Leftovers 10-29-14

Pretty short week for full reviews this week but, like I said yesterday, not too many giant books out there. Let's just blast through this.

All-New X-Men 33

The ANXM search through the Ultimate Universe trying to make sense of their new surroundings. Angel and X-23 find each other, Jean leans on the Ultimate Spider-Man, Iceman gets in some trouble, and Beast is rather trapped in Latveria. It's extremely similar to Bendis' GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 15, which featured the Guardians all split up in foreign places, some faced with the unknown and some faced with enemies, in little almost-vignettes to show that they're all confused and lost. Like I said with that one, worth a miss. Total Score: 2/5










Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy 3
Sabertooth has latched on with an army unit and is brutally killing just a bunch of people, even going so far as to kidnap a shorter one per night, dress him as Wolverine, and murder him. His dreams are filled with Wolverine mocking him, telling him that he'll never be complete without Wolverine and laughing at him for never getting to kill his true rival. It's weird and heavy-handed and the art is interesting but often lost me as to what was actually happening. Full-on crazy Sabertooth is not a Sabertooth I have any interest in, though I'm rather burned out on any Sabretooth after a few years straight of seeing him show up what feels like every week. Total Score: 2/5


Death of Wolverine: Deadpool and Captain America 1

Steve Rogers calls Deadpool in to help him thoroughly clean and destroy Wolverine's stuff, insistent that no one should find his genes and clone him (is this regular procedure when a hero dies?). The last piece is a knife used to stab Wolverine that was sold to AIM not long ago. With the clock ticking, Deadpool and Steve launch an attack on an AIM base and secure the knife again. When they return home, Cap leaves Deadpool to destroy the knife. Deadpool, though, returns to Butler's base and considers cloning Wolverine himself. It's a decent team-up, one we could have expected after their arc together in DEADPOOL. It's got a few laughs and some sweet moments between the unlikely allies, but it's nothing particularly groundbreaking, like I thought their first arc was. Total Score: 3/5






Deathlok 1
Henry Hayes is a Deathlok and has no idea. When he's sent on missions by his handlers, he returns mind-wiped, believing that he was assisting Medics Without Borders in war-torn areas. He also returns home to his life as a single father of a teenage girl named Aria. However, things might get complicated as his last mission had him attacking Black Tarantula, among others, who seemed to survive, unbeknownst to Deathlok, and he's drawn the eye of Maria Hill, who covertly promotes a promising researcher named Andrea Hope to active agent, tasked with finding as much as she can about this new Deathlok. It's an interesting starting point for this new series, though its best attribute this issue is actually how quickly it reads. With so much new information and characters and storylines coming at us all at once, this issue could drag, too exposition-heavy to keep us interested. Instead, it moves well and switches locales and perspective a lot, keeping the reader interested, if not yet invested. Total Score: 4/5


Elektra 7
Matchmaker has been killed by the experimentally juiced up Lady Bullseye who can become intangible as she pleases. Still not a problem for Elektra, who allows herself to take a few hits to force Lady Bullseye to become solid, allowing her to stab her then, as she goes intangible, Elektra breathes her enemy in. It's kinda disturbing. Anyway, she defeats Lady Bullseye and returns to Sidewinder, demanding he take her to the Assassin's Guild leader. He leads her to New Orleans where she's ambushed by other assassins she's defeated but are now similarly juiced up like Lady Bullseye with varying new powers. It's a tough fight but she bests them once more, finally making her way to someone at least pulling some of the strings. The guy says he doesn't lead the Guild but he can make this go away if Elektra lets the weird doctor experiment on her too. She, of course, refuses, kills the pair, and returns to Sidewinder to find out who leads the Guild. He doesn't know but believes Bullseye, currently catatonic and in SHIELD custody, does. Elektra sets off to bust Bullseye out. Elektra continues to be great, handling all of the amped up assassins who come her way and illustrating just how next-level she is in this community. The art isn't my favorite here, which is unfortunate because Del Mundo's really was up there. It's also a bit strange that she destroys so many people this issue that could have been issue-long fights. I'm not that upset about it, nice to see a book move quickly instead of trying to milk every fight out, but it's a tad weird in this community. Also, Matchmaker is dead and I hate this book for that. Total Score: 4/5


