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).

Rann-Thanagar Holy War 2 – This was surprisingly good – much like …Journey into Space? Whatever that last mini with Captain Comic & The Weird was, which it appears to be following. I enjoy both of those characters, as well as Animal Man.

Young X-Men 3 – Please make it stop. This is so obviously setting up a surprise twist reveal…and if it isn’t it’s even dumber than the Final Crisis retcon because now Cyclops is hiding TWO black ops teams? One of them massively under qualified compared to the other? Whatever. And the tattoo guy is still the stupidest new character to come out of the X-House in years. Combat-Blindfold is pretty annoying too, but that at least I can buy as a power progression and could possibly be interesting at some point. Wolfmutant #47 is also stupid. Die him please.

X-Force 4 - This is picking up. I’m not sure if they missed a page last issue that would make the Rahne plot clearer or what…I have to say I’m excited about the last page though. Really excited. I mean, sure, they 100% forgot about Angel’s new healing factor (the only remotely interesting thing about him since he got the feathers back)…but at least this angle has possibilities.

Trinity 1 – Whatever. PS. You can cancel Superman/Batman now. Superman/Batman/Wonderwoman is enough.

Avengers-Invader 2 – Some parts were quite good, including the usage of the “new” Bucky retro-origin stuff. Some were very silly, like the “New Avengers” deciding to randomly break the Invaders out even though they must know about the whole time paradox thing as well as anyone. I wonder what time period this is set in? Right after Civil War but before Skrull Invasion I guess? After Elektra was discovered? I don’t know, it doesn’t make much sense.

Cable 4 – I’ll always love Cannoball and I’m always sad when they kill him. Of course, explaining how every other mutant on the planet died would have been nice, but I guess that would have been too rational. All in all, not a bad issue, and it looks like things will be picking up pretty nicely though the rest of the year. Hopefully the Bishop thing will be resolved in an interesting manner (sadly I just want him dead now that he’s been destroyed and remade as a raving madman) and we can move on to….I dunno what. No idea where they would go with this thing once Cable stops being chased, so I have a feeling the chase will continue.

Nova 14 – A slightly different angle on a Galactus story so far and a decent read at that. I have to wonder at the inclusion of the weird possessing entity – I’m assuming it’s being done to set the thing up as a re-occurring villain, because if not it’s an awful lot of page time for filler.

Secret Invasion 3- Very good. Good stuff here. We all saw the suggestion posed at the end of the issue coming – the answer though will probably surprise either way. My money is on him not being a Skrull and this being another mindgame. PS. Bendis, you’re breaking the rules you just set for the Skrulls two months ago (and broke right after that with the Sentry issue & the Skrull meeting in the broom closet) again. I doubt any of the deaths in the fight will take, but if they do it’s some pretty serious stuff. Makes me wonder if there’s any point to reading any more issues of Initiative set before this.

Ultimate Origins 1 – Pretty decent. More interesting than the whole Galactus/Secret thing (sadly). They are finally showing how this universe fundamentally differs from 616, and doing it in a fairly clear-cut way so far.

Nothing had a cover cool enough to put up this week.

(OK, I didn’t buy this one yet, but I’m grabbing that hardcover as soon as it’s out!)

It’s been a while since a crossover title was actually somewhat required reading for a mini – and I don’t mind it once in a while. As long as they don’t overuse the gimmick, it’s cool. But then again, if you didn’t read Nova 12 you’ll still be OK – all you need to know is that he brought some help back.

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X-Men: Divided We Stand 1

UGH.

The writing is not horrible, but I can’t stand where they are going with ANY of the characters in this mini. OK, that’s not quite true, the Nezhno story is ok because it doesn’t really go anywhere. Well, he pines, but that doesn’t count. Although understandable, I hate what they did with Anole mostly because it was just stupid and mean on Cyclops’ part. Now we know he has some kind of master plan and the X-Men are getting back together, but what they have done to the students is just stupid and cruel. Same with Hellion – abandoning him in a hotel – REALLY??? A kid with that kind of power and you want him running around bitter at you? Ohhhhhhhhh Kaaaayyyyyy. Cannonball is acting like a stupid war-brat or something, which I can’t recall him ever being before. I could possibly see this being in line with his characterization in the Warren Ellis (or whoever) revamp that ended out the X-Force series, but it stinks to high hell against everything else. I guess it’s a set up to why he’s a “bad guy” in the so far insipid Young X-Men series.

Oh, and Northstar’s characterization was so far out of anything I’ve seen before…I’m sure they can just chalk it up to post-resurrection stupidity but man, he was just a blank slate here. He could have been anyone who decided to show up and deliver random statements.

I decided it was not worth buying and left it at the store. I’m trying to limit my crap intake and limited series are a great place to start cutting.

