Daredevil: End of Days 8, Daredevil Dark Nights 1

Daredevil: End of Days 8
Bendis and Mack (w) and Janson and Sienkiewicz w/ Mack (a) and Hollingsworth (c)

Books like this one make me feel like maybe I've lost touch with myself as a comic reader. Well, books like this one and Twitter. On Twitter, I follow both Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack and I love one of those men very much because I think he's an incredible talent who helped me realize just how much art can go into comics (the other one I nearly constantly sigh/yell at in my comic blog). David Mack particularly has been retweeting a lot of positive things about Daredevil: End of Days as a whole and the twist ending which surprised so many readers. So I had to ask myself "is this just because he tracked down the positive reviews/that only people who loved the book are taking the time to write to them about it or am I wrong about this series?" Of course, liking something is a rather objective definition whereas reviewing something should come from a neutral place and based on knowledge about what objectively makes something good or not. I know that by claiming this is a review blog, I'm kind of inherently saying I can do that but sometimes I'm not sure that's accurate. Maybe I've lost track of comics over the years and now I'm jaded and cynical. I just didn't care for this series. That's coming as someone who loves Daredevil and loves David Mack and, in the right circumstances, can appreciate an alternate reality-esque future. But I just didn't care for this series. I think, again, it kind of stems from the fact that this series was eight issues long. After issue three or four, I was annoyed by the mystery of Mapone more than I was curious about it. It kept coming up and it was clear it wasn't going to be answered in any quick way and the writing prodded the reader to keep asking "WHAT IS MAPONE," a question I was already sick of asking and I, in turn, begin to resent the fact that they wanted me to care. You know what it's like? It's like that scene in Wall-E where Eve asks Wall-E what his directive is and he shows her how good he is at compacting trash, then when he struggles through the word "directive?" she turns away from him and says "Classified." It's a great little moment in the film and would have been SO awful if he had kept asking her and she had kept saying "classified" but kept prodding him to ask anyway. Okay, maybe it's only like that if you're me.

Timothy, the little boy that Daredevil rescued once upon a time is the new Daredevil and we get a few scenes of the two of them as Matt trained him late in his life (in fact, just before he died). He explains that someone will appear to him to guide him when the time is right, just as Stick did for him, and that he'll know it when he sees it. Now, with Timothy's father Ben and his mentor Matt dead, he's desperate to find out who his "Stick" will be. He runs into people from Matt and his father's past, including Foggy Nelson, Punisher, Peter Parker, and Nick Fury, but none of them are his Stick. Fury offers him the secret of Mapone but Timothy, angry that Fury didn't give this information to Ben when he had the chance, throws the file in a trashcan fire. He returns into a bar he was visiting with Peter Parker (who attempted to help him work through his grief in a scene that can't help but have some SNAPPY DIALOGUE) to find that the red-headed woman playing pool with a bunch of hoodlums is in trouble as the hoodlums feel she's been conning them. Timothy jumps into the fight and takes out a couple of the guys before being critiqued by the woman for his fighting style. She then reveals that she's blind, the only thing her father left her, and that she can help train him to fight. Her name? Mapone Romanova, the daughter of Matt and Black Widow. If anywhere, this is where I'm jaded and cynical. The things I've read on Twitter make this seem like a huge and shocking reveal but is it? I mean, we saw Ben investigate all of Matt's former lovers and each one of them had a red-headed child. He couldn't track down Widow but should anyone be surprised she also had a child with Daredevil? Also, and I hate to be that guy, but Mapone is a stupid name.

Daredevil Dark Nights 1
Weeks (w and a) and Loughridge (c)

Daredevil Dark Nights is an eight part series that will feature three adventures for Daredevil written and illustrated by three different creative teams. Lee Weeks is heading up the first arc, a three issue story called "Angels Unaware," which focuses on Matt Murdock trying to deliver a heart to a little girl waiting in a hospital during a massive snowstorm. Matt fell asleep in the office reading the bible (getting back to Matt's Catholic roots) and wakes up to find the city effectively shut down. He decides to walk home, as his office is just a short walk, but the snow messes with his radar sense a bit. When a few muggers accost him on the empty streets, he makes quick work of a pair of them but doesn't sense the third one behind him, who knocks him unconscious and steals his money, leaving his wallet out, to be covered by the snow. A man (possibly homeless?) carries the unconscious Matt to the nearby hospital where he wakes unsure of who he is and startled to find that he's blind and everyone appears to be screaming (he doesn't remember his senses). Eventually things come back to him as he rouses himself and incapacitates the three muggers, who have turned up in the hospital lobby to ransom the people there. His doctor returns Matt to his bed and asks who he is. He asks her about the little girl who needs a heart transplant and is waiting for the helicopter that is trying to brave the snow to bring it to her. He informs the doctor that he heard the helicopter go down (the city is just about silent in the snowstorm so he could isolate the helicopter pretty easily) and that he can go get the heart. The homeless man had brought a suitcase that had been with Matt to the hospital and a member of the hospital staff had been trying to open it in the hopes it would reveal his identity (with his wallet buried in the snow). He gets it open and reveals to the doctor that the man is Daredevil. She brings him to the roof so he can try to retrieve the heart and hopefully save the little girl. He stumbles a bit in the snow as he dives off the roof so this may not be as easy as it could be for Daredevil.

