The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
I'm glad. I ended up buying five new volumes from the sale, so I'll probably have plenty of stuff to cover whenever I can get around to reading them. Assuming they have stuff worth talking about.
Batman: Dark Knight, Dark City. I mentioned before that when I was young I only had the first issue of this story and never got to read the rest. I'd heard parts of it over the years, and I knew that it was one of the stories that Morrison would pull from for his run many years later (though I haven't actually read Morrison's Batman stuff, though that'll be changing soon with one of his earliest Batman stories, Batman: Gothic).
Before we begin, everyone here is familiar with Bruce Wayne's sister Dominique, right? Right? What do you mean? She's buried next to his parents and everything.
Well, anyway, I felt this story was a little uneven and the ending wasn't very satisfying. I think this might also be the first story to suggest that there is a supernatural reason for Gotham City being such a shit place to live. Also we had murderous Riddler, which I'm generally not a fan of (though he might have been possessed or something, it's unclear).
Anyways, the story cuts back and forth between the present day with Batman hunting down the Riddler who has kidnapped four infants from the hospital, and 1765 where a group of occultist are planning to ritually sacrifice a young woman in an underground temple in order to summon the bat-devil Barbathos and bind it to their will. Morrison's villain Dr. Hurt will later be established to have been at this summoning, though the demon's name will be spelled Barbatos by then.
Oh, by the way, Thomas Jefferson is also there.
Batman can't make sense of Riddler's plans. He's killing people unlike he usually does, but his riddles are often easy to solve and seem to be rewarding Batman with one of the missing babies as Batman works with way along the path that the Riddler has set for him. He also seems to be going out of his way to save Batman's life should it look like something might actually kill him.
On a side note, at Batman's first encounter with the Riddler in a library, he has a cop in a noose standing on a pile of books and is threatening to knock the books away. The top book in the stack turns out to be Seduction of the Innocent.
By the end of the first issue, Batman has rescued one baby and has now followed the trail to a cemetery. Suddenly zombies burst forth out of the ground to attack him.
34 years later, I now read the rest of the story.
So yeah, within a few pages we learn the zombies are fake. Most are real corpses, just with machinery inside to make them crudely lunge at Batman, while one is a Riddler henchman in zombie make-up in order to provide actual muscle to the fight. Afterwards Batman gets the second baby, and the flashback to the occultists continue.
So Thomas Jefferson got cold feet about murdering their victim and tries to stop it. During their argument, a large bat gets into their underground temple. In their panic, they mistake it for the demon and run screaming out of the temple and nailing the entryway shut--with the woman and the bat still inside.
This is all being told to us via journal entries of the man who owned the land. He talks about how some of the people there later died or committed suicide, while Jefferson went into politics. The land owner never unsealed the temple, and instead sold his land and moved to Canada, where he would pen this journal years later. As time passes, Gotham City is built over top of that land, with a theater being built over that spot (and to my eternal surprise, it actually isn't the Monarch Theater...I'm surprised the author was able to resist).
Around twenty years after this story came out, the Shadowpact ongoing series will establish that Gotham City is rotten because a warlock named Dr. Gotham was buried underneath it. I wonder if Dr. Gotham and Barbathos were underground neighbors?
Back to the story, Batman solves some more riddles, more people die, and Batman is about to rescue the third child in the sewer when...I'm going to put this in spoilers with a content warning for uncomfortable violence.
Riddler made the baby swallow a pingpong ball so it would choke as he made his escape. He also made sure the ball was the perfect size to get lodged in there and not come out by simply slapping the baby's back. Batman's only option is to perform a tracheotomy. With a switchblade. In the sewer.
Batman standing over the baby with a knife is the end of issue 2. Issue 3 he does the deed and then rushes the baby immediately to the hospital. The baby is on life support throughout the issue, but at the end is established to have pulled through.
The story continues with Batman figuring out that Riddler's clues are drawing a question mark on the map of Gotham City. He goes to the penultimate point at a carnival, with a good idea of the general area of the final point.
After the carnival (where he rescued the final baby), he speeds to the final location, a "Q & A Storage" which is located right next to that theater I mentioned earlier. Amusingly, Batman turns out to have brought the goat with him in the Batmobile, and sends it through the front door to confuse the henchman as he descends from the rafters.
