Winter Soldier 19
Latour (w) and Klein (a and c)
The final issue of Winter Soldier finds Tesla having created a cosmic cube of some sort, the Tesla Tesseract. Her plan is to create chaos by going back in time with it to kill the people who have brought her pain. She advises Bucky to take the opportunity to go back and finish Novokov before he can hurt Natasha or wipe her memories. He refuses, knowing that time shouldn't be broken this way. He watches helplessly as she jumps them to various points in her life where she was hurt and kills whoever was torturing her. All the while, Bucky pleads with her to return and live the life she has. Finally, she brings him back to the day he killed her father and tells him that now he has the chance to make all of this go away by not killing her father. He explains that he understands what he was and who he is and how everything feeds into his life and how he can't just go back in time and change things, as much as he wants to erase his Winter Soldier past. No good can come from altering the past. Tesla attacks him, using the body of Father Hammer, who was evidently watching Bucky even at this point to see his skills. As Bucky gives up the fight, he shows Tesla her reflection on his knife. When she could have gone to see her father in this time, she chose instead to look like Father Hammer. Mortified by this, she brings them back to the present and admits her mistakes, fighting a war on soldiers. Unfortunately, it's too late to save them as the cosmic energy is expanding too quickly. Bucky uses his arm, rigged with a homing beacon, to send them back to Earth while she keeps them intangible so they don't crash into anything. They land in the ocean and she sinks away, disappearing, while he emerges at the top. There's a nice wrap-up for Joe Robards where he acknowledges without acknowledging that he knows Bucky killed his wife but he understands the weight of having a mission. Bucky returns to the cube despite himself and goes back in time to kiss Natasha at a time when she knew him before leaving again.
It's a wonderful and fitting wrap-up for the Winter Soldier, whose biggest demon since his return, and rightfully so, has been his past as the Winter Soldier. This issue gives him an out, a way to try to erase the things he's done and the person he was in that time, or even small parts of it. He could erase the horrible acts he's committed, he could erase Novokov and get back Natasha, he could do just about anything. Instead, he comes to terms with what the past means. Will he ever be over it? No, probably not. He probably shouldn't ever be. But maybe he can move past it with this feeling. Latour and Klein inherited an almost impossible job (replacing a beloved writer who created this character on a near-failing book) and did very nice work anyway. Klein's art really stands out here as there's a great piece at the beginning that shows the Winter Soldier's beginning as Bucky falls into the water from the drone he couldn't stop which calls back to early Avengers style art and uses great colors. The issue is solid and their run was well-executed. Still very sad to see this book go. Well at least the other two books in this review are still going strong and will never-oh.
Red She-Hulk 66
Parker (w) and Pagulayan, Olliffe, Bennett, and Jose (a) and Staples (c)
Red She-Hulk and X-51 arrive in the Florida Everglades, the Nexus of Realities, according to the Terranometer. Time is different here and Aaron is hopeful that they'll have the best shot of changing a fixed point in time by going to where time is least fixed. As they arrive, Red She-Hulk instantly spots and attacks Man-Thing, home after his journey with the old Thunderbolts some months ago. He teleports her into a different reality, one where she goes out and saves Bruce Banner on the gamma testing site where he saved Rick Jones and became the Hulk. As a result, she becomes the Hulk (still red and a she, but now the only Hulk) and he's just a great scientist. In this reality, Banner is able to help Betty keep Hulk in check and maintainable, leading to her eventual transformation into a form far more like the Red She-Hulk we know. As a result, she's more accepted in society and is a valued Avenger (who makes out with Thor at least once in her lifetime), all of which makes Banner jealous. Banner teams with Dr. Stack and creates the Machine Men, used to attack super-powered individuals. This whole time, Aaron has been trying to contact Betty in this world to get her to remember who she really is and bring her back to their universe. He can only effectively communicate with her through dreams and she shakes them off in the morning, fully embracing her new life when awake. When Banner and Stack create the Machine Men, Aaron is finally able to enter the world as more than just a spectator, as he enters his own alternate body. Man-Thing continues to watch from the sidelines, unsure of what exactly is happening and unable to teleport them back in any useful way. On the plus side for them, though, She-Hulk has tracked Red She-Hulk with the help of Echelon before leaving them in the dust to reach Betty and Aaron first. She arrives as Aaron, who, in this world, is programmed to hunt superheroes, is trying to tell Betty that this world isn't hers and she needs to go back with them. Unfortunately, Aaron is just a machine and must continue attacking her while trying to give her advice so it comes off pretty misleading. Man-Thing is able to open Betty's eyes to her past, but now she has both histories running through her mind so she's not in great shape. Man-Thing and Aaron try to get She-Hulk to help but Betty goes full Hulk right as General Fortean arrives so everything is going completely wrong and crazy as the series ends next issue.