This is definitely an interesting spin on Daredevil. It's very religion-laden, which could turn some readers off. That's always been a kind of interesting facet to Matt's character for me, even if it occasionally gets ignored or gets heavy-handed. Here I'd say it's more heavy-handed than maybe it needs to be, but it certainly illustrates the themes of this arc and the fact that Matt is religious. If you were picking up this Daredevil book and the only things you'd read had come from the last few years of Daredevil, you'd likely be startled to find him so engrossed in the bible and holding a chain with a cross on it. Still, it's not out of character, just a little different than what we've seen. The story is already engaging and the art varies between good and great at times. Weeks' three issues should be a good read on Daredevil's character and give us some thing to talk about before David Lapham takes over writer and artist duties for the two part "What a Day, What a Night" and Jimmy Palmiotti and Thony Silas give us the three issue arc "The Trip" to end the series.

Winter Soldier 19, Red She-Hulk 66, X-Factor 257

Winter Soldier 19
Latour (w) and Klein (a and c)

The final issue of Winter Soldier finds Tesla having created a cosmic cube of some sort, the Tesla Tesseract. Her plan is to create chaos by going back in time with it to kill the people who have brought her pain. She advises Bucky to take the opportunity to go back and finish Novokov before he can hurt Natasha or wipe her memories. He refuses, knowing that time shouldn't be broken this way. He watches helplessly as she jumps them to various points in her life where she was hurt and kills whoever was torturing her. All the while, Bucky pleads with her to return and live the life she has. Finally, she brings him back to the day he killed her father and tells him that now he has the chance to make all of this go away by not killing her father. He explains that he understands what he was and who he is and how everything feeds into his life and how he can't just go back in time and change things, as much as he wants to erase his Winter Soldier past. No good can come from altering the past. Tesla attacks him, using the body of Father Hammer, who was evidently watching Bucky even at this point to see his skills. As Bucky gives up the fight, he shows Tesla her reflection on his knife. When she could have gone to see her father in this time, she chose instead to look like Father Hammer. Mortified by this, she brings them back to the present and admits her mistakes, fighting a war on soldiers. Unfortunately, it's too late to save them as the cosmic energy is expanding too quickly. Bucky uses his arm, rigged with a homing beacon, to send them back to Earth while she keeps them intangible so they don't crash into anything. They land in the ocean and she sinks away, disappearing, while he emerges at the top. There's a nice wrap-up for Joe Robards where he acknowledges without acknowledging that he knows Bucky killed his wife but he understands the weight of having a mission. Bucky returns to the cube despite himself and goes back in time to kiss Natasha at a time when she knew him before leaving again.

It's a wonderful and fitting wrap-up for the Winter Soldier, whose biggest demon since his return, and rightfully so, has been his past as the Winter Soldier. This issue gives him an out, a way to try to erase the things he's done and the person he was in that time, or even small parts of it. He could erase the horrible acts he's committed, he could erase Novokov and get back Natasha, he could do just about anything. Instead, he comes to terms with what the past means. Will he ever be over it? No, probably not. He probably shouldn't ever be. But maybe he can move past it with this feeling. Latour and Klein inherited an almost impossible job (replacing a beloved writer who created this character on a near-failing book) and did very nice work anyway. Klein's art really stands out here as there's a great piece at the beginning that shows the Winter Soldier's beginning as Bucky falls into the water from the drone he couldn't stop which calls back to early Avengers style art and uses great colors. The issue is solid and their run was well-executed. Still very sad to see this book go. Well at least the other two books in this review are still going strong and will never-oh.

Red She-Hulk 66
Parker (w) and Pagulayan, Olliffe, Bennett, and Jose (a) and Staples (c)

Red She-Hulk and X-51 arrive in the Florida Everglades, the Nexus of Realities, according to the Terranometer. Time is different here and Aaron is hopeful that they'll have the best shot of changing a fixed point in time by going to where time is least fixed. As they arrive, Red She-Hulk instantly spots and attacks Man-Thing, home after his journey with the old Thunderbolts some months ago. He teleports her into a different reality, one where she goes out and saves Bruce Banner on the gamma testing site where he saved Rick Jones and became the Hulk. As a result, she becomes the Hulk (still red and a she, but now the only Hulk) and he's just a great scientist. In this reality, Banner is able to help Betty keep Hulk in check and maintainable, leading to her eventual transformation into a form far more like the Red She-Hulk we know. As a result, she's more accepted in society and is a valued Avenger (who makes out with Thor at least once in her lifetime), all of which makes Banner jealous. Banner teams with Dr. Stack and creates the Machine Men, used to attack super-powered individuals. This whole time, Aaron has been trying to contact Betty in this world to get her to remember who she really is and bring her back to their universe. He can only effectively communicate with her through dreams and she shakes them off in the morning, fully embracing her new life when awake. When Banner and Stack create the Machine Men, Aaron is finally able to enter the world as more than just a spectator, as he enters his own alternate body. Man-Thing continues to watch from the sidelines, unsure of what exactly is happening and unable to teleport them back in any useful way. On the plus side for them, though, She-Hulk has tracked Red She-Hulk with the help of Echelon before leaving them in the dust to reach Betty and Aaron first. She arrives as Aaron, who, in this world, is programmed to hunt superheroes, is trying to tell Betty that this world isn't hers and she needs to go back with them. Unfortunately, Aaron is just a machine and must continue attacking her while trying to give her advice so it comes off pretty misleading. Man-Thing is able to open Betty's eyes to her past, but now she has both histories running through her mind so she's not in great shape. Man-Thing and Aaron try to get She-Hulk to help but Betty goes full Hulk right as General Fortean arrives so everything is going completely wrong and crazy as the series ends next issue.