Fantastic Four 12
Wyatt and Spider-Man talk to Johnny, who IMMEDIATELY comes to his senses and visits Ben, explaining that someone is clearly pulling the strings here and that Ben needs to get out. In Latveria, Valeria tells Doom she has to go home to try to pull her family back together, leaving Doom, who has devious plans once more. Finally, Reed accuses Mr. Eden, with a great deal of exposition because who would ever want to see him work towards a discovery when we could just have him talk about things he discovered off-panel, of engineering the portal opening in the Baxter Building. Mr. Eden isn't really Mr. Eden though, Reed's lab partner Cully is Mr. Eden and he's doing all this because he hates Reed. WHAT A DUMB ENDING. I'm going to give this the very slightest benefit of the doubt here as we all know FANTASTIC FOUR is ending soon, so it's entirely possible these dumb twists and dumb turns were meant to unfold over multiple issues instead of twenty pages, but STILL. We don't care about the GASP, it's not MR. EDEN, IT'S CULLY thing because we don't care or know about either of those characters. Reed accuses him of engineering everything with a ton of evidence we're just learning about NOW, which is like a detective story where we see a moonlighting detective doing his day job then suddenly, apropos of nothing, solving the whole case on the last page of the book. It's all terrible and I do not like it one bit, my friends. Total Score: 1/5


Guardians of the Galaxy 20

FINALLY, the end of Star-Lord's story reveals that an already dying Nova sacrificed himself to transport Drax and Star-Lord back to their proper universe and that Thanos escaped too. There's also some crap about how Nova was in love with Gamora and he swore Star-Lord to secrecy about all of this, which is why he didn't tell Gamora or the crew earlier. If it is indeed the death of Richard Ryder (doubtful, as that old comic book axiom of "we didn't see the body" certainly comes in to play), it's a pretty stupid death; a standard sacrifice with questionable motivation marred by a prolonged and unnecessary admission of love. It's the worst kind of superhero death, cliche and boring at the same time. Then Gamora goes off and sheds a single tear. Total Score: 1/5






Inhuman 7
Black Bolt is still alive and Maximus is using his telepathic powers to control the missing king, focusing his limited powers entirely on Black Bolt. Medusa knows that her husband is alive and sends a pair of Inhuman investigators, one from the old kingdom named Auran and one NuHuman named (by Auran) Nur, to track him down. They eventually do find Maximus and Black Bolt and Auran, knowing that Maximus likely can't control their minds while he's focused so hard on Black Bolt, somehow doesn't realize that Maximus would be willing to use Black Bolt to attack the investigators, which he does, blowing out a huge part of the penthouse they're staying in overlooking New Attilan. Nur, though, may still be alive, ready for the next move. There are some interesting things in here, particularly between Maximus and Black Bolt, but the whole book is dragged down by a lot of exposition and re-explaining what's going on all over the universe wherever Inhumans are concerned. I also kind of like the idea that Soule is introducing new Inhumans all over the place, moving them into our consciousness slowly so he can eventually bring everyone out at once and we won't be overwhelmed. It's a smart play for a franchise looking to build. Still, the writing will have to get out of its own way and start trusting the reader a little more before the book can really take off. Total Score: 3/5


Marvel 75th Anniversary Celebration 1
It's an extra long (and double-priced) book to commemorate 75 years of Marvel, replete with a story about the start of the universe, an old Stan Lee script illustrated by Bruce Timm, a Bendis Jessica Jones story, a Tom DeFalco Spider-Man story, a Len Wein Wolverine story, and a slew of covers from a slew of illustrators for books that will never exist, all credited to Brian Michael Bendis. Is it worth your money? No, probably not, unless you really love Bendis because this book is just chock full of him. It's always nice to see some of the legends like Lee, DeFalco, and Wein, but their screen-time is limited and the stories are somewhat fun throwbacks, nothing you haven't read a thousand times before. Six bucks though? I'm not gonna tell you to spend that. Total Score: 2/5






Nova 22
Nova talks his way back out of expulsion with a reluctant Principal Philbin then goes trick-or-treating with the X-Kids at the Jean Gray School. It's a bit of a reset issue and it works well enough for that with a couple of nice moments and an easy, generic story. Nothing to write home about but not a complete failure of an issue, as I maintain it's important to rest every few issues and let our hero have a slower day now and again. Total Score: 3/5


