Nightcrawler 1, Superior Foes of Spider-Man 11, All-New Doop 1

Nightcrawler 1
Claremont (w) and Nauck (a and c)

Nightcrawler is back in the Marvel Universe and he's making the rounds meeting up with all his old friends at the Jean Grey School and elsewhere. After checking in with all of the X-Men around, he decides to head to Manhattan to meet up with foster sister turned girlfriend Amanda Sefton. She's excited to see him (though, frankly, not excited enough considering where he's been) and they rekindle their old relationship immediately until a robot sort of villain attacks, looking for Amanda (not sure what we're calling her; far as I know, her last name was Magik and that's kind of re-taken and I really don't want to get that all backwards. Daytripper maybe? Ugh). After a bit of a fight, Nightcrawler dispatches the would-be kidnapper and he and Amanda agree to go make sure other people in her family and in her life are safe.

It's really hard to judge any book (unless it totally blows you away) on the first issue. They have to establish their character, establish their world, establish their stories, establish their villains, establish their tone, etc. I find it doubly hard to judge this one on the first issue. If you've never read an X-MEN comic or, you know, a comic before, this one might not be so bad for you? What I'm trying to say is that Claremont, in his big return to the Marvel Universe, is really ready to explain who everyone is (though, weirdly, doesn't really explain Amanda Sefton, easily the least recognizable character in the pages of this book). Hopefully, as all the key players have been explained or are explained, this will die down a bit and let the story do the talking. I admit to being skeptical about this series. Claremont changed the Marvel Universe for the better in the '70s and '80s but the style of writing is very different these days and there's less of a need for over explanation to say what's happening in the panels. We'll see if that starts to tone down a bit as well. Nauck's art is strong and absolutely fits the more lighthearted tone of the issue. We'll see how this one presses forward.

Superior Foes of Spider-Man 11
A Grizzly Situation: Peyer (w) and Carnero and Pallot (a) and Sotomayor (c)
The Superior Looter: Kalan (w) and Plati (a) and Rauch (c)

SUPERIOR FOES OF SPIDER-MAN 11 is split into two different stories, both told by villains at a Super Villains Anonymous meeting. The first, by Tom Peyer and Carmen Carnero, features Grizzly, Maxwell Markham, telling a story about how depressing and sad he is. He gives a little bit of his history (he's a former wrestler who's also not a very good super villain) and talks about a recent mugging he perpetrated, wherein he took some money from a guy's wallet and then returned the wallet to him with the cards and everything else in it. He goes and buys a pizza and brings it back to share with the guy he mugged, still tied up, and the two talk because Grizzly is just lonely and depressed. A lot of the depression, it seems, is caused by the fact that Spider-Man is so scary now. Gone are the days of a simple fight and some traded quips, replaced by a horrifying potential encounter with a man who would sooner leave you paralyzed than webbed up for the police to find. After the mugging, Grizzly did run into Spider-Man and did get brutalized for it. Now he's at the meeting, sympathizing with other Spidey villains about how terrible life is now.

Elliott Kalan and Nuno Plati bring us the second story, focusing on Norman Fester, AKA the Looter. Tired of continually losing to Spider-Man and not taking a criminal empire like he wanted, Looter left New York for a while on something of a spiritual journey. Also a journey to beat up the lesser heroes spread out around the US and to improve himself on every level. When he finally decides to return to New York, he's stronger, faster, better in every way. Other criminals warn him that Spider-Man is different now but he's sure he's a match for the Spider. He, of course, is not and the two quickly meet only to find that people were not lying and is quickly put in a wheelchair with all manner of broken bones. Despite this, the scary thing Looter has taken away is that he still wants to rob and assault and do all these vicious things, that there's something darker in him than just committing crimes as means to an end, that everyone has a Superior Spider-Man in them. It's a fairly strong piece by Kalan of The Daily Show and the Flop House podcast fame and one that finds Kalan writing a pretty good Spider-Man. Bit of a different issue in general as we take a step back from our usual protagonists of this series (I mean, if you can call them protagonists). Nice little one-shot, good for a change of pace. The regular creators return to the series and presumably to the regular story next issue.

All-New Doop 1
Milligan (w) and Lafuente (a) and L. Allred (c)

Doop lives on the margins of the pages, navigating the Doopspace as he sees fit. Today, he sees fit to follow Kitty Pryde around at key moments over the last year. He writes and gives her a letter during a fight she and the ANXM and Scott's X-Men are having with some sentinels (back from some time ago). Later, during BATTLE OF THE ATOM, he encourages her to read the letter that she had since pocketed. The letter is a love letter, ultimately asking Kitty to marry him. She's very surprised, though touched, but she explains that it could never work between them. Citing a reason, she says that they can't even communicate. In response, Doop peels off his skin, revealing another version of himself (the same physically) who is able to sort of speak English.

Doop finally gets the limited series I'm not sure anyone was asking for. Regardless, there are some neat things happening here. Doop, not unlike the character Forget-Me-Not introduced in X-MEN LEGACY 300, is not only able to live on the outskirts of any situation, he often has some level of interference that helps the people though goes unnoticed. The way Lafuente presents this "living on the margins" and the way he makes his way through the world is very interesting, sometimes literally diving down across a page and over the panels. It's interesting to see, even if the book maybe goes a little too far out of the way to show it happening as Doop drops in on various moments over the last year (that might be entirely personal bias as I've been rather against most things happening in the X-world over the last year). Interesting book to see, I'm curious as to where it will go moving forward.