Unfortunately for him, a rotten rafter collapses from the weight of his grapple when he was swinging around after taking down the first guy. Somehow he's unconscious from this. The henchman is going to finish him off, but Riddler shows up and shoots the henchman for trying.
Batman awakens tied to the altar in the underground temple. Exposition time. Riddler got ahold of the journal some time ago when heisting antiques. He dug up the underground temple, with the bones of the woman and bat still in it. He also begun hearing a voice talking to him.
The journal detailed the ritual the woman had been put through in order to become a worthy sacrifice. The Ceremony of the Bat, which made her into "the human-shaped bat." Riddler intended to put Batman through the steps of the ritual and then sacrifice him on the altar so he could gain the power of the demon, hence his confusing riddles and actions, and constantly trying to ensure Batman followed the trail and lived.
Just as Riddler is about to plunge the dagger into Batman's heart, a voice rings out to both of them, mocking Riddler for being so foolish and easily manipulated. Riddler freaks out and runs away, sealing the entrance and setting the building on fire.
The voice recants the tell of over two hundred years ago, how the woman scratched at the door that was sealed shut, and how it was his heart that is part of the very foundation of the future Gotham City and how he molded it and shaped it to create Batman who would eventually free him.
Batman then sees the woman, banging on the sealed door. The voice calls her Batman's sister (due to both being human-shaped bats from having gone through the ritual). Batman calms her and tells her his real name and she tells him that her name is Dominique. As they are escaping, Batman wraps her in his cape since it's fireproof.
When Batman is outside and unwraps his cape, he's holding her skeleton. He buries her in the Wayne crypt next to his parents.
Batman debates if it was Gotham City or the demon that made him who he is, but ultimately decided it didn't matter and he was who he is regardless. The end.
So...Riddler got away and Batman potentially freed Barbathos since he did exactly what the demon wanted? Also did Riddler start murdering people due to the demon's influence or simply because he wanted power that badly? Unknown! Morrison later retcons parts of this story into his run though.
Now I've got five different choices of what to read next, unless I decided to read some non-Batman works for a bit.
Yeah... stories like that, I don't believe the Riddler would ever follow the steps of a supernatural ritual in 1000 years. It's pretty key to his character that he's more of the logical/scientific type. He also... doesn't crave physical or magical power? There are various characters who WOULD follow through with such a plan, so it's fixable by choosing a better candidate, but also, is the outcome really worth it? (no, not even slightly, imo) I did enjoy your telling of it, though!
+2
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
I like that a bunch for the Riddler, honestly. Esotericism is a way better fit for a guy obsessed with secret knowledge than science.
0
Lost CanuckWorld's Greatest Escape ArtistDoctor Vundabar's Murder MachineRegistered Userregular
edited August 2
With this Riddler talk, I want to highlight my favourite ever story involving the character: Impulse #48 from 1999.
While Gotham City was fucked up from the No Man's Land event, the Riddler skipped town to visit Impulse's then-hometown of Blue Valley.
He thinks fighting the kid version of the Flash will be easy and places bombs all over town, expecting that Impulse will never be able to solve all of the riddles pointing to their location. To complicate matters, he's kidnapped Impulse's surrogate father Max Mercury as well as the grandfather of his frenemy.
Impulse doesn't even try to figure out the clues, he just runs arounds the entire town in a span of minutes and deposits the bombs in front of the Riddler, who loses his mind in anger.
A thing about these 80s and 90s Batman comics that I've been reading is that they like to remind you that Bruce Wayne sleeps in the nude. He is a man that enjoys the feeling of bare butt cheeks on satin sheets.
Every shot of him in bed is drawn to let you know he's naked. There's usually not even anyone else in bed with him, he's just having a nightmare or something and Alfred has to come in and deal with all that.
I'd almost feel sorry for the Xeno in that picture. But, it probably popped out of the chest of some second or third string Avenger and so has super powers of its own.
A thing about these 80s and 90s Batman comics that I've been reading is that they like to remind you that Bruce Wayne sleeps in the nude. He is a man that enjoys the feeling of bare butt cheeks on satin sheets.
