Holy crap everything I liked this week was Marvel!`

Yes it's true, hell must have frozen over and monkeys must have flown out my butt because everything I enjoyed this week were Marvel books. Granted DC titles were light this week compared to Marvel but this is a first. At least for a long time. So let's get into it before the obvious tear in reality from me enjoying all Marvel books devours our universe.

First up this week is:

Black Widow Deadly Origin #1. It was the cover that did it. I normally don't care either way for Adi Gravnov but this cover is amazing. Black Widow is sexy as hell and both Wolverine and Winter Soldier look freak'n cool. Tom Raney's interior art is decent, the story is fun and decent and I really recommend picking it up, plus it's only four issues. I've always enjoyed that they twisted Wolverine and Black Widow's past together (ever since that great Uncanny X-men #268 issue) and here they spotlight it.


On to Ultimate Comics Armor Wars #2, totally loved it. It's has great humor, great art, really cool action, and great one liners from Stark. This is definitely on the good side of the Warren Ellis comic scale.

And another Ultimate comic, Ultimate Comics Spider-man #4. I really thought the Ultimatum thing would be the death of the Ultimate comics line, so it's hard to believe I like all three titles so much. I think UC Spidey has the best in characterization, between Peter, Gwen, MJ and Johnny Storm it's really fun to read their conversations. I really like that Jessica Jones is in this and looks like the Ultimate Hood just made his appearance, plus a really cool looking Mysterio. High marks all the way, you should all be reading the Ultimate Comics Line.

And now on to two books that did not come out this week, first being last week's Dark Reign the List Wolverine.
I'd pretty much given up on Jason Aaron being one of those writers I follow no matter what. His Marvel work started out really strong with the Wolverine Get Mystique story line and slowly went downhill from there for me--as well as Scalped suffering with delayed shipping schedule making me have the feeling that I have no idea whats going on. Well anyways, that's all changed with this one shot List issue. It's fantastic. Wolverine, Marvel Boy, and Fantomex join forces to keep Norman Osborn from taking control of the sentient secret lab call the World which births out the Weapon Plus killing machines. Most of this stems from Grant Morrison's run on the New X-men (which overall I really liked but I'm also a Morrison-head). So Wolverine teams up with two Grant Morrison's characters and it's a lot of fun. The banter and dialogue between the three is fantastic and if you're seeing the trend that dialogue makes a book for me way more than the action and overall story then you're paying attention because it does.. Jason Aaron writes Marvel Boy and Fantomex as close to the way Grant Morrison would write them as possible. I'm hoping we can some more of these into the store because it's really a kick ass story. Shockingly enough, all the List one shots I've read I've enjoyed.

And this morning I finally got around to reading Spider-woman #1.

And I liked it. A lot. So apparently the shiny bald headed voodoo doll I made of Bendis that I stabbed repeatedly in the head with a pencil in hopes that he'd write good comics again work because I've reviewed two Bendis books today and two others over the last couple of weeks and liked them all. So you all have me to thank. And if the Siege is great then you also have me to thank but if it sucks then you can't blame me because I don't believe in voodoo. Back to Spider-woman, great direction for the character, great internal dialogue and Alex Maleev art is astounding. Read this.

PS--Also read Captain America Reborn #4 and it was good. The full shot of Baron Zemo with a machine gun is awesome.

Woah roadblock, I've rewritten this four times. Here we go again:

Let me start this time by saying that X-23 is a total badass! X-force #20 was one of the coolest, bloodiest issues so far. X-23 killing everything in sight with only one arm. She's easily my favorite X-man, if not Marvel U character. It's nice that her original creators are still the ones writing her. Mike Choi's and Sonia OBack's art is brilliant. Plus we got Domino and Wolverine and Archangel and Warpath, I think the only thing I don't like about this book is Wolfsbane. This issue also leads directly into:



Necrosha X, the beginning of a crossover between X-force, New Mutants and X-men Legacy (sporting one of the coolest variant covers I've seen in a long time, AW YEAH LOST BOYS). I was quite wary of this crossover coming so close after the disappointing Messiah War crossover. But so far so good as this one shot is great. Trevor Crain's art is beyond amazing and yes the idea is Selene bringing dead mutants back to life which hits so close to Blackest Night but granted X-force has been doing that since issue 1 way before Blackest Night was released. Aw well, all these these companies do is copy each other anyways (Marvel Zombies, Blackest Night, Death of Batman, Death of Captain America blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda). Anyways, great start.



Hey look I read New Avengers #58 and I liked it! Captain America vs Ares is really cool. I'll keep reading!

I'd be writing faster but B'wana Beast is teaming up with Batman on the TV. I mean come on B'wana Beast just spliced together a spider and horse!

