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« Book Review: Marvel Comics - the Untold Story | Main | Still alive »

SuperMegaSpeed Reviews

Never has the refrain of "lots of issues to go through so lets keep this short" been more true...

Avengers vs. X-Men #12 - The expectations game on this one has been weird. This series has been crap, so obviously i didn't expect much of this issue. But then the reviews started coming out saying that this issue at least ended the series well and even made sense out of the previous issues. So ultimately i went in with higher expectations than i probably should have. There were some good moments here, but i'm sticking with "crap" as my overall assessment of the event. I'm not even sure what the turning point of the Avengers' strategy was... Tony Stark suddenly starts talking about "faith" and now the Scarlet Witch and Hope can do what they could have done all along and punch Cyclops in the face a lot? Ok, i guess there's the weird Iron Fist angle that was, well i don't want to say "developed" but i guess shoehorned into this series. As a direction-changing exercise (undoing "No more mutants" and setting up an Avengers team that is "a bit more... uncanny" (ugh!)) this was about 11 issues too long. I still think the problem for this series can be found in this post from The Hurting which was a bit of a revelation for me. Marvel is planning out their story arcs at the macro-macro level. And if you just read these events in their bullet-point form - House of M, the changes in Cyclops, the militarization of the Avengers due to Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Dark Reign - this works as a culmination. But to anyone reading the individual issues this has been poorly executed.

Uncanny X-Men #19 - As has been the case for the past few issues, Gillen adds some necessary characterization to the AvX storyline. Would have been better as part of the actual series, but this was still good. I'm sure the oblique reference to the "white hot room" got Tom Brevoort's formspring page frothing, but i've been staying away.

Astonishing X-Men #54 - I'm about ready to drop this.

Avengers #30 - Spider-Woman needs a revamp. Bendis brought her to prominence, which is a good thing, but then he turned her into Hawkeye's hysterical sort-of love interest, which has not been a fun move. I'm hoping her "This isn't me. This is not what I want to act like" moment actually goes somewhere. Oh, and this was not an AvX crossover despite what the cover said (which is fine with me).

Avengers Academy #37-38 - A nice ending to Final Exam and a GREAT downtime issue afterwards. Every panel of #38 had some wonderful character moment. The creative teams announced for Marvel NOW are such a disappointing shuffle of the same boring people; i really wish Gage was getting Avengers or something.

Captain Marvel #4-5 - It's so weird for this series to have started off with a time-travel romp that also seems to be leading into a revamp of Carol's origin. If the idea is to make Marvel a prominent super-hero both in the Marvel Universe and in real life, having her off in a time period where no one will ever know what she's up to is a very difficult way to do it. At least the art in issue #5 was more accessible than the previous four.

Daredevil #18-19 - I think it's hilarious that this has all been a build-up to a revamp of The Spot. This continues to be a good book.

Dark Avengers #181-182 - The whole name change to Dark Avengers clearly was a bait and switch since the book continued to be about the Thunderbolts, and the DA characters were essentially the bad guys. Not that i'm complaining. Even with all the Judge Dredd stuff, i really enjoyed this and again wish Parker was going to be somewhere more prominent after the Marvel NOW shuffle (how about Fantastic Four?). I was pleasantly surprised that this book was allowed to be the place where the Juggernaut's status quo is restored.

Thor #19-21 / Journey Into Mystery #644 - This is parts 2 and 4-6 of Everything Burns; we wound up getting this slightly out of order. It was a fun event. I loved Davis' art on the Thor issues. Might not be a great introduction to the complex scheming of Young Loki for new readers coming in from Thor, but that's moot anyway with the series getting replaced with Sif solo stories.

New Mutants #49 - I didn't really care, i have to say. Sorry Abnett & Lanning.

Spider-Men #5 - This was kinda over last issue, so this just had everyone standing around saying goodbye for 20 pages. Unless that fight with Mysterio was supposed to be an actual super-hero fight but it sure wasn't paced like one. And man, that Mysterio sure can take a bunch of spider-punches to the face without his completely not super-powered skull getting crushed, huh? This was a still a fun little series, and i'm happy with the implication that the Ultimate universe is just some stupid What If pocket-verse like i've known all along.