Every shot of him in bed is drawn to let you know he's naked. There's usually not even anyone else in bed with him, he's just having a nightmare or something and Alfred has to come in and deal with all that.
hey if you had to fight everyone from the riddler to darkseid basically all the time you'd want some comfort too
Since I haven't read modern Batman stuff, I had a question: did they rename his plane since there's now a Batman ally operating under the name Batwing?
A thing about these 80s and 90s Batman comics that I've been reading is that they like to remind you that Bruce Wayne sleeps in the nude. He is a man that enjoys the feeling of bare butt cheeks on satin sheets.
Every shot of him in bed is drawn to let you know he's naked. There's usually not even anyone else in bed with him, he's just having a nightmare or something and Alfred has to come in and deal with all that.
hey if you had to fight everyone from the riddler to darkseid basically all the time you'd want some comfort too
Heck, if you had the cash around to spend a couple grand on the very best sheets imaginable, you'd be a fool not to enjoy them to the greatest possible extent.
You think Wayne (or Alfred more likely) is going to the Kohl's discount rack for sheets?
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited August 10
Puttin' those right in the manga section. It's not right and it's not fair, but graphic novels is the only section in the library where all the books are the same size. It's soothing and on some days I need it.
I'm almost caught up on all hulk as in I'm almost done the run after immortal and Donnay Cates is fun but from what I gather the series is more hilm being miserable and I just want him to have a happy phase and join Storm and Thor in the avengers so they can really tear shit up
I haven't read anything past Immortal, which I loved all of, though two bits from that run particularly stand out in my memory:
The one where the Hulk tells Banner
he loves him, and follows up with a rueful, "Somebody had to." There's so much packed into those lines, including that young Bruce had to almost literally carve off bits of himself to protect and care for him, because no one else would/could.
and the groan-inducing brilliance of the issue title
Essentially the ONLY thing I don't like about Immortal is how you know Hulk's "We are going to Destroy the World" will not be allowed to progress and the character will suddenly stop caring about that topic because of how serialized comics with different writers work.
So I picked up some comics and here are some thoughts on them:
- The Resurrection of Magneto: Basically X-Men Red vol. 5, or S.W.O.R.D. vol. 7. Al Ewing was enough that I gave this a shot, even though I hated that they were bringing back Magneto again so soon after giving him a perfect send-off. But comics is business and Magneto is money, so back he is and I respect Ewing wanting to return him himself rather than leave it to somebody else. It's Ewing, so expect lots of references to other Marvel works no matter how obscure (remember the Gambit&Bishop limited series in the early 2000s? Al does. Remember one of the dozens of throwaway characters Claremont created in his ... fifth? sixth? run on X-Men? Al does.) It also just kinds ends.
On the upside, it forces Magneto to address his flaws for once (Claremont's turn really just had him turning into another person and never acknowledging anything he did before) and move him forwards (though I understand that subsequent writers have already messed that up. Comics, hey yo!) Now he just needs to have an honest conversation with Lorna.
- Grendel: Devil's Crucible: Defiance #2: Grendel gets quick history breakdown of everything that happens in the centuries he was away. Then proceeds to handily murder a bunch of bounty hunters that are sent after him and his new friends. Not much plot advancement here and with only 4 issues, I'd hoped that the Wagners had a bit more focus. Lots of nudity in this one for some reason (not of the titillating kind, though I guess there will always be somebody who goes "this is my thing.")
- The Power Fantasy #1: Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard. By far the most interesting of the bunch. There's some Immortal X-Men in here, a small hint of Wicked and Divine, a lot of Squadron Supreme, Authority and Watchmen. There are many superpowered people on Earth, known as Atomics, but there are six Superpowers among them; people who have as much destructive power as the nuclear arsenal of the most powerful nations.
Etienne Lux is one of them, so far he seems to be a very powerful telepath (and hits lot of the same notes as Gillen's version of Xavier did) and is the main character of issue #1. We see a bit of the other 5 so far; Valentina, Heavy, Eliza, Masumi and Magus and there are some uneasy alliances to keep each other in check.
The back cover is worth a read and if you speak more than one language, also read one of the 'translated' texts on the back as it's not a 1-on-1 translation of the English text.
