Avengers Assemble 16, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Thor: God of Thunder 9

Avengers Assemble 16
DeConnick (w) and Buffagni (a) and Bellaire w/ Wilson (c)

The Enemy Within continues here as more of Carol's past begins to haunt her. A Brood attack, with suddenly appearing Brood riding a giant Acanti whale, launches over New York City as Carol is making coffee and/or tea (unimportant) with Tracy. Tracy says she shouldn't go and Carol admits to herself that she's probably right but they both know she's going to go anyway. Indeed, she leaves and joins up with several other Avengers to stop the Brood. There's a real sense of a hectic battle here as DeConnick jumps back and forth between the battle in New York and the agents of SWORD who were surprised by the sudden appearance of the Brood being questioned by Abigail Brand, all while Yon-Rogg tries to contact Hala, the Kree homeworld, for escort from Earth. Yon-Rogg offers Captain Marvel and the Earth as tidings to the Supreme Intelligence in exchange for his extraction but the Kree monitoring officer who handles Yon-Rogg's call declines, not interested in adding Earth, a troublesome planet forsaken by the galactic council, to the Kree Empire. Angry, Yon-Rogg disconnects and decides instead to make Earth more like Hala, with the powers now granted to him by the Psyche-Magnitron. He transforms himself into new villain The Magnitron. Meanwhile, the Avengers all suspect that this Brood attack has something to do with  Carol's mysterious adversary, as a Brood attack happened early on in her hero's journey. Still, they're unsure what to do with that information and Black Widow suspects that it's just another warning shot. The issue ends as what appears to be a Kree Sentry destroys the last remaining Brood that had escaped north of New York City.

The story is already delving pretty heavily into Carol's history as well as the history of the Kree Empire, which is always worrying with a book like this. Avengers Assemble kind of seemed like the sort of book that was meant to allow new readers to jump onboard an Avengers title while Hickman did whatever crazy things he wanted over in Avengers. I think this story will be a strong one and that everything will shape up nicely for DeConnick but I'd worry that anyone following this book because they wanted a jumping-on point might get shaken by this one, particularly if they neglected to pick up Avengers: The Enemy Within last month. There are confusing parts borne largely out of the chaotic nature of this attack but I don't think it weakens the story. There are a couple parts where I wasn't entirely sure what was happening because of the art (which is largely good but had some weird moments to it) or because of quippy sort of dialogue bouncing back and forth a bit too much. Still, a strong entry to this event that has clearly established drama and a villain for Carol and the Avengers. Should set us up for a nice and tight event.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3
Bendis (w) and McNiven, Pichelli, and Dell (a) and Ponsor (c)

The Guardians have been taken prisoner by the Spartax and their king (and Peter Quill's father) J-Son. J-Son meets with the council he had previously to discuss the attack on Earth by the Badoon. He accuses Y-Gaaar, the leader of the Badoon (and, mysteriously, the only alien name that my spell-check isn't freaking out over), of being unable to keep his hands off of Earth for even a cycle after they agreed to. Y-Gaaar says it wasn't his Badoon; he is the leader of the brotherhood and it was the sisterhood that attacked. J-Son demands he get things in order before defending himself for the Guardians' interference in Earth's dealings. He explains that his son is merely a petulant child and he's going to be punished for what he did as an example to others. He storms off from the meeting and the other members of the council express their dismay and concern over the Spartax king. Meanwhile, of course, Groot was not captured by the Spartax and makes his first major appearance as he breaks the Guardians out of holding. They decide, instead of escaping, to use the weapons that have been confiscated and brought to the same room as they had been and take over the Spartax battleship. They do so with relative ease and Star-Lord issues a message to the rest of the Spartax: his father had his own son arrested for protecting Earth from the Badoon, imagine what he'd do to regular grunts.

