A+X 16, Infinity: Heist 4, Inhumanity: The Awakening 2

A+X 16
Spider-Man and Psylocke: S. Ryan (w) and Parlov (a) and Gandini (c)
Captain America and Cyclops (and so many friends): Duggan (w) and Yardin, C. Smith, N. Lee, and Pallot (a) and Mossa (c)

In our first story (set several years ago), Spider-Man happens to be swinging by a restaurant when he hears a crash. He goes to check it out and finds Psylocke in there, surrounded by sword-wielding men in suits. He helps her dispatch of them but, as she tries to interrogate one, one of the felled men drops a grenade. Spidey stays out of the blast radius but Psylocke ends up impaled by a sword on the ground. Spidey rushes to her side and immediately realizes he can't move her. She doesn't want him to leave for help and so he stays as she tries to hold on to consciousness. Right as it seems like she might be fading, the X-Men show up and take her away, presumably to save her (she's still alive now, isn't she?) and Spider-Man makes his way home. Weird little story, doesn't seem to fit any where but it's a nice intimate look into the superhero community, which I suppose is the goal of this series. The story moves well and the art works well enough for it so I guess I can't complain. Still a little weird though, right?

Continuing the long Cap+Cyclops saga, the assembled team squares off against Cadre K, the Skrulls who were trained by Charles Xavier and who are hiding out on the planet. In the middle of their big fight, Emma Frost realizes that they're not doing anything wrong here and informs the heroes. Everyone stops the fight and they talk for a bit as Cadre K explains that they're just trying to make a decent living for themselves out on the farm and trying to keep the cattle who have Skrull DNA in them out of other farms and out of processed foods in America (some of their farm is comprised of the cattle that Reed Richards convinced Skrulls to be on their first trip to Earth, a move everyone considers pretty jerky). The heroes decide there's nothing wrong with what they're doing (in fact, they'd prefer those cows stay out of the market) and promise to stop fighting against them and fight for them as need be. Unfortunately, the LMD Cap and Cyclops have been working with shows up and reveals that he, Cap, and Cyclops have been infected with nano-Doombots who have monitored everything so Doom is likely on his way to capture these Skrulls. Looks like we'll have to wait a little longer to see a resolution between Cap and Cyclops.

Infinity: Heist 4
Tieri (w) and Barrionuevo, Bachs, N. Edwards, Domingues, and Rauch (a) and Sotocolor and Mossa (c)

The supervillain team-up not in league with Captain Atlas of the Kree (so pretty much just not Spymaster) present have been imprisoned and knocked out so that they can be executed (weird that they're waiting) by the Iron Man soldiers that they helped to steal, unwittingly, for the Kree Empire. We'll get back to that, okay? Anyway, Unicorn goes crazy and manages to break them out of their containment and, with the help of a remote controlled Iron Man who has figured out what's happening here and the help of Blizzard's new Inhuman powers (which apparently act as a battery, so he overcharges a lot of the armors), they manage to defeat Atlas and Spymaster. Not willing to let his pals go down for the fight, Blizzard flies the remote Iron Man out and freezes them both while the others escape. When the pair come to, Iron Man shuttles Blizzard off to jail, where the SHIELD psych team gives him a dream of joining up with the Inhumans on Attilan while Whirlwind and Firebrand start a relationship over again in the tropics.

There was a time this week where I wasn't sure I'd be able to read this book in time to review and, well, I'm kind of jealous of that possible-timeline-Tim. I haven't totally hated this series overall and I don't totally hate this last issue but I certainly don't care for it. There's plenty here that doesn't quite gel for me. First and foremost is the idea that someone from the Kree Empire is deadset on stealing Tony Stark armor and using B-List villains to do it, including hiring Spymaster to coordinate the whole thing. One of the biggest things about the Kree Empire is that they're masters of technology. I don't really see them going crazy to steal all of Tony Stark's outdated armor. I know that might seem like a minor flaw but really, it's the plot point that's driving LITERALLY EVERYTHING we've seen in this mini-series so not buying it means that the whole series is weak. Also, everyone looks and sounds rather the same (aside from Firebrand, who at least looks different, thanks to being the only woman in this series) so it's hard to tell exactly what's happening at any one time. The final reveal that Blizzard is actually dreaming his future with the Inhumans is played like a big and shocking reveal but it's really not that big a reveal and it's not that meaningful because, again, B-list villain who we haven't really grown to love in this series, despite what Tieri might think. Ah well, at least the final piece of INFINITY seems to be over, which is more than we can say for AVENGERS VS. X-MEN, am I right A+X?

Inhumanity: The Awakening 2
Kindt (w) and Davidson (a) and Beaulieu (c)

The assortment of kids (I'd be fine if that was their superhero team name - The Assortment of Kids! Actually, never mind, I'm going to use that one, copyright Tim Nicastro 2014) manage to track down new Inhuman Fiona's new Inhuman brother Flynn after he destroys an apartment building which we learn was the apartment building that housed the jerk kids who nearly tortured Fiona in the park before she flew away. He was doing it out of love and a severe anger problem, that's all! So the Assortment of Kids® goes to meet up with Flynn and Finesse talks him down from his anger, explaining a bit of her history to sympathize. They stage it so that it looks like the apartment building was actually just the result of an Inhuman transformation and then they give Flynn and Fiona a choice of which superkid school they want to go to: Flynn chooses the Latverian School of Science (geez guys, warning bells, huh?) and Fiona checks all of them out to learn she's not alone in the world.

