It was a pretty big week for comics.  Several books that I was/am really looking forward too.  Basically everything except the X-Men Forever issue – which I expect to be decent, as usual, but not stunning.  I don’t think I’ll be picking up the second volume of that one, we’ll see.

Blackest Night 8 - Deciding which book to read first this week was tough, but I figured the “big” event book should go first.  Oi.  Lots of stuff here.  The resurrections are obviously the big thing folks will be talking about.  I’ll just say that I think they are all stupid.  I mean, we knew they weren’t going to leave big guns like Aquaman, Hawkpeople & Manhunter dead.  Bringing back Maxwell Lord just seems stupid – maybe as a way to semi-retcon Wonder Woman’s killing him?

And bringing back the original, boring, burnt out Captain Boomerang? ARGH.  His son was at least kind of interesting – until they filled him full of stupid recently and killed him.  I could care less about the Hawkpeople, their memories, blah.  Bringing back the original Firestorm: DUMB DUMB DUMB.  Leaving new Firestorm’s girlfriend dead?  DUMB AND CRUEL.   The whole thing is going to leave a nasty taste in my mouth – especially if they shuffle the new, non-white, Firestorm off to be replaced by the old school white Firestorm.  It looks like they will be sharing a body though… that actually has some potential.

Bringing back Jade… BLEH.  I liked Kyle + Sinestro’s Daughter.  Did we really need to complicated his life even more? I mean, I know this shit is all about drama but really?  Ugh.  Am I the only one who wants characters to be happy once in a while?  I admit, I have a soft spot for Kyle.  Oh, the art looked really good – especially the surprise fold-out splash page.

Oh, and someone actually says “I think from now on, dead is dead.”  AHAHAHHAH.  AHAHAHAHAH.   Ahhhhh hahahaha.  Yeah, right.

Oh.  This issue was bad.  Just in case my rambling wasn’t clear.  It was pretty, and somewhat entertaining, but just bad in pretty much every way.  Villain was hugeass phantom menace, tons of zombified heroes were completely ignored (for pretty much the whole series), tons of zombified enemies were ignored.  I guess, maybe the whole series was supposed to take place in like, 20 minutes or something? I dunno.  Bleh.  Bummed.

X-Force 25: The other big one this week I was waiting for.  And by “other big one” I mean “the end of the other crossover event that involves a bunch of dead people coming back and tormenting their old friends and people fighting a “dark god of death”"  ANnnnnndbreath.  How crazy that Necrosha & Blackest Night both ended on the same DAY?  Zombie zeitgeistnsnarfin.  So.  It was ok.  A little too easy I thought, actually.  Oh and evil Blink is still out there (but armless?) along with Lois London (Dazzler’s sister, to be in the upcoming Dazzler ltd).  I suppose she might make an interesting villain.  At least it will be something different, as we already have a “real” Blink out there with the Exiles who just may make it over to 616 someday.  Might as well bring “good” Sabretooth with her.  Oh right.  This issue.  Elixer, Wolfsbane, Warpath and X-23 are out of X-Force.  Leaving us with Crazyangel, Wolverine, Domino & Vanisher.  A decent issue.  Better than average.  Art was hard to follow, but that’s always been the way of this.  Compared to Blackest Night, I think this one came out on top – mostly because it avoided stupidtactular resurrections.  For the most part.  And killed a few villains.  Yay!   And one hero turned villain.  Yay.  Done with.  I hope!

X-Men Forever 20: Uhh.  Re: the reveal at the end: Umm?  This is still sort of set in 616… sort of.  So I don’t get this.  Alternate build-up to the Civil War maybe?  The issue was competent, if lackluster, as expected.  Still a bit much exposition, even for Claremont.

New Mutants 11:  Art: ugly.  Characters: horribly written.  Quite obviously not the normal writer.  Worst issue of this volume, hands down.  There were some decent ideas, but very poorly executed.

and in closing…. the beginning of another event:

X-Men: Second Coming -  A good start.  I’m not sure why Cable couldn’t just have stopped when he saw the X-Men taking out his attackers.  I mean… the panel seemed pretty clearly drawn to indicate that he saw the X-Men.  So that was dumb.  Resurrecting pretty much EVERY dead “human” villain in X-Force was dumb.  Using them here is still dumb and lazy, but the story is well written so.    Art was good, although the coloring was a bit too dark for my tastes.  Lots of wasted space in those shadows.  Seriously, resurrecting Hodge, Creed, Leper chick, and other dead annoying dudes was lame.  Hopefully they die somewhere along the way and we’re done done doooone with resurrections for a while.