There's definitely an interesting story developing here if it can stay away from too many tropes. There's always a worry when you're talking about son facing off against father and this team, made up of a couple different interesting child-father relationships, knows that better than most. Still, there's something sinister happening with J-Son and this council is an intriguing idea, bringing together the heads of several powerful races to make decisions. I have some issue with the back-and-forth here, as is usual and well-documented on this blog so I don't intend to get into it more, and I can envision Rocket's character getting unbearably annoying over time. For the record, I do think there is a way to do Rocket and make him not annoying, despite the fact he's a bit annoying by nature and the fact that plenty of people want him dead. I worry that his bloodthirsty nature is going to wear thin if it keeps up the way it is (mostly shouting about how he's killing everyone as he's killing them). I do appreciate that it's a sort of new take on him and a new take on the more violent heroes in the Marvel Universe (outright glee with killing isn't typically a Punisher trait, per se) but it might be worth toning down before it gets unbearable.

Thor: God of Thunder 9
Aaron (w) and Ribic (a) and Svorcina (c)

The big fight we've been waiting months for finally happens in this, the third part of Godbomb. The Thors Three approach Gorr as the godbomb nears completion. The three of them fight valiantly, one after another or sometimes all at once. Gorr, seeing the full might of three Thors, decides he needs extra strength and orders his minions to kill all of the gods on the planet. This enrages the Thors more but adds to Gorr's power. Present and future Thor get caught by a serpent of Gorr who holds them while Gorr himself fights the past Thor. Future Thor holds the serpent's mouth open long enough for present Thor to escape and go after Gorr, just in time to see past Thor knocked away. Thor and Gorr battle heatedly and Gorr decides that present Thor is his favorite. Future Thor fights because of regret and past Thor fights because of shame, but present Thor, he suspects, fights because he knows that Gorr is right about how worthless gods are and he needs to prove to himself how wrong that is. Eventually the other two Thors convene on present Thor and help in the attack. Gorr brings them into the sun of the planet, where the fight finishes (for now). As the dust settles, god blood rains down, as do hammers, and finally Thors. Gorr demands the godbomb prepared.

Like I said at the start, we've been waiting for this fight for months and it doesn't disappoint. It's every bit as epic and grand as you'd expect it to be, with the Thors fighting as hard as Thors are known to fight and Gorr still managing to come out on top. The banter is pretty solid and the Thors themselves go through a bit of an arc in this issue not unlike Thor's arc. They come in brash and spewing bravado, eagerly attacking Gorr and getting the best of him to start before turning a little more solemn among the death of the other gods and the strength of Gorr. Finally they're defeated by Gorr and all hope seems lost. Still, there are two more issues in this arc so smart money is on them waking up and coming after Gorr again. Maybe not the same direct way, but in some manner. Still, good issue with all the action we've been waiting for and the standard great art and colors by Ribic and Svorcina. Should be a solid last couple of issues of this arc. It'll be interesting to see if the Thors are victorious and just how victorious they are. Gorr is a pretty good villain, it almost feels like it would be a shame to lose him.

Age of Ultron 8, Avengers: The Enemy Within 1, Iron Man 10

Age of Ultron 8
Bendis (w) and Peterson (a) and Mounts (c)

So we learn a little more about this alternate timeline as Bendis again tries to make us learn about the butterfly effect. The Tony Stark of this world questions Wolverine after accessing both Sue and Wolverine's memories alongside Professor X and Emma Frost. He learns that Wolverine was responsible for killing Pym and setting the world on a different timeline before explaining to Wolverine that the timeline he's created led to a war between technology and magic that caused Asgard to abandon Earth and divided the world into pretty much Tony's half and Morgana le Fey's half. Stark is ever suspicious of an attack from le Fey and spends some time believing that Sue and Wolverine are constructs of hers, an idea that is reinforced when le Fey attacks at a particularly inopportune time for our heroes. Meanwhile, the Defenders don't like Tony and want to talk to the prisoners. Then le Fey shows up and splits Tony's helicarrier in half.