Winter Soldier #11 - Having Hawkeye in this story doesn't really add much. Hawkeye and Iceman were pretty fun together in Avengers Academy. Here Hawkeye is just another ultra-competent agent to fight alongside Bucky. Anyway, this is moving along fine but i've sort of lost any investment in it now that's it's cancelled. Even Guice isn't bothering me.

X-Factor #244-245 - I don't know what i think about turning Siryn into a Celtic goddess, but i'm glad to see that Lorna isn't going to remain a vegetable. I definitely like PAD's issues when there's no adventure plot, like in these two. He's great at characterization and humor and he makes all the interactions a lot of fun. And i really appreciate him doing his best to plausibly set up Havoc for leaving the book and totally changing his MO and costume after his plans in this book were derailed by AvX.

X-Men Legacy #274 - I know it goes back to Claremont but the Rogue/Magneto relationship thing is really weird to me. But getting past that, i thought this was a well written character issue. Too bad, again, the book is effectively cancelled. I've enjoyed David Baldeon's art on these issues as well.

Avengers Assemble #8 - Oh whatever. I can't believe i'm going to be reading a Guardians of the Galaxy book by Bendis when there's a perfectly good Abnett and Lanning floundering on a soon-to-be-cancelled New Mutants book. I'm not sure what the significance of the Cosmic Cube in this story being man-made was supposed to be; wasn't the original Cube also man-made (by AIM)? At least this issue acknowledges that Thanos and Starlord were in the Cancerverse. I guess the Stranger and In-Betweener are officially Elders of the Universe... i wonder when that happened. And where's the Gardener??!?

Avengers #31 - This was good. I hope Bendis restores Wonder Man to sanity before this is all over. Looking forward to a Microverse romp if that's where things are going.

New Avengers #31 - This is me doing my best not to complain about the lack of coordination on the use of Hellstorm between here and in JiM. Beyond that, this seemed fine. Lately i've been fooled at the start of each new Bendis arc; starts off promising but never goes anywhere. Hopefully since these are also going to be his series finales, we'll go out with a bang.

AvX Consequences #1-2 - Gillen's basically continuing here what he was doing in Uncanny X-Men during the AvX crossover, and it's just as good. Captain America's new costume is just ridiculous, though. Hilariously stupid looking. It's like his costume was in the wash so he had to go to a Halloween store to buy a replacement.

Avenging Spider-Man #13 - An improvement over last issue. Silly fun stuff.

Captain America #18 - This all seemed to wrap up a bit too easily but i still enjoyed it.

Red She-Hulk #58 - Parker has a nice pro-feminist statement of direction for this book so i was a bit disappointed in having an attempted rape scene in this first issue. Beyond that, we'll see where it goes. I had no interest in a Red Hulk but Parker more than made it work so i'm hoping to see the same magic worked on Red She-Hulk.

Wolverine and the X-Men #17 - Allred and Doop! This was a fun, crazy, totally "end times" book.

Uncanny Avengers #1 - I thought the Havok recruitment scene was done well enough. Havok's new costume isn't looking good either though, guys. Just go with the original; it's comics! But the Scarlet Witch/Rogue scene was pretty bad; it would have been better to have it come to some sort of reasonable resolution instead of getting interrupted by an attack by the Red Skull's Lamest Minions EverTM. Not sure i love the Scarlet Witch's costume either but i appreciate that the change here was probably about giving her some pants. It sure is convenient for an Avengers-side villain to be engaging in a plot involving mutants right at a time that Cap is forming this integrated team, but we'll see how this goes.

By fnord12 | October 28, 2012, 12:54 PM | Comics


Comments

so, what i got out of reading AvX #12 is that if the Avengers hadn't been dicks, none of this would have happened.

if they hadn't shown up giving orders to Cyclops and completely not listening to anything he had to say, Hope wouldn't have run and there wouldn't have been a completely unnecessary fight between the Avengers and X-Men.

if the Avengers hadn't then extremely foolishly blasted the Phoenix, it wouldn't have separated into 5 people, 3 of whom had questionable ethics to start, without the addition of the Phoenix force turning them into despots.

if the Avengers weren't total assholes, the two groups could have worked together to come up with this very same solution to dealing with the Phoenix.

but they didn't. and Captain America is the biggest douchebag of all, especially with his "it's all your fault" attitude to Cyclops.

uh, no, Cap. it's completely and totally your fault. dick.

oh, and i don't buy this macro-macro argument. even if they hadn't actually planned out the details and didn't talk about how they were going to execute the plan to make sure everything fit, it still doesn't excuse the poor writing and plotting of individual titles. why didn't shit sound good or make sense within the same book that one person was writing?