…which leads (literally, the last 6-7 pages of the above are the first 6-7 pages of) Thor 604 – Urk.  All that goodwill, gone.  Robotic undead Asgardians??  That’s….really lame, especially for Doom.  Shouldn’t there be magic involved with this somehow?  We’ll see.  I still don’t get how Khelda (a real goddess, not just some generic Asgardian) died like that. I call BS.

Son of Hulk 17 – An interesting ending to a strange series.  The little “huh?” that could.  It’s wrapping into the Marvel cosmic stuff next month or so, so that will be interesting.

Guardians of the Galaxy 20 – One of the weakest issues so far, but that’s not saying much. It was still good … I’m just not quite as interested for some reason.  Maybe it’s this whole “Fault” thing.  It’s just not working for me.

Hercules 138 – Herc is gonna die huh?  We’ll see.  Curious to see how all the long running Athena stuff ties up at least.

Ultimate Avengers 04 - Dumb.

New Mutants 07 – Poorly written in spots – “Hey let’s leave Doug, hi other X-men!  Ok, now let’s go back and get Doug when we could have just done that before!” … dumb.  But other than that, above average.

Fantastic Four 573 – Dumb.  You go to all this length to make some interesting new semi-heroes, then make them into GIANT DICKS off camera?  The hell?  Horrible issue all around.  OH.  And two separate people have their brains smashed – in a Fantastic Four comic… ON CAMERA.

Uncanny X-Men 517 – Wow, Magneto’s new powers are weak.   Really?  AND I HATE GREG LAND’S “ART”.  ARGH.  I mean…too fucking lazy to even finish tracing Psylocke on the cover…

(Oh look, someone else hates this cover!)

And the rest of the book just veers between crapmeh and similar levels of insulting – artwise.  There’s a scene with Rogue that was decent, but would have been better with a real artist.

Meh.

So, Matt Fraction (the writer) is going to be at my local comic shop (Excalibur) and I’m thinking of going just to ask a Greg Land question and see if he can answer honestly. I mean, can the man who brought us Casanova actually like this shattacular “art”?

PS.  Check out Casanova.  Very good.

New Avengers 59 – OK but DUH, of course the ending should have been expected – no one checked for this?

Blackest Night 5 & Green Lantern 48 – Good stuff, be more interesting if deaths now have repercussions because of this stuff though… what can I say, I like me some Rainbow Guardians.  It’s simple, it’s fun.  It just works.

Blackest Night Wonder Woman & Blackest Night Flash – Dumb.  Pointless.  PS evidently Wonder-Woman can lasso herself and make a giant ring of fire?  What the fuck? OK.

I’ll close with a few panels that I found really cute for some reason or another, from Ultimate Spider-Man 5.

I didn’t like the new artist (David La Fuente) at first, but he’s growing on me.  The action scenes are actually quite good, but it’s the personal stuff that I’m enjoying.  Gwen’s face in the 1st and second panels need work (esp the 2nd – a little tooooo freakish) but the 3rd is great and the 4th is adorable.

PS Bringing Gwen back as a clone is awkward.
PPS There are a lot of Spider-related clones in Ultimate Spider-Man.  Already.  Spider-GirlPersonWoman is a female clone of Peter.  Like X-23 to Wolverine, except the same age. Yeah.

Oh, right, here’s the page:

X-Factor 50 delivered on at least 85% of what was expected – and there was a lot riding on it, so I’ll call it good.  It may actually be closer to 100%, but the final sequence with Doom and what?whereishe? left me confused.  If this was intentional, then OK.  Layla’s “power” is quite interesting, and I have to wonder if it’s come into play at all thus far in the series.  I like the explanation for her prescience (although the several of the early scenes from X-Factor don’t make  a whole lot of sense under this umbrella at all – the one that ended with the bathroom collapsing seems downright farcically impossibly now).  The preview for issue 200 – the “relaunch” looked really, really promising.  I bought 2 copies.  Just because.

Oh, and the majority of the people on the cover above did nothing in the story.  This was allllll about Madrox and Layla.  And Ruby and Trevor Fitzory (I know, right?) a little too.  And crochety Doom (where the hell did he go?!).

Necrosha & New Mutants 6 were pleasant surprises.  Although, …battleCypher is kinda like what/huh/ok/no/yes?  … and I SERIOUSLY doubt that the implied ending is in anyway true, but who knows, people have been dying left and right lately.  OK, not X-people.  In fact, pretty much everyone who has ever died in an x-comic was resurrected in the current X-Force run.  Except for the people I wanted resurrected (Synch!)…ok, yeah, there is only one (Synch!). Everyone else can stay down.  Please.