GUYS, I can't believe this series is ending. I've loved this book since it switched over to Betty as the primary character and this issue illustrates again how perfect it is. First and foremost, this is an alternate timeline done right. Parker did it very well in Dark Avengers but this is a different animal, as it's one change that has meaningful implications and that logically moves from one step to another. I could name other books where, for example, Hank Pym is killed and then everything changes to such a ridiculous degree that you might mistake Hank Pym for God. Instead, one switch changes the whole Hulk dynamic of the Marvel Universe and everything naturally follows from that switch. On top of that, we have our characters acting in character (except occasionally Betty, who doesn't actually know what her character is) and doing what they can to solve this. One of the best parts, though, comes from Aaron who is fresh off his failure against the Yologarch because he couldn't escape the fact that he's just a robot following code. In this new universe, he is humbled again to find that he still can't break code so, as human as he is, he can't stop attacking Betty, his friend, while he's trying to save her. It's a brilliant extension of the ideas addressed with Aaron before this, and something that comes up occasionally with AIs but is still an engaging idea made far more engaging by the long game Parker has been playing to make us like Aaron so much and to give him so much personality over the course of this series. It's hard for me to understand why this book is ending, though Jeff Parker has assured me it's not my fault so I feel pretty good about that.

X-Factor 257
David (w) and Edwards and Carnero (a) and Milla (c)

"The End of X-Factor" six-part arc has officially started which should bring us right up to Peter David's final X-Factor issue and the final issue of this run on X-Factor (there is some speculation that it will be restarted as a part of Marvel NOW! or Marvel NOW! 2 which is apparently a thing that is happening that I'll probably have to look into more when I haven't written a few overly giant reviews already (stop writing and canceling great books and maybe I'll stop typing so much...but don't actually stop writing great books, okay? And look, in the interest of honesty, I probably won't stop typing so much). We jump right into it as Layla has tracked the demon goat-headed Madrox to Marrakesh, Morocco where he's being held by a boy named Aziz who hopes to use him to open a portal to the afterlife and bring his mother back from it. Yes, it's already kind of the saddest story. Layla, who knows things, has found her powers to be a bit off of late. This run-in with Aziz and his uncle (who has dabbled in dark arts and thinks he can use Jamie to open the portal successfully) was something she saw in her thoughts but it was supposed to be a quick detour as the portal never opened and Madrox was supposed to still be Madrox when it happened, not goat-head Madrox. Unlike her visions, though, they successfully open the portal and goat-head goes in and pulls the mother out. Unfortunately, the mother is a horrible demon thing now and kills Aziz almost instantly before approaching Layla. Layla's forcefield doesn't protect her from this otherworldly being and she's about to suffer the same fate as Aziz when goat-head Madrox pulls the demon back and throws her into the portal. Layla disguises Madrox and they leave, still unsure of what to do next and Layla unsettled by her inaccurate visions.

This is a certainly compelling storyline. I love Madrox, as readers of this blog should certainly know by now, and so I'm happy if this final arc focuses on trying to get him back. The idea that Layla's visions aren't predicting the correct events is an interesting one and how exactly she'll be able to translate those to help could lead to a great story. On top of that, this seemed to be the first time that we saw goat-head show some sort of semblance of an idea of what was happening, as he saves his wife and escapes with her pretty willingly. Whether that's more a survival instinct or part of Jamie's personality coming through is up for debate. Still, the issue was a very quick read and was over well before I was ready for it to end, which is always a good sign, if a little depressing. I'll be interested to see where this one takes us to trigger the ending.

Age of Ultron 9, Thanos Rising 3, Thor: The Dark World Prelude 1,

Age of Ultron 9
Bendis (w) and Peterson, Pacheco, and Bonet (a) and Mounts and Villarrubia (c)

One of my problems with this series, as I've said time and time again, is that it is way too long. I tend to have issues with Bendis on this front, which I'm sure I will examine again tomorrow as I write a review for the final issue of Daredevil: End of Days. However, I think we've officially reached the point where I have nothing more to say about this series. Everything I've written about this series (and recent Bendis as a whole, honestly) holds true; it expects that the readership, people currently reading comic books, I'd remind you, don't know anything about time travel, it focuses on characters who like to talk in quick bursts of snippy dialogue, and a bunch of the tones don't match with the seriousness of the situation. I'd add to that, in this case, that there are literally three pages of this penultimate issue which feature panels of destroyed New York and Wolverine making a plethora of grunts and groans and the like. All in the same area of blown-up New York. Then Tony Stark tells Wolverine that time is an organism and traveling back and forth through it to change things tears it apart and Wolverine proceeds to travel back to talk to himself about killing Pym. As the both talk to each other in snappy repartee, with the occasional interruption from Hank Pym saying "this is fascinating" and the likes, the opposite of what the audience is thinking before all three are greeted by Sue Storm, also still back in time, who jumps in to, first and foremost, blame Wolverine for knocking her out at the car so that she didn't come in to see what was happening. This might not sound that objective, but this is all so stupid. Then they tell Pym to create Ultron but make it so he has a design flaw that he can't fix and that Pym can activate to stop Ultron but Pym can't know he's activating it because this is all so stupid. Then he makes a weird new Ultron as the Wolverines and Sue arrive at the Savage Land and watch as one Wolverine kills the other, which is all so stupid.

