is in a pretty good spot. So far it's been paced pretty well. I'm interested in seeing how the rest of the event turns out, as now we're truly in the thick of things and there are still four issues remaining across four different titles.

QUICK ADDITION: I just learned that both X-Treme X-Men and Age of Apocalypse (which you may recognize as two of the three books involved in this crossover event) have been cancelled. It's too bad, I think both were compelling reads (somewhat surprisingly to me with X-Treme) that felt a little off-the-beaten-path for X-books. I might write more on these cancellations eventually.

X-Men Legacy 8
Spurrier (w) and Huat and Yeung (a) and Villarrubia (c)

Another really fun entry to the series with a tense addition to the ongoing story. As with last issue, this story is pretty self-contained. David has found a young mutant named Santi Sardina with the ability to take credit. I know, it sounds weird but it's definitely a new power. Essentially, Santi receives praise for anything praiseworthy around him; if people watch a good movie in his vicinity, he gets credit for making it, if someone reads a poem that strikes a chord with them, he gets credit for writing it, etc. He doesn't understand what's happening for a long while and, when he eventually does, he's pretty quickly fed up with it. He doesn't use it to his advantage (not intentionally, anyway) but, as David explains to Blindfold from their spot watching this drama unfold in what David called the psychosphere (the dream plane), it wears on him as he becomes unable to distinguish any genuinely deserved praise from the praise he'd be bound to get anyway. Santi is ready to drop out of school and remove himself from human contact to end the misdirected adulation but, David explains, he's planning to give things one more shot. He's looking to sign up for an extracurricular. Blindfold wants David to nudge him to art club, as Santi enjoys graffiti, but David has other plans. He explains to Blindfold the implications of this power. If he joins the student government now, he'll be class president in a year, elected official in three, governor by 28 and president right at 35. It would be the first mutant president and it would be a huge windfall for mutantkind, something to turn the tides. This, David feels, is what his father's dream would be; a wonderful representative for mutants that is uniformly loved (even if it's a little undeserved) and in a position to affect real change.
However, just as David is about to push Santi that way, David's mind is attacked by the monster that's been hiding in it. David, normally relegating himself to the shadows of his own mind to avoid this monster, is unprepared and can't gather any of his powers in time. He's about to lose the fight for his mind and body when the Charles in David's mind takes control and expels the monster. Charles disappears into David's mind again and David regains control shakily. He turns back to his mantra of "I rule me" and realizes that everyone should be able to say those words. He nudges Santi to art, which leads to some great superhero-based artwork anonymously created and praised (though, again, as it's anonymous, Santi isn't the one praised for it).
It's another really good entry with a solid story and a unique set of circumstances all tied together in a thought-provoking way. I love Santi's power and his aversion to it. I know it's maybe a little unexpected in a world full of people with laser-eyes and bone claws, but I think it's a good dig at that side of mutantdom. Mutant powers are undefined by their nature and so truly can be pretty much anything. I like the drive David has right now to achieve Charles' dream and I can see the logic in his using the method he proposes here. The abrupt entrance and exit of the mind-Charles put this whole series in a new and interesting place as we get another look at the story in David's head. There are also great things happening with the layout of this comic. David spends a lot of time in his own head. When we're seeing something happen outside of his head, we see his thoughts in captions, as is true in so many comics. When we view David inside his own head, there's a loudspeaker system shouting out his thoughts, the ones that would be in the captions. It's a really wonderful idea. His relationship with Blindfold continues to improve and impress. The title page, which featured the name of everyone involved crossed out and replaced by "Santi Sardina," was a great touch, as is Spurrier's inclusion of Pixie as Blindfold's friend and roommate so he can write more Scottish characters. All around, just a great book and another great issue. If you're a Marvel fan and have some background reading comics (I think this might be a hard book to dive into comics with) and want to get into the mutant wing of the Marvel Universe, this is a great book to go with. It's small enough to not feel like you're missing out on decades of backstory and continuity but still gives a great sense of mutant purpose and the place of mutants in this world. Really wonderful book.

