SUPER QUICK REVIEWS: All-New Doop 2, Deadpool Annual 2

All-New Doop 2

Milligan (w) and Lafuente (a) and L. Allred (c) and Cowles (l)

Despite Doop's sudden ability to speak English, Kitty still refuses his marriage proposal. He brings her between the margins, which freaks her out a little, but he treats her to an ultimately nice night. He also tells her (as this happens during BATTLE OF THE ATOM) that she should have the courage of her convictions and that she should fight for what she believes, in this case that the ANXM should be allowed to choose if they want to stay or go back (GOD, still so stupid). By issue's end, he's given her the courage to voice her beliefs but he's also run afoul of the future's Kitty Pryde, who of course turned out to be Mystique's son Raze, who stabs Doop.

The "traveling through the margins" thing continues to be a pretty neat visual and a useful plot device but his love of Kitty still seems so sudden and thus so baffling that it's a little hard to get into this series. Making matters worse (for me) is the connection to BATTLE OF THE ATOM and that Doop's interference here is helping Kitty to step up for something so dumb (I'm all for people getting to choose their own fate except when their choice might break the entire time-space continuum. That's one of very few exceptions). Still, Lafuente's art is good and there's enough new here to at least make the book worth checking out.

Total Score: 3/5

Deadpool Annual 2

Hastings (w) and Camagni (a) and Milla (c) and Sabino (l)

The Chameleon is terrorizing Spider-Man, rapidly changing into seemingly innocent civilians in need of help before stabbing Spider-Man with a knife or a sedative and disappearing again. Deadpool, once he proves to Spider-Man he's really who he says he is, vows to help his "amazing friend." After Spider-Man is sedated by Chameleon and Deadpool throws Chameleon out a window, Deadpool drags Spider-Man into a closet to change clothes with him and allow him to rest. Pool takes up the Spider-Man identity for the day, foiling crimes and trying to out Chameleon. After a strange fight with the Master, a snake-based villain who is changed into a giant mouse, Chameleon appears and tries to sedate Deadpool. The real Spider-Man, wearing Deadpool's costume now, shows up to help and Chameleon tries to imitate him to confuse the gun-wielding true Deadpool. Deadpool figures it out, shoots the right Chameleon in the leg, and he and Spidey part amicably.

It's a fairly fun one-and-a-half size issue, one that doesn't require a whole lot of outside reading or a whole lot of knowledge of either character but is certainly entertaining enough to justify reading it. As a giant size issue, it's $4.99 and I can't fully endorse it at that price, as much as I love Christopher Hastings and as much as I like his Deadpool. It is fun writing and it is strong art but it very much is something of a throwaway book, fun to read once but probably never to be revisited. In other words, typical annual stuff.

Total Score: 4/5

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.

A+X 5, All-New X-Men 8

A+X 5
Iron Fist + Doop: K. Immonen (w) and LaFuente (a) and Campbell (c)
Loki + Mr. Sinister: Gillen (w) and Bennet and Morales (a) and Charalampidis (c)

A+X stories are meant to have little substance to them, which makes them a little hard to review. Especially the Iron Fist and Doop one in this issue. There's a basic story wherein Doop and Iron Fist are trying to get back some sort of friend of Doop's, which is all kind of hard to follow because Doop speaks in an untranslated language that Iron Fist can apparently understand (or at least pretend to understand) and that the reader can't. My being unimpressed by Doop, who everyone in comics seems to love, continues unabated.

The second story is a little more meaty, with Loki teaming up with Mr. Sinister to steal back a genetic sample (hair) of Loki from Dr. Doom, who was trying to clone a Loki of his own to match Ragnarok, the Mr. Fantastic-created Thor clone from Civil War and currently appearing in Dark Avengers. Sinister doesn't trust Loki but wants the the DNA for himself; as the foremost geneticist in history, he feels he can push homo superior a little past where it is now with some Asgardian mix. As Loki allows him to take the hair, he reveals to the audience that Doom would have likely been able to make a clone, given enough time, but that Sinister will find he bit off more than he can chew because, as opposed to even Thor, there are things in Loki that go far beyond his philosophies. Interesting idea. That's it. That's all I've got.

All-New X-Men 8
Bendis (w) and Marquez (a) and Garcia (c)

I'm a little burned out on this series already. I came out of this one trying to think of what I was going to write and nothing sprung to mind. I guess the idea that Jean is willing to read and alter people's minds is a big step. Everything else was inconsequential. I don't know, I'm still skeptical of the whole concept of this book so I kind of can't get myself worked up over anything that happens in it. This whole issue, too, felt like another step sideways instead of forward. We know Warren wants to go back to his time and that he's scared by whatever has happened to him in the future that has seemingly erased his whole personality and left it as Angel. We also know that the Avengers and X-Men are tense right now. I don't know, it all just seems like we never move ahead, we move to the side at every potential step. I think that's, to an extent, something that happens in comics. You have a really long-form medium that requires you to put out a book every month or so and you're eventually going to stutter step a little bit. However, since issue two or so I feel like we've been stutter-stepping. I talked about, in my review of Venom 31, that an issue without much action to move forward is great sometimes. It's necessary. You can't just keep throwing action at us because it's going to lead us to a spot where action is all we know so you have to keep upping that action or you stagnate with the action you have. This is kind of the opposite of that. All-New X-Men has been avoiding action at seemingly every turn. Even when there is action (like in this issue, Warren and Angel fight Hydra at Avengers tower), it's action that doesn't push story along. Like I said, even before this issue, we knew Warren wanted to go home and we knew that he was afraid of how he became the Angel he sees in the present. We don't need a fight scene to prove that. Then Bendis spends a couple pages (that feels like several) with Kitty and Iceman mocking Cap and Beast with a fake conversation. Then Scott says something. Then they're all blown away when Jean alters Warren's mind to keep him in the present. And that's where we are. If they had put that in a recap for a new issue, without releasing this issue, I would have believed it had already happened. I would have believed that I simply didn't remember the specifics but, as all the foundations were definitely there, it must have happened and I forgot about it. That's not a measure of a good comic.





ALSO: Blogger is having some troubles right now, it seems, so I may put off my last review of the week until tomorrow, when it will hopefully stop giving me error messages.