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Month End Moments of the Week 06/24/09
Lucascraft
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This being the end of the month, there were a lot of books released today. I had 8 and I've read 4 of them so far. So lets discuss our moment(s) of the week.
Gotham City Sirens - A new team-up book featuring Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn, with an ample amount of cheesecake. Gotta say, out of the 4 books I read so far, this is my top moment. As I stated last week regarding Streets of Gotham, I love the way Paul Dini writes Harley. I'm really excited about this new ongoing in which she's a co-star.
Detective Comics - Featuring Batwoman. The story was pretty good. From what I can tell, its a continuation of the events that took place during 52. However, there was one thing that kind of bothered me:
Daredevil - Brubaker's supporting cast is just so good. I loved the scene between Dakota and Foggy.
Green Lantern - The end of the Agent Orange arc. Once again, the art in this issue was split between Tan and Barrows. I actually thought Tan's art was much improved this issue. The art seemed split about 50/50 between both of them, and both had some great panels.
Gotham City Sirens - A new team-up book featuring Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn, with an ample amount of cheesecake. Gotta say, out of the 4 books I read so far, this is my top moment. As I stated last week regarding Streets of Gotham, I love the way Paul Dini writes Harley. I'm really excited about this new ongoing in which she's a co-star.
The story seems like its gonna be pretty interesting. The girls have formed an alliance, but already there are signs of distrust and secret alliances. The bit at the end with Ivy trying to learn Batman's identity was pretty awesome.
Detective Comics - Featuring Batwoman. The story was pretty good. From what I can tell, its a continuation of the events that took place during 52. However, there was one thing that kind of bothered me:
I didn't particularly care for the way Rucka was writing Kate. She seemed really out of character from how I remember her in 52. Not only that, but the tattoos and outfit she was wearing were really out of place. I thought Kate Kane was a rich woman of privilege? She seemed almost goth and self deprecating to me, which is not what I remember at all.
Daredevil - Brubaker's supporting cast is just so good. I loved the scene between Dakota and Foggy.
Crazy Wilson Fisk talking to his imaginary ghost-wife was interesting. And all the manipulation and backstabbing that is going on between Fisk, Owlsley, and Lady Bullseye is fun.
Oh, and mind controlled Tarantula and White Tiger on a mission to kill Foggy. Next month is gonna be great!
Oh, and mind controlled Tarantula and White Tiger on a mission to kill Foggy. Next month is gonna be great!
Green Lantern - The end of the Agent Orange arc. Once again, the art in this issue was split between Tan and Barrows. I actually thought Tan's art was much improved this issue. The art seemed split about 50/50 between both of them, and both had some great panels.
So Hal's hand getting chopped off was an illusion created by the Blue Ring. I think we can officially count that as a new power that Blue Lanterns have, the ability to trick or manipulate people into believing their hopes are coming true.
Also, the full page splash image of Hal summoning his own entire corps to fight against Larfleeze's summoned corps was pretty awesome. And I loved the line "I thought of it a billion years ago. Did you?"
Also, the full page splash image of Hal summoning his own entire corps to fight against Larfleeze's summoned corps was pretty awesome. And I loved the line "I thought of it a billion years ago. Did you?"
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Saw that stuff in the preview, and it was great. Hoping to pick up the full issue today.
The Blue Lanterns probably don't see it as an offensive ability, although it seems pretty effective.
I really can't wait to read Detective. I was listening to Rucka on Word Balloon earlier and I'm especially fascinated by her father. Seems Rucka did a metric fuckton of research on Special Forces for his background, and he's doing overwatch/after-action debriefings.
Indeed.
Maybe that's why I laughed. "Yeah. You wish."
I haven't read much else yet.
Also, I thought the whole thing about the seers in the opium den was pretty awesome. Perhaps the mutant gene goes back a little farther than they thought?
I also loved the fact that it was standalone. Didn't have to deal with some last page reveal that you won't truly understand for 30 days.
And Beast said mutants had been around for thousands of years, it was just in 1906 when the population boom started, with the birth of Dr. Nemesis.
Kevin Thorn wrote away Old Sam to be ignored by everyone for ten thousand years and a day, for punishment for trying to steal his pen. Gary makes all the furniture come to life to stall Thorn while the others try to take him down, but Thorn wrote himself a force field to protect himself. As Thorn writes the end of the world, Jack Frost....
So Thorn is in ice, and they are able to save the day. Dex appears and shows what an egg can do to save the world:
Hey look its Bufkin!
Anyways, this egg is a blank universe, so all the Literals hop on through to create a new world so Thorn can play there:
Gary and the Page Sisters stay behind, knowing that it will mean they turn into Mundys. The sisters also tell Jack Frost to come along with them instead of telling his father he performed his heroic feat (which is weird because he's like 1/4 their nephew or something, ewww).
