Angel & Faith #3 – Angel & Faith continue to impress! I love that this series is delving into old pieces of the Buffy mythology like Mohra blood and Watchers, and while still mixing in newer elements like the end of magic and the slayers that now roam the world. And of course no story with Faith is complete without some moral angst: Will she actually kill Angel? Or, more accurately, does she really think she will? My only complaint about the book is the cheap ink used on the covers, which smudged with my fingers while I was reading it.
Annihilators: Earthfall #2 – Great story but nothing out there special. So far it’s following normal story progression: Issue #1 set up the scenario and left a cliffhanger with the Avengers and #2 had the requisite super hero battle before the threat reveals itself. So by all calculations next issue will be a super hero team up between the two teams where they probably get defeated which leads into issue #4 when they devise a plan together to defeat the Church of the Universal Truth and a reborn (albeit child-like) Magus. Not the most creative arc set up but it still makes for a fun storyline.
Astonishing X-men #43 – Fantastic story! These standalone stories are something that the X-men got away from in recent years but recently they’ve made a bit of a comeback. Thank god! Not every single story needs to be planned out in a 4 or 5 issue arc Marvel! And what a story it was. Danger and Emma are easily two of the coldest and hardest X-men, either by design or by experience so it was good to see them not only working together but doing so for the purpose of helping someone else, a stranger no less. And despite the entire “rescue” being a complete shame by Machinesmith, we got to see once again that Emma isn’t as hard as she would like people to think and Danger came a little bit closer to being human.
Avengers Academy #20 – Despite having a Fear Itself banner (and having almost nothing to do with Fear Itself) I absolutely loved this issue. I’m sad to see Veil go, but something tells me that we will be seeing her still even if she’s not with the team. What really shocked me though was Speedball’s departure. We had been warned that a faculty member was leaving but to been honest I really thought it was going to be Quicksilver. He doesn’t serve to much of a purpose here and I think he would be better suited over in one of the X-books, if not X-Factor with his former teammates then over in Uncanny X-men with his father. I am excited to see the team interact with all of the new members, especially the ones that I am not that familiar with.
Avengers Solo #1 – Eh...it was ok. There was nothing really bad about the book per say, it just wasn’t all that exciting and the “cliffhanger” ending was probably one of the lamest villains ever, the Trapster aka Paste Pot Pete. Definitely had the same feel as the old volume of this book so probably a bigger draw for people that are Hawkeye fans. The saving grace of the issue was the back-up story actually. Just by chance I read Avengers Academy right before this issue, so watching them move into their new home on the West Coast was a great follow up.
FF #11 – Definitely a better issue then many of the recent ones, but still not quite enough to keep me collecting this series. Although it was really exciting to watch the Supreme Intelligence be reborn so I will probably continue picking this up until the end of the Inhumans/Kree storyline but then I’ll be dropping it. With Fantastic Four #600 coming out concurrently with #12 of this title, I just don’t see either title being worth collecting without collecting both. Pass on that!
Journey Into Mystery #630 – What…a heartbreaking issue. I’ve never been much into collecting Thor titles, but with everything being very Asgardian-centric in the last few years, it’s hard to not get familiar with many of these characters. That being said, I have fallen completely in love with Volstagg’s character in the last few years, and his jovial Santa-like ways. And so enthralling and heartfelt was his story to his children that I actually forgot for a moment that the ending was so tragic and that he was just breaking the death of Thor to his children as gently as possible. Much like its last incarnation (during the Lost Gods storyline) I managed to love this title even without following the main Thor title and I will most likely continue with the tales of young Loki even now that Fear Itself has ended. With Thor’s demise, I don’t see there being TOO many strong connections between the two titles, and that’s if they don’t just outright cancel Thor’s book for now.
Mighty Thor #7 – This prelude to Fear Itself finally answered many lingering questions regarding the Serpent’s origin. We’d seen how he gained his limp and we saw that he was imprisoned under the ocean, but why was he down there, and how did he get there. Here we got to see the original conflict between the brothers and also the original Worthy (who look strikingly like their modern-day counterparts) and how their sealing within the hammers was not of their own volition. We also saw that Odin knew since Thor’s birth that he would one day die in battle with the Serpent so maybe, if I may speculate, that had something to do with his adopting of Loki as a way to deflect this prophecy off of his true son. Just a thought.
New Mutants #32 – This is just always such a great title. They’ve recaptured their original tongue-in-cheek feel from the 80’s and the stories have been just great. I love the new team line-up (it’s the first time this team has ever been without Cannonball, as he was the only original member to never leave until the team morphed into X-Force) and the addition, and depowering, of X-man was brilliant. He seems to have fit right into this tight knit family unit, and the ingenious part is that this is basically like having teenage Cable on the team instead of war torn soldier Cable.
Secret Avengers #18 – Is this cancelled yet? I’m sorry, it’s not that it’s a terrible book, but it just seems to have no point to it. The stories in this book rarely affect any other title and besides Shang-chi all the characters have other books where they can be regularly featured (especially now that Beast is over in Wolverine & the X-men). In fact the only time I’ve even heard this book referenced in another title was this week’s Astonishing X-men, when Emma was throwing the details of the operation in Beast’s face. Just send everyone back to their respective books and let Shang-chi guest star once in a while, this is just another extra book to buy every month and who can afford to keep up!
No comments:
Post a Comment