Avengers: Initiative 11

Does she really have a kiss of death – where’d that come from? Or was it just general vamping to distract him.

More gratuitous violence as the government Avengers get their butts handed to them by the tactigon too. I was pleased to see that 2 of the Scarlet Spiders made it out, I was thinking Slott would wipe the slate on them with this. Clones can be really interesting when done well, and not just used as mindless fodder. I hope he keeps this in mind.

Next issue is the graduation issue and after that is another class of newbies – I’m curious how long they’ll follow this model of swapping out the classes every 13 issues (and hopefully keeping up with previous class members) – and of course if they’ll even last until the 3rd class. So far I think I like it, it definitely invests more of a sense of importance when you know that not everyone will make it through the year, and the ones that do might wind up seeing actual page time in another comic (as I’m hoping some of the members will).

Man is that an UGLY cover. And Slapstick is one creeeepy mofo.

PS. Are we going to get the Hardball->spy plot resolved or what?

New Exiles 4

So this wraps up the first “New” Exiles arc. It’s not a particularly interesting wrap up. We get a new recruit who’s half black Atlantean (which could have been an interesting thread in itself, I’m guessing Namor’s father was African?) and…some stuff happened in the world they grabbed him from. The Black Panther seals the planet and Namor is on the moon and the moon and Earth shall war and blah blah. Sorry, not really that into it. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t anything special. I’m still enjoying seeing all the alternates – so please stick to that CC and no more making new characters with really dumb names like that stupid guy with the guns.

How does the Tallus work these days anyway? I forget what the logic behind it still knowing what’s up with a quadrillion realities is without the bugs to drive it.

Oh, and Amara’s queen of the moon. The moooooon I tell you!

Young X-Men 1

Urgh.

The plot here is twelve kinds of stupid, but I’ll try and reserve my judgment until the end of the arc, because there’s obvious a twist coming. If the (old) New Mutants really are going to be “bad guys” in this brave new x-world then I may finally be done with the X-books. That just makes no sense, and would trash my two of my three favorite x-characters (Sunspot & Cannonball…only Iceman would be left), not to mention my comic book childhood. The New Mutants were the x-characters my gen of readers grew up with and we make up most of the comic readership these days, so I really hope they get more respect than this.

I won’t even bother wondering where all the cool “Young” X-Men went, or what the shit is up with this dumbfuck tattoo character. But, like I said, I’m giving it an arc.

Cable 2

This was ok I guess. Certainly better than a number of the original Cable issues. Not better than the Weinberg stuff or than C&DP though. I’m not liking Bishop as a villain at all, although I can buy the rationale for it – I mean, it’s at least not TOTALLY out of left field (only deep center field). The whole gun thing was really annoying anyway, and CC was the only one that ever wrote him decently (especially in the defunct and horribly titled X-Treme X-Men) – so I suppose it’s not really a loss. We’ll get a (maybe even temporary) great villain whom we sort of understand and we are pained to watch…which makes for more drama I admit.

All in all though, I really like Cable better with a supporting cast. His shit gets tired when it’s just him. No, the baby doesn’t count, it’s just a bjornament at the moment.

The pencils look good of course, and the cover is kind of cute with its whole bionic-arm-western-pistol-duel thing.

X-Factor 30

I saved the best for last of course. Well, the best that I bought seeing as how I’m not picking up Conquest until the hardcover.

Of course Arcade was always a “gimmick” villain, but now even moreso – rarely does it take the various X-teams long to wrap him up – and I think this is a good thing. This was a nice done-in-two-or-three arc (oh wait – there’s still one issue to go! I have a feeling that will just be aftermath though. Funny, aftermath of the aftermath! I like it!) that not only directly picked up plot threads of the previous “big event”, but used those plot threads to move itself forward in a new and interesting (but not gimmicky way!). Not to mention working in some Arcade silliness. And a REALLY ugly cover. Well, just ugly in the sense that his face is ugly, but it fits. I’ve always assumed he was sort of modeled after that Mad Magazine guy, and this is a nice, modern spin on his classy goofy face.

So what happens aside from the Arcade trouncing? A random civilian gets killed. Monet acts really weird – we’ll assume it’s just electro shock for now – but it will be interesting to see if any of that carries forward. We get some teases at where the team might be headed for the future in the way of the statements made by the broke and suicidal mutant-hater. Rictor almost loses his nuts. And Madrox gets shot a lot. See? It sounds silly when I tell it, so just pick up the book.

Other thoughts for the week:

The Skrull special covers are ugly. I pretty much hate them all. The hidden variants are amusing (there is one for Young X-Men and even Exiles (???) evidently), but I wish all the main books (Avengers primarily) were variants so I could get a non-Skrull cover.

All images linked from CBR this week. Head over to that link for the rest of April’s Marvel solicitations.