FF #6 - No no no no no no no! Why do i buy this comic? His name is Mike Allred. Sure there's some cute stuff going on here. But it's not drawn by Mike Allred! I do think Joe Quinones would have been better off not trying to mimic Allred's style, in any event.

Uncanny Avengers #7 - Mixed feelings about this. Very mixed. I almost downloaded a scan of this to do a full review with images to help me work through all my problems, but instead i've just given the issue multiple reads, but this is going to be a long-ish speed review (i still retain all my usual rights to be sloppy, wrong, unfair, etc., as per a normal speed review).

I mentioned recently that if you put Celestials in your story you've got an in with me, and the same is true, in theory, about Apocalypse. But of course this isn't actually Apocalypse in this story. It's some Apocalypse Twins. Still, all that would be good enough, and a part of me is still intrigued by all of this. But there is so much crap mixed in here.

Some really bad art choices. Like that sequence with Holocaust/Genocide receiving the "death seed" from the Celestial. Really unclear what is happening there. And the panel where Wonder Man is in his room, before that atrocious exchange with Scarlet Witch. I'd like to think that he's mourning his dead brother, and he's looking at a picture of him, but the picture is just a nondescript man that could be him or his brother or just something he tore out of a magazine. Maybe a picture of himself and his brother as little kids would have been better. Because without a picture that clearly shows his brother, he's just sitting there feeling bad for himself ("I'm an abomination." Well you are if your brother just died and all you can think about is yourself; i don't care how much of a villain he was. And honestly i don't know where this stuff is coming from.). And generally the art is uneven; the very last panel with Thor is pretty bad.

On to story issues. I thought the point of Nick Fury Jr. was that he was going to be a field agent, so Marvel could do Steranko style spy stories again. So why is he the guy showing up (with "Commander Hill") to complain about the way the Uncanny Avengers are handling themselves. It really ought to be Daisy Johnson right now, right? Or at least Hill should do the majority of the talking. As to what SHIELD is complaining about, it's a mishmosh. Does anyone really still consider Rogue to be a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants? Any moreso than Scarlet Witch? And Fury is blaming them for the Avalanche attack and the Red Skull attack? I don't know. I guess it's just meant to be an exposition dump but it makes Fury seem really cranky for unexplained reasons.

Then we get to the internal bickering and the really bewildering use of Rogue. Wasp inexplicably catty as well (Wanda is a "real" Avenger). And then Wasp hitting on Havoc.

Not too thrilled about the cliched "throw Cap in the last lifeboat" scene, either.

But the biggest concerns relate back to the flashback from last issue, and i won't rehash what i said but suffice it to say that this really does seem to be a pretty self-contained story or maybe "continuity-agnostic" (if it connects with anything, it's Jason Aaron's Thor series) that takes it as a given that this Jarnbjorn axe can defeat a Celestial no problem and will ignore the fact that when Odin built the Destroyer specifically to defeat Celestials it didn't even work that well. I was also surprised to see Wolverine recognize the axe, if that was indeed what was happening in that scene. Last issue there was a cutesy ancestor of Wolverine, i thought. Was it really supposed to be Wolverine? Or maybe Wolverine was just recognizing the Apocalpyse Twins from his time in Uncanny X-Force; let's hope so.

Anyway, i still want to hold out hope on this but considering some of the flaws i'm seeing in the non-Celestial/Apocalypse portions of the story, i'm losing confidence. I thought this story started out rather well with the Red Skull with Xavier's Brain arc, and maybe Remender should have wrapped that up and had a downtime issue to work out these team squabbles before getting involved in something else. I do think a lot of my dithering here (and generally) would go away if i was reading this stuff in trade form, and i am slowly coming around to realizing that's the better way to read most books nowadays.

Young Avengers #4 - Unqualified goodness here. I've really loved how each issue has had some unique and original art sequence (the diagram of Marvel Boy's attack in this issue), and i'm loving the dialogue and at this point sort of reveling in the obvious stupidity of the Kids vs. Parents theme.

UA: ok, can i stop reading this now? the dialogue is awful.

is Rogue going to continue walking around wearing a hoodie and being a bratty teen?

not to mention the constant sniping amongst all the female characters. the Avengers are now being played by the cast of Melrose Place.

Wasp hitting on Havoc was creepy because it was completely lacking in taste or subtlety and because she's too damn old for him, ferchrissakes. goddamned cougar.

the art is dreadful. the last panel of Thor was nothing compared to the awful panel a few pages back in the scene where he and Wolverine recognize Jarnbjorn.

at this point, i really don't even give a damn that the Red Skull has Xavier's brain (what???) or that the Apocalypse Twins (who???) are killing Celestials and just about everyone else around because i can't take anymore of this dialogue.

The dialogue is fantastic. Without it, we wouldn't know that the Avengers are being funded by the Wasp creating a line of fashions based on Avenger and X-Men costumes...including ruby quartz visors for that "I'm a mutant messiah" vibe all the teens are clamoring for.

And, without the amazing dialogue, we wouldn't know that Rogue was one of Magneto's floozies.

Witty AND informative!

And, Havoc is pretty old, too. He was around in the early days of the X-Men.

Let's talk about the art for a second. Why did Havoc look like Cannonball in the book, and why does it look like they meant to put Wolverine in the cover where Havoc is standing? Look at the pose and the face. It's Wolverine. Its like the cover was drawn and someone said, "This is great, but there's one little problem....you forgot the team leader and Wolverine is barely in the book this month. Yeah, Wolverine sells comics, but we need to build up Havoc so we can spin him off into his own movie franchise. Please fix that minor issue. It's a great cover though. Love it."

And, going back to the original post. Let's talk about the escape "coffins" for a second. So....giant space fortress with thousands of people, but only enough "coffins" to accommodate one two guest? And one of them is broken, and it happens to be the one Captain American and Sunfire pick? I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept Red Skull + Xavier's dead brain = telepathic Red Skull transforming into Onslaught...but at least give me a throwaway line about how this attack couldn't have come at a worse time since we're hosting whatever space peace negotiations on our space station and don't have enough "coffins."

oh oh! i forgot to gripe about the Wasp's clothing line cause i was busy being skeeved out by her sad attempts at flirtation.

Unity?? she named it Unity?? as in four-toed, brainwashed Canadian government party? really? that's the name you picked?

and even if it didn't have all these bad, four-toed associations, it's such a stereotypical uppity enviro-hippie name, i don't see the teen appeal.

On the question of Wasp and Havok's ages:

Janet comes into her inheritance at age 23 in Avengers #43, Aug 67 cover date.

Havok's first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #54, Mar 69 cover date, has him graduating college, and it's said in a lettercol that he graduated early due to being exceptionally intelligent (and to avoid a discrepancy with his age relative to Cyclops). So put him at... 19?

Throw all that into Marvel's Sliding Timescale and i guess there's a 5 year difference between them, with Jan nearing 30 and Havoc in his mid-20s?

i call 5-year Rule! cougar. *shudder*

and she's alot of work. my god is she alot of work. she's crazy. Havoc needs to stay far, far away.

YA: i'm still kinda upset that Noh-Varr is now having good times with Young Hawkeye when it wasn't that long ago that he was dating Annie. there was that heartfelt goodbye before he went off into space with the Avengers to fight the Phoenix and he gave her something as an "I promise I'll be back" gift. what the hell happened to that relationship? she's prolly still waiting for him to come back. or call. or something. jerk.