Thanos Rising 5, Deadpool 15, A+X 11

Thanos Rising 5
Aaron (w) and Bianchi w/ Pieruccini (a) and Svorcina (c)

The conclusion of the Thanos origin story begins as Thanos returns to Tian, now with a skeleton crew running his fleet (he's killed, you know, a bunch of them), to raze his home world. He has the crew stay inside after the initial wave of bombing, deciding to walk the grounds himself. The last man standing on Tian, Thanos' father, confronts him with a gun of his own design. Even with everything Thanos has done and how betrayed his father is, he can't bring himself to shoot his son. Thanos has no such issues, takes the gun, and shoots himself in the head with it. It doesn't work well and Thanos discards it, shooting his father in the stomach with his own weapons. The two have a chat about everything that's happened and, in the course of the chat, Thanos reveals that he's done it all for Death, who he still thinks is an actual person beside him. A'Lars is shocked by this and implores Thanos to check all the devices in his lab to tell him whether or not there's anyone else with them. Thanos keeps clinging to the idea of her but he begins to get a little concerned. Thanos shoots A'Lars again, still not enough to kill him, just enough that now A'Lars can watch the destruction Thanos spreads across the universe. It was enough, though, to sour him on the idea of Death as a physical person and he walks away from her, leaving her to follow him across the universe begging for him to acknowledge her.

I'm still thrown a bit by this series as a whole. Obviously the timing makes a whole bunch of sense with new readers coming from The Avengers and his likely subsequent appearances in other movies as well as his importance in the recently started Infinity event. This gives all those new readers a sense of Thanos as a villain and the lengths he's willing to go to and what drives him and the way his mind works and so on and so forth. While I liked the way this series ended (as opposed to the way I feared for a while it was going, where some tangible person was poking and prodding at the mighty Thanos to make him evil), I'm still unsure whether it's a series that needed to be done. In a business sense I'm sure it did so I'm willing to accept that answer. Comics are a business and you don't ever want to exclude new readers just as you don't want to upset old readers unduly. I think this series is a good example of that, giving a backstory for new readers while being inoffensive to old readers. Still, I've always seen Thanos as one of those "death for death's sake" kind of guys or the Iago trope of someone who seeds destruction because he's a sociopath. Less that, perhaps, than some others but in that vein. Giving him a driving backstory kind of takes that away (though you could make an argument to say this particular backstory doesn't because all of his motivation still comes from within). Oh well. Can't complain, solid business move and an acceptable creative move. Nicely handled, Marvel.

Deadpool 15
Posehn and Duggan (w) and Shalvey (a) and Bellaire (c)

Deadpool suspects that the people who have been harvesting his organs, led by the mysterious Butler, are connected to the Weapons Plus program, the same program that created Deadpool and Wolverine (as well as Fantomex, though I don't know, sadly, that we'll get him in this arc) and that was based around the Captain America model. He's not wrong, as we see Butler reprimanding one of the Weapon Plus scientists for rejecting Deadpool after they thought they had failed with him (they cured his cancer even if they didn't feel successful with his brain damage). Butler sees this is a huge oversight and wishes to test on him more, though he has his own ulterior motives in the form of someone he loves who's apparently in suspended animation or something similar. Anyway, Deadpool infiltrates Stark Tower to talk with Wolverine about the issues. Wolverine isn't much help and thinks Deadpool is being paranoid (well, not entirely, he thinks probably people are after Deadpool but he doesn't think it concerns Weapon Plus). Deadpool and Agent Preston go next to have a chat with Captain America at an AIM base he's bringing down. Cap follows Deadpool's logic in coming to see him but also doesn't quite believe him. He recommends Deadpool find someone to talk with about everything and come in out of the cold to find where he belongs in the world. Deadpool isn't assuaged and decides to put a mysterious device in his leg in case anything happens to him. Solid call since that night he's attacked by Butler and his cronies and taken in for testing (after a dream wherein he and Wolverine successfully defend from the Weapon Plus guys). Butler commands that Deadpool's legs and arms be removed as Deadpool's not going anywhere.

