Captain Marvel 14, Guardians of the Galaxy 5, Ultimates 28

Captain Marvel 14
DeConnick (w) and Hepburn w/ Sandoval (a) and Troy (c)

The Enemy Within storyline ends as Carol discovers that the the source to all of Yon-Rogg's power, to his return, is a piece of him stored away in her mind all these years. With that piece, now amplified by the sentries Yon-Rogg has put into place, the former Kree commander has used the psyche-magnitron to bring all manner of Kree weaponry and haunts from Carol's past to real existence. That includes the dinosaurs we've seen, Deathbird, the Brood attack, and everything else strange in this crossover recently. For the finale, Yon-Rogg has whipped up his biggest creation: a duplicate of Kree-La, the capital city of the Kree home world, which he intends to bring down on New York City. Will the Avengers stop the signal from the sentries or will Carol have to take matters into her own hands?

You should read this book. I know I've been a staunch supporter of this series since its inception and have done nothing but recommend it on this blog but really, you should read this book. It's another good story with a lot of great art and amazing character moments. Captain Marvel has become one of the best defined characters of the Marvel Universe in an immensely short time. My girlfriend and I were talking about her character the other day and she felt, as the one who has read more of the Ms. Marvel back-catalogue, that this series was very slightly a departure from the character we've seen. There are aspects there for sure, like her loyalty and her dedication to duty, but she's stronger and more decisive, more strong-willed in this series. It's not anything that DeConnick has hit us over the head with but it's certainly there and it's certainly defined. Unlike other writers, DeConnick doesn't have someone piping in to say "gee Carol, you're so strong-willed!" every five minutes, preferring instead to show and not tell with her characters and their actions. Be prepared for some changes in the Captain Marvel Universe, which spans particularly across Captain Marvel, Avengers Assemble, and Avengers. If you want to get in on the ground floor of understanding what she's going through, pick up this issue. No spoilers here, at least not yet. But boy is it hard not to spoil things. Another great issue, solid event overall. This event isn't in the style of a really big, universe spanning event. Instead, it's an event in that it spans two separate books telling the same story. A crossover, really. I would argue, though, that it was a necessary one and a well-executed one. It's not an event in the same way Marvel does where the plot takes precedence and everyone's just along for the ride. Here this story has very specifically to do with Captain Marvel and the Avengers Assemble team is her team, so they're there because the threat requires them but also because their teammate requires them. One of the nice things about Avengers Assemble has been DeConnick's dedication to showing them as a real team who likes each other and who works well together. Of course they needed to be in this storyline as one of their own is directly threatened. Good choices all the way through.

Guardians of the Galaxy 5
Bendis (w) and Pichelli (a) and Ponsor (c)

Peter Quill felt the rip in space-time from issue ten of Age of Ultron and it's haunting him. Despite being wanted by the Spartax armada, he makes his way to Rigel 7 to talk to Mantis, hoping she has some knowledge of this or that she's heard something in her travels. She hasn't but she recommends he talk to someone more connected than she, though also significantly more dangerous, if he wants answers. Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman's creation Angela from the Spawn comics has been dumped unceremoniously into the Marvel Universe and, though she doesn't know why she's here, she wants revenge for it.

The issue starts with a long scene between Rocket and Tony about fixing his armor and about Gamora, which gives us a little more insight into both of their characters. It's rife with that snappy dialogue Bendis loves (working slightly better here since both characters are supposed to be snappy-ish throughout their histories) and Bendis uses Rocket to straight up tell the audience what the characters are about (humans are unimpressive and unevolved, Gamora has daddy issues, etc.). From there, they discover Angela, leaving Peter back on Rigel 7 (they don't know where he and Drax are) so they can fly back towards Earth to stop her from getting too close. Finally, Peter takes a trip across the galaxy to talk to the mysterious and dangerous foe who, if you've been paying any attention to Marvel in the last year, you will probably immediately identify, though the book doesn't reveal it officially until the last page, dragging a few pages worth of dialogue out first. Neil Gaiman is credited as a consultant on this issue, which signifies his "return" to Marvel, as Marvel has been thrilled to repeatedly announce. Not sure if he's actually going to come back in a role greater than that as we continue with Angela, his creation and for whom he got involved in a long legal battle with Todd McFarlane. The rips in space time are clearly going to be a big deal in the upcoming Infinity event and in this series presumably among others so it's useful to see them discussed and actually weighing on a character, but overall the issue moved a bit predictably.