And now ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the Geoff Johns section of the reviews:


Blackest Night #4....starring Barry Allen! Hey wait, I thought this was a Green Lantern event! Anyways, great issue but took too long to come out as things felt like it was dragging. The rumor is that Johns will be penning a second Justice League title next year and I think he's beginning to set up his team here (Barry Allen, Mera, the Atom). Leads us into:


Green Lantern #47. Finally an issue focused only on Blackest Night, no Sinestro civil war tie ups, no back story. We get Hal, Sinestro, Carol, Atrocious, and our favorite Larfleeze. And it's leading directly to what I've been thinking, the new Guardians of the Universe will be a representative from each of the corps. But we'll see I guess. Oh and Doug Mahnke art is crazy.


Superman Secret Origin #2--I love it! It has the Legion! It has Luthor! It has Superboy! It has Krypto! I want the rest of the series to be just like this, no growing up Clark!

And thus endeth the Geoff John's portion of our program. It kinda gets repetitious doesn't it?

And finally this week, Dark Reign the List Punisher.


I can't say too much but it's Dark Wolverine (Daken) vs Punisher with a direct lead into my highly anticipated story line, FRANKENCASTLE! Haha it's awesome and I can't wait. Never before have I wanted to read a Punisher storyline so badly. Here's a preview pic!



And here you people were worried what Disney might do to Marvel...

Alright lords and lasses, here we go on another week of my reviews and some dandy ones there are. First up is Batman Streets of Gotham #5.




It's written by guest writer Chris Yost, writer of Red Robin and co-writer of X-force. The story stars Huntress and Man-bat and is pretty standard as the two battle over what undoubtedly be a misunderstanding on the Huntress's part. Dustin Nguyen draws an amazing Huntress, she's one my favorite heroines and his art alone make this issue worth reading. I wish the normal back up would be Huntress instead of Manhunter, which is alright but I don't read it half the time.



I haven't read Dark Avengers since #2, but I decided to pick up #10 this week and I really liked it. Deodato's art is really nice and boy does he know how to draw a sexy female. I really like the interaction between Bullseye/Hawkeye and Moonstone/Ms Marvel as well as the new meds Venom/Spider-man is now on. In fact the banter and interaction between all the Dark Avengers is quite enjoyable, I think I shall have to go back and do some catching up. I have some hope that the Siege will be good.

I also read Dark Reign the Hulk this week and while the story was fine and all I bring it up because Moonstone/Ms. Marvel is in this one as well and she's wicked great again. I think I quite like her.



Justice League of America #38 debuts the new creator team of James Robinson and Mark Bagley. Upon finishing reading and taking a Brillo pad to my eyes and dousing them in bleach after having to suffer through Bagley's art, I had to think about the story. First off, it appears Justice League Cry for Justice should have been complete before he took over the regular JLA as there are a few *See Justice League Cry for Justice panels and whatever they were referring to hasn't happened in that series yet. The plot of the issue seems to be Vixen gathering her team of JLAers and discussing how horrible and worthless of a character she is and how pathetic their team is. I'm not joking. And then naturally Despero attacks. What I think is funny is this:


Justice League of America #38 also had Despero attacking a much more enjoyable team of Justice Leaguers which in turn made it a way more enjoyable fight. Actually, that was always one of my favorite stories from that series of JLA. But back to the issue at hand, I seem to be spouting only negatives and I did not actually hate this issue. Maybe it's the bleach being absorbed into my blood stream but I seem to still like the issue. Yes its filler, yes it should have come out after Cry for Justice was done and yes it's just to shoehorn in the Blackest Night tie-ins issue...hmm I seem to have lost where I was going with this as I return to all the negatives about this issue that I liked. Ah maybe it was the appearing of Zatanna at the end to help defeat Despero--although looking more like a tranny thanks to Bagley instead of the hot magician I so have a crush on. Now I need more bleach.




My favorite read of the week happens to have come out last week, House of Mystery Halloween Annual #1. Now I haven't read any of the new House of Mystery series and while I heard it was good, I just never got around to it. Until I heard Merv Pumpkinhead was in it. Now Merv was always my favorite character of the Sandman series and was one of the main reasons I read the Dreaming (I still maintain the Dreaming characters where way better than Morpheus and his family).