First and foremost I want to say that this is a legitimately good issue. I've had a lot of well-documented problems with this series in the past though I think it's steadily been improving bit by bit. I think the plot and the humor of the first arc was at its worst, slightly improved in the second arc, and slowly working its way up from there. One thing this team has done pretty well so far has been characterizing pre-existing heroes from the Universe and this arc is going to be a good test of that with super-established Wolverine and Cap joining the ranks. More than that, the plot seems sound and Deadpool is making fewer stupid jokes. Maybe he's talking less, I don't know. It does also make me feel like the supporting cast has been holding the book back (I haven't been a fan, exactly, of SHIELD agent Michael nor Ben Franklin nor really Preston, let alone the other bit-part characters that have come through). I've mostly liked the art in this series so far as well but I feel like we can't overlook this arc's art team of the awesome Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire. But really, it's a good issue with almost entirely good writing and ideas (there are still a couple of unnecessary and overkill jokes in there) and a solid plot to put us up against. I'll be thrilled if this series as a whole turns it around. As I've said, I don't like not liking books and I hate not having a good Deadpool book out there. Rooting for it here.

A+X 11
Thor and Magik: M. Benson (w) and Texeira (a) and Loughridge (c)
Spider-Man and Cyclops: Krueger (w) and Lim (a) and Sotomayor (c)

Another issue of A+X and I still don't know what this series is doing. The first story is Thor and Magik and it's a doozy. Thor, visiting the Asgard armory for just about the first time ends up inadvertently touching a weapon that sends him to Limbo (don't know why Asgard has that). Magik feels the disturbance and travels to Limbo to get Thor to stop messing around in her dimension. Thor isn't happy to see her and demands to bring her back to justice. He's also not really dying to give up on the fight with all the demons but eventually she just brings him back out to Earth anyway. Then she leaves. And that's the issue. Really weak story with pretty bad characterization. Very bare bones (Thor likes fighting, Magik runs Limbo, so on) and somewhat strange and off-character writing (Thor literally says "I tip my wings to his lady wife" at one point and what what does that even mean, Thor). Not much to be gained from this one.

Second story features Cyclops chasing a mutant body snatcher named Malice into the New York subway trains only to find himself confronted by Spider-Man, who sees Cyclops picking on average people (Malice doesn't just shape-shift, she takes over a body). When Spider-Man begins to hear Cyclops out, Malice tries to take him. Spider-Man is not so easily taken, though, as he's a bit familiar with people inhabiting other bodies. Eventually, Malice puts Cyclops in a position where he has to make body contact with her to save the life of the human she's attached to. She takes him over, which actually works according to Spidey's plan. He's able to take down Cyclops and restrain him enough to pull Malice out of Cyclops (Doc Ock has his ways to pull a mind out of a body). The two chat back in Spidey's lab for a minute wherein Spidey tells Cyclops it could help him to use the villain identity as it suits him. It's a fair sight better than the first story as we actually get some decent characterization here both between Cyclops being the hero and still being bewildered to find himself such a villain and between Spidey as Doc Ock still having trouble dealing with insults to Doc Ock and being as smart as he is. Better stuff, still a bit of a silly series. I swear some day it will end.

Thanos Rising 4, What If...AvX 2

Thanos Rising 4
Aaron (w) and Bianchi and Pieruccini (a) and Svorcina (c)

Thanos is getting closer and closer to the Thanos we know today and it's all been at the urging of his mysterious would-be lover. He ravages world after world in the hopes that someday it will be enough to please her but she insists that he should be nothing short of a god and so no amount of worlds will ever be enough. Finally the truth comes to light for Thanos: the woman is not a real person, rather it is Death itself. He's horrified to find this but still, he's come this far, so he insists that she love him even if it means killing his own homeworld.

I don't know how much I like this recast of Thanos. It works fine, sure, and I don't know enough about Thanos to say that he wasn't a perfectly fine, inquisitive little boy at first, egged on by Death. The twist here is definitely scores better than the way the series had been pointing otherwise, which meant that a woman drove Thanos to become the universe's biggest murderer, taking blame somewhat off him and putting it on to her. At least here it's kind of saying "of course Death was behind this, Death is the only one who profits from Thanos." Still, in a way, it takes the blame a little bit off Thanos and that's a bit strange, all said. I suppose we like our villains more complicated now but I'm not sure it's really done that. Instead, I think it's complicated him less in the guise of complicating him more. Instead of killing machine with ever-unknown motives, we have a killing machine who is killing simply to kill and that's a little strange, right? Of course, they have to give him a deeper background as we launch into Infinity and, of course, as we'll start to see him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe not too long from now. I guess no other origin would have worked so neatly for Thanos and would have tied him so irrevocably to death as actually tying him so irrevocably to Death. Still, it feels a little weak and, if you haven't noticed from my faffing about here, I can't quite put my finger on what it is. One issue left in the miniseries as Thanos turns towards Titan and, likely, back towards Earth.