I think everything I've said about this series remains true as I remain annoyed at the length, annoyed at the need to drill the butterfly effect into readers, annoyed at the implication that Hank Pym is the cog that makes the Marvel Universe turn, annoyed at the writing style, and annoyed at spending so much time in an alternate timeline that we all know will not stick around. That said, I'd like to mention something I don't think I've really brought up that much in the run of this series: the art. I think the art is fine on more or less static images and situations, with people talking and the like. However, from the get-go (and even with different artists at the helm) I've found the action sequences to be overly chaotic and a bit hard to piece together. In most of the fights, there are so many colors and lines converging that it's hard to tell who's fighting from panel to panel and almost impossible to say who's winning. In the beginning, that was a little more excusable because the fights weren't really the focus; the state of the city was the focus. Now, though, the fights are very much at the center of a lot of these panels and don't really stand out as much as you'd like, especially to try to cover for the story or the excessive dialogue. I have a theory that says that you'll be able to read maybe four of these issues when all is said and done and have as much of an understanding of the story as someone who read all ten. We'll see if that's accurate as the last two issues come out.

Avengers: The Enemy Within 1
DeConnick (w) and Hepburn (a) and Bellaire (c)

One of the reasons that I've really liked DeConnick's run on Captain Marvel is that she's made it a point to, throughout the series, establish that Carol has a life outside of the Avengers. It's maybe not a huge part of her life in terms of time-spent, but it's clearly massive in terms of how she identifies herself. She doesn't live at Avengers Mansion, she stays in an apartment. She has a routine that involves getting coffee or croissants at the same place and meeting up with an elderly lady each day. At her apartment, she has people that she cares about including the little girl who wants to be her and that girl's mother. She has Tracy the surly older woman with whom she bonded over their sicknesses. She had Helen Cobb (albeit in time displacement). She has Avengers friends too, like Spider-Woman and Captain America and Tony Stark, but she has more social visits from Avengers than you see in most solo books. The creation of Carol's little universe unto herself and the importance of it in her daily life is already playing a huge role in this series, as Rose has been kidnapped by Yon-Rogg (Carol does not know it's Yon-Rogg behind everything, but we've already seen him) and hidden away. With the help of Spider-Woman and Thor, Carol is able to track down Rose but finds that Rose has been a diversion so her captor could break into Carol's apartment. Carol hurries back to her building and clears everyone out of it. She busts into her own room (scaring her cat Chewie) and finds that her enemy has broken into her footlocker of important items. Missing from the footlocker is her piece of the psyche-magnetron, the machine that gave her powers and that is, as she describes it, essentially a Kree-built wish-machine. Now the world is in danger and she feels it's her fault. Spider-Woman rallies around her and insists that now the Avengers are involved and this guy will not get away with this.

The issue starts in pretty standard Captain Marvel form, which isn't at all a bad thing. There's a conversation between Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman that focuses around whether or not Rose is missing or just an old lady before chaos breaks out in the form of old-school villains the Grapplers. From there, the action never stops and the chaos piles up on Carol, who has trouble with her brain lesion (not helped by the fact that she insists on flying at one point) and with the whole situation. She suspects it's all a distraction to keep her from Rose before she realizes that Rose is the distraction. It's non-stop action but not in a way that feels forced or like action-for-action's-sake. It serves to keep Carol off-balance and unable to get a foothold on the situation, just as the audience is unsure of the villain's plot even though we know more than Carol (as Captain Marvel readers know it's Yon-Rogg behind everything and we watch him break into Carol's apartment while she's in Central Park). It's a really great layout and it feels already like this event is going to be something different and great, if incredibly stressful for fans who love Carol. I listened to an interview with DeConnick (found here) that features her at one point saying that she didn't plan too far ahead on these books because she didn't expect either of them to last. She cites people like Fraction and Bendis, who can plan series in year-long chunks, and Hickman, who can plan a series over a four-year chunk (amazing, and my fun fact of the day). She could have fooled me as this event seems born perfectly out of what she's done with both of her Marvel books over the course of the last few months. Looking forward to this one. It's also important to note that Scott Hepburn's art is solid throughout (and his characterization of Jessica particularly as someone who can't stop gesticulating) and Jordie Bellaire's colors are great and she uses the same color palette as on Captain Marvel, so the book feels like it slots perfectly into place.

