This week's picks

Hey all my buddies! Sorry for all of those SUPER QUICK REVIEWS this week. GUYS, why did I say "sorry?" It was probably better for EVERYONE. I'm still planning to do full reviews for a number of books but, as I intimated earlier this week, I may do these more often (unless, and this is a pretty big unless potential investors, someone starts paying me for this blog). But THAT'S not what the Sunday post is for. The Sunday post is for BEST OF. So what was the best of this week? Well I'd certainly recommend the following.

Avengers 29

Am I still a little sore that this book was $4.99? And that this extra dollar came from an extra ten pages plenty of readers have already read or that could have been covered in maybe an extra page-long recap? Yes. Duh. I just mentioned it all, clearly I've been thinking about it. THAT SAID, I do really love this issue. Jonathan Hickman has two AVENGERS books in a row that feature key Avengers members (one of the original Avengers and one of the "IT ONLY TOOK ME FOUR ISSUES TO GET HERE TOO" Avengers) discovering something about other key member Tony Stark and wanting rip him apart for it. Unlike the last one, which sort of disperses as Banner agrees reluctantly to join up with the world-saving and not kill the Illuminati (yet), Cap won't be so easily swayed. It's wonderful and incredibly tense, somehow managing to be tense despite being a different version of AVENGERS 28. Lots of fun if you find remarkably tense moments between dudes who were friends but also have been pretty bitter enemies PERHAPS a bit more recently "fun." I do. Check it out.

Captain America 20

This one was a tough choice (and probably my Cap bias is out in full here) between, particularly, this one, CAPTAIN MARVEL, NEW AVENGERS, and AVENGERS UNDERCOVER. This one ultimately wins out because Rick Remender has made it his mission this whole series to break Steve Rogers in every way possible and BOY does it come out in force here. If you're looking around going "geez, I think superheroes at Marvel don't get beat up enough," you will love this book. I'm...I'm not sure anyone should be looking for that? But if the idea doesn't turn you off, you should check this book out. You should probably check it out anyway. Remender's doing astonishing stuff breaking down the most unbreakable character in this modern day Job-like story. But also with punching and superheroes and world-level threats.

X-Force 5

Si Spurrier is regularly putting out really thought-provoking, human books even as he puts people up against incredibly powerful or even ridiculous villains (Spurrier recognizes in the book that Volga is crazily over-the-top but he's not really who we care about). X-FORCE is just another in a line of phenomenal releases from Spurrier (even outside of his Marvel work) that make you really care about the characters and that keep you aware of who everyone is and what everyone's going through at all times. This is very heavily a Marrow-centric issue but it's impossible to not acknowledge what's happening with Cable and with Psylocke and with Fantomex. It's excellently done and it's, to this point, everything I want this series to be.