Ultimates 30, Fearless Defenders 9, Deadpool 16

Ultimates 30
Fialkov (w) and Di Giandomenico and Ruggiero (a) and Charalampidis (c)

Kang is Sue Storm from the future, still sure that the only way to save the Earth is to gather the gems and get to work right away. We see how she convinced Reed and how she got the pieces in place but Tony and the Ultimates keep resisting, eventually pushing back enough to get their hands on the final gems. Tony uses it to revive his body and put it back in the armor while also using some of Reed's future tech to armor Thor up a bit, giving him a new Mjolnir and pretty much giving him his powers back. As it looks like the Ultimates are going to win out, everyone experiences the sort of vision into all universes that we got at the end of Age of Ultron and Sue realizes she's come too late again, that there's no way to save everyone from what's coming. The gems break and Sue-Kang disappears. The Ultimates win the day and imprison Reed, who then informs Sue that something more powerful than just the regular Gah Lak Tus storm is coming and that it's broadcast one word: hunger.

Neat little ending for this neat little arc. There's a bit more "this is happening because we said it's happening" in this one than there has been throughout the rest, which has mostly landed on the comic-book side of possibility. Tony revives his dead body and then makes Thor a god again with future tech and "a little know-how" which is kind of the ultimate "look, this is happening now, no point arguing." Bits like that are surprisingly easy to ignore, though, and it leads to a place we probably want to be anyway, with Tony alive and Thor powerful again. The tone stays impressive again; just as the start of this arc had an overwhelming feeling of "oh no, these guys can't be beat," the ending, between this issue and the last, has a real feel of a momentum swing and then the feeling of "oh boy, these guys can't be beat!" It locks down pretty well and it should segue nicely into what will undoubtedly be our next major storyline for the Ultimates.

Fearless Defenders 9
Bunn (w) and Sliney (a) and Gandini (c)

The Defenders are on their way to meet, as scheduled, a slew of current and ex-boyfriends at a pub in the city when they're sidetracked by more of Caroline Le Fey's hired help who are trying to awaken ancient sentient (though currently dormant) sculptures called the Pandemonium Axles and walk them through the city. I...I don't really know why. Maybe that's on me, but we'll get to that bit in a minute. The Defenders are momentarily stunted by they pretty quickly recover themselves and engage in the battle with the Axles and the villains, joined now by the men who were waiting on them at the pub. The men have been talking amongst themselves all this time about how the new team needed a helping hand or maybe they needed to stop teaming up altogether. They bring this up with the women as the battle ends and are deservedly rebuked. The Defenders, though, have prisoners to interrogate.

Guys I really hated this issue. First and foremost, plot wise, I didn't really have any idea what was happening. It's pretty sloppily put together. I had to read it a couple of times, once to read the whole thing as it was written, once to read what was happening with the women by skipping over the men part and once to read what was happening with the men by skipping over the women. It seems like reading a book a few times for coherency's sake should be a major warning sign for an issue. In addition, the tone of the book again suffers. I've had problems with this from the get-go with this book. Does it want to be snappy and funny or dark and dangerous? It doesn't play down the middle somewhere smart, it alternates back and forth all too often, leaving both aspects weak for it. The biggest problem that I have, though, is the blatant sexism it puts on the male characters. I've been a little wary of this book because it's heralded as an all-female book and that has clearly been its intent. Like I said with my pre-game this week for Mighty Avengers and like I've said before, I'd rather have Marvel overdoing it than not doing it at all, so I'm onboard. I'm admittedly more wary because it's a male writer writing a female team (as with Wood in X-Men) but that shouldn't necessarily make it bad. However, playing to these tropes of "the men think the women are doing too much on their own! How terrible!" both comes off as insanely preachy and as disingenuous from a male writer. I'm not trying to say that Cullen Bunn is intending to do anything sexist by going so blatantly anti-sexist with his females, I think he's just scraping off the top of the barrel here. Worse than that, it's taking characters who, on the whole, don't really have any sort of this kind of sexism in their history and making them sexist. Suddenly Flash Thompson doesn't think women can handle a team on their own. Iron Fist is there (though I thought he and Misty had been broken up for a while; maybe I missed something, though I'm not really upset about them, I've always liked that couple) and, though he doesn't necessarily agree with Flash and the also-suddenly-sexist Stephen Strange (a little more believable as Fraction made him a bit creepy in the last Defenders incarnation), he's complicit now in this sexism. It seems like such a cliche approach to making an all-female team and now it's actively hurting other characters who didn't need to be involved. I don't think that's the way this team should be handled. I think having an all-female team should be handled as if it's just that, simply another team. Sure maybe villains make references occasionally or something like that, but they should ignore it because hey guys, they're superheroes. All kinds of problems with this one.

Deadpool 16
Posehn and Duggan (w) and Shalvey (a) and Bellaire (c)

Deadpool is in captivity and dreaming about things under heavy sedation. He's starting to figure out a little subconsciously that he's in trouble and he manages to disconnect a tube with the mechanism he'd implanted a few issues ago into his thigh. It's enough to give him time to get out of the lab and make a break for it. As he's on the brink of escaping what he finds out is a laboratory and holding facility in North Korea, of all places, Butler finds him and begins to talk to him. Despite Preston's pleas, Deadpool listens and learns of a whole camp of created superheroes for North Korea which have been spawned from Deadpool's DNA. They're based on other, real superheroes, mostly mutants, but they're all descended from Deadpool's DNA, making them all pockmarked and hideous (not entirely sure why). Butler, of course, shoots Deadpool in the back of the head at the first opportunity, but not before telling him of the daughter he is and who they have under containment, the daughter he had with the girl from the Iron Fist/Power Man flashback issue (so at least that had a point, retrospectively). The brain heals slowly and Preston comes back online, trying to get Deadpool's mind to come back. It's hard to say how long it's been back as he's sitting in silence thinking about what Butler said. One of the mutants, a Nightcrawler, teleports into Deadpool's holding facility and gets him out of there. They talk as they start making an escape and Nightcrawler informs them that they're going to try to break out tonight and would love his help. They come upon a heavily guarded barn and Preston and Deadpool are curious as to what's inside. Nightcrawler says that it's never been that guarded before and Deadpool manages to break in with Nightcrawler joining him once he's inside. Within, they find what's being so heavily guarded: the real Captain America and Wolverine, under heavy sedation.

It's another pretty solid plot and overall pretty solid issue from Deadpool which, again, is so encouraging. The weight of a possible child really affects Deadpool and it does effectively shut him down for a little while, which is an impressive characterization. I will say, though, that I think the book is weakest as Preston tries to rally Deadpool, which might go back to my concerns for the book that maybe the writing is going well only when already established characters are there. I don't think either Michael nor Ben Franklin have been very good, let alone even less established characters, and this issue points to Preston not being a particular favorite of mine either. I haven't really liked her a lot throughout the series but I always figured it could be worse than having a straight man to Deadpool's funny guy in his head. Now I'm not so sure. I complained near the beginning of Superior Spider-Man that, as much as I loved him and was rooting for a return, Peter Parker in Doc Ock's head was grating and rather annoying, constantly just saying things we already knew, like "Come on, what are you doing? Spider-Man would never do that!" It's kind of the same with Preston and it weakens the writing a bit. However, overall, this issue again impresses and continues a pretty solid plot. I'm legitimately interested about what's coming next. Hopefully it keeps it up.