Marvel Knights Hulk 4, Revolutionary War - Warheads 1

Marvel Knights Hulk 4
Keatinge (w) and Kowalski (a) and Filardi (c)

Nikoleta Harrow has brought Banner to the site of the first gamma bomb, the site where Hulk was born. She brings him underground and he realizes that she's allowed AIM to trace them and to follow them there before she reveals that she's also gotten her hands on another gamma bomb and left it on the surface. It goes off and wrecks through AIM's forces. As Banner hulks out, she injects herself with the serum they've created and attacks Hulk as a Hulk herself. she momentarily stops him but he ultimately brings her down and she dies, as she knew she would when she brought him there. SHIELD agent Molly Fitzgerald shows up to bring Banner back in and to answer his questions about the damage he's done. He returns to Paris briefly to apologize to the woman who found him and took care of him before his life returns to what it had been.

I will admit, I was somewhat distracted reading this issue wondering why I hadn't figured out Nikoleta Harrow before this issue. MORBIUS THE LIVING VAMPIRE wasn't that long ago and I clearly knew that Keatinge had written both. I should have recognized Harrow from her brief role in Morbius' adventures. Maybe I would have cared a little more about this series if I had some minor background for its villain. It's hard to say, though, because it takes a special HULK book to make me care too much about people trying to replicate the Hulk conditions and become Hulks. I just can't bring myself to care (I also have trouble with the "I want to recreate the super soldier serum!" storylines and anything all along those lines. Not as much trouble, mind you, and there certainly can be good stories centered around those but by and large they're mostly kind of tired storylines). Keatinge wrote a wrap-up letter at the end that talks about he and artist Piotr Kowalski's desire to get into Banner as a character, to get into what separates him and the weirdness inside of both him and Hulk. I don't think they really hit it. I wonder if a longer series would have given them the chance but this one just felt too rushed and too bogged down in its own story to really care about character until the very end.

Revolutionary War - Warheads 1
Lanning and Cowsill (w) and Erskine (a) and Zamor (c)

Colonel Tigon Liger has been hearing voices calling to him from Hell, the voices of Kether Troop, the team he had to leave behind the last time they stopped Mys-Tech. He goes to one of the Master Keys, a wizard who can open a portal provided he has some information on it first, to try to get him to open a portal to Hell to pull his team out after all this time. Agent Keller meets them at the SHIELD building in England only to find that someone's been building a portal on a missing thirteenth floor. It turns out, unfortunately for Liger, that the builder was none other than Keller himself, possessed by a Psycho-Wraith and prepared to use the captured British heroes (including Captain Britain and Dark Angel, plus others) as surrogates for the Mys-Tech board to open the gate to Hell and unleash a revolution on Britain and the world. Liger is unable to stop Keller now that he has a Master Key there and the portal is reared up and ready to go. It's not Mys-Tech coming out, though, it's Hell's new "liege lord" and Mephisto's chosen champion Killpower.

I've been a bit hard on REVOLUTIONARY WAR as a whole but I stand behind just about everything I've said so far. I think that the tone, by and large, hasn't corresponded with the intended drama of the book and I think that the exposition of who everyone is and the history of these characters has interfered with the storytelling of this book. That aside for this review, I think WARHEADS was just about the most coherent and best standalone issue of this event (aside from maybe DARK ANGEL, which read extremely well even without a lot of context). It really felt dedicated to telling the story and to keeping a consistent tone, which was a huge difference maker. I still think there was a bundle of exposition, maybe bordering on too much, but I've always understood why that was going to happen in this series, even if I wasn't in favor of it. This one, once it starts to get away from the history of the Kether Troop, does a solid job presenting a threat and making us understand why it's a threat. It's still a little confusing but I'm willing to take the blame on being confused. Solid work. Hopefully it's paved the way enough to make the upcoming conclusion, REVOLUTIONARY WAR - OMEGA, powerful and meaningful.

