Wolverine vs. Captain America : Haven’t we seen this before?  Shouldn’t the archetypal pairing be Cyclops vs. Captain America?  I guess maybe the outcome of that match would be too apparent?  (Cap, unless Cyclops caught him full on with his guard down or something).  So, I guess this is the “main event”.  Even, I guess. Except that Wolverine will keep getting better, but I suppose Cap could get him down for a bit.

Storm vs. Thor :  I love Storm to death, but there’s no way she should win this fight.  It’s almost silly.  They probably should have done Collosonaut vs. Thor – that’s really the closest thing to an even match I can think of for Thor, and he’d probably still win that one.

Spider-Woman vs. Gambit : The match no one cares about!  No?  Well, OK.  This one is even enough then.

Spider-Man vs. Iceman : The money dictates that Spider-Man win (that and he always wins) but, realistically…Iceman could just freeze the whole room.  Done, end of story.

Captain Marvel vs. Rogue : This one at least has some history to not.  Not that I’m convinced any of this crap will make any sense – although Marvel swears it will – but there’s at least a back story here.  Still, unless Carol is an idiot and lets Rogue get close, this isn’t even a fight.  Seriously.

Psylocke vs. Black Widow : With prep time, the Widow would win.  But I can’t see how that would happen in an actual fight.

Luke Cage vs Beast : Sorry Beast, this would last as long as it takes for him to hit you.  I’m guessing there will be a lot of talking in this one.

Magneto vs. Iron Man : Except for the fact that Magneto is generally a villain, this should never be a fight.  (Unless either party gets prep-time, of course).

Hulk vs. White Queen : OK.  This is uh, interesting.  Hulk’s gonna win that fist fight, so this is going to have to move onto the psychic level, where she’s got a chance.  But, if that’s the case… I dunno, this is the only not like vs like match out of the covers.  I’m confused.  Then again, the Avengers have the Hulk + Thor (for this series at least) – what the hell do you do against THAT?  Namor, maybe.  Since he’s an X-person now?  Namor vs. Thing (see below) is another match that would actually make a lot of sense but that they miss.

Cyclops vs. Hawkeye : Should be Cyclops by a mile, but you know, ambushes and all so who knows.
.

Daredevil vs. Archangel : Umm.  What?  Are we out of continuity here?  I don’t even…

Colossus vs. Thing : I think this one has happened before, and the win went to the Thing.  But, you know, with Cytorrak’s powers on top of his own, this should be Colossus by a mile.

That being said, the premise for this series (or rather, for the main AvX series – this book is simply described as fleshing out the battles from that book, so it’s at least not even trying to be anything other than what it looks like) looks somewhat terrible, even with all the “work” they’ve done to make there be an actual reason for the two big cash co-err teams to do battle.  STILL.  There is something to be said for comics targeted at 7-14 year olds. I mean, we haven’t had anything like Marvel vs. DC in a while (Avengers vs. Justice League was the most recent that I can recall and they, of course, teamed up in the end – still, this could end that way : Everyone vs. Phoenix!).  And the books do seemed to have stirred up quite a bit of internet debate (old school!  x vs y!  Who is the strongest!?), that’s probably a good thing for Marvel.

[Note: All images from CBR article here.]

Here’s the full cover-merge spread:

And the breakdown/zooms:

I have to say that I’m really not feeling Shaw anywhere in an X-Book.  I never found him to have *any* redeeming characteristics (unlike Magneto, who’s had them for a long time, or the White Queen & Sage who were convincingly (to me) retconned (in the case of Sage) or had a pretty solid turnaround).  That’s not to say we couldn’t be seeing another White Queen turnaround here BUT.  Do we need it?  Is anything about Shirtless Shaw interesting enough to make it worthwhile?

Idie was my favorite cast member, so I’m pretty bummed to see her as the trade for Shaw.  Hopefully she’ll wind up in Wolverine’s team (as one might expect, given Schism so far) and not dead or in Limbo.

Still trying to wrap my head around how sticking Shaw with the mutant messiah is a good idea, from anyone’s perspective….

Well.

Psylocke (and possible Domino??) is pulling a Wolverin— er, double duty (as she’s also been revealed as being in X-Force, one of the team Wolverine/gold teams).  That’s interesting.  Especially if you’re a Psylocke fan.  I’m not a huge one, but I don’t dislike her (I have to admit, I do miss the ~1988 armored look though).