Speaking of dying left and right.  WOW.  Guardians of the Galaxy 19.  Wow.  Can they even call that a win with half the team dead?  Just wow, balls of steel on those writers I tell you.  And I’m not even mad about it – even though one of my favorites is gone – ?for good?.  If you like comics, especially cosmic ones, you should be buying this book.

Astonishing X-Men 31 was underwhelming.  Mucho.  But, who knows, maybe once it gets into gear…

Thankfully Avengers Initiative 29 continued to whelm in all 7 gears.  Komodo (I’m still holding out on the hope that her and Hardball work it out…) the paraplegic kicking ass with brains, Tigra continuing to just kick ass, Speedpenance getting his cat back (!) and… meeting the New Warriors, finally.  Lots of peanuts riding on the grinder heading into the 30s.

New Avengers 58 on the other hand… this plotline is dragging on way too long.  We know Bendis isn’t going to kill Cage (in fact, I’m pretty sure that the recent issue of Thunderbolts with Cage & Iron Fist takes place after this entire arc).  The Hood/Osborn stuff is moderately interesting, and the Ms. Marvel/Osborn smackdown was somewhat rewarding.  But still.  Finish this up and move on please.

Did I mention that you should pick up X-Factor 50 & Guardians of the Galaxy 19 (although neither will make much sense at all without a substantial reading and time investment in the rest of the series…but it’s totally worth it!)?

Blackest Night 4 was decent, although I think Green Lantern 47 actually beat it.  These panels are awesome.  I guess I’m a sucker for shiny lights.

I really hope all the shiny colored rings stick around.  It would also be handy if some of the current (and future, since we know Guy Gardner goes Red) non-green colored lanterns stick around.  I rather wish Hal had stayed blue – it would certainly make him more interesting.  I guess they’d have to rename the book then :P.

One note:  The colorist seems to have drawn the indigo light as more of a blue, but we already have a blue… sooo… yeah.

The bad news is that I’m totally not going to finish the Gathering Storm tonight.

Once upon a time, a great creative team made Jean Grey interesting as the Phoenix, then killed her, ending that arc wonderfully.  Then Marvel thought it would be fun to do again, and again, and again.  Each time it is less interesting, and more likely to make me not buy whatever book is involved in it.

Once upon a time, a great creative team (or three) brought Emma Frost through a wonderful character arc, ending in marriage to Cyclops, after various struggles with non-heroic tendencies.  Now, Marvel appears to be starting that cycle over.  And each time I see this arc continued, I’m less and less likely to want to buy issues with her in it.

Oh, I also find it hilarious that the one person to get the best of Norman Osborn so far is Aurora.  Aurora.  WIN.

Blackest Night: Titans 01 – I’m sensing a pattern of bringing back un”valuable” characters only to kill them and resurrect them as Black Lanterns (Hawkman/woman, Aqualad guy, and now Hawk) in a vain attempt to ratchet up the drama.  *Yawn*

X-Force 18 : Wow, armless huh?  That’s pretty graphic, even for an x-book. I am pleased that all the almost-dead ex-New Mutants/X-kids from this issue are still alive though.  Kind of a miracle there.  And Necrosha is ticking away in the background… not horrible, not great, but decent.

New Mutants 4: Not stellar, but getting better at least (Sunspot coming on to Amara though??  Aren’t they all like brothers & sisters by now?).  I fail to see why Sam would try and send Dani away though – they’ve been through enough that he would know better.  Besides, Legion was obviously after her for one reason or another, and he can probably teleport….sooo…yeah.

Dark Wolverine 77: Yes, the “dark”-ness is dumb, but whatever.  They’re at least going out of their way to make Daken a character in his own right, which I do appreciate.  Not really my thing though.  Sadly I’m hooked into Marvel to follow certain characters, most of the new ones (especially Wolverine clones) just don’t do it for me.

Justice League of America 36: Wow, when has Vixen looked this ugly?  These issues just feel like filler to me, or like it should be a separate series or something.  Look, I’m not knocking Len Wein…but the story he’s writing does not feel like a good fit for the current run of this book at all.  Plus, the art is periodically horrible.

Wolverine Origins 39: Ok but, umm, Romulus’ 4th claw is really dumb, not to mention impractical and useless (looking).  Sorry Rommy, you have the least cool claws, goodbye!

Wonder Woman 35: Uh, this is the first “good” issue of Wonder Woman I can recall flipping through.  The whole arena/fight club bit is kind of silly but the Pele/whatshisname/Wonder Woman alliance arc is actually really interesting.

Dark Avengers 08: Decently interesting, mostly because it focuses on the X-Men.  Hah!  So I guess Emma wasn’t a traitor…this may counter my comment on Dark X-Men above, we’ll see.  I didn’t see Xavier in the pile of people rescued though, interesting.  Is this the first step in the Cabal’s breakup (finally!) with the only two ostensibly “good” characters defecting back to the angels?  It couldn’t be soon enough.