Uncanny X-Force 3
Humphries (w) and Garney and Hanna w/Alphona and Strain (a) and Gracia w/ Gonzalez (c)

Another action-packed issue of this new iteration of X-Force as Puck, Storm and Psylocke question Spiral on the little girl (named Ginny) and Bishop's sudden appearance. Spiral reveals that she had "teamed up" with Ginny to help them both make their way in this world (a six-armed supervillain can't exactly get a job at In-N-Out Burger, Spiral explains) by opening a club and having the telepathic Ginny make everyone believe they're feeling whatever feelings they came looking for. There's an interesting question of ethics here that this team just does not have time for right now. Bishop is on the scent of Ginny and they don't have time to wait for backup from the school. Psylocke locks in on Ginny's location and Spiral teleports them to the LA subway system Psylocke directed her to. There they find Bishop and Ginny. Bishop is still crazy and extremely fast and strong, making the fight, weaving all around trains, an extremely difficult one for the team. Spiral grabs Ginny and teleports on to a train to get them away from it. Eventually, Betsy psychically stabs Bishop which has the unexpected negative effect of sending her into his mind, which is maze-like and a trap itself, she discovers as the issue ends. Meanwhile, the good Fantomexes have parachuted out of a plane over LA while the bad Fantomex watched.
There's a lot happening here in terms of action and some exposition, but it still feels like the story is kind of taking its time coming to us. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea, though I do think some things are going to have to start connecting pretty soon. You can only drag a story so long before mystery and suspense give way to annoyance and frustration (ask Lost how their fans took to unanswered questions over a long period of time). I do think that the next few issues will be crucial in defining this series. We're at least waist-deep into what could be a pretty compelling story on a couple different sides and I don't think that revealing all the answers to the story at once, especially in issue three, is the right move. However, some answers are going to have to start spilling through (or at least trickling through) to keep readers invested. I think putting Betsy in Bishop's mind is a good place to start digging for clues. Putting all the Fantomexes in the same city as our team is another clever move. It's putting all the pieces into play on a chessboard and arranging them in a way that you know the actual carnage (there's a lot of carnage in chess, right?) is right around the corner. So I think this is another stepping-stone issue but not without reason. If we go another few issues with stepping-stone issues the series will be in trouble, but for now I think it's moving at a pretty smart pace.

X-Termination 1, X-Factor 253

X-Termination 1
Lapham, Liu, and Pak (s) and Lapham (w) and D. Lopez, A. Lopez, and Martinez (a) and Mossa (c)

The X-Termation event officially starts after a bit of prologue work in Astonishing X-Men and X-Treme X-Men over the last few weeks. AoA Nightcrawler has recruited AoA (or Dark) Beast to get them back into their universe from the 616. Dark Beast decides that the only way would be to go inside the Dreaming Celestial in San Francisco, as the Celestial is a sort of access point to all universes. It's a dangerous prospect and has never really been considered before but, with the aid of some helmets Beast whipped up to guard their psyches, Nightcrawler successfully teleports the pair inside. Meanwhile, Wolverine and his astonishing X-Men team are still tracking Nightcrawler. Wolverine has been betrayed by the elf and intends to make sure it doesn't happen again. If there's a weakness in this premise, I think it's here. I understand that Wolverine's mad and this comic does what it can to illustrate why Wolverine's so mad (he was betrayed by Nightcrawler who Wolverine trusted, despite being told not to, but that betrayal led to Wolverine having to kill his own son) but it still feels a little forced. To the issue's credit, I think they know that. I think they go out of their way to establish why Wolverine's mad and focus on it a little more instead of shying away. I do believe that Wolverine would consider Nightcrawler an enemy now, but in the way he doesn't go hunting down Creed or Mystique 24/7, I imagine Wolverine wouldn't send an X-Men team out after Nightcrawler. There is, the comic points out, a more personal element to this too; not only was Wolverine betrayed by someone he thought of as an ally, he was betrayed by someone who is another universe's equivalent of his dead best friend. It's not so far-fetched that it's lingering over my head all the time, but it's enough that I'm a little dismayed when Wolverine and team travel through the portal into the Age of Apocalypse Universe with Beast and Nightcrawler because it seems excessive. When they get to the AoA, things escalate, as Nightcrawler learns he's missed the war, all his friends from this universe are dead except for Creed and Jean, and Weapon Omega has been stopped. Dark Beast is captured by Jean and friends and told he'll stand trial for his crimes after he fixes the portal, which is still open and tearing things apart a bit. Wolverine and his team come through the portal and get into an argument with Jean over what's happening and who gets to hang out with Nightcrawler. Dazzler and her X-Treme X-Men team burst through the portal warning of the horrible things on the other side, which then proceed to come out. Three extremely powerful entities emerge and one kills Charles Xavier (the one that's just a head) and seems to grow. Now, as we move on to part two in the next Astonishing X-Men, three X-Men teams are facing down the possible end of the multiverse.
It's an interesting story to tie these three teams together and it'll be fun going forward because we have three different teams from three totally different backgrounds (including the X-Treme X-Men team whose members come from all sorts of different backgrounds as it is) forced to work together and to work alongside people they'd rather not work alongside (i.e. anyone and Dark Beast, Wolverine's team and Nightcrawler, Wolverine's team and most of Jean's team who are villains in the 616, etc.). One of the interesting things about this issue was that it centered itself around Nightcrawler, even putting Nightcrawler's thoughts on display as the captions. This takes some of the ambiguity out of his character, showing us that he regrets betraying the team and understands why Wolverine hates him. It also shows him as still mourning the loss of his wife and now re-appearing in the AoA as a man without a home. The aftermath of Weapon Omega has left him feeling just as much an outsider here as in the 616. Knowing what we know of him through his thoughts, we know he's still a pretty good guy at heart, someone who may wish for his own death but will still fight beside whoever he's with for the right cause. I think it's a really smart decision to take that ambiguity away for the audience's sake. Let Wolverine be mad at him, let us know that Wolverine won't forgive him, but let us know that he's on our side. The issue escalates quickly as all three teams meet up. Should be fun moving forward.