What If...AvX 2
Palmiotti (w) and Molina and N. Lee w/ Magyar (a) and Rosenberg (c)

Magneto has destroyed the helicarrier holding all of the Avengers while the Phoenix continues to rush towards Earth. The Avengers fare somewhat well, truth told, despite the helicarrier crumpling. They lose Falcon and Colleen Wing, both of whom I like very much but, frankly, it seems like it could have been a lot worse. Meanwhile, Magneto goes with Hope and Emma to the moon to await the Phoenix while Namor sort of kills Wolverine by beating him up pretty well and throwing him underwater, presumably not giving him a chance to heal. Cyclops and Iron Man shout a bit at one another but Cap directs their attention away, preferring to team up against Magneto and his plans over anything else. Up in space, the AvX space strike-team encounters the Phoenix and, as before, falls to it. However, in this reality, Hope takes on the Phoenix herself on the moon.

This one definitely moves better than the last. I still have some issues with the conceit of this changed reality, wherein Magneto and Namor snap so suddenly and are willing to kill the Avengers so readily. However, burying that a bit now that it's set and we're looking at this issue as it fits into this story, this reality is now playing out differently as Cyclops removes himself a little before the Phoenix attack to presumably ask what he and his X-Men have become if they're this willing to kill Avengers. It still, obviously, remains to be seen what the X-Men will think when a full-strength Phoenix comes back to Earth (in AvX, the full-strength Phoenix only appeared before the real events of the book and at the very end, when Scott went crazy and killed Xavier) but at least we're firmly on this track now and the book is stuttering a little less because of it. Some of the characters still feel a little copy-pasted and it's hard to pull a real identity out for many of them, which is a flaw now and could be a greater one going forward, though I don't think this series will go on long enough to delve too deeply into character for it to matter too much, but the art is pretty great and the story is now at least a bit more of a reasonable "what if" as, instead of asking "what if Magneto and Namor went a bit crazy and killed some of the Avengers before AvX," it's now asking "what if Hope did take on the Phoenix on the moon?" Better question to ask, really.

Avengers 15, Avengers AI 1

Avengers 15
Hickman and Spencer (w) and Caselli (a) and F. Martin w/ Delgado (c)

This issue of Avengers is billed as "the prelude to Infinity," referring to this summer's Infinity event that will focus itself on Hickman's two Avengers books, Avengers and New Avengers. Several issues of each will be dedicated to the event, as will a couple of books from several other series and the main series, a six issue limited series entitled "Infinity." Infinity has been promised as the way that the Marvel Universe will springboard off from Guardians of the Galaxy, Thanos Rising, and Nova into the future. Also, it's a major event, with books dedicating issues to them that seem to not have a weird designation after them, as Age of Ultron tie-ins did (like Uncanny Avengers 8AU). Avengers will continue its storyline, centered on stopping the Builders from re-making Earth while New Avengers will find that team fighting an attacking Thanos. In theory, it will all be connected. That said, there's not a ton in this specific issue to go over. We pick up where last issue left off and find most of the team fighting in Perth against the communication system and Banner trying to figure out how everything is linked. They also know that something is happening in Barbuda (AIM Island) but aren't quite sure what to make of it yet. Cap and his team seemingly defeat the communication system but not before it sends its signal to the huge entity breaking out of AIM's hold as the issue goes on and sending the signal out to the Universe at large. Many ships appear on SWORD's radar all at once. SWORD is able to block off most of the ships but a Skrull ship breaks through. In other Avengers activities, Captain Universe and Manifold go to space.

There's plenty happening in this issue but it's not a ton more than what happened in last issue or what we could have expected for next issue. It does read as a sort of prelude issue, feeling a little like it's slowed down to catch readers up before the event kicks off. One of the weaknesses of this series, in my mind, has been that the cast is too large and the story too huge to really get into character deeply. I feel like only a handful of issues have really gone into characters' personalities in the first fifteen issues and I wonder if that will hold up as time goes on. Still, it remains a solid book and this event promises to be something interesting, no matter what else we might call it as it's coming out. As a rule, I tend to shy away from events that span issues of many books because I rather hate having the full universe focused on one story (despite anything I may have said about Civil War this past week) for a bit of time. I think, probably, everyone is a little wary about that because it puts an awful lot of pressure on the event to be great because if the event is boring (Fear Itself, Siege), the spin-offs are likely to drag and drag and drag and drag and oh hey, AvX What If is out this week, hm?