Ultimates 28
Fialkov (w) and Di Giandomenico and Ruggiero (a) and Charalampidis (c)

Things are as bad as they've been for the Ultimates with Reed Richards, Hulk, Quicksilver, and Kang (revealed to be Wanda Maximoff) gathering the Infinity Gems one by one, now only one away from having the entire set. Meanwhile, Tony Stark appears dead, Cap, Thor, and Hawkeye have all been injured, captured, and contained. Fury has a team prepped and ready to move but Reed's team is more powerful and is backed up by patrolling Herbietrons. All is not lost, though, as Iron Man has safeties built into his armor that even Reed didn't foresee and that begin wreaking havoc the minute Reed attempts to synch with the armory. To make matters more complicated, Reed's team is at odds with one another and unhappy to need to work together. Will the Ultimates be able to stop Reed et al before they send their newest recruit to the center of the Earth to recover the last gem?

Another solid issue of this arc from Fialkov as everything is falling apart for everyone. Somehow Tony's death seems to have helped the team and hurt Reed at the same time and we're really starting to see more of the cracks in the armor for Reed's team. Reed has started creating doppelgängers out of his own flesh (weird) and Pietro points out, pretty accurately, that those are the only people Reed could ever love. Meanwhile, Hulk is angrier than ever with humanity but kept in check by the Herbietrons. Pietro and Wanda, as always, are their own entity and hard to classify. I will say, as someone who isn't as familiar with the Ultimate Universe as with the 616, Reed's attitude is a strange one. He's far more flippant and casual than the Reed of any other dimension we've seen, which is a little weirdly jarring. Still, the writing is good and the story is better. Each character seems to be getting his due (not so much her due since there are only like, three women currently appearing among all the men and only two of them have lines in this book...one of those women is simply nagging) and the plot is moving well enough to keep readers interested. Should be interesting. Don't be surprised if it ties into Fialkov's other Marvel book Hunger, as both take place in the Ultimate Universe and have to do with the possible destruction of the world and more.

Age of Ultron 8, Avengers: The Enemy Within 1, Iron Man 10

Age of Ultron 8
Bendis (w) and Peterson (a) and Mounts (c)

So we learn a little more about this alternate timeline as Bendis again tries to make us learn about the butterfly effect. The Tony Stark of this world questions Wolverine after accessing both Sue and Wolverine's memories alongside Professor X and Emma Frost. He learns that Wolverine was responsible for killing Pym and setting the world on a different timeline before explaining to Wolverine that the timeline he's created led to a war between technology and magic that caused Asgard to abandon Earth and divided the world into pretty much Tony's half and Morgana le Fey's half. Stark is ever suspicious of an attack from le Fey and spends some time believing that Sue and Wolverine are constructs of hers, an idea that is reinforced when le Fey attacks at a particularly inopportune time for our heroes. Meanwhile, the Defenders don't like Tony and want to talk to the prisoners. Then le Fey shows up and splits Tony's helicarrier in half.

I think everything I've said about this series remains true as I remain annoyed at the length, annoyed at the need to drill the butterfly effect into readers, annoyed at the implication that Hank Pym is the cog that makes the Marvel Universe turn, annoyed at the writing style, and annoyed at spending so much time in an alternate timeline that we all know will not stick around. That said, I'd like to mention something I don't think I've really brought up that much in the run of this series: the art. I think the art is fine on more or less static images and situations, with people talking and the like. However, from the get-go (and even with different artists at the helm) I've found the action sequences to be overly chaotic and a bit hard to piece together. In most of the fights, there are so many colors and lines converging that it's hard to tell who's fighting from panel to panel and almost impossible to say who's winning. In the beginning, that was a little more excusable because the fights weren't really the focus; the state of the city was the focus. Now, though, the fights are very much at the center of a lot of these panels and don't really stand out as much as you'd like, especially to try to cover for the story or the excessive dialogue. I have a theory that says that you'll be able to read maybe four of these issues when all is said and done and have as much of an understanding of the story as someone who read all ten. We'll see if that's accurate as the last two issues come out.