A+X 17, Night of the Living Deadpool 3, Marvel Knights Hulk 3

A+X 17
Iron Man and Broo: Loveness (w) and P. Diaz (a) and Mossa (c)
Captain America and Cyclops: Duggan (w) and Yardin, C. Smith, and Pallot (a) and Mossa (c)

Story one of this somehow still going series finds Iron Man unwillingly taking on Broo for a day, having allegedly agreed with Beast to some sort of job-for-a-day intern program. Tony is, of course, not thrilled to find Broo tagging along with him but Broo grows on him as he helps him solve a couple of science problems before going on to help him defeat the Chessmen, old enemies who have a chess-theme to their get-ups and quips and who shouldn't be a match for Tony but manage to interfere with his suit. When Broo comes in to save him and help him save himself, Tony takes to the alien and decides to give him the day he wants, showing him all around his labs, space, other heroes, etc. It's a sweet little story, one whose highlight is certainly in the banter with the chessmen, and one that altogether probably won't be remembered much past this very day, as is the theme of A+X.

Story two, of course, continues the Captain America/Cyclops team-up, though the two aren't together for most of this issue. They still work together, though, as they attempt to save the Skrulls from Cadre K from Doctor Doom, who has more experiments to run and more Skrulls to probably kill. They fool him momentarily as he comes in, as Cap sticks him with a micro-EMP and the psychic Skrull implants dreams of him beating the Avengers, but Doom figures it out and comes to, though he's still unable to move. Cap informs him, for some reason, that Cyclops and the other Skrulls and Avengers and X-Men previously gathered there are trashing Doom's lab and Doom teleports himself back to his craft from out of his armor, leaving the armor to self-destruct next to Cap and the other Skrull. Before they can head off after him, SHIELD shows up, possibly Agent Adsit, to take the Skrull away. When Cap defends the Skrull, Adsit(?) attacks him, thinking him to be a Skrull. Another piece of the long ongoing story that very nearly makes you care about the Skrulls but can't quite, just from size limitation and the fact that this is a story about Cap and Cyclops, so this story has very little stakes.

Night of the Living Deadpool 3
Bunn (w) and Rosanas (a and c)

Deadpool quickly kills the would-be invaders of the small community and goes to join up with them himself. He discovers that there's a former AIM scientist living among them and interrogates him to make sure he's not trying something evil, only to learn that this scientist's division of AIM, called AIR for Advanced Ideas in Regeneration, inadvertently created this apocalypse. As Deadpool begins to fit into the community, he wonders why his healing factor hasn't erased the scar on his arm from when one of his old fellow-survivors-turned-zombie bit him, even though it clearly flushed out the zombie bit. It turns out, of course, that it simply hadn't flushed out the zombie bit and he wakes in the middle of the night as a walker and turns nearly the entire community before his healing factor does kick in and reverts him back to Deadpool so he can see what he's done.

There's a neat little guilt-based story that's fairly original in here about a man who was a zombie killing his fellow survivors before turning back and realizing what's happened. It's particularly efficient with this type of zombie, which has some semblance of consciousness and doesn't want to be doing what it's doing. Of course, it's coming in the midst of a DEADPOOL book so it can be a little bit harder to see the deeper story through the lighter tone. It's still a decent story and it's stopped being so concerned with making every other zombie reference, giving it room to actually tell its own story. The coloring, black and white for everything except Deadpool and what Deadpool's dealing with, continues to be aesthetically pleasing but it does start to get a little hard to follow the theme of it when Deadpool turns and goes black and white, eventually returning to color when he changes back. Still an interesting book and it's giving Deadpool a few nice little introspective moments.

Marvel Knights Hulk 3
Keatinge (w) and Kowalski (a) and Filardi (c)

A little bit of Nikoleta Harrow's history as we learn that AIM had created (or at least imbued with powers) Nikoleta and she had broken out to ensure that she wasn't held back or destroyed by AIM. Now she's figured out how to successfully separate Banner from Hulk and how, in turn, to control Hulk. As a result of this separation, history has changed and Banner survived the gamma bomb as just himself, getting into the bunker with Rick Jones, though it led to a life with Betty Ross kept under quarantine while the army monitored his home and his health. Eventually Betty dies of exposure to gamma radiation and Bruce tries to run out from his quarantine only to be shot by the army, returning him to this timeline and putting him back in the Hulk's body, reverting down to Banner form and talking with Nikoleta, who is flying their rig right to where the gamma bomb first went off.

