I picked up two Marvel books - X-Men : Endangered Species, which is entirely skippable even if you plan to follow the crossover; and Incredible Hulk, where Hercules makes me chuckle.
Of course, the big news is Flash #13, the last issue of the title. It is being replaced with a “new” Flash series, resuming the numbering of Wally’s series.
The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13: Friends! Romans! Comic Book Geeks! Lend me your ears! [spoiler]I come not to praise Bart Allen, but to bury him.
When we first met Bart, he was kind of a brat. He quickly mellowed, and turned into a charicature of a hyperactive underachiever. The kind of kid who meant well, and was obvious really smart, but didn’t have the attention span to really pull it off. It was a hoot. I mean, Impulse was almost a comedy title, but it had quite a few touching moments, and it was great to see a kid character acting like a kid. In this capacity Bart also complimented Young Justice extremely well, playing the fun little brother to Superboy’s superhormones and Robin’s batsmarts.
The Bart’s solo title was canceled, and Young Justice gave way to Teen Titans. As far as I can tell, Geoff Johns was either uninterested or didn’t know what to do with Bart. So he shot him, and had him become Kid Flash for some reason (Wally was right, it just came off as Bart trying way too hard). He got better, and the “read every book in the library” thing was kind of cool, but lots of the things I loved about Impulse were gone.
But that’s okay! I mean, real people change. And I certainly don;t want to be that guy, who refuses to understand that different writers write people differently. So I went along for the ride.
The Flash ended and Infinite Crisis happened, and Wally, with wife and infant children, just up and vanished. Bart vanished too, and when he came back, he ahd suddenly grown up. His character growth and development, if any, literally happened off-screen. The kid was gone.
So it was Bart’s turn to be the Flash. And he sucked at it. Ok, to be fair, his writers sucked and by extension he came off as pretty damn whiny. And virtually every trace of Impulse was now erased. They tried to have a new wrinkle on the thing by having Bart contain the Speed Force inside of him, but they did absolutely nothing with it before undoing it this issue. Bart wasn’t ready to be the Flash. Retiring Wally was simply unnecessary, and in his stead we were given a stranger with Bart Allen’s name.
And now it’s over. Bart’s dead. Blasted and beaten to death by the Rogues. A victim of Infinite Crisis (It’s a Crisis! Gotta do something to the Flash!), One Year Later (All New Flash!), and Countdown (Well, that didn’t work, maybe we can do something with the Rogues, at least). A rather inglorious death for a Flash, but then, he wasn’t a very good Flash.
I see it more as the inevitable end of Bart’s decline. They took a teen character and aged him Off-Panel and four years in three months. What came out was a guy with Barry’s intellect and Wally’s issues with proving himself, but with the personality of neither. It was all ground that had been covered before, and better.
But what are you going to do about? Kid grew up and got laid. You can’t unring that narrative bell. I mean, you probably could, but it’s a pretty big cop out. And you can’t just keep him around once a more interesting Flash (most likely Wally but also possibly Barry) returns in Waid’s new run. Now he’s just superfluous. Now, no character is completely without hope. A good enough writer could have built Adult Bart into something more interesting to read about (Simone rehabilitated Catman, for crap’s sake!), but why bother? You’d pretty much have to start from the ground up, and do you really think Waid wants to take time to build something out of the corpse of a character he already created?
Poor bastard either had to die or just fade away into comic limbo. And dying let’s you explore Piper’s reaction to it (yes, he was there, btw, but he tried to get the Rogues to go after Inertia instead, he failed, and is still accessory to the murder of a Flash) in Countdown.
The whole thing was a tragic inevitability to it. In a metatextual sense, I mean. The actual text is pretty much garbage.
Au revoir, Bart. Well, at least we get Mark Waid back.
And where the hell did the Rogues go at the end? Did the politely stop kicking Bart to death simply so he could have a moment with his girlfriend?
And what the hell is this crap I hear about Wally returning in JLoA? That’s just not fucking fair! Give us Flash fans a heads up![/spoiler]
Madame Mirage #1: It has a decent premise, but it’s simply not grabbing my interest. It jumps into the plot too fast, and the mysteries are simply not that compelling. Madame Mirage herself smacks of the Spoken Attribute: we’re told taht she’s all cool and badass, but not shown it. Plus she just looks kind of silly in that getup. If everyone was wearing film noir costumes, it might work, but it just is conspicuous and impractical.
Checkmate #15: A little bit of the torture-porn, but at least we got a clear explanation of Shasha’s powers, and some juicy political intrigue.
Aquamen: Sword of Atlantis #53: If the art was better (specifically if the faces were better), I’d quite enjoy this. As it is, it’s only marginally acceptable.
The Brave and the Bold #4: A lot of fun. A LOT of fun. A wonderful showcase for the length and breadth of the DCU. Although LoSH continuity makes my head hurt.