Avengers AI 1
Humphries (w) and Araújo (a) and D'Armata (c)

Hank Pym is a new man following his destruction of Ultron and, as such, the destruction of the man he was in the Marvel Universe (as if that makes up for the fact that we all know you hit Jan once). However, the virus that he created to destroy Ultron has spread and is rapidly evolving, creating a new sort of AI that SHIELD division agent Monica Chang wants destroyed before it brings about the singularity. Chang treats Pym fairly hostilely before Captain America steps in and says that Pym is not to be accused of anything and that he's a founding Avenger and so on and so forth. Instead, he asks Pym where Vision is, speculating that they could need him for this. Pym explains that Vision has been upgrading himself out in space, as his core programming (built from Ultron) dictates that he do whatever he needs to do to ensure his survival. Pym calls him back and sends him to pick up former Runaway Victor Mancha, another son of Ultron. They join with Pym and he introduces them to their other teammate, a carefully monitored Doombot Pym has outfitted with a portable black hole in case he should turn on them. Pym sends them to a hospital that is being attacked by bots bearing his AI (connected somehow to an entity known as Dimitrios). The team works pretty well and ends up defeating the bots and finding what they were looking for; a robotically enhanced woman only able to say "Dimitrios is coming."

Skottie Young variant because they are
ALWAYS GREAT.

There are plenty of places to go with this series as the AI of the Marvel Universe has really come alive in the last couple years (pun one hundred percent intended). It's still too early to say much about this plot but it's easy enough to get into the characters here. Pym was redefined in Mark Waid's Age of Ultron 10 AI which set him up as a more creative person and a man who has broken from his rigidly scientific background to try to solve problems in any way he can/any way that interests him. Vision has improved himself to the point of being able to transform himself into nanites and also to activate an explosion, which he refers to as a supernova (and given the fact he powers himself with the sun, it is probably an accurate description on a very small scale). Victor, who has been removed from his Runaway pals for a bit now, is determined to get back into the hero game, even going so far as to constantly give himself a new hero moniker, including devil slayer and and wolf swag in this issue. There's a fun relationship between Mancha and Vision that casts them as brothers, both the rebel sons to Ultron. Doombot is, as expected, a Doombot and adds another dimension to the team (I love seeing some Doom, we'll see how it'll last over a series). There's a lot to like here but not a ton to talk about, despite the length of this post. Guess I probably just blacked out and babbled a bunch, huh? Whoops.

Age of Ultron 9, Thanos Rising 3, Thor: The Dark World Prelude 1,

Age of Ultron 9
Bendis (w) and Peterson, Pacheco, and Bonet (a) and Mounts and Villarrubia (c)

One of my problems with this series, as I've said time and time again, is that it is way too long. I tend to have issues with Bendis on this front, which I'm sure I will examine again tomorrow as I write a review for the final issue of Daredevil: End of Days. However, I think we've officially reached the point where I have nothing more to say about this series. Everything I've written about this series (and recent Bendis as a whole, honestly) holds true; it expects that the readership, people currently reading comic books, I'd remind you, don't know anything about time travel, it focuses on characters who like to talk in quick bursts of snippy dialogue, and a bunch of the tones don't match with the seriousness of the situation. I'd add to that, in this case, that there are literally three pages of this penultimate issue which feature panels of destroyed New York and Wolverine making a plethora of grunts and groans and the like. All in the same area of blown-up New York. Then Tony Stark tells Wolverine that time is an organism and traveling back and forth through it to change things tears it apart and Wolverine proceeds to travel back to talk to himself about killing Pym. As the both talk to each other in snappy repartee, with the occasional interruption from Hank Pym saying "this is fascinating" and the likes, the opposite of what the audience is thinking before all three are greeted by Sue Storm, also still back in time, who jumps in to, first and foremost, blame Wolverine for knocking her out at the car so that she didn't come in to see what was happening. This might not sound that objective, but this is all so stupid. Then they tell Pym to create Ultron but make it so he has a design flaw that he can't fix and that Pym can activate to stop Ultron but Pym can't know he's activating it because this is all so stupid. Then he makes a weird new Ultron as the Wolverines and Sue arrive at the Savage Land and watch as one Wolverine kills the other, which is all so stupid.