Iron Man 10
Gillen (w) and Eaglesham (a) and Guru eFX (c)

One of the reasons I've enjoyed Remender's Captain America series is that it's taken the Captain America history and said "what don't we know?" It turned out that the answer was "what was Steve like before he was old enough to even try to enlist in the army?" With that, Remender had a whole new level to add to Steve's character and a series all ready to write itself. Gillen has apparently done the same thing with Tony Stark, except we already knew more about Iron Man's childhood. It was his birth that we hadn't really examined before. 451 has shown the film to Tony and goes on to explain that Howard was scouring the Earth to find a way to save the unborn Tony's life. Doctors said it couldn't be done and that, in fact, if it was done, they'd have wished it wasn't, so damaged was Tony. However, that wasn't a good enough answer for Howard and, eventually, he found out about 451. At the time, 451 was being held by the Greys, a race of aliens (in the style of the stereotypical sci-fi alien) who had opened a casino in Vegas. They had stumbled upon 451 and captured him, knowing that he was valuable but unable to crack into any of that value. 451 awoke to one of the underlings of the Greys, Rollo, and appealed to him to break him out, offering a nice reward. Rollo meets with Howard and entices him, letting him know about 451's extensive knowledge, which Howard hopes can be parlayed into saving Tony's life. He assembles a team including the likes of Jimmy Woo, Thunderbolt Ross, and Dum Dum Dugan to name a few and we get a nice, old-fashioned heist comic. The heist is successful (though Rollo is found out and killed) and Howard and 451 apparently escape. Tony doesn't believe any of it and is put to sleep by 451, as they'll need him "before [they] reach [their] destination."

It's an interesting idea and, as I said, gives a nice little look into the parts of Tony that we don't know so well. I'm pretty well-versed in Marvel but I wouldn't ever claim to know every single character and every issue they've appeared in, so I can't guarantee it's never been mentioned that Tony wasn't projected to survive birth, but that does seem like a pretty big fact for me not to have found out, so I'm going to credit it to Gillen. It adds a layer to Tony's story which is then doubly added upon by revealing that he wouldn't have lived without alien tech and methods (which we have yet to really hear about). Was Tony more than just a regular child, albeit a little more intelligent and with more resources? We also can't ever rule out the fact that 451 is simply lying. Everything is a possibility and we've already seen 451 lie to get his way before. Occam's Razor would dictate that 451 lying is a far more simple solution than "Tony was going to die in childbirth so Howard tracked down a mysterious robot who had accumulated masses of knowledge and broke that robot out of an alien casino so that he could try to help save Howard's son." Then again, this is comics and that second argument is far more in line with how Wikipedia explains comic plots. Stay tuned to this one; whatever the answer and motivations behind 451, they're bound to be interesting and to put Tony in previously unexplored areas, both physically and emotionally.

Captain America 6, Captain Marvel 12

Captain America 6
Remender (w) and Romita Jr., Palmer, Janson, and Hanna (a) and White (c)