Mostly I’m happy to see Warpath back somewhere and Jubilee & Storm on a team.  This is pretty female heavy team too.  As in, extremely.  Probably top heavy too, knowing comic artists.  As others on the net  have pointed out, having Jubilee not on Wolverine’s side seems very strange, especially given the amount of effort he’s expended to help her lately (donating his blood to keep her sated, the stuff they just went through in the Wolverine & Jubilee mini-series, etc.).  I assume this will be a major plot point …

Having Domino out of X-Force, with Psylocke and potentially not pulling double duty could also set up some really interesting trust & subterfuge situations.  I wonder if Psylocke is here to take care of Jubilee for Wolverine?

I’m not understanding why Storm is not featured more prominently – other than that all the fliers in these promo posters are really tiny hovering figures.

Lose Domino (sorry, I don’t think she works here) and I’d be much more interested.

 Tell me that doesn’t look like a Brotherhood of Evil (Misunderstood?  Reformed?) Mutants in the making.  Magneto, Danger, Juggernaut & the White Queen.. oh and Cyclops and semi-amoral Illyana as afterthoughts.

And this is the flagship title?

I’m… “confused” would be an understatement.  I have to admit I’m surprised & impressed that they are letting the Juggernaut transfer stick.  It’s interesting to me in that normal dude + Juggernaut = fucking nuts.  So what happens when you have crazy tough mutant + Juggernaut?  I mean, does he even need a team?  Maybe the whole team is just to keep him in line?  He doesn’t have a rage face on so maybe he’s in control?  Why would Cytorrak leave him with the powers if he wasn’t a crazy rage-facer?  I guess I’ll have to read and see …

Still, I cancelled Uncanny from my pull with the relaunch – I’ll pick up the first issue at least (mostly because 1sts are a bitch to get back issues for if I ever decide to pick it back up), but nothing here reaches out and says “buy me!”.  Juggerlossus + Illyana comes close… but Danger says “nope!”.

Oh, Nate, you sure know how to ruin a cover with your shirtless self.

Abnett & Lanning have a huge stockpile of cred with me for the Marvel Cosmic stuff… but selling me on X-Man as a team member (especially this time) is going to take a lot of work.  Enough that I doubt even the awesome A&L.  That and a) there’s no Cannonball (WTF!?) and b) Magma is flying?  So she can fly now but we forgot that Sunspot can?  *confuzzled*

No Karma also makes me sad.  She’s one of those characters where I don’t find her powers particularly interesting (uber-limited, focused, telepathy) but I love her character.  She just has a … “presence” to me as a reader I guess, always has.

This is kind of a douchey cover in general.  Why do Warlock & Sunspot have those idiot-semi-villanous grins?  Why is Nate the central character?  Why is Magma flying?  I mean, she’s “Magma” not “Firestar” or “flying fire girl”.  Magma is heavy.  Rocks are heavy.  Please, please don’t make her some generic fire girl.

New Cypher is pretty interesting, Sunspot has always been one of my top 5 characters, and Dani is generally interesting.  Warlock really varies by writer.  Eh.  I’m in the middle on this one.  We’ll see how it goes.

X-Force to end and relaunch.  Sounds like “Wolverine’s X-Men” meets Secret Warriors.  Teaser image below.

The guy on the right looks clearly to be Fantomex, it’s suggested in the article that Wolverine is the only returning member (and also, that Angel might be one of the last people they would want on the team), so the “winged” person is NOT Angel so… Cloak maybe?  I’m thinking it’s a cloak specifically drawn to look like wings to mess with us.  I mean, in an ideal world it would be Mimic….   And two people with swords. So, Psylocke for sure I’d say – probably the figure in the front.  It looks like bottom left has two swords… which leaves us with Deadpool. UGH. UGH. UGH.  Please no.  What other X-Men have the sword-ninja thing going on?  Honestly I can’t even remember.

X-23 gets her own book.  The artists for the interiors of last month’s one shot was terrible.  If it’s someone who can actually draw something that will interest me, I’ll pick up the first issue – but that will probably be the only Wolverine-”mini-universe” book I touch.  And only because I like Liu’s take on her.

Wolverine’s “real” kid also gets his own book.  Oh, what?  He already had his own book?  Indeed.  It’s just a relaunch for the #1 sales boostCalled Daken: Dark Wolverine or something.  Horrible title, but they had to keep the Wolverine in there to make people care enough to pick it up I guess.  Don’t get me wrong, Liu has done a good job writing Dark Wolverine so far… I just couldn’t care less for the character.