As I said above, I'm not convinced I can say anything else objective about this book. This is one of the problems with a series that has dragged on too long; a once-noble reviewer dedicated to try to look objectively at the book is now forced to admit that maybe he's not in the right state of mind to do just that. Instead, he wants to type "stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid" all over this review. Frankly, we should all praise him as a hero for not having done that from word one of this review.

Thanos Rising 3
Aaron (w) and Bianchi (a) and Svorcina (c)

Thanos leaves Titan after killing his mother to go on and push forth in his new life. He goes across the universe, from galaxy to galaxy, with a crew of pirates, landing many wives and spawning many children across the cosmos. None of it is satisfying for him as he keeps taking more wives and fathering more kids and killing more aliens with his pirates in order to simply feel something. He doesn't, except lingering remorse over the things that happened at Titan. Mostly, he's upset that the mysterious girl didn't reciprocate his feelings towards her. She, he is convinced, is the only woman who will ever make him feel love. In this new life, he leaves all of his wives and children behind time after time and has sworn off killing, even though it enrages the pirate captain. He keeps his job because he's adept at finding new targets and turning off all of their sensors and everything. However, his seeming inability to kill is a point of contention with the captain, who eventually attacks Thanos to provoke a response. As Thanos continues to refuse to fight, he accepts his fate, ready to be beheaded. Instead, though, he seems to black out and opens his eyes to find the pirate captain disemboweled before him. He returns to Titan later to see his mother's grave and comes across the mysterious woman again. He asks her to marry him, deciding that she needs him just as much as he needs her, and promising her that he'll give her anything she could desire. She sort of consents, saying that he'll need to be hers and hers alone and demanding that he go out and kill all of his once wives and children, which he begins to do as the issue ends.

I'm unsold on this series. I'll be honest, I don't know the full history of Thanos. I know only what I've seen reading the books that I've read in my lifetime which means I've seen him more than a few times and through several different lenses. However, this is comics and he's been around for four decades now so I certainly don't know his full character. In what I do know of him, though, he's a comic book villain in every sense of the word. He's cold, he's calculating, he's powerful, and he's evil. Sometimes that can come off as cliche or lazy or any number of other negative attributes. However, sometimes the best villains are simple brilliant sociopaths, dedicated to chaos for chaos' sake. It's the character of Iago from Shakespeare's Othello and it sustains over time for a reason. Sometimes, then, giving these characters a background can actually weaken them. I'm not a hundred percent sure that's true of Thanos (particularly where I'm not sure of his background in general) but it kind of feels like, as the mystery is unraveled, it's going to leave people feeling a bit unfulfilled. I suppose if this woman turns out to be inside Thanos all along (a definite possibility) or something along those lines, it's going to equate to about that same thing and it will have been nice to watch his descent into madness (well, maybe "nice" is the wrong word). However, if it is a woman, I have some serious qualms about the message here and Marvel should probably be a little careful about the idea that one of its universe's biggest killers was turned this way by a woman. So let's all just hope it's his imagination.

Thor: The Dark World Prelude 1
Yost and Kyle (w) and Eaton and Hennessy (a) and Troy, Sotomayor, and Mossa (c)

This is a weird one. If you saw The Avengers, and you're reading this blog so I have a feeling you did, you'll recognize about 50% of this issue. This book takes place before and concurrent with the movie as we learn exactly why Thor hadn't yet returned to Earth prior to Loki's attack on the Tesseract. We also see a little bit of how Thor came back to Earth with the Bifrost destroyed, something that was glossed over a bit in the movie (with a throwaway line talking about dark energy and the cost to send him through). More or less that's what we get here as Odin shows Thor some dark energy and explains it will cost them both to send him through it. So pretty much exactly the same. However, we also get some interesting stuff about how hard Jane has been working to reopen the portal and what the universe is doing in Asgard's absence from it. For someone looking to get into the spirit of Thor: the Dark World with only knowledge from Thor and The Avengers, it seems that this comic is certainly accomplishing that. It's a good interweaving (not necessarily seamless, but good) of the storylines from the Cinematic Universe with some behind-the-scenes Asgard stuff tossed in. I don't have a huge idea of what's coming in the newest Thor movie, set for release in November, but it certainly feels like this book is going above and beyond to tie some plots together.