Thunderbolts 32

Six months after the fall of the Thunderbolts, Red Leader runs his new compound from Kata Jaya, the spot of the team's very first mission. He's plotted his whole life perfectly and now his only problem is that he has a crush on his biographer and can't seem to win her affection. However, all is not well for Red Leader as the Thunderbolts have been gathering intel about the new compound and have led the Avengers there to help take it apart. Red Leader has plenty of plans in place to pick apart his old team but they all crumble when his biographer turns out to be the SHIELD agent Hawkeye had been working with in disguise. She shoots him from behind and the T-Bolts and Avengers win the day, though it's made clear to Red Hulk that none of them want to join him again. It's a fun ending to a book that has certainly had its ups and downs (though mostly ups, particularly from halfway or so on). Deadpool has a particularly strong issue here, though the rest get a little bogged down by the sheer amount of characters and the focus being on Red Leader. Also, Mephisto sends the spirit of vengeance back to Johnny Blaze, to his dismay, which is a fun moment. Total Score: 4/5


Wolverine and the X-Men 11
Melita interviews Spider-Man, Storm, and Quentin Quire about the passing of Wolverine, though "interview" probably isn't the right word. She talks to each of them and gets more from some than others. The Spider-Man bits are mostly fun and work pretty well and the Storm stuff is more or less what you want out of Storm. To be fair, the Quentin stuff is what you can expect from Quentin too, but I still have to ask if we need this much Quentin Quire in our lives. Anyway, strong "in memoriam" kind of arc and, like last issue, it's nice to see so many artists paying their respects to Wolverine. Total Score: 3/5

Comics this week

So I use the same comic list every week to pull what books are being released and it very rarely, if ever, steers me wrong, which is nice because I haven't always had that luxury in the past. Sometimes, though, it looks a lot more imposing than it is. There are a TON of reprints coming this week, perhaps more than actual new releases. That means a light week for me (yay!) but a harder week for this post (totally worth it!). Let's get into it.

Death of Wolverine: Deadpool and Captain America 1
I told you, it's a light week. I'm not actually super excited about this book because I legitimately don't know what to make of it. Obviously we know it's a tie-in book and it's one that ties-in to the recent DEATH OF WOLVERINE mini, but it also harkens back to DEADPOOL's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" arc, which remains easily my favorite arc of that book. Will this tie-in live up to the quality of that arc? Let's find out TOGETHER.

Deathlok 1
Full disclosure: I'm not really that excited about a DEATHLOK series. The character holds little interest to me (though I loved Deathlok in Remender's UNCANNY X-FORCE, the one who admitted to loving X-Force and was later easily cast aside by Magneto). However, in light of a short week, Nathan Edmondson wins me over here. As a very vocal supporter of Edmondson's BLACK WIDOW and less vocal but still somewhat vocal supporter of his PUNISHER, I'm happy to give this one a look.

Elektra 7
This book's great, it's a short week, you know everything I'm about to say.

Marvel 75th Anniversary Celebration 1
A six-dollar celebration 75 years in the making, this book makes the list mostly because I want to talk about one of the segments, namely one that intends to explore what happened the day the Marvel Universe was born, written by FANTASTIC FOUR's James Robinson with art from DAREDEVIL's Chris Samnee, AKA a creative team I half-loathe and half-love. That's all I have to say about it.

Thunderbolts 32
THUNDERBOLTS comes to its conclusion after a run of a good couple years. A weaker-than-expected start from Daniel Way led to a fantastic Charles Soule middle and now we reach the final chapter of the first ongoing Marvel work for Ben Acker and Ben Blacker. I've enjoyed this book for quite some time now and I'm sad to see it go, though unsurprised. Looking forward to seeing where it leaves our team in the aftermath.