There will be a 3rd (4th? 5th?) “core” X-Men book,  called plain old “X-men” again.  Is that volume 3?  The first arc is billed as “mutants vs. vampires“. Before and after O.O:

Gambit and Rogue together again huh? BLEH.  Interesting to see Rogue in two titles…or will Legacy be forced to shift focus again?  That would be a shame, as Carey has really done a great job of making Rogue actually interesting and not lame anymore.  Oh, and Nate grey looks like an old ass Elvis in the above! Plus… Nate has too much power for a team.  Just sayin.

PS: Mark Millar is, in addition to his other redeeming characteristics, a big whiner.  Oh no!   Someone else at Marvel is using vampires in their books!  The sky is falling!   Nevermind that whole long running MI13 vampire arc… obviously everyone is out to steal Mr. Millar’s high quality “work”.

New ongoing X-Men series scorecard:

Uncanny: 0
Legacy: 0
New Mutants: 0
X-Force: -1
Cable: -1
Wolverine: Origins: -1
Wolverine: Weapon X: -1

“New” X-Force: +1
X-Men v3: +1
Daken: +1
X-23: +1
Wolverine: +1

Grand total: 8 ongoing x-books, including 3 Wolverine-related books, for a gain of +1.  I’m much more pleased with 3 Wolverine-related books than I would be if it were 3 actual Wolverine books (also, he’s still appearing in New Avengers too, so it’s not like he’ll be in less than 4 books a month).  They HAVE to make these books all about the characters… because really we’re just looking at 3 people with the same powers (although different #s of claws o.o).  It’s a challenging situation and I fully expect either Daken or X-23 to fold by issue 13.

Oh, and it looks like Cable is dead. Or at least off the table again.  And I’m not seeing Nightcrawler anywhere…  It’s a shame that’s probably not him (back to his old, two swords “swashbuckling” gear) in the X-Force teaser up there.  BUT WOULDN’T THAT BE AWESOME IF IT WAS? That squiggly thing that I thought was a random ninja ribbon (ninja frequently have random ribbons on their costumes so they can trail in the wind when they hop around) could be his tail.   That would certainly be a stellar follow-up on the seeds planted in last couple weeks.  Not to mention Nightcrawler as the team’s conscience.  Wow.  That would actually be really cool.  So cool that I hope they’ve already thought of it.

Which would mean who dies…. Iceman?  Well, at least he has a built in resurrection clause.

Since I wasn’t buying Cable or any of the Wolverine books (I have was getting Origins in trade due to the whole intentionally finite length of the story but man it’s just kinda bleh, so I may not get them all unless it wraps up smartly) this means I’ll be adding a book to my list.  Oh, wait – almost forgot, I’m dropping X-Men Forever.  Sweet.  The first volume is ending next month or so, and I don’t think I’ll get the second.    It was entertaining but… meh.  Maybe if the art were better.

I may just drop the entire Avengers line though… not that I don’t enjoy them, but picking up two entire lines is just a bit much.  Still, there is some interesting stuff coming up in the Avengers line.  Nova will be in the spyvengers.  Funky, I know.  That same title has Black Widow though, and she’s always annoyed me so.  Oh, it also has Beast!  Tempting.

And, the much expected Avengers Academy will finally arrive… with Justice,  Speedball (no longer Penance), Wasp, Tigra & Quicksilver as instructors.  Looks like it will get the carry over plots from both Mighty & Initiative.  Mighty was running out of steam, so hopefully this will be what those arcs needed.  Then there’s Amadeus Cho’s solo (!) book.  Pak’s Hercules run was fucking brilliant, and I love Cho as a character sooo…. yeah, there’s another one I’ll be getting.

It looks like it will be a good year for Marvel books.

I mean, it’s not like their suddenly going to kill a little girl for shock-effect right?  Yes, I AM looking at you Justice League: Cry for a Longer Title and better writing.

By the way, Norman Osborn is also dumb and obnoxious and annoying.  He’s racing Wolverine for # of titles appearing in, and has far outpaced (imho) the Civil War Iron Man’s douchebaggery levels.  Please die now, again, thanks bye.

Fantastic Four 568: Typical Millar dumbness of the uber, uber-bad.  Oh gawd he’s so powerful not only did he beat everyone, but he beat us a thousand times already – how will we ever beat him? Who cares?  Really?  Does anyone care about the villain from that weird ass 1980 whatever limited Millar put out a few years ago?  Yes, I know it ties in sidebar with Old Man Logan and all that.  Which is actually kind of cute… but the actual execution so far in FF is lame.

Iron Man 15: This storyline is still running?  Wow.

