Guardians of the Galaxy 16: Still good.  Not an over the top awesome issue, but it does have a good cameo by the old Guardians, if you’re into that kind of thing.  Not much else to say.

Project Superpowers v? 1: Was kind of interesting.  They are sure throwing stuff out there fast and furious.  If I was young, and felt like getting involved in a new hero universe, this would be worth picking up.  But I’m not.

Power Girl x: She doesn’t need a comic book, really.  This is grasping.  Superman has like 4 already, and Supergirl has one, and she is already in Justice Society.  She’s just not that interesting.  Is it sad when a character’s defining characteristic is her cleavage?  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I actually find it very interesting that hey, here is a character who is actually supposed to have giant breasts, and it’s addressed frequently over the years – as opposed to every other comic female who is just drawn with giant breasts.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, pointless.

Outsiders 20: This book has gotten boring.  *yawn* Just don’t care anymore.

Avengers Initiative 26: So glad the quality level of this book is holding on.  It’s worth the $3 or whatever it is these days (I try not to look, it just makes me sad ;) ).  Mostly because the New Warriors are in it, without them I would drop it like a rock.  I really just don’t care about ANYTHING Osborne is doing, can’t wait for him to die again.

Runaways 3 12: Speaking of how the mighty have fallen (see Hulk above)… ok it’s not that bad.  But what the hell is going on here?  Runaways 3 has been weaksauce in general, but this latest arc is weaksauce covered in stupidpepper.

Fantastic Four 569: Gorgeous art can’t save Millar’s horrible writing.  While he’s not on the low-level of someone like Loeb, he’s still a hack in the sense that most of what he writes seems to simply be:  “ooo look a shiny thing!” , where the shiny thing is anything shocking.  This issue was almost as poorly written as 600 in the sense of things just popping up out of nowhere.  I honestly couldn’t tell which FF was the main one at several points.  Oh – and if we are to believe those were really alternate FFs…wait, I don’t believe that for a second, unless they were like, the suckiest of the sucky FFs or something – hundreds of them couldn’t even take the 616 FF?  All this for, as someone said “an upgrade” for Doom?  Didn’t he just get one on Waid’s run, and then again later…?  Meh.

Skaar/Son of Hulk 13: So Hulk has TWO kids now?  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an out-of-ass popping moment, and fits with the flow of the series (I wondered how it was going to keep going with this title…I have a feeling it won’t last much longer if it keeps going in this direction though) – but I don’t get how it makes sense in terms of the pre-existing STORY.  Skaar was older because he aged super fast – this other kid did too?  And, you know, I’d think Caiera would have remembered having a second child, especially with her abilities.

Marvel Zombies 4 04: Not horrible, but not good.

War of Kings: Ascension 04: It certainly does leave Darkhawk in an interesting place … one kid, not guilty of a huge crime, on the run from the universe & the good guys… still not interesting enough for an ongoing, but he will make a good occasional guest star.  Cosmic Marvel has room for a “power armor guy” too, more than “Earthbound” Marvel, so moving him out was a smart play.

War of Kings 06:  A fittingly pyrrhic ending to such a series.  I’m not disappointed, and will be picking it up in trade.  Some interesting things came out of it,  one of them the (hopefully final) death of Vulcan, Marvel’s to DC’s Superboy Prime as far as petty annoyance goes.  Hopefully that sticks, nevermind that how he healed himself didn’t make any sens.  More important deaths include Lilandra’s from last ish – while always a support character, she filled a huge role and will be missed – and Black Bolt.  It will be interesting to see where the Inhumans go with a potentially reformed Maximus, Medusa will lead I guess?  Gladiator as the majestor will be interesting, and really is a logical and fitting choice: his life’s purpose is to serve the imperium, and how better to do that?  Looking forward to the fall out from this one.

Ultimatum 6 & the Requiem Books: The Spider-Man Requiem book was always going to be pointless, as he’s not dead (and revealed to be so at the end), but it was good just in the way JJJ FINALLY turned a new leaf.  Now there’s some “Ultimate” change for you :P.  Then again, maybe now he can rail against the “new” Spider-Man for not living up to the old one….