The annual is just a nifty way for Vertigo to spotlight all it's current ongoing and future series framed around the characters of the House of Secrets book. With no prior knowledge of these characters, I liked them immediately and decided by page 3 that I must read the series. With the Merv Pumpkinhead story, we also get a John Constantine story, an I, Zombie story (an upcoming new Vertigo series by Chris Robinson and Mike Allred), and a Madame Xandu story. Well played Vertigo because now I want to read all these series as all these stories were great. Merv was the best and I hope that turns into something, a new the Dreaming series would be fantastic. I must have it! And now you must have this annual. Because it directly lead to me reading,


House of Secrets Vol 1 Room and Boredom TP. I love the set up of this book. We have a group of characters trapped inside the House of Mystery as well as a newcomer. Now the bar that most of this takes place in, tabs are paid in stories so not only to we get this intriguing story about the trapped characters, we get these lovely horror stories from the patrons, generally done by other writer/artists teams and boy they can be brutal. And funny. So basically what I'm saying is this series is awesome, can't wait to read more and you should try it out especially since the first trade is only $9.99 for 5 issues. Once again, well played Vertigo, well played.

You know what really chaps my hide? Yeah I said it, chaps my hide. I don't even know for sure what that means but it ain't good. I'm pretty sure it means chafing of some sort but I will not google it even with the google search bar so close to where I'm typing. To me it sorta looks like a term for wearing chaps on your hide which I don't think is such a bad thing because i think chaps are kinda of cool and think we all should wear chaps in our daily lives more often. Regardless of meanings, I'm very unhappy that Geoff Johns and Franics Manipul are leaving Adventure Comics because this book is just fantastic. They have something really unique going, something that won't have a good resolution in just a couple issues. That's what chaps my proverbial hide.



In issue 3 this week, we continue with Connor's checklist of how Superman/Lex Luthor he is or isn't. We have a foreshadowing of a mad genius villain for Connor, with it being his classmate and sudo-friend, Simon Valentine. The bits with Krypto are great and then Connor finds Tim Drake (Red Robin) in Paris and they have a heart to heart about the stuff that went on while Connor was dead and the stuff each are dealing with currently. We get some great New God/Final Crisis tidbits that gets me all excited. The Legion back up is a lot of fun and there's a pretty big bomb dropped at the end of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to the Levitz penned Adventure Comics starring the Legion, but I'm disappointed lose such a great story.



With Walking Dead #66 we see the conclusion to the hunters storyline. To me Walking Dead is like an episode of Jerry Springer, most of it is talking and extreme violence followed at the end by Rick's own Final Thoughts of what just happened. Reading his letter pages, Kirkman says he has ideas to take him to 200 issues, by that point I think Rick will just be a stump that makes noises, kind like that guy from the Crossed. Ha! I've figured it out, the Crossed is the future of the Walking Dead!




If you are not buying Secret Six then there's something wrong with you as it is one of the best books out there. Ultra-violent and creepily sweet, super villains really do have hearts even though they may maim each other constantly. Get this book, support it as it could easily be one of those that disappears. BUY IT! It's only three cheap trade paperbacks and a few issues. It's written by a girl no less!



Finally this week I finished the Showcase Presents Warlord Vol 1 TP. I've fallen in love with 70s comics. I have a hankering for awesome comics and Warlord fills my need. Warlord is about US pilot Travis Morgan who crash lands in a mysterious land in the center of the earth where there is constant daylight. It's a land of sword and sorcery and Travis quickly takes to it as the ultimate badass with his sword and gun and knack for finding warrior women in distress. I love the formula that many 70's adventure comics use, hero finds the girl, fights battles, loses the girl, goes on quest for the girl, finds other girl, rescues first girl after many battles, other girl is in love with him, so the girls fight and so on and so forth and it's so awesome. Mike Grell's art is amazing, his battles scenes intense and gritty, his women ultra sexy (right up there in with Paul Pope's ladies in my opinion), his villains dastardly and his Warlord is the ultimate in chiseled muscle, loin cloth wearing, alpha male hero. The black and white reprint takes nothing from the issues as I sometimes don't like black and white reprints of originally colored material. It works and works well. Huge recommendation from me.

And finally Planetary

So Planetary has finally come to an end, the final issue is out and it is fantastic. I wasn't sure what to expect out of the final issue as they had wrapped up everything quite nice with issue 26 after their defeat of the Four and telling the Apokalips-esque alternate Earth the Four had sold our dimension to(that the Drummer so lovingly refers to as Earth Toilet-on-fire) to F-off. But I had forgotten one early thread yet to be resolved, that being Ambrose Chase. I'll leave it at that except to say this issue if full of techno-babble which I love to read. I have no idea if this is based on real theory or not but I love the way Warren Ellis writes that crap. I really do hope he returns to this world every so often, even just a one shot or graphic novel and he's left it quite open to do it. The series has really shown how amazing a comics can be, the top of the form and honestly it made nearly everything else I read this week seem amateurish and silly.