X-Factor 253
David (w) and Kirk and Leisten (a) and Milla (c)

I think I've put my finger on why I'm not a huge fan of this "hell on Earth" arc of X-Factor, a book I routinely love. I've already touched on this before but I had decided that it was rooted in my own anti-Rahne biases. I think that plays a role but the real key is in the captions. As I said above with X-Termination, it's an interesting decision for a writer to have to make to choose whose thoughts are shown in the caption. With the disappearance of thought bubbles in comics (as brought to my attention, in fact, by Peter David's Writing For Comics and Graphic Novels), captions play a similar role but usually only give us one character's thoughts, where thought bubbles could potentially drift to a couple characters in any given issue. Single-character books, like Winter Soldier or Captain Marvel, will typically focus the captions on the titular character, while team books will often use captions either as a narrator, like Avengers or Uncanny Avengers, or will select one character per issue or arc to focus on, like X-Factor or X-Termination. Throughout this arc, the captions have been with the thoughts of Tier, Rahne's son. My problem with that is kind of two-fold but both severely affect my enjoyment of this arc. For one, Tier doesn't have much to say. He's a kid in the middle of this weird situation so he mostly just remarks on how weird this situation is. When he's an interesting character, it's because he's gone berserker which means he's not thinking and has no real memory of the event, so his captions don't bring us for that ride, just the before and after, again leaving Tier with little of value to say. The other problem with Tier's captions, for me at least, is that I tend to view X-Factor as the ultimate family-driven book. They're not a family but they act like one. They're a closer team than just about any other team in the Marvel Universe and, for me, that's what drives this book. When you take the focus off of the team, I lose some interest in the title itself. If there's going to be a center to the book in the captions, I want it to be in the form of someone on X-Factor.

Jamie, as a horrible goat-headed demon, is guarding Jezebel for Mephisto when Strong Guy shows up and knocks Jamie out to rescue her. Strong Guy reveals that he's playing an angle that suits him but won't say what that angle is, making his character more compelling again. Meanwhile, X-Factor debates using Tier as a weapon against the Hell lords, as he's already taken down one of them himself. He takes down Satana in this issue, so that plan seems like a go. Monet, who has been weakened by Pluto and fainted earlier in the issue, gets the news of internal bleeding from Layla, who knows that she'll die from this. Monet confirms this with Layla and tells Layla to tell no one before flying off. These are the moments in an X-Factor book that intrigue me. They're the character moments that only need a page, despite the huge implications, because they're precisely what David has set up with his run. It's a strong team element driven by people and little interactions. Hopefully next issue will see a return of Madrox as Madrox and not as goat-headed Madrox. Also, according to the title page of the comic, Peter David is recovering well from his December stroke and has been released from the hospital and is writing again. Hooray! Still continue to learn what to do to help if you're so inclined.

