Nova 14, Night of the Living Deadpool 4

Nova 14
Duggan (w) and Baldeon and Pallot (a) and Sotomayor (c)

Nova and Beta Ray Bill have teamed up and they're headed after Skaarn. Sam remembers that Skaarn said he was going "nowhere" which Bill translates as "Knowhere," an old Celestial head that now serves as a neutral ground to many travelers. Skaarn IS there, meeting with a sketchy alien from whom he's trying to buy (or, as eventually happens, steal) a weapon called War Bringers. Bill sees him as he kills the alien and takes the remote he wanted anyway but Skaarn stops Bill mid-attack by radioing to his ship to tell them that if he dies or doesn't come back for some reason, they're to kill the Korbonites onboard. Outside, the War Bringer comes online right beside Sam and he, of course, ends up fighting it. It's very nearly powerful enough to kill him but his last minute adrenaline surge and will to live end up overpowering the robot and he survives. Bill comes to meet him there and tells him that they have to go to Knowhere's Continuum Cortex to be teleported away or else many on the ship will die. Skaarn teleports Bill away as Nova projects an image of himself into the teleported, making Skaarn believe both have gone. Free to try to follow Skaarn now, Nova finds himself called away telepathically by Cosmo, the "watchdog of Knowhere." He is, of course, an actual dog (one time member of the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Annihilators) whose powers have been weakened by a poison Skaarn used. Nova isn't alone as the story continues.

There are important pieces here, obviously, but a lot of the issue is dedicated to filling out the arc and to giving us just a little more character. The issue starts with Nova and Bill saving a damaged spaceship on their way out to Knowhere which leads into a story about how Bill nearly died saving his people once before being saved by another of the Nova Corps. The story is meant to inspire Nova and it clearly does enough of the trick as he recalls it when he brings down the War Bringer. This is Sam Alexander's real first experience with the things that are more his birthright, the deep cuts Marvel Cosmic stuff as he has now gone to Knowhere, dealt with Beta Ray Bill, and even met Cosmo, ratcheting the number of Guardians of the Galaxy he's met, past and present, up to three. This Nova is clearly going to be something interesting as we've now seen him deal with things on Earth, which he'll likely continue to do here and in NEW WARRIORS but he's still spending a good amount of time in space. Not often do characters drift between the two, usually preferring to stick to Earth or space. Could make him a pretty important cog in this universe.

Night of the Living Deadpool 4
Bunn (w) and Rosanas (a and c)

Deadpool finds himself seemingly alone now in a world filled with reluctant zombies, wondering how he turned zombie and back to kill everyone he was trying to save. He finds the zombie AIM agent he had met last issue and uses his head to direct the two of them to the AIR base, hoping that there would be some semblance of cure there. He gets there after a long and hard struggle and finds what appears to be the cure derived from clones of Deadpool himself. He doesn't have much time to celebrate as he's quickly overwhelmed by zombies. In a last ditch effort, he drinks as much cure as he can and allows himself to be eaten by the zombies. Anyone that bit him or was bitten by someone who bit him or so one and so forth ends up replacing their zombie tendencies and their mind with Deadpool's, making it essentially a plague of Deadpool now.

I've been very lukewarm about this book all the way through. I've thought some of the ideas were interesting, though the book was maybe a little overtly laden with references for me. I also liked the art and I'm kind of a sucker for black and white with only a specific splash of color, as this book had. It's hard to criticize this ending too much because, frankly, you don't see a lot of zombie related media ending well, or even ending at all. Sure sometimes people will get to some island, or embrace the zombies, or find some little hideaway home somewhere, but it doesn't explain anything major. No one has ever shown a real cure for zombies (aside from removing the head, destroying the brain) so, if nothing else, this one gets points for trying something new right as we got to the end. Of course, it's rather deus ex machina as a severed head directs Deadpool to the AIR lab and the lab has, in good condition, gallons of "cure" derived from Deadpool himself. Still, it's a bold choice, even if it's one that doesn't really track with me. Whatever, play by your own rules, I suppose. This style off-shoot Deadpool will return in DEADPOOL VS. CARNAGE.

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.

Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 4, Revolutionary War - Knights of Pendragon 1, Night of the Living Deadpool 2

Cataclysm - Ultimates' Last Stand 4
Bendis (w) and Bagley and Hennessy (a) and Keith (c)

The Ultimates have recruited the X-Men in the fight against Galactus and their newest, perhaps most desperate, plan revolves around Kitty Pryde. Their hope is to use Pym Particles to allow her to grow to near-Galactus size (or at least nearer-Galactus size) and get her close to the cosmic entity before she phases through him and, if all goes well, disrupts all of his technology inside. It's a gambit but it's the best they can do on such a short schedule. They inject Kitty with the particles but can't actually get her moving just yet as Jean Grey, who Stark had trying to probe Galactus' mind for any useful information, is noticed by Galactus and he turns his attentions towards the helicarrier. While they start to abandon ship, Captain America jumps into a jet and flies straight at Galactus, ramming the jet into Galactus' mouth as Cap attempts to bail. The helicarrier goes down, hopefully after a number of people were able to escape with the distraction Cap provided, and Galactus remains.