Countdown #45: 52’s slacker brother continues to limp along. I read it because I feel it’s at the cusp of becoming good, and because I fear I’ll lose track of the entire DC line if I don’t. The two motivate me equally, which is pretty pathetic.
I haven’t picked up this week’s books yet, but I do have a question about Black Adam: how did he get his powers back? At the end of World War III, he had reverted to human, and Captain Marvel had changed his magic word so he couldn’t become Black Adam again. Did I miss something somewhere?
No, they haven’t explained it yet. Last issue or so of Wizard they talked to the Countdown guys and they said it would be explained at some point.
Licentous Ectomorph:
There’s supposed to be a Black Adam miniseries soon that will describe his journey toward getting his magic back.
Something that came to mind as I was reading the new Iron Man. This is yet another hole that Tony Stark should not be able to dig his way out of. There was a lot of that in Civil War; Tony would publicly commit crimes that at the very least should have left him mired in scandal for years if not ending up in prison. And now the Hulk has shown up and in a world wide broadcast accused him of committing some extremely serious crimes. The ones that are easily investigatable are the kidnapping and attempted murder charges for the Hulk; in the Marvel Universe the genocide charges would take some doing but I think that if the head of world security was accused of killing millions of people and triggering a war as a result they might take the extra effort to investigate. Even if Stark wouldn’t be immediately thrown in jail on the word of a guy who said he’s going to smash the earth his life should be over. And yet somehow I suspect that Marvel is just going to handwave away…
Tell me, did the Hulk off Black Bolt, like he said he would? Or is he holding him prisoner for a later mock trial before executing. I’m voting the latter, even though I hate the premise. And does Stark really think he can build a suit of armor to stop the Hulk? Bah, if he’s this much of a threat, Dr. Strange should just take a page out of Sentry’s book and teleport the Jolly Green Giant into the sun. What corner is Marvel writing itself into now?
Countdown, if nothing else, gave us Donna Troy actually being useful. I appreciated that.
Checkmate continues to be awesome fun, and I love the last page cameo.
Brave and the Bold is just the best book on the stands right now.
My only book for the week was Justice League of America #10, which was the final chapter of the five-part crossover with Justice Society of America, “The Lightning Saga”.
I was enjoying the story until this last chapter. The ending made no sense to me at all. Can somebody explain what the hell that was all about? I don’t follow The Flash, so I’m a bit peeved that they made me buy two extra books for a story that apparently depends on my having read some other books.
My comic store guy prevailed upon me to buy Flash #13 (I’d dropped it a while back, because it sucked). And… it seemed kind of pointless, really. They didn’t seem to understand that the pathos of a death scene is because the readers are familiar with the character. And they had so completely revised Bart’s character that it may as well had been someone completely different. So: meh.
The Lightning Saga ended with more “meh”. They really should have jiggered things so the last bit was in JSA, not JLA, because the latter suffers in dialog, pacing, plotting, etc. And I don’t think the Lightning Saga storyline required reading the Flash – but I do think that having Flash pop up in JLA without any warning in the Flash monthly was a bit of a gaffe.
After the Lightning Saga, though, I’m still thinking I’d rather see an original-continuity LSH rather than the current reboot. (or any prior reboot excepting 5-years later). Maybe at least the Karate Kid storyline will finally move forward in Countdown, now. It’ll be interesting to see if they remember that Val already had adventures in the 20th century. And who was the woman he was running off with at the end of JLA?
I’m going to have to start reading Countdown with a pillow, because that damn Monitor storyline is like narcolepsy bottled in comic book format. I’d like to know what nitwit thought it was a good idea to have scads of Monitors with nearly identical visual styles so that the only difference between Good Monitor and Bad Monitor is their facial hair! Characters in comics have colorful costumes so that they’re easy to tell apart, you twits!
Comic book store had no Brave & Bold, so hopefully this week. Same thing happened with the last All-New Atom… it’s like they only receive the cruddy books on schedule, and the good stuff is on a delay.
We’ve got no answer on Black Bolt; the Hulk just beat him off panel and we don’t know what happened.
Stark has had anti-Hulk armor for years and in She-Hulk they showed that part of his master plan was to turn off the Hulk’s powers (come to think of it, this wasn’t mentioned in Iron Man and was given only the barest mention in WWH; that’s not good).
The last time Dr. Strange teleported the Hulk away it turned out badly, though why he doesn’t do it rather than get smashed this time will have to be addressed later.
Marvel is writing themselves into a corner that they’ll just ignore the consequences of, much like Civil War.
And you’re making me put way too much thought into stuff I bought just because I thought it would be fun to see the Hulk vs. the Marvel Universe. 
In that case, will Sentry and Hulk throw down? Who will win…who should win?