Only the first issue, but I have faith in Gillen and Wijngaard that they keep this up.
Essentially the ONLY thing I don't like about Immortal is how you know Hulk's "We are going to Destroy the World" will not be allowed to progress and the character will suddenly stop caring about that topic because of how serialized comics with different writers work.
I know one of my fave issues says banner wanted to save the world not joe and savage
Then they see the kid being harassed for wearing the hulks name and Joe ask are we a good guy?
Stumbling on a tweet about how certain bits in Return of Magneto riff on Tarot cards, I went (after primarily following X-Men stuff via wiki summaries and news articles and forum conversations for the last… several years not counting ‘97) and checked out said Return and… damn if that didn’t hit somehow all of my “This Shit Good and knows what it’s doing” buttons.
Is that writer doing any of the new X-Men post Krakoa stuff, because I’m genuinely interested to see how they would take that idea of Magneto attempting to find synthesis between all his contradictions, his rage, his fears and his hopes to chart a new path forward.
The current Immortal Thor run he's doing is pretty fun, there's a storyline where Minotaur buys the likeness rights for Thor and produces an awful Roxxon Thor as story telling magic. They actually produced a full issue with Roxxon Thor that's as dumb and great as you'd expect.
You can have a whole flowchart of which Al Ewing's runs lead into which other Al Ewing runs (and somebody probably already made it). Making things slightly more complicated is that Eve Ewing is also writing series for Marvel at the moment and covers only list the last name.
You can have a whole flowchart of which Al Ewing's runs lead into which other Al Ewing runs (and somebody probably already made it). Making things slightly more complicated is that Eve Ewing is also writing series for Marvel at the moment and covers only list the last name.
Switched over to reading the first volume of Shadow of the Bat from 1992.
The first story arc introduced the new high-tech Arkham Asylum that I'm sure will be around for a long time, ran by Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. Also the first introduction of Zsasz.
Next we got the death of Black Spider (which will eventually just be completely ignored when another writer uses him years later and never mentions his death) in an issue that really wanted to make sure you knew that the word "smack" was slang for heroin.
Then we get a one-shot villain called the Ugly American. He got sent to prison in the 70s for accidentally killing a Vietnam protester when he attacked him for being "un-American." The CIA thought he'd be useful for their new project to make the ultimate American soldier, so they faked his death and put him through a project to dial up his jingoism while also providing him with master training as an assassin and saboteur.
They realized their mistake when he started killing anyone who wasn't a white guy. They tried to lock him up out of view of prying eyes, but he escaped. Now he's going on a rampage that includes running foreign cars off the road and killing an old lady's dog because it was a "french" poodle.
Batman figures out what the CIA did to him and is trying to restrain him so he can get help, but a CIA sniper takes him out during the struggle. A pissed off Batman then leaks all the project details and the names of who was involved to the press. Also the old lady is given a new puppy.
Now we're in a story about a team called The Misfits, where Killer Moth, Catman, Calendar Man, and a new character called Chancer (he's just really lucky, that's it) team-up to kidnap the mayor, Gordon, and Bruce Wayne and hold them for ransom. And--whoa Tim Drake, what the hell is going on with your hair?
Stumbling on a tweet about how certain bits in Return of Magneto riff on Tarot cards, I went (after primarily following X-Men stuff via wiki summaries and news articles and forum conversations for the last… several years not counting ‘97) and checked out said Return and… damn if that didn’t hit somehow all of my “This Shit Good and knows what it’s doing” buttons.
Is that writer doing any of the new X-Men post Krakoa stuff, because I’m genuinely interested to see how they would take that idea of Magneto attempting to find synthesis between all his contradictions, his rage, his fears and his hopes to chart a new path forward.
the new writer handling Magneto completely ignored resurrection of magneto and apparently Al Ewing's magneto's entire X-Men Red arc leading up to his death. Al Ewing is a great writer though, currently on Immortal Thor and Venom (he may be co-writing Venom, I haven't been keeping up), and the big upcoming Venom War is also by Al Ewing which actually has me hyped for a Venom event. He rose to prominence in comics through his highly acclaimed Loki run before doing Immortal Hulk. I don't think he's doing any announced x-men stuff post-krakoa, but hickman is doing a wolverine comic (albeit out of continuity apparently) so I'm sure he will be back eventually as most writers tend to (it's far too much fun of a creative playground to resist for a lot of writers). I highly recommend his stuff!