Original Sins 1, New Avengers 19

Original Sins 1
Deathlok: Edmondson (w) and Perkins (a) and Troy (c) and Cowles (l)
Young Avengers: North (w) and Villalobos (a) and Gibson (c) and Cowles (l)
Lockjaw: S. Moore (w) and Geary (a) and Svorcina (c) and Cowles (l)

Three stories to kick off our ORIGINAL SIN tie-in book which here is two-thirds ORIGINAL SIN tie-in and one third promotional. The first third is the promotional, with a short story by Nathan Edmondson (BLACK WIDOW, PUNISHER) and Mike Perkins (CAPTAIN AMERICA, UNION JACK) featuring Henry Hayes, a new Deathlok, unbeknownst to Hayes. Seemingly leaping right out of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, Hayes is war vet with bionic parts and who is, on occasion, mind controlled to execute missions at the behest of his handlers, whereafter he is dumped back where he started with no memory of the mission. He has just such a mission when a SHIELD agent approaches him in a train station and tells him that he's Deathlok, as was revealed to him by the Watcher's truth-bomb. As the SHIELD agent leaves, Hayes' handlers send Deathlok to execute the man. Though there is a clear tie-in to ORIGINAL SIN, the key of this book is building excitement for October's DEATHLOK, also written by Edmondson and illustrated by Perkins. It's not an awful test-run and it's certainly an easy enough premise to kick things off. Right now, Edmondson can do no wrong by me so let's hope that even a series spawned by (though with no connection to) a show I find almost entirely boring will separate itself the way BLACK WIDOW and PUNISHER have.

The second story finds three members of the Young Avengers, Hulkling, Noh-Varr, and Prodigy, teaming up to investigate what's happening in Manhattan. When Hulkling sees footage from the fight and recognizes Exterminatrix in the middle of it, he gets Prodigy to hijack Noh-Varr's shuttle so it will pick them up and bring them to their friend (who isn't leaving his space station home and also isn't picking up his phone). They convince him to come along and, in the course of their investigation, they run into a somehow un-evacuated woman being held hostage by the Hood, who needs the help of these three Young Avengers. Ryan North, who writes MIDAS FLESH and ADVENTURE TIME for BOOM! Studios and has countless other adventures in comics and other text (like his great Dinosaur Comics or like the choose-your-own-adventure Hamlet or his upcoming choose-your-own-adventure Romeo and Juliet), brings his usual playfulness and fun, natural, conversational style of writing to this project and it really works for the Young Avengers. Looking forward to where this goes.

Finally, Stuart Moore and Rick Geary bring us a short tale of Lockjaw uncovering a secret from the Watcher's truth treasure trove and, after trying a number of other heroes, conveying the importance of said secret to Iron Man, who accompanies him to the moon where he digs up a bone he'd left there. Fun little story which must have given a slight break from all those gorgeous painted THOR interiors to Eisner-nominated colorist Ive Svorcina.

Total Score: 4/5


New Avengers 19
Hickman (w) and Schiti (a) and F. Martin (c) and Caramagna (l)

The Illuminati travel to Earth-4,290,001, the home of the Great Society (Boundless, Dr. Spectrum, Sun God, The Rider, The Jovian, and The Norn) to discuss what's coming. They reveal that they have a doomsday device, something capable of destroying a world, but would much rather not have to use it. While they argue about how they would use such a device (in the case they can't figure something out, one world has to be destroyed to save the other world and to save both universes; the incursion going off as planned would mean the end of both worlds and both universes), Maximus runs some experiments on the frozen Corvus Glaive, locked away with his master Thanos. Back on Earth-4,290,001, the Illuminati try to justify their actions to the Great Society and continue to ask for help coming up with a way to save both worlds before they have to move on to worst-case scenarios but Namor, tired of the indecision, attacks The Rider, prepared to be what the incursion will make them all and provoking a fight between the two once-heroic groups.

One of the things I'd been saying since the start of this series was that NEW AVENGERS feels like a movie or a television show (its presentation, particularly at the beginning, felt more like gorgeous cinema but its episodic nature makes it more like a television show) and it seems to be sticking with that feeling. Hickman knows how to write scenes and how to present them and the artists attached to this book (including series colorist Frank Martin) really know how to make everything feel big and grand. In this issue (as in the last several) we get a number of recent flashbacks that add context and weight to the actions of the present while also allowing us to move on with the story in a way that maybe isn't so dry or straightforward. Some of those flashbacks involve Bruce and Hank talking about morality and the choices they face, Reed talking with Black Swan about the things they can do to help push forward, and Tony telling Reed that Cap knows and soon the most powerful Avengers team ever assembled will be coming for them. It's a strong story and the flashbacks allow the book an opportunity to remind you just how many threads are still out there and how intricate this situation is. I've also been looking for a way to plug this some more and so, while it's only tangentially related, it feels as big and grand, at times (though not always so gripping), as Hickman's EAST OF WEST, which is an absolutely phenomenal book I can't recommend enough. Val Schiti does the art on this issue and really brings great emotion to the characters, from hubris to fear to arrogance to sadness to resignation (guys, most of those descriptions are just for Namor).

