Sorry it’s late - I’m on vacation this week.
I also don’t have my comics yet, because of the fact that I haven’t bothered to leave the house to get them. But I probably will tomorrow…
So how was World War Hulk #5?
**All-Star Superman #9: **Maybe I’m just sick and tired of Krypton being a fascist shithole that the universe is well rid of, but this story just doesn’t work for me until the very end. Not that there’s much of a story, really. Yeah, it’s very Silver-Agey, but they’re using some stuff from that era that doesn’t really work anymore, if it ever did. Quitely’s art is good for heroic characters, but many of his lesser supporting characters look like they just escaped from Auschwitz.
Black Adam #4: This series had never been great, but it’s serviceable. It’s interesting to note that Adam here has a definite ethos, even if it’s one we modern westerners find abhorrent. Over in Countdown, his power has apparently swiftly Mary turned Mary to a more generic mustache twirling evil.
Booster Gold #4: A surprisingly disappointing ending. They didn’t have any fun with Barry and Wally, and the identity of the villains was completely out of left field. They should have set that up better for those of us who only started to follow Booster in 52.
Countdown to Final Crisis #24: Ugh. Well, no wonder Earth-15 was so boring, wouldn’t want to waste any good ideas with that, would we? Oh, and thanks for spoiling yet more of the Sinestro Corp War, Countdown. And not doing anything I didn’t see in that characters’ special, either. It’s nice to see that Mary’s new evil has made her only *mostly *retarded, and Desaad’s dossier’s listing for “Best Death” was hilarious.
Suicide Squad #3: Would have been nice to get Rustam’s full backstory earlier, but otherwise pretty good, if a bit full of exposition. Wasn’t the General a regenerator that would make Wolverine jealous, though? I seem to recall Batman blowing up most of his abdomen, and him being all better the next panel. Seems like he’d need a big power drop to qualify for the Squad.
Salvation Run #1: Not a promising start. It’s just not *Brutal *enough. Using the murderworld last seen in Blue Beetle is nice, but Kirby-esque death traps seems kinda bright for the apparent tone of the story. Also, the villains are not that evil here. But then, maybe Black Adam and Superman-Prime have set my bar for “evil” too high. I suppose I can recalibrate for being kinda nasty and slapping each other around.
Wonder Woman #14: She fights gorillas and Nazis, so therefore it’s awesome. Simone’s take on WW the character is spot-on, and the pure superheroics are good, but I’m not sure she knows what to do with the secret ID stuff. Drop it, I hope.
**Welcome to Tranquility #12:**Sidewinder Spirits Rule!
LOEG: The Black Dossier– Wow, this was, um, dense. It doesn’t have the kind of rousing action/adventure payoff that volumes 1 and 2 had, and all the text features are in tiny 6-point eyestraining type. The ending gives a new dimension to the term “artsy fartsy,” and the 3-D effects aren’t worth the effort. James Bond is depicted as a distasteful thug. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by revealing that the girl kicking Mina’s ass around the spaceport is, in fact, a 19-year-old Emma Peel.
According to Wikipedia, this book bruises so many active copyrights that it’s not being distributed outside the US. Moore gets off a catty slag at the unfortunate movie of a couple years back. “You know that rocket [X-L] must be American; they think ‘excel’ begins with an X!”
At thirty bucks, this one gets a pretty lukewarm endorsement. Wait for the TPB.
Meh. It was quite a letdown IMHO. Not the battle between Sentry and the Hulk, that was okay, but the actually ending was a bit too abrupt for my tastes. At the very least, it needed more of a coda.
Salvation Run #1: The writing on it annoyed me, honestly. Too talky and educated. These are blue-collar crooks, not the Algonquin Roundtable! And why are any supervillains ever scared of the Joker, anyway? He’s a pale psycho in a purple suit. If I have superpowers, I fry him first thing. (Sorry, he’s a pet peeve.)
I bought 2 copies of THOR 4, not seeing it was alternate covers. Ah well.