Comics this week!

Not that I'm upset by this wealth of riches, but it's certainly hard to choose five pre-game picks when I have so many great titles. There are also a couple not-great titles this week, which makes SOME aspects easier, I suppose.

WAIT, I'VE CHANGED MY MIND. I'm going to highlight the five books I think have the most to prove or are intriguing for reasons other than being the best books around (for those curious, my picks pre-this-new-idea were New Avengers 4, Cable and X-Force 6, Captain America 5, Captain Marvel 11, and Daredevil 24).

Avengers 8
I've really liked this new iteration of one of Marvel's flagship titles. I think it's a great premise with good writing and interesting characters coming out from all corners of the Marvel Universe. That said, this seems to me, going in, like it's going to be the first multi-issue arc since the very first couple issues. Every issue has left us with something to think about and a thread to be pulled on at a later date. Last issue ended with what I have to assume is a thread that needs immediate pulling. I don't necessarily think there's a TON hinging on how this issue comes out as I think it's established itself pretty well, seven issues in, but it'll be interesting to see how Hickman starts tying plot points together.

Indestructible Hulk 5
I said in my last review of Hulk that Waid is taking a very definitive stance on how he wants to show Banner/Hulk. Banner is the driving force of the book and sick of living a shy and quiet life avoiding Hulk appearances. It's not like he relishes Hulk now but he understands a purpose for Hulk in the world and is doing what he can to channel that while not allowing it to control his life. It's a solid idea but it's still in the early stages. Every issue is suspect. A Banner-driven book hasn't really be tried before now so it's hard to say if it'll work in the long term. We find out that it seems possible with every new issue.

Nova 2
I was more impressed than I expected to be with Nova 1. Nova 2 comes in with a couple new advantages and a couple new disadvantages. On the one hand, Sam will actually be Nova this issue. That's both a plus and a minus. As interesting as Sam Alexander might be, we're all reading this book for Nova and its Nova's appearance that will make or break this book. Another possible advantage is the appearance of Gamora and Rocket Raccoon. Start building a supporting cast for Nova and, if they're good, we're in business. If they fall flat, the book is in trouble and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy-heavy future could be in trouble. So Nova 2 will hopefully nod to the direction it'll go.

Superior Spider-Man 6
I've liked the shape of this book so far, what with a completely different look Spider-Man at the helm and making us question if our beloved Peter Parker really was the best Spider-Man available. There are some things I'm not totally in love with (one of which is Peter Parker himself constantly yelling his solution to every problem in the background) but I've liked the questions this book has asked so far. One of those questions was, assuming we all saw this correctly, Spider-Man's slaughter of Massacre, the psychopathic/sociopathic serial killer. This issue will see the fallout from that, including a visit from the Avengers. It'll be interesting to see how Slott plays this new card.

X-Termination 1
I've not really been quiet nor subtle about my interest in Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler, on whom this mini event seems to depend. I like his character and his similarities and differences with the 616's Nightcrawler. On the other hand, it seems like a lot of books and a lot of very different plots are going to be tied together through this event, so some level of skepticism seems warranted. Though this event will span a total of about ten books, if I'm remembering correctly, the main X-Termination series will only run two issues. It'll be interesting to see how the event's laid out and also how it's going to weave through its multiple titles. That said, there's a lot riding on this first issue.