This is an incredibly weird story, and not in the sort of good way you'd want it to be. It seems like a whole lot of somewhat interesting ideas stuck together into a narrative that doesn't totally work for it. I'm reading a nonfiction collection by author and one-time comic writer Jonathan Lethem right now and he prefaces one of his essays by saying it's not one of his favorites, that it's included only because he liked the slice of life and character it builds, but that it's not favorite of his because it's a lot of journey with no destination. That's what this feels like. Granted, MARVEL KNIGHTS HULK still has one more issue to go so maybe everything will be wrapped up in a beautiful and thoughtful bow in the fourth issue but it's hard to imagine. It's harder because comic books and comic fans all really tend to like alternate-history things and "what if" ideas (hence why Marvel has their "what if" line) so seeing this alternate-Hulk story not only isn't the first time it's been done, it's not the best it's been done out there. Personally I'm still a sucker for the change we saw in Jeff Parker's RED SHE-HULK last year but there are definitely others and better ones out there. Whether it's fair or not, bringing up these sorts of ideas puts MK HULK in competition with all of these other stories and it comes up on the losing end, particularly sad since MK SPIDER-MAN and MK X-MEN have at least given us something new worth seeing.

Wolverine MAX 15, Marvel Knights Hulk 2, Night of the Living Deadpool 1

Wolverine MAX 15
Starr (w) and Ruiz (a) and Brown (c)

Logan searches the house of the people he just killed trying to defend for a means to start his new life. He finds a little bit of money, showers, and takes some new clothes with him back to Vegas where he gambles the money into a good amount more money. Before he can take off, though, he's drugged and brought to Mickey Gold's penthouse again and put in an adamantium cage. Gold comes in and soliloquizes about who Wolverine is and a little about his past (apparently he was hunted by a Frank Castle in a weird plot twist that will go nowhere as this is the last issue) before revealing that he was the one who paid for Wolverine's adamantium claws and that he also put adamantium claws into himself after finding out Wolverine was a disappointment (guys, this doesn't make any sense. Gold himself admits to not having a healing factor. How would he make his bones the hardest metal ever without a healing factor? Okay, I run a comics review blog, there's no need to call me a nerd for that statement specifically). They fight to the death over Gold's dead son and Wolverine eventually wins out. He also kills the security guards who come to assist Gold and he gets out of town. His last stop before movie on to a new life is to some train tracks, where he sticks his arms out to be run over by a coming train, hoping that his claws won't regrow next time.

I continue to not be sad about this book ending as it still disappoints more than anything else. Frankly, I think this and SAVAGE WOLVERINE should probably be one book, the all-the-gore-you-could-want Wolverine title. A friend of mine was talking with me a couple years ago about the brief introduction of Wolverine to Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and how excited that friend was to see Wolverine disembowel a villain on the show (it's shown through a shadow on the show to avoid showing too much gore but it's very clear how violent Wolverine is in the moment). Not because my friend loves grisly deaths but because that's what Wolverine does and, if I may be so bold, is the best at doing. He doesn't typically do that much in a standalone WOLVERINE series because they want to show him with heart and with a moral center that hates doing the violent things he does, which is totally fine. But if you're going to make a book about Wolverine that promises a return-to-basics Wolverine or if you're making a book that exists in order to show gore and sex and you have the ability to use Wolverine, you should be having a blast. This book was never having a blast. SAVAGE WOLVERINE seems like it often has more fun than this one but can't go as far and this one never has the fun it feels like it should. I don't know. Anyway, not upset this one's ending (though I will sincerely miss the monthly awesome Jock cover). It feels like it was meant to do something different and just never got around to it. Speaking of...