Avengers: The Enemy Within 1
DeConnick (w) and Hepburn (a) and Bellaire (c)

One of the reasons that I've really liked DeConnick's run on Captain Marvel is that she's made it a point to, throughout the series, establish that Carol has a life outside of the Avengers. It's maybe not a huge part of her life in terms of time-spent, but it's clearly massive in terms of how she identifies herself. She doesn't live at Avengers Mansion, she stays in an apartment. She has a routine that involves getting coffee or croissants at the same place and meeting up with an elderly lady each day. At her apartment, she has people that she cares about including the little girl who wants to be her and that girl's mother. She has Tracy the surly older woman with whom she bonded over their sicknesses. She had Helen Cobb (albeit in time displacement). She has Avengers friends too, like Spider-Woman and Captain America and Tony Stark, but she has more social visits from Avengers than you see in most solo books. The creation of Carol's little universe unto herself and the importance of it in her daily life is already playing a huge role in this series, as Rose has been kidnapped by Yon-Rogg (Carol does not know it's Yon-Rogg behind everything, but we've already seen him) and hidden away. With the help of Spider-Woman and Thor, Carol is able to track down Rose but finds that Rose has been a diversion so her captor could break into Carol's apartment. Carol hurries back to her building and clears everyone out of it. She busts into her own room (scaring her cat Chewie) and finds that her enemy has broken into her footlocker of important items. Missing from the footlocker is her piece of the psyche-magnetron, the machine that gave her powers and that is, as she describes it, essentially a Kree-built wish-machine. Now the world is in danger and she feels it's her fault. Spider-Woman rallies around her and insists that now the Avengers are involved and this guy will not get away with this.

The issue starts in pretty standard Captain Marvel form, which isn't at all a bad thing. There's a conversation between Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman that focuses around whether or not Rose is missing or just an old lady before chaos breaks out in the form of old-school villains the Grapplers. From there, the action never stops and the chaos piles up on Carol, who has trouble with her brain lesion (not helped by the fact that she insists on flying at one point) and with the whole situation. She suspects it's all a distraction to keep her from Rose before she realizes that Rose is the distraction. It's non-stop action but not in a way that feels forced or like action-for-action's-sake. It serves to keep Carol off-balance and unable to get a foothold on the situation, just as the audience is unsure of the villain's plot even though we know more than Carol (as Captain Marvel readers know it's Yon-Rogg behind everything and we watch him break into Carol's apartment while she's in Central Park). It's a really great layout and it feels already like this event is going to be something different and great, if incredibly stressful for fans who love Carol. I listened to an interview with DeConnick (found here) that features her at one point saying that she didn't plan too far ahead on these books because she didn't expect either of them to last. She cites people like Fraction and Bendis, who can plan series in year-long chunks, and Hickman, who can plan a series over a four-year chunk (amazing, and my fun fact of the day). She could have fooled me as this event seems born perfectly out of what she's done with both of her Marvel books over the course of the last few months. Looking forward to this one. It's also important to note that Scott Hepburn's art is solid throughout (and his characterization of Jessica particularly as someone who can't stop gesticulating) and Jordie Bellaire's colors are great and she uses the same color palette as on Captain Marvel, so the book feels like it slots perfectly into place.