What intrigues me most about this book is that it's co-written by Christopher Yost, writer for Scarlet Spider and Avenging Spider-Man, most episodes of the amazing TV series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (available on Netflix streaming), and, most importantly, co-writer for the screenplay of Thor: The Dark World. It's encouraging that one of the writers of the movie is entrenched in comics and has already had success translating comics for media with EMH. It's also encouraging for this two-issue prelude (which feels like it's being released too early to coincide with a November movie release) that one of the film's writers will be helming this tie-in. Fun stuff, probably not a ton of substance for long-time fans but great to get caught up in the Cinematic Universe and probably great for fans whose only knowledge of Marvel comes from the movies. Good way to introduce a lot of concepts that could be lingering on the shelf before this movie.

Avengers 13, Avengers Arena 10

Avengers 13
Hickman w/ Spencer (w) and Deodato (a) and F. Martin (c)

Avengers 13 continues where Avengers 12 left off as the team in the Savage Land (comprised of Hyperion, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Captain Universe, and the Spiders-Man and -Woman) sets out in search of the stolen children. Captain Universe comes across a Watcher of the land (Garokk, the Petrified Man) he leads them to the High Evolutionary, who has found a use for the children. As the Avengers are dealing with a handful of Savage Land evolved beasts, the High Evolutionary wakes Terminus, who had been defeated and unable to rise until he put the children, a seemingly limitless power source, behind it. Hyperion discovers this as he goes on ahead to fight the High Evolutionary while Thor and the team deal with Terminus (who had already crushed Iron Man, the empty armor Tony is controlling from space). Thor is on the verge of completely wrecking Terminus with a massive thunderbolt as Hyperion flies out of the High Evolutionary's inner sanctum and through the head of Terminus, rescuing the children attached to the platform within. With Terminus defeated and the children saved, Hyperion and Thor again retreat to the mountain they had been on last issue to talk more. Thor warns Hyperion about what family means to warriors (usually some sort of flaw in the armor), citing the dangerous events on the horizon, but Hyperion will not hear of it. In Hyperion's narration, we find that the most important memory of his life is no longer the destruction of his world but the discovery of this new one.

This is a very sweet issue for Hyperion particularly, who, as I mentioned last review, could easily have gone a pseudo-Doctor Manhattan kind of way. Instead, he seems to be going the exact opposite, gaining strength from the people in his life and the the new family and world he's found. Add to that character arc a few fun lines from the increasingly cynical Spider-Man and some nice Avengers moments as a whole and this is a very satisfying two issue arc. The children don't feature in this one nearly as much except as a plot device and a sort of save-the-cat moment but they still have the weight they gained last issue and, I mean, they're kids. No one wants to watch kids in peril and everyone's rooting for the guy who saves them. So now we're rooting for Hyperion. The Hyperion-Thor relationship continues to be interesting to watch as Thor finally has a new, non-Asgardian god buddy. Rooting for that guy too, pretty constantly. Solid issue, nice two-issue story.

Avengers Arena 10
Hopeless (w) and Burchielli (a) and Beaulieu (c)

As my girlfriend just pointed out, I finish reading about half of these by involuntarily going "oh noooooooooo" at various volumes. This book is heating up like crazy now that Katy has been outed as a strategic technopathic monster with, now that Juston is dead, a Sentinel at her disposal. She still has Death Locket under her command and she's out to win Murder World. Nico, as the only one who knows Katy is back in control, wakes X-23 and tells her what happened. Laura hunts down Katy and Death Locket by herself and ends up taking a beating from the Sentinel. Darkhawk, who had been exiled from the group, finds himself there as well and attacks unsuccessfully after X-23 is defeated. Laura is delivered back to the group in very weak condition and Nico does what she can to hold off Katy and the Sentinel. It gives them enough time to make a break for it and exit the desert. Nico's teleportation spells haven't been working but she tries another one, instead trying to teleport them somewhere else in Murder World. This one does work and everyone jumps through the portal, unsure where it will put them. Just as Nico is about to exit, Katy shows up again and blasts her, breaking her leg. Nico closes the portal and stays behind to face Katy on her own before Darkhawk shows up. Unfortunately for Nico, Katy is now also controlling Darkhawk and he blasts her hand off, knocking away the Staff of One as well. She tumbles down a mountain after it and struggles to reach to it. As the issue ends, her last health bar disappears. Oh noooooooooooooo.

This book alternates between a great and pretty fun read and one of the darkest books Marvel has ever put out. It never feels like it's reaching to try to fit in either corner, which makes it a thoroughly enjoyable, if tense, series. The action scenes are peppered with the knowledge that everybody seems able to die (as much as I hate watching characters die, what a change it is to feel like there are consequences to the battles) and, in fact, rather on the brink of death at any given moment. The less action-y scenes, depending on who they focus on, feel appropriately sinister or appropriately light-hearted. I've already positively said a ton about this book but I really can't seem to say enough. I caught myself, in the middle of this book (in one of the less action-y scenes but knowing that action was on the horizon), stopping to say "gee, I'm really enjoying this book." Young Avengers occasionally gets me to do that but very few others make me actively aware of how into the book I am while I'm reading it. This book probably scared people who weren't fans of the young'uns in Marvel away but I really hope it didn't. I don't think you need to go in knowing anyone in this place. They're well-explained without the need for too much exposition and they're really well-developed across the board (well, except for Red Raven). This book has been fantastic and I'm looking forward to it as long as it keeps going.

