[UPDATE/EDIT: Thread over at Bleeding Cool with a list of the fates of various non-white superheroes and discussion.  I didn't realize the Hawk-douches were supposed to be (partially) non-white.  Or Kyle Raynor...]

Oh, right, Marvel just did that too in Amazing Spider-Man 631… the kid killing that is.  Yes, the Lizard ate his own kid… to show that yes, he really is the Lizard now.  And only the Lizard!  Until another writer changes his mind.  Remember kids (and writers!): comics!

Siege 4 was really bad/dumb/BlackestNight8ish.  It’s like both writers thought of the stupidest possible solution with the least satisfying resolution and went with that.  Also, I could have sworn I read in an interview somewhere that the green on Osborne’s face was supposed to be symbolic… yet it was fucking everywhere in this issue, and someone even commented on it??  The whole power-up->1 panel->Loki dies->throwing a ship can hurt the Sentry->now Thor can knock him out->STFU COMIC!

Ugh.  Ugh.  C’mon Bendis, we KNOW IN CAPITAL LETTERS that you can do better than this.  This was like an after noon of engaging foreplay only to prematurely splatter in your partner’s nose while trying to suppress it resulting in an ejaculation with no orgasm:  no one’s satisfied, and at least one party is probably pissed.

Waitamminit!   Did Loeb ghostwrite this?  Shit :  ANSWER!

Speaking of Loeb – the Red Hulk/Red She-Hulk identity reveals should surprise absolutely no one.  Even though they went out of their way to basically break the chain of clues by having the Red Hulk in a scene with his alter-ego at one point (which I think is an incredibly cheap way to throw off suspicion)… still it was fairly obvious I think.  So yeah, that’s out of the way.  Yay.  Now maybe after this latest round of Hulk event stuff pans out we can get some more Pak-driven stuff.  Sure, I know he’s on board for this stuff (and his issues tend to be better written than Loeb’s)… but there is a huge difference in style and quality between this and the wonderful Pak-driven Hulk stuff from 2-3 years ago.

The way the Constrictor/Diamondback thing fell part in the last issue of Avengers:Initiative (35) was so incredibly, depressingly cliche.  I mean, could they not get a break?  Really?  Would it be that hard to leave them together?  It’s not like anyone else is going to use them for the next couple of years…

The bit with Maxwell Lord and the bleeding nose?  Always?  Oh look he’s got a giant bleeding nose in a giant tub of ice… *yawn*

Did they really go to all the trouble with the bottle city and giving Kryptonians a planet again and like two years worth of story arcs in 3-4 books just to KILL THEM ALL?  I mean, is that where this is headed? *yawn*

Dumbest Marvel retcon in recent memory: The Sentry slept with Rogue.  Because yeah, that TOTALLY makes sense.  Although, I guess if she magically “forgot” she slept with him since everyone forgot he existed then yeah, sure maybe decades of X-Men stories about her emotional fragility and inability to have contact with anyone (possibly culminating in finally getting with Gambit during a power loss period?  Hell, I don’t even remember) make sense… but still, it was cheap and stupid imho.  A much longer and more eloquent commentary HERE with follow-up HERE and note from Mike Carey (who has been doing great work with Rogue for the last few years on his X-Men title).

Astonishing X-Men: Xerogenesis was pretty bad too.  Not liking the bizarre art with uber sex-toy Emma (even more than usual, trust me – the artist actually draws in weird, visible, hand-sized circular nipple pad things that stick out from her ludicrously tight top… do real people wear these??) and strangely deformed everyone else (mostly the women, see above).  Also… there really is no place in continuity for this.  Why?  Because a) Beast is still with them (PAST) and Storm has a new haircut (FUTURE).  So yeah, pointless, skippable title.  Yay!  I’m so glad they moved this to limited series because now my inner compulsive will let me happily skip it.

There’s been some good stuff lately too (the current X-men event, Pak’s Amadeus Cho stuff) but I just felt like being negative for this post… maybe getting my “Dark Onefinemess” out of the way so I can move peacefully into the Heroic Age of Pullbox Commentary. (TM).  Or something

Iron Fist 27: Yes, Danny Rand/Iron Fist will also be a father soon, following in his perennial buddy, Luke Cage/Power Man’s footsteps.  Also of note, and implied by my goofy title, is that the mother of said child (and soon to be wife of Danny) is Misty Knight.  Now.  This is comics.  So her or the baby could go kaput or turn into an alien at any time, for no good reason BUT, luckily no one else seems to care about writing Misty at the moment – so I think they are safe!

Also, this was the final issue of Immortal Fist.  Such a shame, it’s been a great series so far and deserved more than it got (much like Captain Britain & MI13).

X-Factor 45: Answers a question asked by only the most diligent fanfolk (ok, that’s still a lot): were Rictor and Shatterstar together?  Beyond that, the ongoing arcs continue in interesting ways, and things start to come together.

Astonishing X-Men 30:  Something happened here. Forge “died” I think, in a really strange and silly ending that I don’t think anyone saw coming to a story that started looking like something out of 90s Claremont’s and wound up 90s Ennis.  Not bad, but not particularly good, and I think Ellis can do better.

Apparently the entire point of Avengers-Invanders was to resurrect Toro, who no one cares about.  Or the original Human Torch, one of them.  DUMB.  Leading into the new Human Torch mini coming out later this year I’m sure.  The ending was rather horrid – but how else are you going to end a story where the bad guy is omnipotent?