As I said above, I'm not convinced I can say anything else objective about this book. This is one of the problems with a series that has dragged on too long; a once-noble reviewer dedicated to try to look objectively at the book is now forced to admit that maybe he's not in the right state of mind to do just that. Instead, he wants to type "stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid" all over this review. Frankly, we should all praise him as a hero for not having done that from word one of this review.

Thanos Rising 3
Aaron (w) and Bianchi (a) and Svorcina (c)

Thanos leaves Titan after killing his mother to go on and push forth in his new life. He goes across the universe, from galaxy to galaxy, with a crew of pirates, landing many wives and spawning many children across the cosmos. None of it is satisfying for him as he keeps taking more wives and fathering more kids and killing more aliens with his pirates in order to simply feel something. He doesn't, except lingering remorse over the things that happened at Titan. Mostly, he's upset that the mysterious girl didn't reciprocate his feelings towards her. She, he is convinced, is the only woman who will ever make him feel love. In this new life, he leaves all of his wives and children behind time after time and has sworn off killing, even though it enrages the pirate captain. He keeps his job because he's adept at finding new targets and turning off all of their sensors and everything. However, his seeming inability to kill is a point of contention with the captain, who eventually attacks Thanos to provoke a response. As Thanos continues to refuse to fight, he accepts his fate, ready to be beheaded. Instead, though, he seems to black out and opens his eyes to find the pirate captain disemboweled before him. He returns to Titan later to see his mother's grave and comes across the mysterious woman again. He asks her to marry him, deciding that she needs him just as much as he needs her, and promising her that he'll give her anything she could desire. She sort of consents, saying that he'll need to be hers and hers alone and demanding that he go out and kill all of his once wives and children, which he begins to do as the issue ends.

I'm unsold on this series. I'll be honest, I don't know the full history of Thanos. I know only what I've seen reading the books that I've read in my lifetime which means I've seen him more than a few times and through several different lenses. However, this is comics and he's been around for four decades now so I certainly don't know his full character. In what I do know of him, though, he's a comic book villain in every sense of the word. He's cold, he's calculating, he's powerful, and he's evil. Sometimes that can come off as cliche or lazy or any number of other negative attributes. However, sometimes the best villains are simple brilliant sociopaths, dedicated to chaos for chaos' sake. It's the character of Iago from Shakespeare's Othello and it sustains over time for a reason. Sometimes, then, giving these characters a background can actually weaken them. I'm not a hundred percent sure that's true of Thanos (particularly where I'm not sure of his background in general) but it kind of feels like, as the mystery is unraveled, it's going to leave people feeling a bit unfulfilled. I suppose if this woman turns out to be inside Thanos all along (a definite possibility) or something along those lines, it's going to equate to about that same thing and it will have been nice to watch his descent into madness (well, maybe "nice" is the wrong word). However, if it is a woman, I have some serious qualms about the message here and Marvel should probably be a little careful about the idea that one of its universe's biggest killers was turned this way by a woman. So let's all just hope it's his imagination.

Thor: The Dark World Prelude 1
Yost and Kyle (w) and Eaton and Hennessy (a) and Troy, Sotomayor, and Mossa (c)

This is a weird one. If you saw The Avengers, and you're reading this blog so I have a feeling you did, you'll recognize about 50% of this issue. This book takes place before and concurrent with the movie as we learn exactly why Thor hadn't yet returned to Earth prior to Loki's attack on the Tesseract. We also see a little bit of how Thor came back to Earth with the Bifrost destroyed, something that was glossed over a bit in the movie (with a throwaway line talking about dark energy and the cost to send him through). More or less that's what we get here as Odin shows Thor some dark energy and explains it will cost them both to send him through it. So pretty much exactly the same. However, we also get some interesting stuff about how hard Jane has been working to reopen the portal and what the universe is doing in Asgard's absence from it. For someone looking to get into the spirit of Thor: the Dark World with only knowledge from Thor and The Avengers, it seems that this comic is certainly accomplishing that. It's a good interweaving (not necessarily seamless, but good) of the storylines from the Cinematic Universe with some behind-the-scenes Asgard stuff tossed in. I don't have a huge idea of what's coming in the newest Thor movie, set for release in November, but it certainly feels like this book is going above and beyond to tie some plots together.