Comics this week

Back to bunches of comics this week. Should be some real good ones in the bunch and should be a few bad ones (law of averages, right?) and a few that I'm not sure are real things I need to worry about (Wolverine Comic Reader 1 what?). As is typical, though, let's focus this Tuesday on the should-be-good-ones.

Avengers 13
Avengers, a book I'm already pretty thrilled with, is on a run of solid connected one-shots. It's hard to explain that too much so you guys should probably just all be reading Marvel flagship title. I do think this is still a tricky one for newcomers to comics which makes it particularly strange and particularly daring for Marvel to go forth with this. I also touched upon New Avengers last week kind of using the "New Avengers" title to drive sales but both feel more intense and complicated than new readers would be willing to get involved with. In that way, it feels like Marvel wants to reward long-time comic readers with Avengers books of their own and I certainly appreciate it. I hope their sales do too.

Avengers Arena 10
Despite this book's place on the list (which, I assure you, is purely alphabetical), this is the last pregame pick I'm writing before this post goes LIVE. That's important to note because it's been very difficult for me to pick just five books this week and Avengers Arena was vying against Cable and X-Force, Red She-Hulk, and Superior Spider-Man (none of these books were helped by the sudden inclusion of Iron Man, either). At the end of the day though, it came down to Avengers Arena again because I just can't stop enjoying this book. Every issue has been a delight and, even though it's officially earned a near-permanent spot here, it's still a surprise that it's so good. This book has all the makings of a book that could easily have been botched but instead it's found a great spot to work from and Hopeless and crew are putting out great issues week to week. Hard not to include on pregame picks.

Daredevil Dark Nights 1
I'm a big Daredevil fan so it's pretty interesting to me that Daredevil is getting so much love at Marvel right now. Granted, he's a successful older character and his new book is great (like, Eisner great) so it's not that huge of a surprise but it's still encouraging to see. So why pick this, the start of a new eight-part series that will feature different writers/artists to tell new one-shot stories about the man without fear, instead of the conclusion of the eight-part Daredevil: End of Days? Well because I don't much care for End of Days. I think that one could have been half the size and told just as much story. Eight one-shots telling eight separate stories seems like a bit of a better formula and is still a great way to showcase the character.

Iron Man 11
With the interesting story of 451 slowly emerging (though it's coming from him, so who knows whether we trust the narrator or not) and Tony Stark squared off against him, knowing that 451 can take over his armor at any time, we seem primed for a great story with great new insights to Tony and his world. Every issue has been entertaining and has left Tony in an interesting place and I trust Gillen to keep that up. Kieron Gillen has quickly cemented his place in comics and I'm looking forward to this story as much for Tony's new developments as for Gillen's. For Marvel alone (not counting his work with other companies or his indie works like the incredible Phonogram books) Gillen had a masterpiece in Journey into Mystery and is now knocking it out of the park in Iron Man and Young Avengers. I'm excited to watch it continue in all places.

Winter Soldier 19
This is the final issue of Winter Soldier. For anyone wishing to know what will happen to the supremely complicated, thought-dead hero, this will be the last we'll see of him in a solo book for at least a bit of time. Things may change in a year or so, as Captain America: Winter Soldier premieres in 2014, but for now, I'm hoping for a wonderful send-off to what has been a phenomenal solo series for one of Marvel's most popular new characters over the last several decades (I heard Brubaker said that he was the most popular since the likes of Wolverine and Deadpool, though I'm not sure where he got those numbers. I do sort of implicitly trust him, for better or worse). Real sad to see it go.

This week's picks

Short week for comics this week and kind of a weird one. I'd say most of these books were fine and good reads, but I don't know how many totally stand out. PLUS SIDE, at least three of them do and that's all I need!

Captain America 7

I kind of can't get over how good this book is. I love the perspective on Cap and I love the humanity of Cap, which is something I feel like I haven't talked about enough. On top of the fact that we're seeing Steve as a father and dealing with the issues his own father left him with, we're seeing Steve in pain and struggling. Granted, he's in pain a fair amount in comics, as are most superheroes, but he's noting his pain so frequently. Constantly he'll get hit or take a fall or something and he'll instantly diagnose himself (it's been happening since issue one too) with what's wrong and he'll keep pushing through. That's kind of a difference from most other hero books, where you'll see a hero take a big hit, then just get up or struggle to his or her feet or something and keep on fighting. After a few big ones, the drama of "oh he/she must be really hurt" sets in, but here it's amplified by the fact we know EXACTLY how hurt Cap is ninety percent of the time and we see him continue to stand back up. It's absolutely perfect for his character in every aspect; he falls but he never succumbs, he bends but he never breaks, he's not the same level of power as Hulk or Thor or something but he never seems weaker, and, to a less defining but equally understandable extent, he can self-diagnose in a heartbeat. It's a near perfectly written Steve and, as if the story wasn't compelling enough to keep tuning in for (it is), it's worth reading just for that.