This was a huge week of reading, I took home over 20 books and read the majority of them. I still got a few to read so I may return later in the week with a few extra reads if they deem worthy enough. I grabbed a few things I haven't really been reading as I've grown quite bored with talking about the same books over and over again. So here's a few that stood out


I've posted the 2nd issue to Ultimate Comics Spider-man although I read both 2 and 3 tonight. I didn't pick up issue 2 when it came out because I felt issue one was so blaaarggh. But these two turned out to be a lot of fun, way better than any issue of the previous series I've read and that wasn't much because well, I didn't think it was all that good. Myseterio is our main villain here and has a much better look than the old fish bowl of regular Marvel U although his dialogue was quite cheesy as probably was on purpose but you really can't tell with Bendis these days. Surprisingly I enjoy the art quite a bit, a bit cartoony but dynamic and fluid at the same time. However, with Peter Parker's longer hair I have to say the same thing I say to Valley Matt when he comes in to get his books each week, "Cut your hair hippie, you like like an jerk!"



Sweet Tooth #2 continues it's rip off of the Road and I enjoyed it very much. The artist isn't much for action but it's alright, something about the jaggedness of the lines makes it feel chaotic.


In all honesty, the writing on the new Starr the Slayer comics is not all that good but Richard Corben's art is amazing and the only reason I chose to pick up this book. He does that chiseled muscle medieval gladiator character so well as well as graphic ultra-violence.


Last one for the night would be Criminal the Sinners #1. Fresh off their pulp-super hero mini Incognito, Brubaker and Phillips return to their crime noir stories. This one stars Tracy Lawless last seen in Criminal Vol 2 Lawless. However it set up to stand on it's own if you haven't had a chance to read the previous Criminal books. It's a really good start to a great crime book, looking forward to the rest of it.

Boring week.

Sadly I found most things mediocre or boring this week. After putting down the forth read in a row, I thought, Seriously? Are they trying to kill me with boredom?

With Green Lantern #46, the art was suburb and story was good and all, but the Sinestro vs Mongul should have been resolved before the Blackest Night started. While the battle was cool and drawn really well it felt like filler when we should be getting somewhere with the Blackest Night story. Also as filler, the battle felt rushed. This battle would have been way more epic if it was the finale of a Sinestro Corp Civil War storyline.



However, I loved The Last Days of Animal Man #5. This story is really shaping up with each issue a joy to read. If you avoided this in issue format then you're silly because I've told you over and over how great it is. So if you're THAT person who is waiting for the trade paperback (which may start backfiring on you as how many are we supposed to order when no one was interested in the series?) then you should order it as soon as it's available because it's awesome.

...I'm just here to KILL you people.

Small week of reading but hot damn, some really good books. First off:



Superman Secret Origin #1. Go buy this book now. It is fantastic. Yes yes it's a retell of Superman's origin. Yes I know you've read/see/heard his origin many many times before but I don't want to hear it because this book is awesome. First off we get to see how his origin has transformed since the changes done in Infinite Crisis years ago. Most importantly, the stuff I enjoyed the most is the relationships Clark has with all the people around him as he learns of his origins and as his powers emerge. The last page is great and the little twists and changes and evolution of his different origins is enjoyable to see. Once again Geoff Johns proves he can write a story with heart just as well as zombie super heroes ripping out people's hearts.



Holy sweet Jesus on a pogo stick someone check if hell's frozen over, if Bigfoot is real and if monkeys have flown out my butt because Mark Millar wrote a good ending for a story. Not just good, GREAT. You may say I'm crazy, you may say Matt what tha french dude, but it's true--the ending to Old Man Logan was great. I mean really great. Badass cool great. Tons upon tons of Wolverine violence as he claws his way to Banner. I think this may be the most violent Wolverine comic ever. It's bloody fantastic (see what I did there?). There's only one problem in this story and you'll probably see it too, I see what Millar was trying to do and it is funny and cool but there's one word that throws it all out of whack: adamantium. But if you choose to ignore it then it's awesome and leaves you with a satisfying ending and maybe some hope for a sequel. This will go down as one of the essential Wolverine stories.



Detective Comics #857 marks the end of the first story arch as Batwoman once again goes head to head with Alice to save her father and Gotham. Very straight forward costume super hero story that is made into something epic by J.H. Williams. Alice's connection to Batwoman is hinted at and is pretty typical to the point of boredom. I still maintain while the story is solid, it's Williams art that keeps it from being just another typical costume super hero story.

Wednesday Comics #12, the final issue of the run I still sat where I was at week 5, I love the stuff I love, hate the stuff I hate. Regardless, this series proved to be different and cool and I think a success even if I didn't love all of it. I hope they continue to do this, but just as a yearly thing and only if they can have top notch people. I also hope they collect the stories singularly first (ala treasury size editions although it's a fleeting hope as they would only be 12 pages long) as I won't pay the hefty hardcover cost when I don't like half of the stories in there.