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.

Spider-Man 602: The new (?) Chameleon is kind of gross.  And the ending is silly, because we know he’s not dead.

Marvels Project 01: Actually not bad, will see how it goes, maybe the trade will be interesting.

X-Men Forever 05: Claremont ups the drama a bit, mixing and mashing up Decimation/Legacy Virus and Dead @21…where oh where will he go with it?  This issue was definitely missing a few beats, such as anyone reacting to baby Storm….and how everyone is suddenly calling her ‘Ro (Gawd is that a Claremont-ism or what?).  The buddy-buddyness with Sabretooth isn’t working for me either.  And why haven’t his eyes healed yet, seriously?  I’m hanging on mostly out of Claremont loyalty.  X-treme X-men, aside from the name, was a genuinely good comic imho.  Of course, at least 40% of that was Larocca’s stellar un-inked pencils.  Still, I know CC’s got some magic left in him, so I’ll wait and see where this goes for a bit longer.

UC Avengers 1: Meh, over it.  Red Skull is Cap’s son now, *yawn*.  Next.

UC Spider-Man 1: Wow, I really didn’t like the art here like, at all.  It made it difficult for me to enjoy what I’m sure would have been a decent story otherwise.  6 months later and Peter and MJ are broken up, Kitty is still around the edges, and Peter is making out with Gwen who now lives with them?  WAIT.  Gwen died…right?  So, this is Gwen/Venom clone thing or something?  I forget.  Anyway, throw the artist out and you might have something.

Blackest Night 2: Not much happens here sadly.  People fight, and talk, but I didn’t see much progress.  And evidently fire won’t kill J’onn now – not that  GL & Flash were shy about “killing” J’onn again.  Seems a little out of character for all these shiny-happy heroes, but maybe not so much if they’re thinking it’s “just” a zombie.  Really can’t wait to find out how “death” fits into the emotional spectrum and what the White Lanterns are.  I mean, you can’t have black without white right?  Just seems silly.

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…