And at the end, Jack gets kicked out of the Fables Farm, and hits the road with Gary and Babe again.
This crossover should not have worked. It was very very meta, yet it hit the right balance between progressing the story and making jokes about stories and comics and needing the right editor to make it work.
This was right up there with Homelands and March of the Wooden Soldiers as one of the best Fables stories.
And Uncanny #512 was good as well. My LCS actually made a point to tell people "If you didn't like Fraction's work on Uncanny, pick this up." It was very good, like the annual. It was a big story (so the $4 wasn't a ripoff), a nice done in one tale, and just good. It's rather frustrating that Fraction can write these really good stories in the X-Universe but only seems to do so every 6 or 7th issue. There are some hiccups in continuity, like how it doesn't mention Warren and Betsy dated for a long time, but it was good.
The team helped cause the 1906 SF earthquake thanks to Nemesis' dad's device, which was made to power a steampunk sentinel for Shaw and his Hellfire Club(Wild Wild West, yo). Nemesis also went back in time to deliver himself from his mother as she died in childbirth.
And the celestial in SF stands directly on the spot where the X-Men left the blood samples from Nemesis' parents to check their genetic code for mutancy.
More to come later, because it was a heavy week.
Amazing Spider-Man just gets more and more generic. I'm not even really going to go into it, but for every neat moment, something happens to cause a return of the status quo by the end of the next issue. And a lot of the time, the fixing moments are abrupt, uninspired, or just plain nonsensical. Example:
Really Dumb.
X-Men Forever 2 was just flat out bad to a point where even I can't defend it.
However, Fraction's Science Team issue of Uncanny was amazing. One of the best issues of anything beyond Superman that I've read in awhile. I'd love to see a book of just the science team going on adventures, or even just more of Nemesis.
Has he been in anything else, or is he just some ancient silver age character that's been resuscitated in this run? Do we know when we'll next learn anything about the blood samples? I assume the Utopia book/s won't be featuring any new revelations in the X-Gene department. Also, since I haven't been reading Fraction's run so far, what the hell is that big statue thing at the end? Where did it come from?
First off, Silvestri has 4 pencil assists, whatever that means, on this book (much of which is ghost drawn, not just backgrounds ala Pat Lee), and nine fucking inkers. And every other male in the book has a mustache for some reason. He also draws Sentry like a pouting Grinch.
Now, the story, with scans of the good parts:
Riot ensues, Hank gets arrested. Scott and Emma talk to the mayor, and she tells Scott to reign in the people, which Emma takes offense to (because she sees Scott as the leader of mutants, not a joint sharing including her).
Rioting continues, and half the new mutants riot and you have Peter beating up Santo because he's rioting. Basically all the bad mutants riot.
The city is so swamped that Norman has to come in to fix everything, saying Scott hasn't done enough to keep the mutants in line due to Trask's march. So he sends in the Dark Avengers.
That is the best scene int he whole book. Ares is awesome.
Emma is nowhere to be found, because she's meeting with Osborn. He plays on Emma wanting to be the Queen Bee, and tells her to create a new team of mutants to appear as mutant police basically. Then we get this chain of events:
So Cyclops is on the run, Emma seems to revert back to being bad just so she can be known as leader of mutants, and Xavier and Hank are held hostage by Norman.
I can see the Uncanny issues being boring like Fraction's run has been, but the Dark Avenger issues being good, the way Fraction writes them.
Uncanny #513
Dark Avengers #7
Uncanny #514
Dark Avengers #8
X-Men/Dark Avengers: Exodus (gee, could that mean the X-Men leave SF? a bit too on the nose)
Dark X-Men: The Confession (not really integral, an epilogue of sorts)
Not enough facepalm in the world.
And what happens if Emma says no to his offer? She has no pull. Emma's intentions in the cabal have been foremost to keep crazy Osborn out of the mutants hair, which is exactly what he says with the "our deal" bit. I agree, her putting on a different costume seems a bit like comic book logic, but it seems like the most politically viable. Norman would go apeshit.
I could all be wrong in this, but I'm not sure if you can clearly say "Emma is siding with Norman so she can lead the mutants instead of Scott."
Honestly, I think the only whole in this thing is the Avengers are watching this shit go down on TV and they're like "Oh, you gotta go Logan? That's fine, good luck with Stormin' Norman!". I would think they would offer to help, at the very least.
At any rate, did anyone read Thor? It was fantastic. I really wish JMS and Coipel could pump it out more often, because it really is awesome in a can. It's a bit telling, though, that in the issue the Sorcerer Supreme was Strange. I'm going to scan some shit soon, but a few cliffs.
That's good and all, but the moments that really shined for me were Balder's.
Oh, and I guess this is a good a place to mention it as any. Why the hell did Norman give Venom that stupid serum if everytime Venom is going to go into a fight, he's going to turn into evil symbiote from hell? Hey, Gargan, cameras are everywhere.