Marvel Knights Hulk 2
Keatinge (w) and Kowalski (a) and Filardi (c)

The two gamma-infused super soldiers detonated on Banner and took down much of a city block to do it. SHIELD officer Molly Fitzgerald is sent to collect Banner from the French authorities holding him but doesn't get there before Banner's stolen away by the very people who were trying to capture him anyway. They're apparently an off-shoot of AIM, led by a High Commander Harrow, intent on permanently separating from AIM. To do that, though, comes at the cost of making AIM an enemy and, in that respect, Harrow and her off-shoot are a bit outgunned. Harrow wants Hulk on her side but can't get Banner to remember anything nor to actually Hulk out. She injects him with the same serum the super soldiers had that will hopefully enhance his Hulk powers and make him loyal to her. Eventually all of the torture and everything else works and he Hulks out, possibly remembering who he is in the process, but the serum works as well so after he defeats the attacking AIM forces, he bows to Harrow.

There are three MARVEL KNIGHTS series currently running in the Marvel Universe, between this, MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN, and MARVEL KNIGHTS X-MEN. Each book seems to mix some sort of interesting new self-involved story with a really interesting and different art style that might not work thrust into the mainstream series but that really differentiates itself from anything else out there. Except, I would say, MARVEL KNIGHTS HULK. MARVEL KNIGHTS HULK tells a story where Banner has amnesia (which is, I suppose, maybe a new-ish idea but it's mistaking the idea that we really care about Banner and, since by issue two we've seen Hulk, the stakes are quickly lowered on that front) and Hulk is controlled by someone else, which is kind of a running theme for Hulk books. Not that it happens all the time, but that it happens enough (particularly if you've ever read just about anything in the Ultimate Universe). Also, the art is fine but it doesn't stand out in any way from other books on the market, particularly not in the same way that Marco Rudy's amazing MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN art flows around a page or the way that Brahm Revel's pastel-like art creates a tone for MARVEL KNIGHTS X-MEN. This one just kind of is. I don't think it's an awful story or something particularly poorly written, I'm just not that engaged by it and I'm finding it hard to see why this is in the MARVEL KNIGHTS line. Maybe I would be more lenient on it if it was called "HULK: THAT TIME HE HAD AMNESIA" or something like that but putting it in the MK line means that it has a sort of implied standard to live up to and I don't think it's doing that.

Night of the Living Deadpool 1
Bunn (w) and Rosanas (a and c)

Deadpool awakens after a food coma to find the world almost empty but for the zombies roaming every corner. Despite the papers flying around with headlines like "Dead Walk!" and "Dead Rising From the Grave!" and the hints he may have seen in the previous few weeks (of which there are plenty), it takes Deadpool actually running into a zombie and attracting a horde to himself when he fires a gun to realize that maybe there are such thing as zombies. He's ready to start slicing and dicing as he's surrounded on all sides before a human tells him to duck and promptly mows down a path of zombies so Deadpool can jump into their truck. They tell him they're headed to a potential army outpost that's hopefully still okay (assuming the contact they have with them can live that long) and inform him that the virus spread remarkably quickly, quickly enough that he missed it in the couple of days he was asleep in a chimichanga restaurant. Also, all the other heroes are apparently dead.

Hope you're not tired of zombie stories because HERE'S ANOTHER ONE. There are parts of this one that make it enjoyable still and if you're a zombie fan, likely you're going to want to flock to this. This one spends a lot of time establishing the zombie-run world (these zombies are a bit different as they still seem to have a human consciousness trying to reach out but unable to actually fight their body from attacking) and showing Deadpool ignoring the signs of the virus as it was happening. It's hard not to compare this one to THE WALKING DEAD, the major zombie series in comics and now in other media. For starters, the zombie world is all black and white (except for Deadpool), like THE WALKING DEAD comics. Even Deadpool waking up from a "coma" and finding himself in the middle of a city overrun and saved by a group of other survivors harkens back to TWD (though it's not unique in that respect). Still, the book obviously won't continue to be exactly the same as TWD features a sheriff with a complex history and a family to look after as its protagonist and this one features Deadpool. It's a pretty book (though I couldn't help wondering if I'd feel that way if it weren't black and white with splashes of Deadpool color) and, I mean, it's a zombie story, so you probably already know a lot about it, right?