Whatever the current Messiah Mini Event is finally ended a recent issue of X-Force or Cable.  It was actually decent, except that in the end it didn’t mean anything.  Except that Dom killed Kiden in the future.  That’s basically it.  Fun.  Curious to see how X-F will pick up the pieces of Boom-Boom now though.  Shame, she was wonderful with the right writers.  Go NEXTWAVE!

A bunch of Dark Reign minis came out.  They’re all pretty stupid.  The Lethal Legion thing may stir up some interest with the Wonder Man in jail angle though… that last panel was a little creepy.

Daken has taken over Wolverine‘s title, which is good because there was too damn much of one Wolverine – thankfully now we have 3 separate Wolverine’s to spread around.  !?

Now Wolverine’s “main” book is the Weapon X one – doing stuff that would have been in the normal Wolverine book so uh, whatever.  !?

Guardians of the Galaxy 15 was good and ended pretty much the only way it could (on the War of Kings angle), although still somewhat surprisingly.  And I hear the “old” Guardians are returning… that actually makes me very vary.  I think I’ll drop the book if it becomes about them.  Their time is over.  Vance I can take, but the others… meh, they work in the future, not in the past.  For me anyway.

I skimmed through Transformers: All Hail Megatron – it seems pretty decently written, if you’ve got a Transformers itch that the movie just didn’t scratch (which is understandable, as it was mostly trying to scratch your scrotum).

Certainly not worth buying.  Well, for the story anyway.  The art was gorgeous though.

I’m guessing these little “tales” are just meant to show us how badass the big bads are by showing all the alternate realities where the X-Men fail (it was hard to make sense of how the Cyclops story isn’t set in 616 though since it so heavily beats on a specific thing that actually happened there).  But, yeah meh.  We’re smart readers, they’re badass, we get it.

I just can’t do the million ltd series anymore…I pretty much just get the one “event” book of the year and that’s it.  This was well written I guess but…what’s the point?  We already know what parallel worlds are like, invasions from them are nothing new.  This was just a build up to make the villain look like a badass, and show him somehow killing “our” X-Men and…I guess make fun of the whole “616″ universe thing by saying they all died there so the Marvel U must NOT be 616 anymore or whatever.

I know the editors (Brevort at least) hate the 616 thing…which I think is very silly.  If you have parallel worlds, you have to identify them somehow.  “Ours” is 616…wtf is the big deal with that?

Except for the bit about drilling in how common ghost boxes are, the story was pretty good. I love the “Chinese X-Men” thing, and find it pretty sad/funny in the sense that they all lost their powers while pretty much none of the X-Men did.  That’s editorial favor for you!

I also like where Ellis is going with the 3 types of mutant thing..I much prefer this to the “manufactured mutant” line.

that is. What should have been the final issue of Whedon’s run (and this volume apparently) has been stretched out into Giant Size #1 due out in what, June? Meh. Since they are restarting the numbering, they should have just called the giant size #25 and been done with it. Meh.

As for the comic itself, it was pretty good – it’s hard to even care with the time intervals between issues though. Planetary it is not. Plus, we’ve already moved way, way past this in the current X-books, so whatever happens in the eventual finale can’t “matter” for anything, at least continuity wise. I’m sure it will still be a good read though, and flow quite well in a shiny hardcover trade. But yes, I’m a continuity whore. Sorry. Not the kind that can’t overlook little things, but the kind that at least sees stuff like this and wonders what the point is. It’s supposed to be the flagship X-title, and to have a flagship title that has no bearing on any other series well, that’s not really a flagship is it. The Avengers books are doing this right, with effects that trail over into the other related titles, so I know it can be done.

Uncanny X-Men 495

Cyclops has a secret plan!

Cyclops & Emma make out in the Savage Land!

Emma shows lots of skin!

Wolverine looks like a fireman!

Cyclops grows a goatee!

Angel gets hippy hair!

The art (by Mike Choi, who I don’t think I’ve heard of before) in this issue was weird. Not bad, but weird somehow.

There was nothing at all about Bishop, which really digs at me. Hopefully it will be covered elsewhere – I know he’s in Cable #2, but I mean hopefully someone in one of the main x-books actually VERBALIZES and talks about WTF just happened with him.

Obviously a downtime issue, not much going on, but it was a good change from the frantic pace of the last 13 weeks I guess. I’m not impressed, nor was I distressed, so we’ll call it a pass.

Avengers Initiative 9

Yes, I know this came out last week, but I didn’t pick up all my books, so I’m just now getting to it. Wow, horrors man, those kids and crew got f$%ed. In the face. I hope things aren’t as they seem, and people survived (which they usually do in comics). Besides, the one person who actually deserves to die (Gyrich) is still going…hopefully he at least gets shot in the last half of the arc.

I love that the Freedom Ring has turned up on panel again, and am curious where that will go.

Not much else I would say without spoilers. For some reason I don’t feel like spoiling anything.

What else?

The Twelve 2

I enjoyed this issue more than the previous one, which was pretty good in its own right. If things keep up at this pace, I’m definitely picking up the inevitable hardcover. I’m very curious if JMS will leave any of these new toys floating around at the end of the series, or if they’ll all return to the land of the dodo. Rockman is the most interesting, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I want him to be sane?

Ms. Marvel 24

I have no idea what they’re doing with the last panel “dramatic dangler” in this issue. It strikes me as silly and annoying and obviously false. Especially as it would invalidate the entire previous 23 issues (in the sense that you weren’t actually getting what you were paying for…).

So…yeah, whatever.