Uncanny XM: i like Gillen. alot. you know i do. and i know he didn't exactly have much to work with, but this issue was unnecessary and....kinda crap.

i also don't get where any of the X-Men who were around for the Jean Grey, World Destroyer, Phoenix get off treating Cyclops like he is a pariah and irredeemable. he didn't ask to be imbued with the Phoenix Force. that was Iron Man's fault. do they not recall how little control Jean Grey had once she was possessed? didn't they fight the Shi'Ar because the Shi'Ar wanted to punish Jean over, i dunno, destroying planets? and they didn't seem to have a problem welcoming her back into the fold once she was done being dead.

Astonishing XM: she's never going to get any tapioca balls thru that straw.

Avengers #30: being a woman and also having read many Stan Lee comics from the 60s, i am certainly sensitive to comics portraying women as hysterical, emotional ditzes. while i suppose i appreciate Bendis throwing in the "this isn't me" stuff, it's not really enough. this shouldn't have been written at all. the female character who has her little hissy fit that she can't help having because, duh, she's a woman but then, because we want the audience to like her, has her moment of non-feminine rationality (with Hawkeye being cool and rational the entire time, ofc) and realizes she sounds like the stereotype - yes, because, you know, we women are just naturally crazy and have to actively work at not letting that out. sorry. still offended.

and also, it's not ok to ask about a woman's period in the context of "oh, you're angry. must be your period." because that's dismissive and rude. you can ask about it all you want if it's in the context of bringing me a heating pad.

Min, from what the writers have said, if Hope had tried to use the Phoenix like Scott wanted, she would have destroyed the world. The only way to restore the mutants was for Hope to give up the power but Scott would have never thought of that because he's too obsessed. Of course, this should have been actually mentioned clearly in the story.

you might have noticed - i'm reading comics again. slowly playing catch-up.

Avengers Academy: finally, issues i enjoyed. no teen sap. tengu!

Capt Marvel: DeConnick has lost her metaphor privileges for at least the next 10yrs.

wtf is this supposed to mean?
"It's like that pins and needles feeling when your foot goes to sleep, only instead of just trying to stand on it, you have to hold it agains a hot stove until the gases in your blood build to such a pressure peak they explode."

did she forget what the hell she was saying between dialogue boxes cause i don't see how else anyone would have thought these two incongruous things in any way went together.

holding my fallen asleep limb up to a stove...*groan* just stop it.

I think the CM metaphor is deliberately absurd. Like, it hurts as bad as pins and needles (which is about as close an analogy as you non-invulnerable people can understand), except absurdly worse. Imagine Will Ferrell saying it.

Not saying you have to like it or think it's in character for Carol, but i think we can call off the Mixed Metaphor police.

I also wanted to comment on the Hurting's "Macro" framing. Regarding your complaints about how Cap and the Avengers acted towards Cyclops, it all goes back to the idea that they're supposed to have been developing Cyclops as a guy who is getting progressively closer to Magneto at his worst. So despite what your lying eyes are telling you from reading the story, Cyclops is the bad guy here. Because our notes say so.

There's also the "Avengers are more militant in a post-911 (or post-Secret Invasion) world" angle.

And last thing, reacting to Michael's comment (we need threaded comments!): it's kind of sad that all of Hope's training under Cable and at Utopia are thought to have amounted for nothing, but hanging out with Iron Fist and Spidey for a few days completely changed her outlook and made it possible for her to wield and disperse the Phoenix. You could argue that it's actually the point; that under Scott's militant tutelage Hope learned the wrong things. But now our theme says the X-Men were too militant and the Avengers are also more militant.

RE: CM metaphor - i'd like to disabuse you of your clearly incorrect conclusion, but i don't know how to do that without resorting to insults and violence. it's not in my nature. suffice it to say, i disagree.