And now I remember why I fell off the big two most of my life.
+1
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
Huh, I didn't realize that Victor Zsasz was so recent a character. I think I must have assumed he was late 70s/early 80s because his name seems like an obvious play on Thomas Szasz and that feels like the right timing for that.
+3
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Huh, I didn't realize that Victor Zsasz was so recent a character. I think I must have assumed he was late 70s/early 80s because his name seems like an obvious play on Thomas Szasz and that feels like the right timing for that.
As revealed in the foreword to the trade paperback of "Batman: The Last Arkham", Zsasz's name is derived from that of psychiatrist Thomas Szasz; writer Alan Grant saw the name while visiting a library.
0
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Also, "guy with a knife" serial killers somehow becoming reoccurring villains in superhero comics is just the worst. Looking at you Zsasz and Murmur
Posts
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Steam
This is Vandal Savage erasure.
Oh wait, tried harder for longer, yeah Vandal can be a lazy asshole for decades at a time.
I'm glad. I ended up buying five new volumes from the sale, so I'll probably have plenty of stuff to cover whenever I can get around to reading them. Assuming they have stuff worth talking about.
Before we begin, everyone here is familiar with Bruce Wayne's sister Dominique, right? Right? What do you mean? She's buried next to his parents and everything.
Well, anyway, I felt this story was a little uneven and the ending wasn't very satisfying. I think this might also be the first story to suggest that there is a supernatural reason for Gotham City being such a shit place to live. Also we had murderous Riddler, which I'm generally not a fan of (though he might have been possessed or something, it's unclear).
Anyways, the story cuts back and forth between the present day with Batman hunting down the Riddler who has kidnapped four infants from the hospital, and 1765 where a group of occultist are planning to ritually sacrifice a young woman in an underground temple in order to summon the bat-devil Barbathos and bind it to their will. Morrison's villain Dr. Hurt will later be established to have been at this summoning, though the demon's name will be spelled Barbatos by then.
Oh, by the way, Thomas Jefferson is also there.
Batman can't make sense of Riddler's plans. He's killing people unlike he usually does, but his riddles are often easy to solve and seem to be rewarding Batman with one of the missing babies as Batman works with way along the path that the Riddler has set for him. He also seems to be going out of his way to save Batman's life should it look like something might actually kill him.
On a side note, at Batman's first encounter with the Riddler in a library, he has a cop in a noose standing on a pile of books and is threatening to knock the books away. The top book in the stack turns out to be Seduction of the Innocent.
By the end of the first issue, Batman has rescued one baby and has now followed the trail to a cemetery. Suddenly zombies burst forth out of the ground to attack him.
34 years later, I now read the rest of the story.
So yeah, within a few pages we learn the zombies are fake. Most are real corpses, just with machinery inside to make them crudely lunge at Batman, while one is a Riddler henchman in zombie make-up in order to provide actual muscle to the fight. Afterwards Batman gets the second baby, and the flashback to the occultists continue.
So Thomas Jefferson got cold feet about murdering their victim and tries to stop it. During their argument, a large bat gets into their underground temple. In their panic, they mistake it for the demon and run screaming out of the temple and nailing the entryway shut--with the woman and the bat still inside.
This is all being told to us via journal entries of the man who owned the land. He talks about how some of the people there later died or committed suicide, while Jefferson went into politics. The land owner never unsealed the temple, and instead sold his land and moved to Canada, where he would pen this journal years later. As time passes, Gotham City is built over top of that land, with a theater being built over that spot (and to my eternal surprise, it actually isn't the Monarch Theater...I'm surprised the author was able to resist).
Around twenty years after this story came out, the Shadowpact ongoing series will establish that Gotham City is rotten because a warlock named Dr. Gotham was buried underneath it. I wonder if Dr. Gotham and Barbathos were underground neighbors?
Back to the story, Batman solves some more riddles, more people die, and Batman is about to rescue the third child in the sewer when...I'm going to put this in spoilers with a content warning for uncomfortable violence.