Iron Man 10
Gillen (w) and Eaglesham (a) and Guru eFX (c)

One of the reasons I've enjoyed Remender's Captain America series is that it's taken the Captain America history and said "what don't we know?" It turned out that the answer was "what was Steve like before he was old enough to even try to enlist in the army?" With that, Remender had a whole new level to add to Steve's character and a series all ready to write itself. Gillen has apparently done the same thing with Tony Stark, except we already knew more about Iron Man's childhood. It was his birth that we hadn't really examined before. 451 has shown the film to Tony and goes on to explain that Howard was scouring the Earth to find a way to save the unborn Tony's life. Doctors said it couldn't be done and that, in fact, if it was done, they'd have wished it wasn't, so damaged was Tony. However, that wasn't a good enough answer for Howard and, eventually, he found out about 451. At the time, 451 was being held by the Greys, a race of aliens (in the style of the stereotypical sci-fi alien) who had opened a casino in Vegas. They had stumbled upon 451 and captured him, knowing that he was valuable but unable to crack into any of that value. 451 awoke to one of the underlings of the Greys, Rollo, and appealed to him to break him out, offering a nice reward. Rollo meets with Howard and entices him, letting him know about 451's extensive knowledge, which Howard hopes can be parlayed into saving Tony's life. He assembles a team including the likes of Jimmy Woo, Thunderbolt Ross, and Dum Dum Dugan to name a few and we get a nice, old-fashioned heist comic. The heist is successful (though Rollo is found out and killed) and Howard and 451 apparently escape. Tony doesn't believe any of it and is put to sleep by 451, as they'll need him "before [they] reach [their] destination."

It's an interesting idea and, as I said, gives a nice little look into the parts of Tony that we don't know so well. I'm pretty well-versed in Marvel but I wouldn't ever claim to know every single character and every issue they've appeared in, so I can't guarantee it's never been mentioned that Tony wasn't projected to survive birth, but that does seem like a pretty big fact for me not to have found out, so I'm going to credit it to Gillen. It adds a layer to Tony's story which is then doubly added upon by revealing that he wouldn't have lived without alien tech and methods (which we have yet to really hear about). Was Tony more than just a regular child, albeit a little more intelligent and with more resources? We also can't ever rule out the fact that 451 is simply lying. Everything is a possibility and we've already seen 451 lie to get his way before. Occam's Razor would dictate that 451 lying is a far more simple solution than "Tony was going to die in childbirth so Howard tracked down a mysterious robot who had accumulated masses of knowledge and broke that robot out of an alien casino so that he could try to help save Howard's son." Then again, this is comics and that second argument is far more in line with how Wikipedia explains comic plots. Stay tuned to this one; whatever the answer and motivations behind 451, they're bound to be interesting and to put Tony in previously unexplored areas, both physically and emotionally.

Captain America 6, Captain Marvel 12

Captain America 6
Remender (w) and Romita Jr., Palmer, Janson, and Hanna (a) and White (c)