Cap is PISSED. Just looking at the cover of the issue should really define what happens next. Captain America gets angry occasionally. Dude hates injustice and cowardly actions and terrorism and everything else on those lines. So he occasionally flips out at some villain or gets worked up at some other hero or person or something. But he's not usually angry. Angry is more sustained and less reactionary. Cap often shouts about stuff at villains while he's hitting them with his shield. He has kind of a low-level disappointment with a lot of the things in the world and in his country and in the people, but he's not often really angry. Right now, Cap is angry.
Ian is back with Zola and demands answers from Jet about why she would side with Zola, who murdered the innocent Phrox. Jet gives him the corporate lines about how Cap is a kidnapper, not a father, and how Zola is just trying to get his family back together. However, Jet is having her own problems finding Steve as negative after he spared her life. On top of that, she's never really had interactions with other humans, let alone human males, so she has all sorts of conflicting emotions about Cap. It's an interesting development, and one that makes some amount of sense given her upbringing, and one that's made all the more interesting by the end of the issue. BUT WE'LL GET THERE. Cap storms the mutates of Zolaland like never before and annihilates his way through their forces on his way to Zola and Ian. Ian gets more of a talk from Zola about how Zola only wants the best for his family and how Ian will have to understand that, even if it means reprogramming him to feel that way and brainwashing him to show Cap as figurative vampire who takes in younger men and trains them to be murderers before they die themselves (Bucky, Nomad, other Buckys, etc.). It's a compelling enough argument for Zola to make, though Cap has raised Ian for ten years or so now and it seems tricky to convince the boy that his father is an abductor with ill intents. However, he does look a bit brainwashed by the end, though this could be a ploy like one Bucky tried to use when Faustus tried to brainwash him into hating Cap. Meanwhile, Cap has tracked down Jet (showering, it's a little weird, honestly) and threatens her with a gun he's taken from the mutates. She remains calm, saying that he won't shoot her, he's too good of a person, but that he also won't ever get to Ian and doesn't deserve to. Cap fires the gun. It had been point blank on Jet's face but we don't actually see her in the panel that he shoots it, so all bets are off.
There are still a ton of interesting things happening here. Jet's feelings towards Cap paired with Ian's feelings towards Cap (very different feelings) make for a somewhat unpredictable dynamic as Cap tears through Zola's base. Also, Cap sees the doorway that had been the portal that brought him here and contemplates going out and getting help before returning to Ian, but decides against it. He also reveals that, because Marvel time is so messed up, he's actually spent more time now in Dimension Z than he has in the present day, presumably since being frozen in ice. This is his normal now. It's an incredibly interesting idea and it'll be interested to see where it goes or if it gets resolved or something. Cap's anger pervades this issue and demands your attention as a reader, really pulling you in and gripping you as we watch Cap struggle with losing Ian and with seeing Zola's mutates (which have Cap's face in horrible, twisted ways). Another strong issue. Excited to see where we go as this arc continues.

Captain Marvel 12
DeConnick and Sebela (w) and Andrade (a) and Bellaire (c)

Captain Marvel's fight continues against Deathbird, as does her inability to fly. The two come at odds somewhere in the middle of the issue as Carol can't really help herself and lifts off just enough (after totaling her flying motorcycle when she picks it up and uses it to hit Deathbird) to sap the power right out of her. It's enough, fortunately, as the fight ends with Deathbird in custody though it does leave Carol sick and weak. Throughout the issue, there's also a dialogue going between Carol's doctor and a doctor who had a patient with similar symptoms to hers, despite her Kree physiology. That doctor reveals his patient was none other than Helen Cobb, friend and idol of Carol as well as a fellow pilot. Cobb's doctor reveals that she had started hallucinating before her death, but that her reports of these hallucinations were so vivid that they seemed real, to the point where she even smelled like she had been places the doctor knew she couldn't have. Carol's doctor, who has more experience with superheroes, points out that things that are impossible happen every day in this world, so they can't rule anything out. They decide that maybe this is foul play and that someone is pulling these strings, including Helen Cobb's disease and the fire that took her life and which seems to also include Deathbird's attack and maybe even Carol's disease. The culprit is revealed to be Yon-Rogg, a Kree officer who had allegedly died in the same explosion that gave Carol her powers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the original Captain Marvel titles.
This is a very interesting decision, delving so far back into Carol's history and pulling a villain out of the ether to torture this new Captain Marvel. Yon-Rogg has a long-seated hatred of Carol and is clearly a bit unbalanced. He's also obviously not one to object to using Carol's loved ones as cannon fodder in his hatred. On top of that, she still can't fly and her powers are waning but she's going to be angrier than ever when she finds out what's happening. Now we're going to head into Captain Marvel's very own event, "Avengers: The Enemy Within," which will start in May with a one-shot prelude and continue through July in four parts, spanning DeConnick's Avengers Assemble book in issues 16 (part one) and 17 (part three) and Captain Marvel 13 (part two) and 14 (part four). This will put Carol at odds against her Avengers teammates as she makes decisions that DeConnick promises will be devastating and important, but also the decisions she truly believes Carol would make. If that's not the most worrying sentiment, I don't know what is. This will definitely be an event to pre-order and pick up as it goes on. Trust DeConnick to know what she's doing here, as she's sculpted two wonderful books for Marvel in Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble already. Very excited and more than a little nervous.