Batman standing over the baby with a knife is the end of issue 2. Issue 3 he does the deed and then rushes the baby immediately to the hospital. The baby is on life support throughout the issue, but at the end is established to have pulled through.
The story continues with Batman figuring out that Riddler's clues are drawing a question mark on the map of Gotham City. He goes to the penultimate point at a carnival, with a good idea of the general area of the final point.
After the carnival (where he rescued the final baby), he speeds to the final location, a "Q & A Storage" which is located right next to that theater I mentioned earlier. Amusingly, Batman turns out to have brought the goat with him in the Batmobile, and sends it through the front door to confuse the henchman as he descends from the rafters.
Unfortunately for him, a rotten rafter collapses from the weight of his grapple when he was swinging around after taking down the first guy. Somehow he's unconscious from this. The henchman is going to finish him off, but Riddler shows up and shoots the henchman for trying.
Batman awakens tied to the altar in the underground temple. Exposition time. Riddler got ahold of the journal some time ago when heisting antiques. He dug up the underground temple, with the bones of the woman and bat still in it. He also begun hearing a voice talking to him.
The journal detailed the ritual the woman had been put through in order to become a worthy sacrifice. The Ceremony of the Bat, which made her into "the human-shaped bat." Riddler intended to put Batman through the steps of the ritual and then sacrifice him on the altar so he could gain the power of the demon, hence his confusing riddles and actions, and constantly trying to ensure Batman followed the trail and lived.
Just as Riddler is about to plunge the dagger into Batman's heart, a voice rings out to both of them, mocking Riddler for being so foolish and easily manipulated. Riddler freaks out and runs away, sealing the entrance and setting the building on fire.
The voice recants the tell of over two hundred years ago, how the woman scratched at the door that was sealed shut, and how it was his heart that is part of the very foundation of the future Gotham City and how he molded it and shaped it to create Batman who would eventually free him.
Batman then sees the woman, banging on the sealed door. The voice calls her Batman's sister (due to both being human-shaped bats from having gone through the ritual). Batman calms her and tells her his real name and she tells him that her name is Dominique. As they are escaping, Batman wraps her in his cape since it's fireproof.
When Batman is outside and unwraps his cape, he's holding her skeleton. He buries her in the Wayne crypt next to his parents.
Batman debates if it was Gotham City or the demon that made him who he is, but ultimately decided it didn't matter and he was who he is regardless. The end.
So...Riddler got away and Batman potentially freed Barbathos since he did exactly what the demon wanted? Also did Riddler start murdering people due to the demon's influence or simply because he wanted power that badly? Unknown! Morrison later retcons parts of this story into his run though.
Now I've got five different choices of what to read next, unless I decided to read some non-Batman works for a bit.
While Gotham City was fucked up from the No Man's Land event, the Riddler skipped town to visit Impulse's then-hometown of Blue Valley.
He thinks fighting the kid version of the Flash will be easy and places bombs all over town, expecting that Impulse will never be able to solve all of the riddles pointing to their location. To complicate matters, he's kidnapped Impulse's surrogate father Max Mercury as well as the grandfather of his frenemy.
Impulse doesn't even try to figure out the clues, he just runs arounds the entire town in a span of minutes and deposits the bombs in front of the Riddler, who loses his mind in anger.
Nintendo Switch friend code: SW-4012-4821-3053
AT4W continues Event Month with the final chapter of the 90s' Infinity trilogy.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Every shot of him in bed is drawn to let you know he's naked. There's usually not even anyone else in bed with him, he's just having a nightmare or something and Alfred has to come in and deal with all that.
hey if you had to fight everyone from the riddler to darkseid basically all the time you'd want some comfort too
Heck, if you had the cash around to spend a couple grand on the very best sheets imaginable, you'd be a fool not to enjoy them to the greatest possible extent.
You think Wayne (or Alfred more likely) is going to the Kohl's discount rack for sheets?
#3:
#2:
(Note: By the time of this film, King Shark had likely been on a team with Captain Boomerang for years).
#1:
They are releasing manga sized collections at 9.99.
https://www.dc.com/blog/2023/11/02/dc-announces-dc-compact-comics
Great selection of stories, and it's a perfect entry point.