Cable 16:  K.  Whatever.  We’re aging Hope from 9 to 11, I get it.  Oooo 9->11. HUMMM.  And  Bishop got old – will he finally die now and be revealed as a skrull so we can get RealBishop back?

X-Men Forever 3:  The hell???  I mean, I would say the Shadow King, but I hope not because that’s too standard.  Someone should have commented about the Sabreooth/Wolverine’s dad thing…

Blackest Night 1: I actually bought this one – 1st DC book this year – because the Sinestro Corps War was pretty decent.  I have a feeling turning this thing into a company wide crossover is going to ruin it, but we’ll see.  The first issue definitely starts off with what “makes” an event these days: death and resurrection!  None of the resurrections go as usual though :p.  Curious if they are going to leave the two “big guns” (ok, not really, but they hung out with them a lot) who die at the end of the ish dead.  A wee bit gory for DC though.

New Mutants 3:  Slightly better than the last two issues, curious when/how they are going to repower Dani though – I’m guessing valkyrie somesuch.  Now I suppose I have to track down 1  & 2 in backissue bins.

Mighty Avengers 27: Not liking the “overkill” power levels of the villain so far, everything else was cool though. I think I prefer a “smart” villain plot to massive smash these days I guess.

X-Factor 46: Continues to build towards 50, not getting any worse.  A semi-revelation at the end, shows no signs of slowing down.

I actually wasn’t expecting that. It makes sense – no one really cares about her anymore I suppose.  But still. Well played.  Poor Gladiator.

What else?
Oh, Batman & Robin has lots of potential, in that wild Morrison & Quitely way.  I suspect it will be a great ride, and then collapse into itself when they move onto another project.  Just a guess really – who can carry on a post-Morrison run?  The choice always seems to be regression, retcon or ignorance.

I can’t stand Hal Jordan as a “character”, but dammit if Johns isn’t turning out the best books I’ve seen DC put out – Sinestro War was excellent, and the Blackest Night business COULD be decent.  Except they decided to make a fucking yearly event out of it SO I expect it to suck in that regard.

Captain Britain & MI13 was cancelled – shame if there ever was one.  More than any other book Marvel has cancelled in the last few years, this one has real quality, guts, etc.   There are better books running (X-Factor, the Abnett & Lanning stuff), but none that I can recall being cancelled.  And certaily drek of  lower quality still continuing.

I’m still tempted to pick up the New Mutants series, and the Claremont X-Men Forever potential fiasco but man, money you know.  Maybe if they’d cancel half the x-books I’d buy the rest.  Wolverine certainly has enough titles – Wolverine (Daken),  Origins, Weapon X, New Avengers, Dark Avegers (Daken), X-Force (& girl wolvy), Astonishing X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, First Class, the new X-Men First Class series…um, did I forget any ongoings?  That’s not even counting all the idiotic guest appearances and limiteds.  Of those titles…I only buy 3 so yeah, even that is too much Wolverine sometimes.

Looks like they may be bringing Steve Rogers back already – boo hiss to that if it’s true.

Huge boo hiss to bringing the other Flash back.

Conner Kent was missed, but the manner in which he and Kid Flash “returned” was like  “WTF?  You couldn’t just have Superboy Punch that shit back?”

Let’s see… what else.

The Greg Land cover for the Cap/Mi13 annual is fuckhideous, as usual. It’s not really worth linking too, you’ve seen that face in every single book he’s ever worked on. I suspect that must be his masturbation muse, because it’s really entirely too much, even for a tracer.

Umm.

Stuff. Yeah, let’s call it there for now.

AKA Starjammers v4.3 or so.

The thing with Havok and the star guy…CLASSIC.

Some major shake-ups, a direct lead in the no-I-won’t-link-it probably return of Jean Grey, good action scenes and another original Starjammer potentially dead (although I suspect he’ll return as some warped hybrid before too long).

Ch’od loses an arm in War of Kings #1 too – so the originals are pretty fucked these days.  Wouldn’t want to be Ch’od or Lilandra right now…of course they should get Hepzibah back now that she’s been in limbo for a year or two now…

Young X-Men 10 – I figured I’d pick up the last 3 issues…just because I’ve got every other damn issue of the various New Mutant incarnations.  It’s nice that the cover remembers that Sunspot can fly – I don’t think any other part of the series does.  Then again, maybe he flew in that stupid fight against the tattoodorks, I wasn’t paying that much attention.