Fury MAX 12

It's sometimes hard to do a "this week's picks" because saying that implies that my subjective way of viewing books is worth listening to and is similar enough to what everyone's view is or what everyone's view SHOULD be. Usually I can get over that because I know, in my heart of hearts, that the books I've chosen are phenomenal and no one should be disappointed by them, in the very least. Of course, people still will be because that's how humanity functions, but I'm over that. However, this is a strange pick because it's probably the one of the more polarizing books I've chosen for this segment throughout the last six months. For action fans, there's not a lot of action. For fans of quick and snappy dialogue driven books, there's almost none of that. For fans of happy endings or beginnings or middles, there's nothing much to choose from here. For people who don't like swears or violence or a touch of nudity, this book won't really land. For people who don't want discussions of America's shady involvement in Nicaragua and similar areas of possible communist aggression or discussions about politics and Congress, this book is not a fun one. However, the weight this book puts on Nick Fury and the hopelessness Fury feels, a feeling he is not used to, is so palpable and so heavy that it would have been hard for me not to pick this book. Fury's very well characterized and his struggle is so hard to look on and to deal with that it adds such a layer to his character and to this world that I wouldn't have been able to look away from it. The art, which I wasn't sure about at the start of this series, has proven so perfect for the subject and the tone that it's a near perfect book, if you're looking for strange things in a book and none of the things I mentioned above. So I recommend this book knowing full well that many people would not like this book. Still, I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend it anyway and I'd sure hate to be remiss.

New Avengers 6

Have I mentioned that I adore this book? It turns out I have, almost non-stop. There's such a weight to this series and to these characters and it all ties back in, in a great way, to Captain America, which is why Hickman so adeptly utilized him for the first few issues. These are characters who are abnormally strong in different ways, whether it's with their powers or their intellects or their convictions, and they're being tested in all of those ways in what is essentially a no-win scenario. The problem that this team had with Cap being there is that Cap bends but doesn't break, the same characteristic that makes his solo book (and almost all of his other appearances) so compelling. In a lot of situations, he won't even really bend. The problem this team is facing (they're never referred to as the New Avengers so I'd almost rather call them the Illuminati still but the BOOK is the New Avengers so it seems like I SHOULD still call them New Avengers but that also seems like a marketing ploy since there's almost no reason for them to be called the New Avengers and they're seemingly more secret than even the Secret Avengers and...you know what, this doesn't matter. Let's just get back to what I was saying) is one that requires them to make horrible and inhuman choices to save their world and there's no way around that, at least not yet. Namor constantly points out that these heroes want a way to have everything, a safe two planets, but that there isn't any way to have that. They have to bend and break. Cap wouldn't have been able to, as they all well knew, so he had to be removed from the team. What a devastating book this is that the first order of business was removing the conscience of the team. By the same token, though, what a phenomenal book to read where they know that's exactly what they've done.

Best Panel:

I don't necessarily love picking the best cover or panel from one of the books that I chose as a "best" book, even though that kind of logic follows to a certain extent. However, this panel from New Avengers took a tone that was already dark and shifted it to be just a bit darker and to really focus on the people under the masks in such a simple and elegant way that I felt like I needed to highlight it. Of course, I'm also a big fan of Epting's art and I love the way that D'Armata colors this book. From issue one this book has felt like, in all departments, it knows what it wants to be and what it needs to be to be successful. This panel is just another example of that, as Hickman manipulates the characters and Epting manipulates the view of the characters and D'Armata manipulates the tone of the scene all aimed at making us see the book they want us to see. Brilliantly done.

Gambit 13, Iron Man 258.4, Fury MAX 12

Gambit 13
Asmus (w) and Pinna and Martinez (a) and Rosenberg (c)

With Fence near-dead in his warehouse, Gambit sets out to steal some tech that can hopefully save his friend's life. Unfortunately, that tech is owned by Tony Stark and it'll require Gambit breaking into an apartment armory of his and getting out of there with a suit without being spotted. Of course, things don't go quite as planned as alarms trigger when he gets in and Pepper sends Rhodey in to check and Rhodey discovers Gambit in a suit, using an override Fence gave him to enter and use the suit. Gambit is powering it himself, which is interesting, and manages to stun Rhodey long enough to get out of the armory and start flying away. Rhodey's suit is far better than the one Gambit stole and his isn't self-powered. Rhodey, now knowing that Gambit is inside the suit, tries to get Gambit to power down peacefully before resorting to blowing him out of the sky. Fortunately, he has gotten far enough away that he crashes down in Fence's warehouse and Rhodey sees the injured man and wants to help keep him alive. It seems like they got there in time but something sinister is still up as Fence has apparently hacked the Iron Man network and is beginning to transfer data out of there on behalf of some silhouetted probably-villain.

One of the things that I think slows this book down so much is the amount of mid-fight banter that takes place in every Gambit fight scene. There's always a ton of dialogue as characters aren't sure whether they want to quip or explain themselves or cryptically not explain themselves or do any mix of the three. It's not so bad that it makes the books, which are usually at least interesting if a little predictable at times, unreadable, but it definitely slows the pacing of the books down. This book started with a real spy feel to it and it seems like that's not a bad angle to take with a character like Gambit. In that case, I would say the over-explanation hinders the momentum and the tone of the series. Still, there are usually enjoyable pieces spread throughout each issue and I'd say the series is still worth reading, particularly if you're a Gambit fan, as it winds down.