Cap is PISSED. Just looking at the cover of the issue should really define what happens next. Captain America gets angry occasionally. Dude hates injustice and cowardly actions and terrorism and everything else on those lines. So he occasionally flips out at some villain or gets worked up at some other hero or person or something. But he's not usually angry. Angry is more sustained and less reactionary. Cap often shouts about stuff at villains while he's hitting them with his shield. He has kind of a low-level disappointment with a lot of the things in the world and in his country and in the people, but he's not often really angry. Right now, Cap is angry.
Ian is back with Zola and demands answers from Jet about why she would side with Zola, who murdered the innocent Phrox. Jet gives him the corporate lines about how Cap is a kidnapper, not a father, and how Zola is just trying to get his family back together. However, Jet is having her own problems finding Steve as negative after he spared her life. On top of that, she's never really had interactions with other humans, let alone human males, so she has all sorts of conflicting emotions about Cap. It's an interesting development, and one that makes some amount of sense given her upbringing, and one that's made all the more interesting by the end of the issue. BUT WE'LL GET THERE. Cap storms the mutates of Zolaland like never before and annihilates his way through their forces on his way to Zola and Ian. Ian gets more of a talk from Zola about how Zola only wants the best for his family and how Ian will have to understand that, even if it means reprogramming him to feel that way and brainwashing him to show Cap as figurative vampire who takes in younger men and trains them to be murderers before they die themselves (Bucky, Nomad, other Buckys, etc.). It's a compelling enough argument for Zola to make, though Cap has raised Ian for ten years or so now and it seems tricky to convince the boy that his father is an abductor with ill intents. However, he does look a bit brainwashed by the end, though this could be a ploy like one Bucky tried to use when Faustus tried to brainwash him into hating Cap. Meanwhile, Cap has tracked down Jet (showering, it's a little weird, honestly) and threatens her with a gun he's taken from the mutates. She remains calm, saying that he won't shoot her, he's too good of a person, but that he also won't ever get to Ian and doesn't deserve to. Cap fires the gun. It had been point blank on Jet's face but we don't actually see her in the panel that he shoots it, so all bets are off.
There are still a ton of interesting things happening here. Jet's feelings towards Cap paired with Ian's feelings towards Cap (very different feelings) make for a somewhat unpredictable dynamic as Cap tears through Zola's base. Also, Cap sees the doorway that had been the portal that brought him here and contemplates going out and getting help before returning to Ian, but decides against it. He also reveals that, because Marvel time is so messed up, he's actually spent more time now in Dimension Z than he has in the present day, presumably since being frozen in ice. This is his normal now. It's an incredibly interesting idea and it'll be interested to see where it goes or if it gets resolved or something. Cap's anger pervades this issue and demands your attention as a reader, really pulling you in and gripping you as we watch Cap struggle with losing Ian and with seeing Zola's mutates (which have Cap's face in horrible, twisted ways). Another strong issue. Excited to see where we go as this arc continues.

Captain Marvel 12
DeConnick and Sebela (w) and Andrade (a) and Bellaire (c)

Captain Marvel's fight continues against Deathbird, as does her inability to fly. The two come at odds somewhere in the middle of the issue as Carol can't really help herself and lifts off just enough (after totaling her flying motorcycle when she picks it up and uses it to hit Deathbird) to sap the power right out of her. It's enough, fortunately, as the fight ends with Deathbird in custody though it does leave Carol sick and weak. Throughout the issue, there's also a dialogue going between Carol's doctor and a doctor who had a patient with similar symptoms to hers, despite her Kree physiology. That doctor reveals his patient was none other than Helen Cobb, friend and idol of Carol as well as a fellow pilot. Cobb's doctor reveals that she had started hallucinating before her death, but that her reports of these hallucinations were so vivid that they seemed real, to the point where she even smelled like she had been places the doctor knew she couldn't have. Carol's doctor, who has more experience with superheroes, points out that things that are impossible happen every day in this world, so they can't rule anything out. They decide that maybe this is foul play and that someone is pulling these strings, including Helen Cobb's disease and the fire that took her life and which seems to also include Deathbird's attack and maybe even Carol's disease. The culprit is revealed to be Yon-Rogg, a Kree officer who had allegedly died in the same explosion that gave Carol her powers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the original Captain Marvel titles.
This is a very interesting decision, delving so far back into Carol's history and pulling a villain out of the ether to torture this new Captain Marvel. Yon-Rogg has a long-seated hatred of Carol and is clearly a bit unbalanced. He's also obviously not one to object to using Carol's loved ones as cannon fodder in his hatred. On top of that, she still can't fly and her powers are waning but she's going to be angrier than ever when she finds out what's happening. Now we're going to head into Captain Marvel's very own event, "Avengers: The Enemy Within," which will start in May with a one-shot prelude and continue through July in four parts, spanning DeConnick's Avengers Assemble book in issues 16 (part one) and 17 (part three) and Captain Marvel 13 (part two) and 14 (part four). This will put Carol at odds against her Avengers teammates as she makes decisions that DeConnick promises will be devastating and important, but also the decisions she truly believes Carol would make. If that's not the most worrying sentiment, I don't know what is. This will definitely be an event to pre-order and pick up as it goes on. Trust DeConnick to know what she's doing here, as she's sculpted two wonderful books for Marvel in Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble already. Very excited and more than a little nervous.