Like the last issue, this one is framed by social media. It's a little less intrusive here as we don't follow the Instagram account of anyone in the book but it's still pretty prevalent as every page shows a weird non-sequiter sort of Twitter conversation between two people who seem unrelated with all of this and it's weird and creepy and I do not care for it. One of the blurbs from one of the creators at the end of YOUNG AVENGERS this week called YOUNG AVENGERS the perfect comic for the Tumblr generation (which I a little resent because I loved that book and similarly hate that generation but I understand what it's saying) and it feels like this book is trying just super hard to be named that. Instead, I think it flounders and gets a little too heavy-handed about these kids not fitting in and finding their place and so on and so forth. On top of it, the art is a little bit weird and kind of makes everyone look super ugly super all the time. Also, I just really can't say enough how much I don't need a Twitter feed going across the top of a comic book. Gross. Hope no one was looking for interesting action from the cover of this one! Plus side: the book that this one advertises at the end of this one is AVENGERS UNDERCOVER, which I'm looking forward to and, more importantly, which isn't this one.

A+X 15, Inhumanity: The Awakening 1

Sorry about the lateness of this post! Busy week and I couldn't get my hands on A+X until late so I almost skipped this post entirely. Look for my picks of the week shortly.

A+X 15
Dr. Strange and Beast - Nitz (w) and Smallwood (a and c)
Captain America and Cyclops - Duggan (w) and Yardin and C. Smith (a) and Mossa (c)

In our first story, Doctor Strange teams with Beast to investigate a strange and somewhat haunted yoga session in Greenwich. Beast, given his attachment to science, believes it to be alien technology while Strange, of course, believes it to be magic. The two bicker as they visit Dormammu's realm to find more. There, they meet their counterparts from another dimension, Dr. S of the Strange-Men and Sorcerer Supreme Beast, both of whom want to destroy the 616 because of the yoga business. Our Strange and Beast distract them and get away. Given a moment's respite, they realize this must be the work of the Impossible Man and visit him and manage to convince him to set things right. They return back to their home world, neither of them any more accepting of the other's business. Not a bad little story. Definitely fun, even if it treads a lot of the same ground A+X has been treading (people with differences bickering, mostly).

Meanwhile, the Cap + Cyclops storyline continues as they bring the shot-Skrull back to their base. The LMD there informs the two that the Skrull is still alive, having shifted his organs in his body right before being shot and that he is, in fact, conscious. The Skrull wants fast food at a specific restaurant but promises that afterwards he'll take them to a Skrull secret base. Cap and Cyclops each call in their own help, with Cyclops calling Emma Frost and the Stepford Cuckoos to help give them a telepathic edge and Cap calling in Ant-Man to help destroy the Skrulls guns, as the fast food place ends up being the secret base and they attack pretty immediately. Ant-Man and Emma agree to tag along for the rest of the adventure. Together, they all realize that part of the plan of Cadre K is to take over the cattle industry and poison the meat. The story is starting to gain some legs but, more importantly, the characters are starting to take some shape. They still snap at each other here and there but they're getting more tolerant of their work, which is pretty neat and leads to some nice little lines here and there. Not a bad issue overall, two fairly fun stories. More than I could say about other issues of the series.

Inhumanity: The Awakening 1
Kindt (w) and Davidson (a) and Beaulieu (c)

Following right on the heels of INFINITY THE HUNT, this mini-series picks up with the students of the American schools cleaning up in New York after INFINITY. Pixie is monitoring social networks and realizes there's a newly-Inhuman girl who may be about to kill herself from bullying and her transformation. Pixie leads Quentin Quire, Striker, and Finesse to the girl and see her flying high in the sky. Pixie realizes that she's not flying, she's falling, and saves her. The girl tells her story through Instagram pictures and their comments, where she's been examining her life even before transforming into a feathered and winged Inhuman, which she also documents. Her jerk brother's friends tortured her at one point and she's harassed by a troll online and it's all become to ouch for her. Striker talks about his time in the spotlight and what it's meant for him and how he deals with it and it seems to straighten her out a bit. She reveals to them that her brother also cocooned and they go to see him only to find that he's burst out and is now wreaking havoc in the world.

Followers of this blog will probably notice that I did not care for INFINITY THE HUNT and it seems like I may care for this mini-series EVEN LESS. This one is obsessed with showing all of the recent events (INFINITY and, now, INHUMANITY) through the eyes of social media. So on top of the story being told through a series of Instagram pictures and their comments (not to mention through her narration over the pictures), there's a running Twitter feed at the top of every single page. It's unbearable. There are probably people out there who would be more forgiving about this than I am but I absolutely hate the layout of this issue. Here's the thing: YOUNG AVENGERS has done something like this throughout their series. Each issue starts with a Tumblr-like recap page, which works for this series and, importantly, is one mostly-inconsequential page that's loaded with neat little bits and, again, are not important overall. They also did a set of Instagram pictures to explain away their in-between-issues adventures. It worked and it made sense. Here there's way too much of it and it permeates the entire book. I read online someone saying that it was a powerful book that addressed bullying and other important teenage problems but I can't even really say that. There's obviously a lot of bullying, but it's almost too much a parody of bullying to be taken seriously and it seems like Kindt wants to do too much else in the book to really fully examine bullying or something. Just...not a fun book, you guys. The downside of actually getting my hands on A+X was that I suddenly found myself needing to both read the rest of this issue and review it without just dutifully ignoring it. Oh well, right?