I would agree that there can be a double agent in Emma, but would it come at the expense of drugging Xavier and apprehending the X-Men and essentially making SF martial law so quickly? All this seems to have happened in 8 hours. A good plot point would be her wanting to be a double agent at the beginning, but slowly reverting to her old ways because it just works better.
Nice to see him acting more like a god of war.
he writes people the way that fits his needs
I'm not sure what you were meaning by your second paragraph. Can you clarify?
Damn, damn fine. Mon-El goes on travels throughout the world, and fights alongside a bunch of nearly unknown international DCU characters. It's not just Robinson showing off his encyclopedic knowledge of early and obscure DC; there's also a feeling that of all the Superbooks being pumped out right now, this is the important one. There are little nods to the upcoming Adventure Comics, and his Justice League, as well as the August super cross-over event.
Detective Comics is interesting, but I'm not sold yet. I love the stark transition between Kathy's personal life and her work as Batwoman. My biggest issue is probably that I haven't read 52 yet (coincidentally, I have the last two volumes on the way to me, and I intend to read it in the next couple of weeks). Also, the Question backup kind of sucked. The art isn't all that great, and the story is just pretty normal. This is probably just a warmup story, but the fact that it's divided into Chapters AND Parts is discouraging.
I forgot to pick up like two books.
In regards to my second paragraph, I was referencing Emma being on the Cabal just to protect mutants and to try and get the best for mutants out of it. Norman sees her being there as just a mutant to use for his goals, as she is the highest ranking mutant who has a conflicting past until recently (Namor despite being a mutant is just a dick, not really being bad). At first she tries to keep her distance form how they run things, but she later realizes "hey, this isn't bad, he's doing things the way I would."
Also, Loki was a guy in Utopiain a panel with Doom. That was weird.
I don't think she's in it to have more of a hand in mutantkind because she pretty much has it. She can make decisions just as well as Scott can. Even if she "replaced" Scott as the figurehead of Mutantdom, what would change? Nothing. If that's Fraction's angle, I disagree with it.
The Loki thing makes sense if you read Thor. Loki doesn't have Sif's body anymore. I mean, he could probably take the female form anytime he wants (Master of Illusion, and all) but Doom and he are bros.
And just you wait until Jean is ressurected and there is acceptable art of her. I will resume my mantle of pride!
Immonen's first issue was ok, but more rough than Moore's was. There were also some kind of meta moments, like Nico calling Xavin a "him" and Karolina correcting her as a "she", it felt like something to please those people who got all upset Moore had Xavin as a man his first issue. Pichelli's art is good (she would be really good on Teen Titans) but the team looks to be in their 20's now save Klara and Molly. Victor looked completely different to past rendering. And Nico has big boobs again.
Oh well. Quality will probably dip, but hopefully speed will go up correspondingly.
That spoiler enrages me, Texiken.
The Shadow Cabinet arc that's been going on for a while ended this month. I wasn't too keen on it at the beginning, but the characters have slowly been growing on me. I'm to the point now where I actually really like the current lineup of JLA: Dr. Light, Firestorm, Zatana, John Stewart. Really the only character I don't care for is Vixen, and that's because she's still completely fucking useless. Also, I really like the Shadow Cabinet heroes: Icon, and Hardware. And finally, the Bruce Wayne alternate reality character of Paladin is still cool as hell. I really hope McDuffie keeps Paladin around.
Paladin also had a really sweet line in this issue:
Paladin: I did.
John Stewart: With a bullet.
Paladin: With a bullet made of Lutetium, it weighs about 70 pounds. And my revolver is a Rail Gun.
Hardware: Can I see it?
Nah, but seriously, I think this was the last issue from his pen. Is it Len Wein on filler until Robinson's mini ends? Then Robinson will be taking the League. And from my understanding, his team is a bit more classical.
Also, I really love Dr. Light, and Robinson has been using her constantly in Superman (plus she's popped up a few times in the other Superbooks since New Krypton), so I hope she sticks around.
Though that pheremone power is possibly one of the stupidest things Ive ever seen.
Musk-Rat: Son of Wolverine.
Sadly, pretty underwhelming. The art was very inconsistent, and the pacing made it obvious that Swierczynski was trying to wrap things up in a hurry. All in all, a very inauspicious end for one of Marvel's most consistent books.
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I think it's a good thing. If Daken was able to seduce women and manipulate men without the aid of a power, he'd seem like too much of a Mary Sue.
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I thought McDuffie had stories for JLA planned out like 2 years in advance? That's why he's always pissed when he's given all these editorial mandates. . . because it screws up his story?
And I agree about Dr. Light. I never really knew much about her until this current arc and the current Superman stuff, but between the two of those, she is rapidly becoming one of my favorite DC characters.
What else is she in? Are there any other good stories that feature her?