Iron Man 258.4
Michelinie (w) and Ross and Layton (a) and Sotomayor (c)

The Iron Man 258 saga wraps up as Tony enacts his plan to defeat the Entity. Hammer lets Iron Man into the space station as he reveals that he is, in fact Tony Stark. They manage to send a low-tech message to Rhodey to tell him to meet Tony back at the sewer entrance hideout, where Tony gives Rhodey a different suit, one that more closely resembles his own. The plan is to distract the Entity while Tony gets in and injects it with a virus that would destroy it. They get to Stark Enterprises and are met with a slew of defenses as well as a couple special Iron Man suits directed by the Entity. As they begin to successfully fight off the Entity's defenses, the Entity brings foreign missiles online. Hammer warns the duo that the fight has just gotten far larger and Tony decides to rush through, no matter the cost. He manages to get through the building quickly enough to inject the Entity and end the threat. However, now Hammer knows who Iron Man is and Rae is still dead. Not everything is a victory for Tony Stark upon the defeat of the Entity but, as Rhodey says "that needs to be enough."

It occurs to me I probably could have gone back and read the storyline preceding this one but I'm afraid I would have fallen into a Starkhole and never climbed out of it. Once you start reading a comic storyline all at once, you may not ever stop. However, it would have probably given me more relevant things to talk about in this reviews, including how well it fits into the story and how well it works with the Tony of the time. However, it's just as well as most readers probably don't have access to the preceding and following storylines so we should probably just judge this arc the way it stands on its own. It's not easy to ignore the fact that this is a weirdly timed story. Iron Man is currently in the 500s somewhere, I believe, so it's a bit strange to double back and tell a story the slots so specifically into time actual decades ago now. Sure Iron Man is probably the focus character of May for Marvel (two-thirds of my Marvel calendars had Iron Man on them this past month; the third was Thing, inexplicably) thanks in large part to the third movie coming out, but it's still a bit of an odd choice to give readers this storyline at this point. It's not so odd because, frankly, I found it more compelling than a retelling of his history or something like that that tends to come out as new readers enter stores, but then, I'm a comic fan. Oh well, I shouldn't nitpick. For Iron Man fans, it's worth picking up this arc. It's an interesting enough story and it moves smoothly enough. If you've been an Iron Man fan since the days of Michelinie and Ross, you probably don't need me to tell you to get this book because you've probably gotten it already. Modern day fans without an eye for the past probably won't care for it but Marvel wasn't expecting that anyway.

Fury MAX 12
Ennis (w) and Parlov (a) and Loughridge (c)

Barracuda's men stopped Hatherly on his way as a distraction and roughed him up a bit to bring back to Fury, who is primed to gun down the whole camp. Barracuda explains what's happened and how little the army and the potential war and communist aggression means to him. All Barracuda has ever been interested in is the money and the drugs that he can get out of this deal and there's no way for Fury to stop it. If he tries to shoot them, he's so outnumbered that someone would kill him and, though it might have made something of a small dent, it wouldn't stop anything. They can't kill Fury because he's a legend and a high-ranking official so it would bring even more people down to their operation. So all Fury and Hatherly can do is leave. Hatherly announces to Fury on the plane that he's quitting when they get back because he can't stand the kinds of things that these secret wars are causing. Secret wars mean no accountability and that leads to people like Barracuda. When Fury returns to Pug, Pug denies him the chance to go hunt down Barracuda or to reveal anything. Too many people in Congress and the military are involved or complicit in someway so he can't expose the operation and Barracuda and some of his best men have all taken off from the location, mailing copies of evidence to some of those complicit in Washington with the threat that they'd send more to the mass media if anything happens to any of them. Fury has to accept it. If anything goes south for Pug, he loses his votes and his money and everything else; if anything goes wrong for Fury, he loses his war. Fury can't do anything. He and Shirley have a bit of a falling out as well as they both acknowledge that they've each been trapped by Pug and as Fury is kind of a jerk to her anyway. Fury waits a few years and finds Barracuda and breaks all of his limbs with a bat, which is something that isn't quite a solace.

The next issue is the final issue of Fury MAX, which makes me a bit sad. I'm not fully sold on the MAX line as a whole but I'm absolutely sold on Nick Fury's character time and time again and I think that this character as part of the MAX line makes total sense. It doesn't NEED to be completely explicit content in every issue but Fury's a violent character and he has a lot of darkness to him. Some of the most interesting characters in literature are the planners and the thinkers. Fury has always been one of those types and a well-written Fury is an incredibly compelling character. There is definitely a lot of darkness there though, particularly in his willingness to sacrifice to bring about the best outcome. He's not a guy that necessarily frets over the cost of getting the job done, he just gets the job done. However, in the way that Parlov his illustrated him, Fury MAX really brings out his age and the weight of his decisions over time. It's a solid read but it's definitely a specific solid read, as anything in the MAX line. I'm still sad to see it go. A lot of the books we've seen ended recently (or that we've seen cancelled recently, whether they've ended yet or not) have been books I'd categorize as "different" in some way or another. As much as I like Marvel's line of comics as a whole, it's sad to see so many road-less-traveled books fall by the wayside because it seems to signal that the only books that can survive are the ones that they know can survive.