Secret Avengers was all recaps, so eh.
The Joker is supposed to be scary for the same reason that Robin is cool. The latter lies to the Batman. The former gets away from the Batman. (and other villains don’t know that the Joker has writers’ fiat on his side.)
Countdown #24 - Didn’t mislike it quite as much as the all-Monitor stupidpalooza before, but still… not interesting. Also, I’m going to assume that their drawing Prime as a mature adult instead of a mature teen is not a spoiler on the Sinestro Corps War, but is just bad art direction.
Titans East special - That was… not well-written. I know it’s a set-up for the upcoming series. But it’s not a good set-up. It doesn’t make me want to read the upcoming series.
Batman & the Outsiders #1 - Bought this on recommendation of my Comic Store Guy. Liked the Batman here. Still think J’onn looks dumb in his new look.
Wonder Woman #14 - Got the character and tone right, and the talking gorillas as houseguests feels a lot like the Giant Head as houseguest in the All-New Atom, so very happy with that. Nazi villains in WW is a nice touch, but while I know that all new WW writers feel the need to have an Amazon plotline, I hope Simone moves on to new ground soon. WW is in need of expanding her schtick, and her rogues’ gallery.
Booster Gold #4 - Yeah, they really needed to do something more interesting with the Flashes.
All-Star Superman #9 - That did, indeed, need more than one issue to tell that story. It breezed past too many things, not the least of which was Lois’ reaction.
Things I learned from World War Hulk #5:
The power of a million exploding suns goes “VJJJWOMMMVVVVVVVVB”
Speaking of which, you’d think that the unleashed power of a million exploding suns would have a wider blast radius. They must have been really small suns, I guess.
The combined force of an anti-Hulk orbital satellite array goes “JRJRKKCSSSSSS”
I enjoy seeing Tony Stark get the crap kicked out of him even more than seeing superheroes fighting supervillains. Seriously, if they had a weekly WWH tie-in devoted solely to him being slapped around, that would be fine.
I think the Joker can probably thank Batman for his intimidation stature among supervillains. Batman spends all his time making sure that criminals are afraid of Batman. As Batman’s archnemesis, the Joker directly benefits from this superstitious fear. To other villains, he’s not just a weedy psycho; he’s the guy who goes out of his way to pull the dragon’s tail, and yet survives. They figure that he must have more going for him than meets the eye; after all, he fights freakin’ BATMAN on a regular basis, doesn’t he? Batman frightens everyone else-- but the Joker just laughs at him.
Plus, c’mon; the guy dresses like a clown. Clowns are goddamn terrifying in any universe.
I especially liked the beatdown from Thor #3 with the promise of more to come later.
World War Hulk #5: Well, it was nice to see Sentry actually do something even if it was nearly destroy the world. Once again, Tony Stark puts his money on the wrong horse. Makes one wonder how the Registration act ever got off the ground.
Speaking of the Registration act, remember that whole thing of Peter Parker revealing his secret identity in front of the world and all of the horrible consequences that came from it. If you blinked when reading Avengers: The Initiative #7, you may have missed all of that coming to an end. The three clowns in Stark’s Spider Man costume reward Peter for his help in retrieving a briefcase from three clowns in Vulture armor by telling the world that Peter Parker was just wearing armor that mimicked Spider Man’s powers, and now Parker has been kicked out of the program. Next scene is Jolly Jonah Jameson wondering if Parker was really Spider Man. What makes it extra fun is that the three clowns in the Spider Spat outfits were clones.