The X-Men one was just sad, as they took the brunt of the death toll.  So many characters with so much potential, dead.  I wasn’t a fan of Ult. Night Crawler, but the young kids – Cannonball & Sunspot, they died off camera, such a waste.  Frost & Xavier & Magneto all down – so nothing left of the “old guard” of mutants (not counting the weird Nick Fury/man-made mutants thing), and nowhere to go but…up?  I think they’ll be joining the Avengers now.  Cyclops dead instead of Jean is a switch, I guess, finally.  Too little too late though, imho.  At least Rogue has some permanent powers now, I’m not sure why.  I guess Juggernaut died off camera too.  Huh?  I’m guessing Sabretooth didn’t die here, but the might as well just wipe him too.

Ultimatum itself was just as poorly written in the finale as it was in every other issue.  Generally sub-par all around.  Perfect example of Jeph Loeb at his “best”.

The major moment from FF Requiem wasn’t even in the book..I think it was in Ultimatum 6??  That would be Ben’s crushing of Doom’s skull (and what happened to Namor?).  Was it that easy, really?  The rest of the book, meh, whatever.  They’re all still alive, so they will be back.  Nothing new to see here.

So, in the end it took the Ultimate universe what, 10 years to get to a place as different from 616 as it should have been to start, and they had to resort to Jeph Loeb to get there.   I don’t think he’s writing anything else there for a while, so I’m hoping it can only go up.

The art is anime-ish and annoying – everyone looked like they were yelling all the time (like anime).

The writing…wow, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that characterizations were so incredibly, noticeably, OFF before after any writer switch.  At  least that I can remember.

I mean, the bones of the plot are decent..but man…I have low expectations so far.  I mean, it’s not as bad as Young X-Men 1 (the plot here at least has a “point”), but it’s pretty sub-par.

Not nearly as good as Secret Invasion has been so far though…

New Avengers 42 – Great read here, filling us in on how Jessica got swapped and *gasp* what did the Skrulls have to do with House of M??  Were they just caught up in it like everyone else…we don’t know that yet.  I guess we’ll have to wait until 43.  I’m still confused by the Skrulls being able to access their normal personalities, I thought somewhere they had said all that was subsumed in the host identity.

Hulk 04 – Stupid, stupid and more stupid.  They’re doing the standard “build the bad guy up to be soooo bad that the good guy can’t possibly win.  Until he does.” routine that it hurts me just to read it.  And now next month R-ulk gets to beat down Thor?  Mmmmm kay.  Jeff/ph Loeb, I can’t stand your writing.  Please stop.  Maybe go to work for Stuff or Redbook or something yes?

Fantastic Four 558 – A little better and more interesting than previous issues – but do we really need another Hulk?

Trinity 04 – Meh.

X-Factor 32 – EEeeennnteresting.  So we’re finally out of mutant town and on to the next thing.  Which is…?  I’m actually rather annoyed that he brought Val Cooper back in in the way he did on that last page – this is probably the first thing that has pissed me off about his run.  But it’s nothing serious.  Can’t wait to see where this is headed.

Mighty Avengers 15 – Not quite as cool as as the new “New”, but still interesting.  Here we find out when Hank Pym got swapped, and some of what he/she was up to.  It looks like the original is dead, but I’m calling TINY odds on that being the case.  I’m sure everyone is stored nicely in glass tubes somewhere to be released in the penultimate issue.

New Warriors 13 – This is all over the place.  I have no idea why they went after Machinesmith “for real”…but at least it looks like it’s building to something, and I do so enjoy plot that actually builds.  Hope it’s worth the wait.

Teen Titans 60 – I’m really sad about the ending to this one.  And I HATE the way Kid Devil was drawn in this issue.  He looked like a gaunt old hippy.  Sort of like kid clockking whatever.  All in all though, TT has been decent lately.  I hope Ravager completes her little heroic loop journey and makes her way back…the pining/drama/etc. from Kid D is killing me.

Superman 677 – Bad guys calls out good guy.  I get it.  I think I’ve seen it before.

Young Avengers/Runaways – Secret Invasion – The art was horrible, but the story fairly interesting.  I’d like it at least 3 times more if it wasn’t stupid anime crap looking.  I guess part of the Whedon Runaways arc is spoiled, or did it end and I just missed it?

Young Avengers Presents 6 – This was a cute story.  I never see how the Hawkeyes of the world get by in super-adaptoid & Skrull armada world…but they do.