Uncanny X-Men 3, X-Treme X-Men 12

Uncanny X-Men 3
Bendis (w) and Bachalo, Townsend, Mendoza, Vey and Olazaba (a) and Bachalo (c)

Maybe my problem with Bendis now is that there's just too many words. I've said before that I think he's writing as if comics were a TV show or a movie but the mediums are completely different. Bendis has come out before as a fan of Gilmore Girls, which totally fits with his dialogue. I'm not saying Gilmore Girls is a bad TV show, just that it is a TV show. You can do the snappy dialogue and the fast back-and-forth in TV and in movies but I still maintain that it doesn't fit in comics. In comics, it's just a lot of word bubbles distracting from the point everyone is trying to make. And it appears in ALL of Bendis' comics. Each comic that comes out has someone (or some group of someones) in the background making extra but unnecessary points or quips or "geez, how did I do that...I still don't know how I did that!" kinds of remarks. It doesn't fit because it doesn't flow and because it distracts from whatever seriousness might be going on. All the kids, perfectly ordinary kids before their mutations appeared only days ago, are stunned by the appearance of the Avengers (which they should be) but won't shut up about it. We get it, you've never been in this situation. Frankly, I think most kids would be stunned silent in this instance. Apparently, though, they'd all be telling each other how they don't understand what's going on and making jokes behind everyone. So maybe it's not the right format. Maybe if this was a television show or a movie, this would all make sense and flow beautifully. Or maybe it's too many words for any medium.

Anyway, the Avengers show up to take Scott and Emma into custody and Bendis still writes Captain America as a one-dimensional jerk. No one in this comic seems to listen to anyone else in this comic. Cap doesn't listen to Scott and Emma saying that they weren't the ones who broke apart the Phoenix and forced it into their bodies and Scott and Emma don't listen to Cap saying that, no matter what, Scott still killed Professor Xavier. Cap then throws in the fact that Havok is on the Uncanny Avengers and it FEELS like Cap is admitting to making a PR move with his new Avengers team, which the Cap in Uncanny Avengers would probably also admit to, but not as a weapon. He did it because mutants need the press and the world needs to see mutants as friends, the same way they might see Avengers. Here, he says it as if he's saying "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M BAD AT MUTANTS? I'M GREAT AT MUTANTS! PRAISE ME!" Look. I have some issues with this issue. And with this series. And with this writer. I think I'm going down a pit of disdain for Bendis that no amount of "oh, but remember his run on Daredevil? And Ultimate Spider-Man?" can save. Magneto comes and reveals to Scott and Emma that he betrayed them to gain the Avengers' and SHIELD's trust. He says that now they'll totally trust him and he's done something no one saw coming and everyone hails it as a brilliant move even though it's so common, we have a regularly used name for it: double cross. I don't know. Guys. I'm having trouble being objective about this any more. Maybe I'm not. Maybe this is my objective reasoning. I think I would still feel this way without knowing Bendis wrote it, or without his back catalogue. But I don't know any more. Let's just move on.

X-Treme X-Men 12
Pak (w) and Araujo (a) and Kholinne w/ Caeli (c)

Things are again heating up in the X-Treme X-Men set of universes. The three evil Xaviers who had teamed up last issue opened a portal to the multiverse and offered sacrifices to it in order to take over the world only to find that whatever was inside was far worse. Dazzler and her team rebelled against the Xaviers but too late to stop the portal from opening, killing the Nazi and Witch Xaviers (the head-in-a-jar Xavier claims to have been manipulated by the other Xaviers but says he has done what he could to prevent them from finding Dazzler's team, which kind of fits, so they keep him alive for now). Now they're going through the portal to save the multiverse but quite possible sacrificing the world they left behind to whatever horrors are coming from the portal. Interestingly, this was billed on the "Road to X-Termination" event postcard as a prologue to X-Termination, the event that will center around AoA Nightcrawler trying to return to his dimension from the 616. So this portal seems to be something of a hinge to those events. We'll see.

Anyway, not too much else to talk about here. Basic character stuff, mostly stuff we already knew. Dazzler is taking the kid's gloves off and swears that, if killing needs to be done, she's willing to kill and to die. She makes sure her team is prepared for all of that too. So we'll see if that changes as the book goes on or if she'll have to kill to accomplish her goals. Lot of mini-X-Forcing around the Universe right now. I guess that's what happens when you have a book that's as great as Remender's come through the wires; everyone wants to use something of a similar formula. It seems the original threat of the ten evil Xaviers has subsided but given way to a whole new threat, which is probably Xavier-related anyway but I guess we'll have to find out later. AoA Nightcrawler might make a good fit for this new, suddenly violent team, should he find his way into it. Two Nightcrawlers on one team! Can you imagine? Probably. It's probably happened before. I don't know, comics are weird, you guys.