In other blink you may have missed it revelations…
Illuminati #5: Taking place after the end of WWH, we have the secret six getting together to discuss the corpse of Skrull Elektra when…It’s revealed that everyone in the Marvel Universe is a Skrull!!! :eek: Okay. Maybe not, but Black Bolt is and has been for some time. Makes the Hulk’s beatdown of BB seem somewhat less impressive, but Skrull Bolt does manage to lay a decent beatdown on some of them before Namor kills him. Also interesting are the skrulls that show up with Colossus’ powers and Thor’s hammer respectively. Now we have skrulls running around undetectable by normal means (Reed’s tech, Strange’s magic, Wolverine’s senses, etc.). From what I’ve seen of the new Thor series, it’s unlikely that Thor himself is a skrull, but we do know that Reed, Tony, and Pym made a Clor with a pretty hardcore hammer. Wonder if one of them is a skrull. Come to think of it, I wonder if I’m a skrull…Wonder how many storylines Marvel is going to try to wave off with this development.
It also had Cyclops’ power. The first had the powers of at least three of the Illuminati, which was interesting. The only person we know who is not a Skrull is Tony Stark (Bendis said so, and I think that’s beyond even him.) Oh, and Deathlok 
I think it’s a pretty clever idea, but I hope they don’t, as you said, try to wave off too much. But just imagine the uproar if they decide that Cap’s been a Skrull for a while? :eek:
Or just skip the whole damn thing. What a disappointment. The last thing we need, after two good and tight LoEG books is more idle wankery from Moore about women, sex and his own thoughts on them. God help us all.
Not quite.
They were speculating that the Skrull might have been impersonating Black Bolt all along. It was by no means firmly established, though.
After reading Avengers: The Initiative, I’ve come to realize that whatever Marvel is paying Dan Slott, it’s not enough. This man can deftly explain away any continuity issues that Marvel can throw at him. He had plenty of practice in his She-Hulk run and he didn’t it effortlessly in A: TI.
And bless the man for bringing back those little reference boxes with the asterisks that explain things. For God’s sake, in one of thsoe little boxed, he referenced Amazing Spiderman #12. TWELVE!
The only thing that’s going to be worse than this book is the accolades that are going to be heaped on it by people who are too afraid to denounce the Emperor in all his naked glory.
Wasn’t thrilled with the Black Dossier, either. So sad.
Gail Simone’s run on Wonder Woman is off to a promising start, though.
And Damn Marvel to Hell, they found a way to make me pick up one of their titles. The Hulk’s getting a new #1, and his old title is being handed off to one of the most criminally underutilized members of the Marvel Universe.
I am so ready for The Incredible Herc.
Dan Slott is pretty much the only decent writer they have nowadays. I think they should take whatever they’re paying all their other writers and give it to him.
Your fingers to God’s monitor, my friend. Moore is still a great writer…but he’s no longer a disciplined writer. And without that I’m afraid it’ll all be this incoherent noodling that sacrifices story for presentation.
Yeah, I’m late…NaNoWriMo is cutting into my reading time…
Only read a couple from last week so far…sadly Titans East is one of them.
My reaction as I read:
Cover: ‘Who dies?’ Bet it’s Power Boy, what with being a creepy stalker nobody likes, even as a villain AND a New God.
Flashback… OK. Not sure it was necessary, and how Starfire defeated Bizarro defies even comic book logic, but…OK.
Meeting the team… Is that…Starfire? Oh, Buddy, how could you? Wow…naked Hawk. Gratuitous, but I find myself unable to complain. Power Boy is creepy, no surprise there.
‘War games’… This part was good, actually. Vic, Lagoon Boy, and the ladies all came out looking good - even if Dove is the only one who demonstrated any level of brains. Son of Vulcan, and Anima for that matter, are mostly just there.
Post games… Dead Power Boy, no surprise there… Oh, come ON…Seriously? ALL of them? Even Vic? Isn’t that kind of overkill? (Actually… it’s literal overkill, isn’t it?)
New She-Hulk and Wonder Woman, good. New CheckMate and Thunderbolts, bad. The artist on 'bolts made everyone look like a damn puppy, with big moony eyes. And CheckMate was about a bunch of talky intrigue, and not even GOOD intrigue.
She-Hulk looks hot and was funny-Peter David’s another solid writer.
Am I the only one who when reading Wonder Woman, had a Portal flash? “The cake is a lie!” Perhaps I need to get out more?