Avengers Initiative 27: Stellar story here.  It really shines in how much is crammed into one issue without making anything feel rushed. Reading the first “section” I was like “arrghhh is this gonna be the whole issue?”  But then, it wasn’t, and it worked just fine for what it was.  Not to mention that they quoted my favorite Petty song AND a classic Springsteen song…big points there.  The (non-Dark) Avengers books continue to swing for the bleachers.

Woah.  All four “Hulk” titles came out today.  … Little bit odd there Marvel shipping folks.

Hulk 14: If only I wasn’t so morbidly fascinated with waiting for this train wreck to end…yes I keep tuning in, no it doesn’t suck yet.  Nevermind that you get Domino acting horribly out of character, quailing and getting all  obsequious towards RapingHulk, or Wolverine telling X-Force to “Kill everyone” (including Electra, whom he just saved, and the Punisher, with whom he’s worked before).  Wait, no on second thought don’t forget either of those things – they’re just more examples of a what an ignorant writer Loeb is.

Son of Hulk 14: I still don’t get how this other kid is a Hulkchild too.  I mean, Caiera wasn’t even pregnant with him.  Huh?

Incredible Hercules 133: The origin of Amadeus Cho commences.  A little slower than the previous year or so of stories, but hey it’s only the start.  This is one book I’m torn about not buying every time I see it.  Bottom line, Pak is just a damn good writer.

So good in fact that two titles he wrote came out today!  Incredible Hulk 601 was also pretty decent.  We get to see Bruce using his brain (I wonder where he ranks in the “smartest person on Earth” thing that Amadeus is #7 on…I mean Richards must be in the top 3, Doom and Pym probably up there too…), which is nice for a change.  He says flat out that the Hulk will be back eventually (which makes me think, maybe not for a while :P), and now he’s helping his “son” train to kill the Hulk/him.  If only he could kill the Raping Hulk instead… well, there’s another big Hulk-over coming in a few months, so I have a feeling he’ll be back for that.  Who knows though, Pak’s got balls, so a Hulk-less Hulk-over… I wouldn’t put it past him.  Besides, they just imported a 2nd She-Hulk, and there’s a third (red…) one coming in another month or two.  Not to mention A-Bomb & Hulk’s 2 (!?) kids…so there’s Hulk-oids aplenty, we can get by without old green skin for a while.

Anyway, so, was this any good?

Sort of.  The art was passable, and the general plot skeleton could be fine BUT.  But. What the hell is up with Sunspot’s characterization?  Is he 15 again?  Has he not been running a powerful corporation and sitting on the board of the Hellfire Club for a couple years?  Now he’s excited by stupid cars and stupid jets that I’m sure he’s seen/driven better than before.

His whole character is ringing horribly wrong.

Magic has this weird gothy-self-inflicted drama thing going on too that doesn’t seem to mesh with her most recent appearance.  Not to mention she’s trying to hard to be Layla Miller in this issue.

Magma is ok so far, but that’s really only because her character has always been to be a blank slate.

Cannonball was the best of the bunch, and that’s not saying much at all.  His outburst against the younger students in the beginning was embarassing.

I get that the writer is trying to bring back some old school feel or something (especially the villain – why??) – but that doesn’t mean everyone has to act like they’re 15 again – they should be early/mid 20s at least by now.

I really wanted to like this.  It’s a better start than Young X-Men, but it’s still looking pretty dismal so far.  I didn’t really realize how bad it was until I just spelled it out here and forced myself to accept that it’s really sub-par.  SigH!

I’m glad Young X-Men got canceled.  It sucked.  The storylines sucked, and it introduced probably the worst X-character ever.  Yes, even worse than Maggot (although I actually kinda liked Maggot.  I know, I’m weird like that – but he had a really creative power.  I think without his bizarre speaking style he might have gone over better). I’m looking at you dickwad.  Not only does he have the retarded origin of gaining superpowers from some other guy tattooing him (and thinking it was his own power to be powered by whatever he had tattooed) – but one of the tattoos is the motherfucking phoenix force. …Seriously, the dumbest shit I’ve heard in years. And that’s saying a lot.  Even dumber than the random resurrection at the end of the most recent issue of the Final Crisis/Legion series.

I suspect I’ll pick up both the new series for the first arcs at least, and I had just dropped Young X-Men from my pullbox.  Because it sucked.  Great characters (please don’t kill Dust…talk about a waste), stupid pointless stories.  And it introduced..at least 4 new mutants.  You know, it’s not like they are rare these days or something…