RE: just because Cyclops is becoming the new Magneto of old doesn't make Cap any less of a douchebag. he came in there making demands and having no time to even explain his reasoning. it was just "give us Hope". yeah, sure. i can totally see militant Cyclops and non-militant Cyclops just saying "sure, officer, please take away this teenaged mutant to do who knows what with. thank you, sir."

and reading the issues with the new (but we couldn't bother to actually develop it) characterization of Cyclops still doesn't make it good writing. so who cares if they had a macro vision? they couldn't write 1 good issue. forget if they pulled off a mega plot.

I think everyone (except Tom Brevoort) agrees that AvX was crap. We're now just trying to figure out why.

i have a theory on why, but it contains more insults and violence.

Min, the X-Men have also overreacted in the past when it comes to the Phoenix. In X-Men 174, Lilandra tried to kill Madelyne Pryor with a lightsaber when she first appeared thinking she was the Phoenix. In X-Factor 17, a villain tricked Scott into thinking Jean was the Phoenix, and he tried to convince her by using his optic blast on her at point blank range, which could have killed or maimed her if Leech hadn't neutralized his powers.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Cap was overreacting because the Phoenix was destroying planets. The Supreme Intelligence, which has the combined brainpower of a zillion beings, concluded from this that the Phoenix intended to destroy Earth. I was waiting for an explanation as to why the Phoenix was destroying planets but it turned out that was just there so that the Avengers would jump to the wrong conclusion. It's always annoying when a plot element is there for no reason except to lead some of the characters in the wrong direction.
Another thing to keep in mind was that Scott wanted to lock up Wanda, and didn't care that she was influenced by the Life Force. So people refusing to accept Scott's "I was possessed" is laser-guided karma.
And finally, Scott DID gamble the fate of the planet to get mutants back- Hope could have lost control and killed millions.

michael: boo. stupid plot for no reason except to move the plot along.

Dark Avengers: i love Troll.

Thor/JiM: gah! they killed kid Loki! they always take away the things i like! i knew i should never have told you guys i liked him.

oh, and i take it all back. i hate Troll. no, really.

DD: um...why is there a head in Foggy's wastebasket?

Winter Soldier: i have no idea what any of the action panels are supposed to be depicting. none.

XM Legacy: it's not that i'm against character development issues. i'm all for a downtime issue in between storylines. it's just that i feel like there's been a ton of not anything to do with anything issues and then they throw this at me, and the sap of the character development issue just makes me nauseous. also, this Magneto/Rogue thing is just squicky.

Avengers: so, this is is the beginning of the Wasp isn't dead, she's just been in the Microverse all this time storyline? cause that's Janet running around with her face covered, right?

NA: i'm gonna nitpick the art and ask what the hell is that arched back pose Captain Marvel is exhibiting when she first appears at the mansion?

and here's the dialogue nitpick - they keep referring to the baby as "it" instead of "she". that's something i do cause i don't care for babies or discussing babies. it's not something i'd expect adults who coo over the cuteness of a baby to do. for proof of this, just go to facebook. there's always someone posting baby pictures. i guarantee none of the cooing comments refer to the baby as an "it".

CA: Queen Hydra??!! *groan*

yes, let's not do anymore weird, heavy-handed attempts at flirting from Diamondback and no more weird non-fighting bet Cap and Sharon. just let's not talk about their relationship and let them beat stuff up alot.

Uncanny Avengers: so, i stared at this cover for a while, trying to figure out what the title was. i finally gave up and declared it was to be called "Marvel Now!", which i thought was a really dumb title. but now, thru a process of elimination, i've discovered it's actually Uncanny Avengers. upon taking a closer look, i do now see the title.

my only defense is that i was so distracted by the poorly drawn cover that i totally ignored the shadow-esque words. i recall in 6th grade art class, one of our first assignments involved learning about perspective. i think Cassaday skipped that lesson. why is Havoc a dwarf? and no, it's not cause he's standing next to Thor, who also appears mis-proportioned.

since the inside of the book looks ok, i'm going to assume the top down perspective is the reason for these dwarfish looking characters on the cover. well, at least he can draw feet. they don't look right on this cover, but at least he made the attempt.