What intrigues me most about this book is that it's co-written by Christopher Yost, writer for Scarlet Spider and Avenging Spider-Man, most episodes of the amazing TV series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (available on Netflix streaming), and, most importantly, co-writer for the screenplay of Thor: The Dark World. It's encouraging that one of the writers of the movie is entrenched in comics and has already had success translating comics for media with EMH. It's also encouraging for this two-issue prelude (which feels like it's being released too early to coincide with a November movie release) that one of the film's writers will be helming this tie-in. Fun stuff, probably not a ton of substance for long-time fans but great to get caught up in the Cinematic Universe and probably great for fans whose only knowledge of Marvel comes from the movies. Good way to introduce a lot of concepts that could be lingering on the shelf before this movie.

Age of Ultron 7, Thanos Rising 2

Age of Ultron 7
Bendis (w) and Peterson, Pacheco, and Martinez (a) and Mounts and Villarrubia (c)

Guys, if you go back to the past and kill someone, the future changes! That seems to be the lesson of this story and, in particular, these few issues. What a twist that no one saw coming! Except that it's so prevalent in science fiction that there's already a term for when this very thing happens and it is used commonly, despite the fact no one in our lifetime has ever gone back in time and killed someone.
So yes, I continue to be a bit bitter about Age of Ultron. It might even come off sounding a little hypocritical, considering how much I'm enjoying Dark Avengers and preparing to enjoy Red She-Hulk. Those are different. We're looking into alternate dimensions there, where something has happened in the real history of the place that changed it. It's a nice hypothetical situation asking things like "what if Hank Pym had died early into his research?" and then giving us some sort of answer in a universe where that's the way things are. Here, in the main Marvel Universe, we all know that things are going to be reset and a couple things might be a little different, but by and large this hypothetical situation isn't fully realized, just a slight diversion from the main path. Then we end up back on the main path. Woo. Thanks for the ten issue "major event."
So yes, Wolverine and Sue return to the present to find that EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. It's a lot of "gee, what's all this? This wasn't here before..." for a bit of time, then they get attacked by the Defenders, a team of heroes comprised of Cap with a Nick Fury eyepatch, Doc Strange, Thing, a smarter Hulk, Janet Van Dyne in a costume that's a cross between Captain Marvel and the Wasp, Wolverine in old-school costume/Daken costume, Starlord, and Cyclops/Cable (dying to hear how that happened). Wolverine and Sue are eventually taken down and Doc Strange says they have to go to "him," which Colonel America (for real) doesn't want to do. However, "he" shows up anyway, a version of Tony Stark controlling tons of Iron Man armors and looking more cybernetic than human. Where will this lead next time? When will this all eventually go away and be restored? Only time can tell (issue 10).

Thanos Rising 2
Aaron (w) and Bianchi (a) and Svorcina (c)

Thanos left the last issue slaughtering a heap of lizards and now we find him no long averse to the idea of killing. However, he does it for science, not for joy. He's certainly intelligent, learning faster than he can be taught. However, the existential questions of life bother him and he has no idea where to start looking for those. So he looks inside a lot of different creatures, than finally inside the people of his planet. As he tries to find something that can tell him what he is and what his purpose is, the mysterious girl from the last issue, the one who nudged him in the direction of killing the lizards, continues to watch him work. He twice tries to express love for her and twice he's rejected. She's happy he's letting his inner nature out (though he initially denies a joy in killing) but she wants nothing to do with him by way of love. We learn a little about Titan too, as narration tells us that no one had ever been murdered there before Thanos was born. He reveals later that he's killed 17 people. Mostly children but a few professors on occasion. This issue ends with his admission that he finds joy in killing, if only because killing lets him feel close to someone, lets him stop feeling alone for a moment. So he's determined that maybe the issue is in love and in his makeup and need for love. The only place he can find love and answer questions about his makeup? His mother, who he has strapped to his dissection table now.
The tale of Thanos is getting darker quickly. It's well paced so far; it's a four issue mini and definitely feels like, if we keep ramping up the creepiness exponentially, it could lead to the Thanos we know today. The biggest drama and intrigue in the continuation of this series will be in seeing how this boy, who wants answers about why he has to be this way and what purpose he serves, will become the all-powerful and pretty murder-hungry Thanos. Hopefully it goes a different way than saying "he just wants to be loved" and I think it will. It could go in the existential route, with Thanos deciding that no one really has a purpose and he's just the sociopath to prove it. However, the best option seems to be to let Jason Aaron tell the story and allow him to guide us through the history of the cosmic supervillain who is rapidly re-emerging on the scene after his surprise cameo in The Avengers. With Guardians of the Galaxy on the table as a new book and a new upcoming movie, we're moving Marvel back into the cosmic realm and who better to usher us there than Thanos, who will also headline the next major Marvel event, Infinity. It's interesting to get to dive a little deeper into his history to see why he is what he is, if we indeed will see that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comics this week

