I don’t have mine yet, but no one had started the thread, so… here it is! I’ll have mine tomorrow.
Countdown - Mack Daddy Jimmy Olsen gets himself some of that hot insectoid tail, oh yeah. (I have no room to mock…I think Red Bee over in Freedom Fighters is teh hotness.) Still looks like he’s going to be a Fifth World God, to me, or else he’ll play a role similar to Kyle in GL, just holding the power until the real recipient shows up. Poor Piper’s gone round the bend.
Arena - The Wonder Women was a weird fight, but the Flashes went in a logical manner. Batvamp, version: Liberty Files is actually not a bad character. Superman-16 is officially awesome. Death toll: possibly 2 Wonder Women, it’s really hard to tell what went down at the end of that fight. Yay for both losing Flashes surviving (even if it’s only because Quick’s a sadist) - it’d be a pity to lose Lia and Jay, even if it’s not our Jay.
Superwoman/Batwoman - The Search For Ray Palmer continues to impress - more often good than bad, and the good mostly more so than the bad. Earth-11 is an interesting one - not entirely just genderswapped - Ms Luthor seems to be on good terms with Superwoman, Blue Beetle’s alive (and in Reach armour), Batwoman and Wonderman are both more unreasonable than their New Earth counterparts…I’d have liked to see a deeper view of a smaller cast without the Challengers, though. Interesting putting Etrigan in the Freedom Fighters (that Earth’s Firebrand, maybe?), and on the FF note…Phantom Lad’s costume fails in general and as a thematic equivalent to Phantom Lady’s.
Mighty Avengers #6–Man! Why does everyone in Avengersland have it in for poor Tigra? Even Jarvis thinks she’s a joke!
Checkmate #21: Some well-needed development of Tautin and her codename, who was just “tough French chick” before. Checkmate’s been good at keeping all of a large cast well developed.
Countdown to Final Crisis #19: My decision to tough this thing out is looking less like stupid fanboyish completism and more like a good move. It’s far too late to truly salvage this series, but they may take it to a decent conclusion after all. It’s curious, and annoying, that the Jimmy Olsen arc here and Death of the New Gods seems to be telling the exact same story in different ways.
Birds of Prey #113: Uh oh. If history has taught us anything, this can only end with Misfit cutting herself and listening to emo music. Now, we can assume that Superman and Batman will reprise (from Kingdom Come) their roles of authoritarian and anarchic superhuman leaders respectively, but after Batman surrenders and is killed, who will we cheer on when he beats the crap outta Superman?
But seriously, a pretty good issue, but I’m of two minds regarding the treatment of Misfit here. Charlotte really is a moron. Somewhat believably so, but still, really, really stupid. She deserves to get, well, not the full Penance treatment, but to be forced to listen to Linkin Park or something.
Detective Comics #839: Boy did this arc stink. A fine example of putting some narrative event necessity (Bringing Ra’s back, in this case) ahead of actually having a good story.
Superman #671: Loved the bit about how Superman could have blown the baseball right through the moon, but held back because, hey, no need to destroy the moon for a charity event, right? A very cool, old-fashioned story about middle-school science gone horribly wrong.
Justice League of America #16: What an odd… Well, Tangent. The story itself was pretty enjoyable (I liked how Atom didn’t see what all the fuss was all about). Nice, but I hope not typical of what’s to come. The backup was pretty nifty, though.
Salvation Run #2: Ah. Much better. Now here’s the Oz meets Lord of the Flies I was hoping for. I think this will shake down to Luthor (Rational and civilized without the morality) versus Joker (Let’s just kill everybody) and their various followers. Could be cool.
Wonder Woman #15: Awesome. Just, really really cool. Nazis and monkeys mean you win.
Countdown looks like it is heading somewhere this issue again, but keeps not reaching anything substantive. At least the “Athena” reveal finally happened.
Superwoman/Batwoman was amusing – particularly inasmuch as they didn’t mention the name of gender-swapped Black Canary. Yeah, I wouldn’t’ve been able to think up one, either.
Birds of Prey was good, except that it seems the upcoming storyline hinges on Superman being a dick. That got old really fast a long time ago with Batman, and they’ve finally stopped doing that. It doesn’t fit Clark’s character (funny websites to the contrary).
Superman started a re-imaging of Lana Lang - Insect Queen, but the main plot seemed rather random and sudden. The All-Star Superman shoutout was amusing.
Which part? The bugs seem to be the larger group the Flea Circus from Up, Up and Away are a part of - yet another of Luthor’s deals coming back to bite Lana and the rest of the innocents at Lexcorp on the ass. Almost two years since their last appearance, but that’s not uncommon in superhero comics.
Aha, I had indeed forgotten all about the Flea Circus. :smack:
That would certainly explain the feeling that the story came out of nowhere.
(Granted, of course, it is entirely possible that it is, really, coming out of nowhere, and it just looks to tie in with the Flea Circus, but I’ve got more faith in Buseik than that.)
New X-Men - Only two comments, really…1: Oh, god, I love how Ramos draws Layla. She is adorable. 2: Anyone else think now that Yoriko’s out of the picture (for a while), X-23 should appropriate the Lady Deathstryke name? X-23 is a bland code-name, and she’s got enough of a connection to LD that it doesn’t just look to be out of nowhere. No, nobody? >_>
Is it sad that the thing I’m most excited about this week is that I finally got an official answer to a question that’s been outstanding in the Marvel Universe for more than 40 years?
[spoiler]Dr. Doom does not have a doctorate.
I’ve always wondered if he went back to school or awarded one to himself from the University of Latveria or got one from a diploma mill before going back after Reed…
For those wondering it was on Marvel promotional stuff text page at the end of She-Hulk…[/spoiler]
Yeah, and the comic your answer was in wasn’t half-bad either. She-Hulk has been a minor gem in my opinion, like Ms. Marvel, though don’t try to write Nextwave characters unless you are Warren Ellis. However, Shulkie does have something that might make the rest of the MU sit up and take notice: a real live Skrull. I’ve liked the recent Nova, also, though my protective instincts made me worry about Cosmo the whole time.
Also, I just for kicks looked through Foolkiller. Dunno why, I’m a 3rd (4th, 5th, 6th) stringer character geek. It’s abysmal. Nine steps below the Punisher, and I don’t even LIKE the Punisher.