Total Score: 5/5

X-Force post-game: part three

CHARACTER DAYYYYYYY

Okay, so I'm a pretty big fan of good characters. I really would read a book that was just well-written and well-rounded characters sitting about and enjoying themselves. Okay, maybe I would do that. I don't know. I probably have done that. Whenever the Illuminati appears, it seems like they're doing that (or launching Hulk into space or whatever) but I like them well enough (NOT YOU, REED).

Look, the point is I prefer good characters to good story. This book had both in great amounts. LET'S TALK ABOUT THE CHARACTERS THOUGH.

Wolverine-
Wolverine, in many ways, had the most static arc of anyone in the book. I think this might come from the fact that he has, I would hazard to guess, appeared the most times in the Marvel Universe. He's not older than everyone (looking at you, Angel), but he's certainly been the most popular of the team for the longest time (I'd say Deadpool has recently challenged him to some extent in popularity, but he's not really reliable "favorite character" material, normally). He still goes through some big events, if not huge changes. Uncanny X-Force 9 features a stand-alone book where he aids Magneto (who has just discovered their existence) by hunting down and killing a former Nazi, highlighting his "used as a weapon" background. He goes through some big parental events with Daken and, I would say, is probably the one most taken out of the fights. That was always interesting to me, watching as Wolverine quickly gets thrown from the plot by fielding the biggest attacks. It says something about Remender's confidence in the team that he'd toss his biggest character to the sidelines when certain big stories came through. Otherwise, Wolverine played the hotheaded leader of the team and filled the role aptly. It's hard to say Wolverine is a weak character because, when written well (as I think he was in this series), even weaker appearances are stronger. That said, he felt a bit weaker than the typically very strong rest of the team. I did like the challenges he occasionally struggled with when realizing that the team felt very much like an excuse to let his animal side out. Nice to see heroes question their own motivations.

Archangel-

Archangel came in with the most exterior problems and left with the fewest about halfway through the book's run. He struggles with keeping Apocalypse's form down in his head, an eventually insurmountable task originally given to Psylocke. I would say that the strengths of Archangel's characters were usually depicted either through his few memories or through other characters talking to or dealing with him. There are some endearing moments when we see his history with the first class X-Men and when he meets Betsy for the first time. Most everything else was hidden from us and he was largely the quietest member of a team consisting of Deadpool and Fantomex. When he appeared, it usually wasn't bad (well, in terms of his character. Sometimes he was really bad, like destroy Montana bad, but you get what I'm saying), but he wasn't a particular favorite. He also had less time to develop in the series and has a well-defined history already in the Marvel Universe.

Psylocke-
I hadn't seen too too much of Psylocke prior to this series. I was familiar with her abilities and a tiny bit of her history (especially as it pertained to Captain Britain), but it was largely through X-Men and as a minor part at that. It was certainly nice to see her here. She was one of the more complicated characters contained to the book (I'd put it between her and Fantomex. Deadpool ranks really high there too, but largely owing to his existence outside of this book but WE'LL GET TO THAT) and we saw her, at various times, love Angel, hate Archangel, hate Fantomex, love Fantomex, depowered, repowered, power-boosted, as a future dictator, without sorrow, with family, against family, and many other with/against emotions. She was the one most ready to point out Wolverine's brutality obsession leaking through in the team and the one often least happy with the missions or the outcomes or the costs. It makes her more interesting, then, that she appears to be leading the new X-Force book by Sam Humphries on its way. Her stories in Otherworld and with her brother Brian always seemed to be the most interesting to me. There were many parts of her story in X-Force that I loved and I think she would have been a strong contender for favorite character in the series if not for the next two.