Young X-Men 11 – What the hell happened here?  The phoenix tattoo thing only gets more retarded, the new characters continue to have no character and the random-ass future sideplot has me curious how they are going to wrap up this trainwreck of a series in a single issue

…certainly better than New Exiles 18 right?  What the hell.  We already know Psylocke is coming back, and none of the current crop of Exiles are in the next series.   So.  Uh?  Shouldn’t there be some kind of a set up starting?

Uncanny X-Men 506 – All around average.  The refugee thing is an interesting angle (were the whores really ex-mutants or did Colossus just make that up – I can’t remember the last issue set up for this arc), and the X-Science squad is at least an interesting thought (complete with two random/mostly made up brand new probably pointless characters!) – although every issue that Warren doesn’t have some kind of Arcangel incident just makes it less and less interesting/believeable.

X-Force 11 – Villain background.  Meh. These issues should be half price.  To some degree necessary but still tedious.  I don’t get why he had to dig the up apaches though – that’s fucktarded!

New Avengers 49 – Interesting to see Cage just fucking with Norman.  Glad.

What was the error in Mighty Avengers 21? I got a free copy with the error repaired, whatever that means.  Not feeling it yet. I adored Slott’s Initiative, but I’m just not feeling this and

I’m sorely missing him on Avengers Initiative 21.  Decent, but not the awesomeness it was.

Captain Britain & MI13 10 – A “downtime issue” with Dracula cranking up the heat in the background.  Definitely a slow down, but somewhat necessary.  Still good.  Hoping Blade ditches the head tattoos (I guess his hand grew back??) and I really, really hope that what they imply happened at the end didn’t happen.  Because that is just harsh.

X-Men Legacy 221 – Too slow!  Stuff is happening but it’s SLOW.  Why are the Shi’ar here?  Dumb.  Sorry Mike, I love your stuff but this is weak.

Yes I only pick up comics once a month or so…so there’s a big stack.

Is it intentional or just coincidence that both big companies have decently promoted (as far as I can tell) limited series running now with their main/only long-term black female characters visiting fictitious African countries?

Of course I’m talking about the Storm (X-Men: Worlds Apart) and Vixen (Vixen: Return of the Lion) limited series – which you already knew if you read the title of the post, which you did if you weren’t brain dead.

Of course, it’s amusing/sad/mind boggling that both companies only have one prominent black female.  Seriously.  One.  Marvel has a few (a REALLY small few) decent black supporting females: Monica Rambeau – who has gotten some screen time lately in Black Panther (and Nextwave of course!), Cecilia Reyes – yes I know she’s Puerto Rican yada yada – I always liked her and wish she could get a regular gig again (currently guest starring in NYX), and I think Spider-Man even has a new black female in his supporting cast…some rich girlfriend of Harry Osborn’s I think.  DC, on the other hand, I can’t think of any.  I’m sure this is partially because I’m not a DCophile but still, I read a lot of DC books and I can’t think of…oh wait – Steel’s daughter!  Anyway, my point is that there really aren’t very many, so each companies only/most prominent black female getting a limited series at the same time seems really….low.   So what’s the deal here?

Mind you I’m not complaining!  I’m just examining an interesting coincidence.

Annnnnnnnyway.

Both series are actually pretty good.  I say actually because limited series based around single characters having some dumb adventure that doesn’t affect continuity tend to suck.   IMHO anyway.   It looks like both these could have potentially pretty heavy continuity effects though – I’m REally curious how much of an effect the Storm one will have on the Black Panther series..as it is playing pretty heavily with the Wakandan cast.

The Storm series gets a bit of extra press from the title – X-Men: World’s Apart – you wouldn’t even think it was a Storm-centric series!  Cyclops & Emma figure into it a little, and Nezhno more than a little, but it’s still a far cry from a straight X-Men Limited.   Then again, maybe that’s how they are branding everything lately.  Storm is certainly featured prominently on the covers (as you can see).

Storm also gets to be super badass and blast an airplane out of the sky from across the globe.  Also, the villain of this particular arc – who has very specific ties to Storm – is a great match because their powers are so unrelated ie he’s on a whole different playing field.   She “seems” really out of her league…but that won’t be the case of course!

Vixen’s looks to be doing a power refinement & re-definement, and those usually play back into the main series.  She’s getting a bit of a streamlined functionality and less/no reliance on her magical totem – which is cool, because I’d think having to rely on a necklace for everything could cause problems if oh, I dunno, someone rips it off your neck.