Thunderbolts 19, Nova 11, Marvel Knights Hulk 1

Thunderbolts 19
Soule (w) and Walta (a) and Guru eFX (c)

The Thunderbolts are taking a road trip as they make their way to the next base. Deadpool is dead in the backseat (he'll be fine, he wanted it to pass the time) but everyone else is merely waiting out the car ride. Leader asks Ross for a cigarette lighter, wanting to re-center himself. Ross allows it and quickly Leader figures out a plan to dispatch with everyone in the van, including using his radiation emissions to knock Ross out before lighting Deadpool ablaze and using the magnesium in a road flare to neutralize the Venom symbiote while stabbing Flash through the chest, ultimately sending Punisher and Elektra to their death by directing them to save the others and tossing a bag of grenades in after them. He nixes the plan, though, when he realizes that then Mercy would show up and undoubtedly kill him. He also admits that he's not sure he's thinking clearly and that he's not seeing all the variables so he decides to wait it out, knowing that every team needs a leader.

Pretty fun little book. Despite it being a kind of "it was all a dream" issue, there's a lot to be gained. First and foremost, Leader seems to be moving quickly back to his old ways despite putting on a good show to the contrary. We, of course, have known something was up since we saw him willingly let Mercy out of captivity on the sub and force them to ground but now we can see his plans in their entirety and he's giving us a rare first person look into his mind and his plans and his goals. It's a very interesting issue and one that's certainly interesting to read even if it ends in the somewhat predictable "he's not actually doing any of this" way. Still a story that needs telling to show us exactly where Leader is right now and what he's thinking. Also, Gabriel Walta's first issue on the book brings some pretty impressive and very unique art to the series, not too far removed from Jefte Palo but also definitely its own style. Nice issue, great cover.

Nova 11
Duggan (w) and Medina and Vlasco (a) and Curiel (c)

Nova's getting readjusted to his normal life on Earth and trying to get it to fit in with his life as Nova. After believing that he was going blind upon returning home last time and seeing bright lights all across his vision, he visits their family doctor who tells him it's probably just temporary blindness brought on by stress and maybe a little by any recent hits to the head he's taken recently. While in one of his classes, Sam realizes that the lights he had been seeing are a map. That night, he flies to the nearest light and finds a dead Nova there. Also there are a horde of giant spiders hanging around that he manages to take down one-by-one. He hears the log from the dead Nova and it shows him an even bigger spider who gored this Nova throw the chest. Sam figures it out just in time and flies up and blasts the giant one from the safety of space. Realizing that the dots are all dead Novas, he decides to go home for the night. However, new enemy Cadivan, apparently a hunter or gladiator or something from deep space has kept a Nova helmet just in case some others should appear for him to kill and take as trophies. Now his helmet has flickered showing that someone is still out there.

Not a bad start for Duggan on his first full NOVA issue. Little bit of a slow start here as we get some time with Sam at school and Sam still trying to deal with his father running out on them and his mother looking for a job. Still, those things aren't bad things to have; the best characters are the ones who are deeper than what happens under the mask, in the vein of Peter Parker or Tony Stark. It does feel a little like this book wants to create the new Spider-Man, someone who lost the man who initially taught him about power and responsibility but he's still left with a strong if slightly helpless role model and support system all while navigating the treacherous waters of high school. Sam's voice still isn't bad here; it's maybe not as free-flowing or imaginative as Zeb Wells' but that may not be fair to judge after one issue. Not a bad issue and retaining the solid art team of Medina, Vlasco, and Curiel helps keep the tone pretty consistent, as the art of a book has as much to do with tone as any other aspect. It'll be interesting to see how a full arc progresses here.

