Tuesday, April 2, 2013

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.

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