Age of Apocalypse 13, Ultimates 22

Age of Apocalypse 13
Lapham (w) and Arlem and De Landro (a) and Loughridge (c)

With Weapon Omega de-powered after the events of the last issues, we find everyone relevant to the AoA Universe picking up the pieces to their lives several months later. Creed is trying to heal his father, Pierce is killing Sebastian Shaw, Trask is setting up defenses and hospitals in the new human homeland of Hawaii, and Jean is tracking down Wolverine who, in turn, is tracking down and killing his former ministers. MEANWHILE, AoA Nightcrawler has chosen to leave the 616 and his "mother" Mystique, haunted by the things he's had to do in this universe and the fight he left unfinished (though, unbeknownst to him, it's finished now) in his own universe. He declines Mystique's offer to join the Hand and he finds Beast (unsure which universe's Beast it is) and demands to be sent back to the AoA. So we have some interesting things happening all over the AoA and the 616 as the X-Termination event begins later this month (this and the last Astonishing X-Men that came out serve as preludes to that event, which will span its own two part book as well as tying into a couple more issues of Astonishing X-Men, another issue of Age of Apocalypse and an issue of X-Treme X-Men).

I'm a bit excited for that X-Termination event. As I've said before, I really like Nightcrawler and I think the idea of this battle-hardened Nightcrawler who is so separate from his 616 counterpart is a pretty fantastic idea. I'm excited to see him wander through more of the 616 as he finds his way back to his own universe, which I'm also excited to see. So yes, I guess a bit excited is a proper description of my feelings for this event. I'm also wary about events that take place across several books. I'd imagine that they're not just mere tie-ins and that they're actually crucial to the story of X-Termination, but I don't know that for sure. Actually, as I typed that, I looked at the little card I have outlining the event and I'm pretty sure of it after all. Every book still to come out (minus X-Treme X-Men 12, which is still prologue) is labeled as part one through six. So yeah, tie-in stories might break flow but they at least don't require you to buy five books a month to stay caught up on one story (typically). It's more pick and choose. Though it does lower the stakes of those books a little bit. I don't know. That's a hard question. Maybe we'll get into it later.

Ultimates 22
Humphries (w) and Bennett and José (a) and Milla (c)

Important things happening over in this issue too. As reconstruction continues following the war in America, President Cap has a lot on his plate. He oversees a meeting between the prosecuting and defense lawyers for the treasonous war criminal Hulk (solved by President Cap locking them in a room together until they compromise) and meets with California's governor-elect's spokesperson Ford, who wants to establish something of a monarchy for himself on the West Coast (solved by President Cap, in no uncertain terms, declining such a solution and having Hawkeye shoot an arrow at Ford's feet and GUYS, this dude is named FORD and Cap has just solved a Civil War and FORD'S THEATER OH CRAP). Ford, not so fond of this answer, demands that they initiate their second plan, which is a reserve team of Ultimates that Nick Fury and SHIELD had to lock away nine years previously because they weren't working out. That team includes the Vision, Tigra, a Hulked-out Wonder Man, and the Black Knight. We see through flashbacks at the beginning of this issue the botched mission that led Fury to put them back in storage essentially, only to remain there until discovered by Ford and California. Ford demands that they start the next step, sending an extremely powerful and severely unbalanced Black Knight to capture Tony Stark. So things are heating up quickly, it would seem.

I like where this book is going and this was the first time in a long while where I finished an Ultimates book and knew exactly where I stood. I think, to be fair, that Humphries' run has been pretty good for that sort of thing. The Ultimates got a little complex and full of storylines (not that that's a bad thing, but I really lost track of all the tensions overseas the country was facing; I suppose that's still a positive for this book, making it somewhat lifelike in that respect. It does FEEL like a pretty fleshed-out universe in a much shorter time of existence than the 616) and it was easy to lose track of some of those storylines. Now we seem a little more concentrated, for a bit anyway, in America, so you only need to follow all the storylines happening in the states. It's a solid story being told and it's leading us to interesting places. Good book.