Marvel Knights Hulk 1
Keatinge (w) and Kowalski (a) and Filardi (c)

Banner is face down in a river as this book starts and pulled out by a woman who saw him earlier that day on the metro (they're in Paris) having something of a freak out. She pulls him out and sees that he's got gunshot wounds. The woman, named Dyane, brings him to her apartment and gets to work trying to fix him up a bit and letting him rest. He wakes later and the two of them walk about the city as he tries to get his bearings. He remembers hulking out at some point but doesn't know where he is or who he is. As they walk around the city and she tries to get him to remember things, two mysterious men in trench coats track down Dyane's uncle George and show him a picture of Banner, asking if he's been seen. George says he has and answers all of their questions without hesitation but they gun him down anyway. They manage to find Banner and try to fight him, trying to bring the Hulk out. On the orders of their superior, they both inject themselves with some sort of serum and turn into something like hulks themselves, wrecking their way through the city on his trail. Finally, after scores of casualties, they explode in a blinding light right on top of Banner.

The first image in this issue is a full page panel of Banner face down in the water and I got flashbacks to Keatinge's first scene back on MORBIUS THE LIVING VAMPIRE, which found Morbius chased through the streets and getting "killed" brutally within the first issue. Apparently Keatinge has something of a theme going here. This issue, somewhat unlike MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN and MARVEL KNIGHTS X-MEN, seems to be hitting some clichéd ground, including the face-down man in the river, the mysterious but helpful stranger, the amnesia, the trench coat guys, etc. On top of that, the art isn't bad but it's not as experimental as it is in the other new MARVEL KNIGHTS books which really sets them apart from the more mainstream titles. So I guess maybe this one isn't going to be my favorite of the bunch; it moved a bit slowly and you could probably play a drinking game with the beats of this book. If he has a memory of hulking out but tries to downplay it, take a drink. If he has amnesia, take a drink. If he inexplicably gets asked out by the girl who really knows nothing about him except that he ends up face down in lakes, take a drink. If the men in trench coats have sunglasses, hats, and dark motives, take a drink. If you're bored by the end of the issue, take a drink. Thirst should be pretty well-quenched by the end of this one.

Comics this week

Another big week as another 19 or so major books come out on Wednesday. You might be asking yourself "gee, doesn't that make it over 60 in three weeks?" Why yes, yes it does. Trust me on that. I have to imagine that we're squeezing out all the books we can before a presumably slow Christmas week. Anyway, let's talk about this week with a few QUICK HITS.

Avengers 24.NOW
That's right, All-New Marvel NOW is starting and I don't know why we have to name our new-brandings like that. I felt ridiculous enough all year saying "Marvel NOW!" (with or without exclamation point, that was never cleared up) and now I have this hyphenated mash-up of words that serve only to remind me of ALL-NEW X-MEN, a series I do not care for. ANYWAY, this is the first AVENGERS issue post-INFINITY and, if you needed more reasons to check it out, comes with a Daniel Acuña poster exhibiting EVERY AVENGER.

Captain America 14
Cap is up against Nuke after a couple issues building to it! Can he stop the far more deranged and probably more powerful super-soldier? Also, what is happening in that poor guy's mind (in this case, "poor guy" can apply to either Nuke or Cap)?

Captain America Living Legend 4
This mini-series wraps after a pretty exciting and successful run. Excited to see just where it's going to go. Oh yes, and Cap is a monster as we start issue four. THESE THINGS HAPPEN SOMETIMES.

Marvel Knights Hulk 1
The two currently running MARVEL KNIGHTS series (SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN) are both impressive in their own ways, featuring really stand-out and unique art to go along with a story that I would deem "compelling enough." Interested to see where MARVEL KNIGHTS HULK will fit in, which I think leaves room for a lot of interesting art but who I also find to be an often-uninteresting character. In the right hands, he's amazing. In the wrong ones (which I tend to see more often) he's the same story over and over and I do not care. Let's find out where this one falls TOGETHER.

Thunderbolts 19
Maybe my favorite cover of the week. The Thunderbolts are on a road-trip! I've really liked this series as it turned the corner from readable with Daniel Way to immensely enjoyable with Charles Soule. I'm sad Jefte Palo seems to have moved on but I do like Gabriel Walta and I think the writing has been more than sharp enough to stand with an art change. Very interested to see where this is going now that Soule will move on to his first non-event-related story.