Fantomex-
Fantomex was the least known commodity in this book. I had gone back to find his appearances in New X-Men and I had seen him originally in his Dark Reign appearance. I remembered liking him there, though being completely unfamiliar with him. He has since pretty easily transformed into one of my favorite characters in the whole of the Universe. A very complicated character by his very existence, Fantomex had three brains, including one of a Sentinel programmed to hunt mutants. He battled against it through the entirety of the series and was largely flippant and witty with the team. I liked him already, but the watershed moment was in X-Force 19, pictured to the left. On the exterior, I absolutely loved him throwing the beer can at Wolverine. Just an amazing moment. But it was the explanation of cloning Apocalypse, the "I needed to know if there was hope for me," that sold me one hundred percent. Everyone loves a redemption story and it was nice to see one had been developing behind our very backs. He was always well-written, always strong, always acted the way you understood he'd act, and throw beer cans at Wolverine's head every 19 issues or so. If he's not a favorite of yours, you're not doing comics right (sorry).

Deadpool-
Despite my adoration of Fantomex, Deadpool was the happiest surprise for me. A relatively new character being good is exciting, sure. But an already established and major player in the Marvel Universe (at least in terms of units sold) acting within character but so far outside of it at the same time? Brilliant. My favorite moments with Deadpool have always been the surprise serious moments, like when he admits to Cable that he's not just picking up anti-Registration heroes for their bounties (as he'd let on), he believes in what he's doing. This series had its share of Deadpool being off-the-hook crazy, for sure, but he had more character-defining moments like that than I've ever seen. Not to say they got old because they never did. They were always refreshing, they were always heart-wrenching, and they were always as much a part of him as any crazy thing he spoke. I'm not sure how Remender was able to keep so true to Deadpool's character while also defining him so emotionally, but I hope if I ever have an opportunity to write a character with those insane tendencies, I'll be able to treat him half as well as Remender treated Deadpool. His scene I mentioned in this post, walking out of a meeting he called to talk about their actions, was the first and earliest sign that this book was for real. Like, more for real than killing a kid for shock value. Deadpool, one of the most deranged and deadly characters in the Marvel U, was suddenly the conscience of the team. It defined him, it defined the team, it defined the series. Throughout the series, he grappled with low self-esteem, working on a team, tough moral choices, morals at all, plenty of things I hadn't seen Deadpool deal with before, but Remender handled them all beautifully. I think Daniel Way was a really good writer for Deadpool's solo series in the way Remender was for his team series. I'm excited to see Way handle him with the Thunderbolts. So far, I'm very unimpressed by Deadpool's new solo series, so we'll see where that goes. The point is that I think Deadpool is a hard character to write well. I credit Way with a good run at a hard time for the character, but I think Remender's run added more layers in 35 issues than most writers add in twice that, especially on a team book (I don't know any layers that were added on to anyone in either of Bendis' Avengers titles that just ended).

Nightcrawler-

I think I said all I really needed to say about AoA Nightcrawler in this post, so I won't say much here (especially after Deadpool's really long entry. GUYS, I have more to say so LET ME KNOW WHO WANTS TO HEAR IT). I loved the idea behind him and I'm sad we couldn't see more of him. His inevitable eventual betrayal of the team for his own needs (he always said as much) was still fairly shocking, though not completely unexpected (as I said, it was inevitable). Still, it was a very different Nightcrawler than the one in the main universe while still keeping some of the heroic tendencies of ours. A nice look.

Deathlok-

He was kind of on the team for a little bit? We didn't see much of him, but when we did (and when he wasn't reverted back to his psychopathic serial killer host), he was always hilarious. Deadpool's love for him was great. Magneto holding him in the air after breaking in with him explaining to the team "I attempted to eject him but I am at a...disadvantage" was pretty great. He's good dude, Deathlok.

EVA-
Was fine. Never got a huge grip on her. She was Fantomex's nervous system. Some stuff happened. She became a full body. She didn't have a huge role after that. I had no beef.

Ultimaton-
Just...whatever. He hung around in the World, guarding Fantomex's lab. It was...cool? Sure. It was cool.

LOOK, it was a great book, you should read it, I might do another post or two about it because I still have a few days until new comics come out and MAYBE I shouldn't have started this blog on a week where only two new comics were released but I had stuff to say about ASM 700 and they certainly weren't to wait around in my brain for a week and my plan overall is to update this near everyday so I MIGHT AS WELL START NOW. I'll talk to you tomorrow.