Tuesday, November 1, 2011

GoldDustBoi's Twitter Giveaway!

GoldDustBoi’s Twitter Giveaway!

I’m giving away a free comic to one of my loyal Twitter followers!

To enter:

1)    Follow me on Twitter @golddustboi
2)    Tweet “Giveaway” and include either what you like most/want to see more of on the site –or– something new you’d like to see featured.

Prize:  You get a choice!  You will get a free comic and you get to choose if you prefer Avengers, Spider-man, or X-men!  Prize will be something random from the group of your choice!  I promise no complete garbage (you won’t get the something from Free Comic Day or some other free giveaway, you will get a real issue).

Winner will be randomly selected, no more than one entry per follower.  Contest ends on Tuesday November 8th at 12 midnight.

Flash Review - 10/26/11



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!

My Weekly Pull List - 11/2/11


Uncanny X-men (Vol. 2) #1 begins this week as ReGenesis keep trucking along!  Fear Itself refuses to die with Fear Itself 37.1 and the Fearless also new this week.  And who are all the new recruits to Avengers Academy?!

Avengers 1959 #3
Avengers Academy #21
Fear Itself #7.1 FI
Fear Itself: The Fearless #2 FI
New Mutants #33 RG
Uncanny X-men #1 RG
X-Men #20 RG

FI = Fear Itself
RG = ReGenesis

Monday, October 31, 2011

Marvel Comics On-sale 11/2/11


Amazing Spider-Man #673 SI
Anita Blake: Circus of the Damned – The Scoundrel #2
Avengers 1959 #3
Avengers Academy #21
Avengers Origins: Ant-Man & the Wasp #1
Daredevil #4 (2nd Printing Variant)
Fear Itself #7.1 FI
Fear Itself: The Fearless #2 FI
Fear Itself: The Fearless #2 (Cho Variant) FI
Hulk #44
Moon Knight #7
Moon Knight 37 (MC 50th Anniversary Variant)
Mystic #4
New Mutants #33 RG
New Mutants #33 (Keown Variant) RG
Shame Itself #1
Six Guns #1
Thor: The Deviants Saga #3
Uncanny X-men #1 RG
Uncanny X-men #1 (Blank Cover Variant) RG
Uncanny X-men #1 (Cho Variant) RG
Uncanny X-men #1 (Keown Variant) RG
Villains For Hire #0.1
X-23 #16
X-Men #20 RG
X-Men #20 (Keown Variant) RG

FI = Fear Itself
SI = Spider-Island
RG = ReGenesis

Happy Halloween from GBD!

Hope everyone is having a fun safe and Happy Halloween1  Be sure to eat entirely too much candy!  Here's some pictures from the pumpkin carving at my school on Friday, this should get you all into the spirit!


I am pretty sure I won the contest with my sick Iron Man Pumpkin! :)

Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Fashion of the Con

OK it took me a long time to get it all together, but I finally have all my pictures from the New York Comic-Con together!  There were honestly so many amazing costumes at this convention that I couldn't possibly have seen them all let along post them here so here are my favorite ones.

It was a night out for the ladies of the Avengers with Ms. Marvel (right), Wasp and Baroness (center), and Black Widow (right) all came to the Con to see what's hot in the comic world this year

 

And not wanting to let the Avengers have all the fun, the X-men girls came out to paint the town black, white, yellow and green. Here we have Emma Frost and Storm (left) along with Rogue and Marvel Girl (right).


The Black Cat (left) was on the prowl while I put my life on the line with Lady Deadpool (right) with Black Canary and Sailor Mercury not far away (right).

Who you gonna call?


This Green Power Ranger seems to have lost his Zord.


And the Con isn't just for comic book fans, we have more then our fair share of video gamers that come to celebrate and revel in their nerdiness with the rest of us.  Here's dual Marios and Peach (left) and Chun-Li with Sub-zero (right).


If anyone is going to paint the town red its these crimson clad "heroes".  First we have Deadpoll along with X-23 and Gambit (left), the mutant decimating Scarlet Witch (center), and Sora and Kairi (right)...


...while Carnage is furious to be left out of the mix.


Taskmaster took this opportunity to get a little bit of shopping in


He of the long golden locks Thor Odinson meets hair master Edward Scissorhands.


Some people weren't shooting for a specific character per say so much as just trying to make a lasting impression. Kudos to these innovators!


Here we have some cast members from AMC's the Walking Dead.  You can't tell from here, but these walkers were especially creepy.

School's in Session - Review Wolverine and the X-men #1


LOVED IT!  Completely flawless, and everything we could have hoped for.  I was hesitant to say the very least when it came to this entire splitting of the X-men idea.  I just didn’t think it was necessary to have two completely separate and opposing camps of the same mutant team, going by the same name, with the same general set of ideas (the betterment of mutant kind).  But opening day Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning was absolutely everything it could have been and more!  Plus it honestly read like an old issue of Uncanny X-men from the 80’s.  I love that the first thing we see is Wolverine getting approval from Professor X, something of a passing of the torch from the old vanguard to the new.  Charles was somewhat missing from the entire Schism ordeal, except for his role in the Prelude, and with such a huge division of ideals and forces its almost ridiculous to think that he wouldn’t have some role or say in what’s going on.  Also, during the ReGenesis one-shot he was also one of the few major mutants that we didn’t see choose a side, but it no seems as though he will be staying with Scott, his “son”, for the duration of this upheaval.

Moving on to the faculty.  BOTH AMAZING AND HILARIOUS!  Kitty Pryde as headmistress is the most perfect and logical choice there was, and the rest of the faculty (right down to Toad as the janitor) was perfect chosen.  And Aaron’s decision to set the story against a Department of Education inspection was not only funny but also made it very easy to show us what the other characters are up to and even some of the classes being taught.  Of course anything that could go wrong DID on this wacky tour! From the Danger Bathroom to a coffee pot through the inspector head, this walk through the brand new Mutant U was doomed from the very start.  Seeing the new generation of teachers, such as Husk and Rachel Summers, was great for nostalgic fan who remember when the faculty was Professor X and Emma Frost.

We got some updates on current situations while also meeting new characters.  It was very sad to see Idie’s outlook of herself and her fellow mutants has not changed but I am hoping that this is something we will see changes in soon.  On the other hand seeing Quentin Quire begrudgingly back at school gave a nice light contrast, something tells me that he will be in detention a lot.  I can’t wait to hear more about our new Shi’ar residents, Warbird (no relation to Carol Danvers) and Kid Gladiator, and how they came to be at the Grey School.  Glad to see Broo (the new Brood mutant who has feelings and morals) found a home here, as a lot of things that happen over in Astonishing X-men don’t always make it over to the main books.  And the absolute nerve of that brat Kade Kilgore to show up at the front door, confess everything he did to cause the Schism, and pledge to more badness right to Wolverine’s face!  If you ask me, Logan should have SNIKTed him where the sun don’t shine.

I had my reservations but this issue more then put those to rest!  I loved this issue, really brought me back to a more classic feel for the team.  I look forward to seeing Scott continue his mission over in Uncanny X-men, but this is the book for people who remember the more light hearted feel for the mutants, back when entire issues were bedtime stories and baseball games.  Not that it was really in doubt, but I am definitely going to continue with this book only now I will be looking forward to it not just keeping up with continuity.