The cover would have you believe that Cap doesn't make it from his jump out of the jet but the pages inside don't indicate anything specific and, with comics, specifics are everything. Without a body, you can almost guarantee an alive body will turn up sometime soon. This event is still interesting and still worthy of, it would appear, the possible conclusion of the ULTIMATE line (by the way, I think we've covered but it's not the conclusion as they've already solicited and talked about new parts of the all-new Ultimate line or whatever they're calling it) but I think, for how small and contained the Ultimate Universe feels compared to the main universe, the sheer volume of books about this event has hurt the tension of it. With so many books and an entire universe tied to its outcome, it's starting to feel, even amidst all the action and all of the big set pieces, that the event is dragging. Almost every event at this point seems to reach that threshold, an invisible line where the reader's interest inevitably begins to wane. I do wonder if there are readers out there who are just reading the Ultimate Universe stuff and have been following this event with bated breath. Do you, mysterious reader, feel like it's still moving really well? Am I tainted because I've read every major Marvel book in between all of these CATACLYSM books? I don't know but it's the inherent problem (or one of the inherent problems) with these events and I think this whole event would be wise to start reaching its conclusion.

Revolutionary War - Knights of Pendragon 1
R. Williams (w) and Sliney (a) and Gandini (c)

Dai Thomas and Kate McLellan go to investigate an old underground Mys-Tech base while Pete Wisdom and Union Jack go to Avalon to warn Albion about Mys-Tech's re-emergence. Both pairs run into problems as Dai and Kate run afoul of the zombies of King Arthur's court, intent on returning to run Britain. Wisdom and Jack find that Mys-Tech beat them to Avalon and overran the Green Knight and possibly Albion. The stories converge as Albion falls out of Avalon and into the underground base (they were together the whole time, practically!) and manages to lead the Knights of Pendragon again. However, it's short lived as their overrun again fairly quickly. Fortunately, Wisdom snags zombie Excalibur and uses it to awaken the Green Knight, turning him into a knight for today (something like a marathon runner that's PROBABLY a British reference but I'm not about to understand it) and saving everyone, even resurrecting Dai, who had kind of died during the battle.

I was rather looking forward to this part of REVOLUTIONARY WAR because, on top of continuing the plot that I'm having a bit of trouble really getting into, it was bringing in characters I like and know a bit better in Pete Wisdom and Union Jack. It, instead, didn't really end up working for me and I found the whole thing something of a headache and often more grating than entertaining. It does a lot of the "clever, too-cool-for-this" captions thing I've taken such issue with over the last year or so and goes SO FAR out of its way to make sure we know the key points of these characters. Pete Wisdom calls himself a cynical guy, like, a hundred times in this issue (I didn't actually count but it FEELS like a hundred) and there's nothing I like LESS than a sarcastic or cynical person constantly asserting how cynical or sarcastic they are. UGH. Anyway, the plot doesn't clear up at all here as we only tangentially see what Mys-Tech is up to and the issue serves as just a way to show off a couple more characters and to point out who's Welsh and who isn't (?).

Night of the Living Deadpool 2
Bunn (w) and Rosanas (a and c)

Check it everyone, I can write this review SO FAST and you'll still get a PERFECT sense of this book. Deadpool and his team of humans travel through the zombies and typical zombie stuff happens, with the one person in their group who was already bitten turning and going on to turn someone else before Deadpool kills them both, then the other three people with him get bitten one after the other after Deadpool and company visit a slew of classic zombie-media locales (ie Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, oodles of Walking Dead, others I'm less familiar with, etc). Deadpool, now alone, finds himself near a human commune ready to be invaded by a group of other humans.

This series is a loving homage to zombies and everything zombie in media and, as such, straddles a fine line between nostalgia, hamfisted reference, and Deadpool. The art is really the standout of the book, particularly as we already have something sort of this nature with Headpool from MARVEL ZOMBIES, but it still can't really cover the fact that this book is only going to be for the true Deadpool fans out there and MAYBE for the true zombie fans out there. The problem is that zombie Marvel was already done better in the aforementioned MARVEL ZOMBIES and zombies in general have already been done better in...well, everything they mention from Night of the Living Dead to the amazing Shaun of the Dead to The Walking Dead. So every beat is predictable in some fashion, meaning that the allure of these Deadpool-centric series, the draw of seeing some new idea, is kind of gone. I liked DEADPOOL KILLUSTRATED best of all of these little series and that one introduced the most original ideas. After a turn through Deadpool fighting Deadpools (and at least the neat idea of a Deadpool alternate-costume for every hero they could fit on the page), we get to this. I don't know. I think the most I can say is that you'll probably know if you'll like it right from the get-go and if it's not for you in its design than it's not going to ever be for you.

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?