GUYS, I can't believe this series is ending. I've loved this book since it switched over to Betty as the primary character and this issue illustrates again how perfect it is. First and foremost, this is an alternate timeline done right. Parker did it very well in Dark Avengers but this is a different animal, as it's one change that has meaningful implications and that logically moves from one step to another. I could name other books where, for example, Hank Pym is killed and then everything changes to such a ridiculous degree that you might mistake Hank Pym for God. Instead, one switch changes the whole Hulk dynamic of the Marvel Universe and everything naturally follows from that switch. On top of that, we have our characters acting in character (except occasionally Betty, who doesn't actually know what her character is) and doing what they can to solve this. One of the best parts, though, comes from Aaron who is fresh off his failure against the Yologarch because he couldn't escape the fact that he's just a robot following code. In this new universe, he is humbled again to find that he still can't break code so, as human as he is, he can't stop attacking Betty, his friend, while he's trying to save her. It's a brilliant extension of the ideas addressed with Aaron before this, and something that comes up occasionally with AIs but is still an engaging idea made far more engaging by the long game Parker has been playing to make us like Aaron so much and to give him so much personality over the course of this series. It's hard for me to understand why this book is ending, though Jeff Parker has assured me it's not my fault so I feel pretty good about that.
X-Factor 257
David (w) and Edwards and Carnero (a) and Milla (c)
"The End of X-Factor" six-part arc has officially started which should bring us right up to Peter David's final X-Factor issue and the final issue of this run on X-Factor (there is some speculation that it will be restarted as a part of Marvel NOW! or Marvel NOW! 2 which is apparently a thing that is happening that I'll probably have to look into more when I haven't written a few overly giant reviews already (stop writing and canceling great books and maybe I'll stop typing so much...but don't actually stop writing great books, okay? And look, in the interest of honesty, I probably won't stop typing so much). We jump right into it as Layla has tracked the demon goat-headed Madrox to Marrakesh, Morocco where he's being held by a boy named Aziz who hopes to use him to open a portal to the afterlife and bring his mother back from it. Yes, it's already kind of the saddest story. Layla, who knows things, has found her powers to be a bit off of late. This run-in with Aziz and his uncle (who has dabbled in dark arts and thinks he can use Jamie to open the portal successfully) was something she saw in her thoughts but it was supposed to be a quick detour as the portal never opened and Madrox was supposed to still be Madrox when it happened, not goat-head Madrox. Unlike her visions, though, they successfully open the portal and goat-head goes in and pulls the mother out. Unfortunately, the mother is a horrible demon thing now and kills Aziz almost instantly before approaching Layla. Layla's forcefield doesn't protect her from this otherworldly being and she's about to suffer the same fate as Aziz when goat-head Madrox pulls the demon back and throws her into the portal. Layla disguises Madrox and they leave, still unsure of what to do next and Layla unsettled by her inaccurate visions.
This is a certainly compelling storyline. I love Madrox, as readers of this blog should certainly know by now, and so I'm happy if this final arc focuses on trying to get him back. The idea that Layla's visions aren't predicting the correct events is an interesting one and how exactly she'll be able to translate those to help could lead to a great story. On top of that, this seemed to be the first time that we saw goat-head show some sort of semblance of an idea of what was happening, as he saves his wife and escapes with her pretty willingly. Whether that's more a survival instinct or part of Jamie's personality coming through is up for debate. Still, the issue was a very quick read and was over well before I was ready for it to end, which is always a good sign, if a little depressing. I'll be interested to see where this one takes us to trigger the ending.
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