The one where the Hulk tells Banner
and the groan-inducing brilliance of the issue title
- The Resurrection of Magneto: Basically X-Men Red vol. 5, or S.W.O.R.D. vol. 7. Al Ewing was enough that I gave this a shot, even though I hated that they were bringing back Magneto again so soon after giving him a perfect send-off. But comics is business and Magneto is money, so back he is and I respect Ewing wanting to return him himself rather than leave it to somebody else. It's Ewing, so expect lots of references to other Marvel works no matter how obscure (remember the Gambit&Bishop limited series in the early 2000s? Al does. Remember one of the dozens of throwaway characters Claremont created in his ... fifth? sixth? run on X-Men? Al does.) It also just kinds ends.
On the upside, it forces Magneto to address his flaws for once (Claremont's turn really just had him turning into another person and never acknowledging anything he did before) and move him forwards (though I understand that subsequent writers have already messed that up. Comics, hey yo!) Now he just needs to have an honest conversation with Lorna.
- Grendel: Devil's Crucible: Defiance #2: Grendel gets quick history breakdown of everything that happens in the centuries he was away. Then proceeds to handily murder a bunch of bounty hunters that are sent after him and his new friends. Not much plot advancement here and with only 4 issues, I'd hoped that the Wagners had a bit more focus. Lots of nudity in this one for some reason (not of the titillating kind, though I guess there will always be somebody who goes "this is my thing.")
- The Power Fantasy #1: Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard. By far the most interesting of the bunch. There's some Immortal X-Men in here, a small hint of Wicked and Divine, a lot of Squadron Supreme, Authority and Watchmen. There are many superpowered people on Earth, known as Atomics, but there are six Superpowers among them; people who have as much destructive power as the nuclear arsenal of the most powerful nations.
Etienne Lux is one of them, so far he seems to be a very powerful telepath (and hits lot of the same notes as Gillen's version of Xavier did) and is the main character of issue #1. We see a bit of the other 5 so far; Valentina, Heavy, Eliza, Masumi and Magus and there are some uneasy alliances to keep each other in check.
The back cover is worth a read and if you speak more than one language, also read one of the 'translated' texts on the back as it's not a 1-on-1 translation of the English text.
Only the first issue, but I have faith in Gillen and Wijngaard that they keep this up.
I know one of my fave issues says banner wanted to save the world not joe and savage
Then they see the kid being harassed for wearing the hulks name and Joe ask are we a good guy?
Is that writer doing any of the new X-Men post Krakoa stuff, because I’m genuinely interested to see how they would take that idea of Magneto attempting to find synthesis between all his contradictions, his rage, his fears and his hopes to chart a new path forward.
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The Incredible Ewing
The Sensational She-Ewing
The first story arc introduced the new high-tech Arkham Asylum that I'm sure will be around for a long time, ran by Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. Also the first introduction of Zsasz.
Next we got the death of Black Spider (which will eventually just be completely ignored when another writer uses him years later and never mentions his death) in an issue that really wanted to make sure you knew that the word "smack" was slang for heroin.
Then we get a one-shot villain called the Ugly American. He got sent to prison in the 70s for accidentally killing a Vietnam protester when he attacked him for being "un-American." The CIA thought he'd be useful for their new project to make the ultimate American soldier, so they faked his death and put him through a project to dial up his jingoism while also providing him with master training as an assassin and saboteur.
They realized their mistake when he started killing anyone who wasn't a white guy. They tried to lock him up out of view of prying eyes, but he escaped. Now he's going on a rampage that includes running foreign cars off the road and killing an old lady's dog because it was a "french" poodle.
Batman figures out what the CIA did to him and is trying to restrain him so he can get help, but a CIA sniper takes him out during the struggle. A pissed off Batman then leaks all the project details and the names of who was involved to the press. Also the old lady is given a new puppy.
Now we're in a story about a team called The Misfits, where Killer Moth, Catman, Calendar Man, and a new character called Chancer (he's just really lucky, that's it) team-up to kidnap the mayor, Gordon, and Bruce Wayne and hold them for ransom. And--whoa Tim Drake, what the hell is going on with your hair?
And now I remember why I fell off the big two most of my life.