What happened here? And, how did the Hulk beat Black Bolt? Didn’t he just whisper at the Hulk (sorry, my memory is failing) to take the Hulk down, after the Hulk mopped up the Inhumans?
In Hulk #300 Bruce Banner had been driven completely out of the Hulk’s psyche and the Hulk fights everyone in the Marvel universe while trashing New York City. In the end Dr. Strange just teleports him to another universe where the Hulk spends a year in quasi-medieval fantasy settings trashing things (hey, that plot synopsis sounds awfully familiar).
With Black Bolt fight in the current crossover there’s just a whisper at the beginning which doesn’t even phase the Hulk and then he charges. The next thing we find is the Hulk holding a battered Black Bolt to demonstrate how strong he is. Reasonably Bolt should have been able to deal with the Hulk but apparently they wanted to get him out the way quickly in the crossover for guys who would make better action sequences. I suppose the Hulk just punched him in the throat before he could react.
Also got : Robin, Ex Machina, Shadowpact, and JLA.
Shadowpact: Zauriel versus Blue Devil. Shadowpact versus Dr. Gotham. The Devil versus a contract lawyer (who, of course, will turn out to be working for the devil). Actually, we saw none of that, only set-up.
Ghost Rider: Danny is starting to assert himself. Guess Marvel thinks a WWH crossover will help spread word about the title. I like the title, but they need to move the big, bad showdown with Lucifer ahead or they’ll be cancelled without resolution.
Heroes for Hire: So Shang Chi was seduced and Humbug got a power boost. Guess that is what happens when I drop a title. Is this title ending?
JLA Classified: Kid Amazo limps on. At least another two issues of this. Obviously aiming for the trades, as tighter storytelling could have finished this arc already.
Coming soon: Asgard…in Ohio! Donald Blake returns as Thor.
Question: Cho, in current issues of The Hulk, is said to be the 7th smartest person in the world (by Reed Richards). Who has him beat (and is it really only 6)? Obviously Reed Richards, Victor Von Doom, Tony Stark. Probably T’Challa, Hank Pym, The Leader. Still, the number of super-brains is huge - is there anything that tracks intelligence the way strength is tracked?
Edit: Whoops, wrong universe.
The only two on that list I’d call a “lock” are Doom and Reed. One of the other four is going to be the Mad Thinker. (Based on Reed’s assertion that the Thinker was the only other person smart enough to understand his psychohistory theory.)
I think Marvel started doing ‘stat bars’ for character bios on its site.
Here we go :
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Mister_Fantastic - Reed’s Intelligence is a 7.
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Iron_Man_(Anthony_Stark) - Tony’s a… 7? Hmm. I think they’re letting the fan votes influence the official ratings.
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Black_Panther_(T’Challa) - T’Challa’s a…7. Ah. I happen to remember reading T’Challa’s bio a few weeks ago, and it was at 4. So, the fan votes are influencing it, and this is worthless. Nevermind.
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Doctor_Doom_(Victor_von_Doom) - Doom’s a… 6. Well, if Reed were the only 7, as he was a couple of weeks ago, I’d buy that. But he’s gotta be smarter than Tony “The Futurist” Stark.
http://www.marvel.com/universe/Mad_Thinker - Meanwhile, the Mad Thinker gets a 5, clinching the fact that I just wasted ten minutes.
Forgot about the Mad Thinker. I’d definitely put Reed and Doom as 7; T’Challa, Mad Thinker, and Stark as 6. But that’s me…
Looking at the ‘official’ level of intelligence for a few others:
Henry Pym is a 7
Beast is a 6
Otto Octavius is a 6
High Evolutionary is a 6
They don’t rank Bruce Banner, The Leader, or Eliot Franklin (Thunderball - supposedly nearly as smart as Bruce Banner). For Banner, they do say “Dr. Bruce Banner is a genius in nuclear physics, possessing a mind so brilliant that it cannot be measured on any known intelligence test.”
Going by these rankings, Cho has to be a high 6 / low 7.
On my personal rating scale I put Doom and Reed as dead even. If someone were to make it a scale of 1 to 10000 then I could see justifying (maybe) Doom having a slightly lower score than Reed, but on a scale of 1 to 7? On that small scale of granularity then I could see dropping all of the big brains in at 7 (Doom, Reed, Pym, the Thinker, Wizard, High Evolutionary, Stark, T’Challa and so on) with 6 for the guys who are depicted as being brilliant but just not world-class (Strange, Octavius, Banner) and 5 for the guys who are smart but not usually gone to for their brains (Parker, Rogers).
On those pages the blue bars are the “official” rankings and the red bars are the “fan” rankings. Neither of them make much sense. Just looking at the Black Panther the official stats list durability of 7. Now I know that T’challa is tougher than most people give him credit for but Juggernaut scale durability?