The covers are really interesting to me in their archetypicality (look ma I can make up words!): they are very focused on their leads involved in some aspect of their powers – Storm flying, soaked in the rain, both, etc.  Mari/Vixen juxtaposed with various animals.  They could be the covers for anything really, nothing ties them down to the specific story.  Nothing wrong with that, I just find it interesting.  Comic covers seem to sway back in between the two poles of either being like these covers and going hard for iconic/archetype or being very directly related to what happens in exactly the issue for which they grace.  I don’t particularly favor either – they are both much better than Marvel’s idiotic zombie & ape variant covers that have jack shit to do with jack shit and are uglier than a dress made of elephant rectums.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.  OK,  I’m sure that I feel unsure about it – how’s that?  I wish they’d come up with more new stuff instead of dredging up the old because, really, it was finished.  It doesn’t need any additional closure.  I’m guessing it will tie in with the whole Illyana return thing they’ve been quietly keeping on the backburner in the comic press for the last year or two.

Well, at least they can’t touch Fall of the Mutants right….Naze/Adversary/Forge are just not “cool” enough…I hope!

Haven’t felt like writing any capsule reviews lately and we’re busy in the middle of a home purchase, trip to Cali and some other junk.  Hopefully I’ll be back on the flying horse soon.

Just in case my 1 or 2 regular readers wondered what was up.

Mighty Avengers 14: This issue introduces the first (of what will probably be many) glaring continuity contradiction error into the Secret Invasion thing. Well, or maybe it brings it more strongly into focus. Anyway, I thought we knew that in order for the Skrulls to be undetectable they had to completely subsume their Skrull personalities until the point of emergence…and yet here we see all the known Skrulls meeting in a warehouse. I’m really surprised Bendis did this…as he’s writing all the related issues. WTF? Other than that bit of silliness, they plot catches up to present day and we focus on the Sentry and have a very interesting ending that I’m hoping will be picked up in SI 2?

Oh, an aside – is anyone else amused by how easily these Uber-Skrulls are being beaten after the first two had to be nuked by Iron Man? Captain Britain punch one’s head clean off in CB&MI13.

I started reading Casanova recently after reading a review somewhere. Dammit if it didn’t have a HUGE spoiler though and the ending of the series is ruined for me…but I’m still enjoying the ride & will be picking up the trades soon. I suggest you check it out if you enjoy a good mind fuck and/or spy-on-spy action and/or mild Morrison-like weirdness.

Ultimate X-Men 94: Innnnnteresting. I won’t spoil the surprise here for you, as it’s actually pretty surprising and worth picking up if you like the title…not that it really makes much sense (or would have gone this long without being noticed). I’m not sure I like the eventual power-change this will probably lead to for one character, but the last page sure is interesting – Angel would actually be interesting if he was more like that! The inevitable mutant arms race this predicates looks to be somewhat silly though. Now any mutant bad guy can get super-super-charged with no apparent ill effects….so the plot point looks rather weak and half-thought out from another angle but it really depends on how they resolve it.

And don’t think I didn’t catch what they’re doing with Colossus and the needle.

Ultimate Fantastic Four 54: Not much going on here. The pencils looked all muddy and kind of threw me, making the rest of the presentation hard to enjoy. There’s not much of a clue where this is going yet so I’m not voting one way or the other on it.

Fantastic Four 557: I get tired of saying how overrated Mark Millar is, but I’ll say it until it doesn’t need to be said I guess. The giant robots thing is stupid. The fact that it is used as …I dunno what the technical word is but it is used to maneuver Reed & Sue into some interesting relationship questions…that part is serviceable. Reeds 1st gift to Sue is stupid and selfish – and reeks of something from Millar’s Authority run. His 2nd gift seems a bit out of character – since when is Reed into frivolous time travel (and how would Sue NOT HAVE NOTICED stepping through a time portal or whatever)? Oh right, since Millar’s first issue. I know it fits the general stereotype of “adventurer scientist” so I’m ok with it, really. That’s a character trait change I can handle, because I think it makes the series a lot more interesting. It’s just that this first arc was not very interesting. Johnny’s incredibly out of character (or maybe in-ultimate-character) behavior is also somewhat interesting BUT – he’s been a hero for a really long time, would he really hang out with someone who says stupid things like “I just robbed a bank, does this mean you have to arrest me?”.

Oh, and we have Doom again. Already. *sigh*

X-Factor 31: Nothing special, but a decent continuation of the ongoing collapse of X-Factor, their home turf, and their role. Looking forward to that Layla Miller one-shot….I’m guessing that’s how they get her aged up to marry Madrox.