Very soft week this week. Only 11 titles by my count and, in truth, I'm looking forward to maybe half of them? Deadpool sets out on his first issue post-first arc so who knows, maybe things will turn around, but I'm not optimistic enough to put it on this list. There were a couple on the brink of the last pre-game spot this week, but only one will make it. Who will come out on top on this virtually meaningless list? Read on to find out.

Age of Apocalypse 14
The X-Termination event continues into April and hopefully will keep the momentum from the last few issues going. As I said in my Astonishing X-Men review last week, the big group is separating out now into smaller groups so we should get a good sampling of character interactions to go along with our exciting story about the deadly consequences opening too many trans-dimensional portals. A valuable lesson for today's youth.

Indestructible Hulk 6
Hulk and Thor team up in Asgard behind the writing of Mark Waid and the illustrations of industry legend Walt Simonson. I've liked the stories so far and I'm interested to see how Waid treats the team up between two of Marvel's most formidable heroes. The way the series has been going to this point has had a focus on Bruce Banner and his intellect matched up against problems Hulk couldn't handle followed by problems that Banner couldn't handle that he sets Hulk on. Now Banner, a man of science, is going to Asgard, a place of magic, to team up with Thor against some evil. I'll be interested to see who takes point on this one.

Superior Spider-Man 7
Okay, LAST TIME I was wrong and we didn't get a big Avengers-Spider-Man fallout. We got the very start of that idea, as the Avengers questioned Spider-Man's recent behavior and eventually decided that they needed to step in. THIS WEEK we seem guaranteed (especially given the pretty neat Humberto Ramos cover) to see the Spider-Man-Avengers fallout and/or chit chat. Sometimes I've assumed that there would be fallout with this new Spidey and found instead that people are pretty easily convinced of his good guy-ness. Peter's probably earned that, but in a world full of people who are constantly Skrull-impersonated or mind-controlled or body-swapped it seems like people are just a little too trusting when someone goes off character. A little suspension of disbelief for all of us.

Thanos Rising 1
I'm coming into this book with little to no knowledge of the plot or anything heading in. I had heard about it (though I thought it had been cancelled before its start...guess I was wrong) and I know it's Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi, so it's a strong creative team, but other than that I'm pretty in the dark. I'm curious to see if this is going to be used to propel Marvel NOW! into a new place (as has been hyped) or to set us up as we amble towards Avengers 2. Thanos was the villain in the first post-credits scene, the one who seemingly had a hand in orchestrating Loki's attack on Earth, and is a pretty ambitious Avengers villain to try to capture on screen. Marvel is clearly making a push for their cosmic corner of the universe  to start playing a big role again with this book and movie villain, the new Nova series, and the Guardians of the Galaxy book and upcoming movie. Thanos Rising might be a way to gauge how popular their strategy will be.

Winter Soldier 17
As I said above, there are a few books that were vying for a spot this week, specifically the spot that was given to Superior Spider-Man. Winter Soldier probably would have been one of those books were I not obsessed with the character and the book as a whole. Any regular readers probably know that I'm a huge Winter Soldier fan and I was sad to see Brubaker leave the book. I'm still unsure of where Latour is going with the new-look series but this makes the list without question because I'm interested in its future. I'm kind of a sucker for the spy-style books that pop up occasionally in the Marvel Universe and, though the series has moved from its noir feel, Winter Soldier definitely falls into that category. However, it's a broader scope now, with Winter Soldier going toe-to-toe with some main Marvel bad guys like Hydra. I'm curious to see where it's all going and hopefully I'll come out the other side of this arc with a good feel for it.