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« Comics: August 2008 | Main | Comics: October 2008 » ComicsSuperMegaSpeed Reviews Age of Sentry! #1 - The cheesy Silver Age style flashbacks are cool when they serve as little interludes in a serious story about the Sentry. Taken all at once with no breaks, even by a good writer like Jeff Parker, and they're pretty intolerable (and only half the book is by Parker). My only fear is that this is eventually going somewhere more serious and i'll miss it if i drop the book. I mean, they can't do a whole mini-series of crap like this, right?!? Oh, well, i can always pick up the back issues. MMmmmmmmmDROP! War Machine #33 - Some very corny stuff going on here, with the "We're at war... and i'm a WAR MACHINE" (and not just once, either), and the Stark satellite turning into a giant War Machine suit, but on the other hand it plays up the Skrull paranoia angle better than many of the tie-in and i do like the emphasis on Rhodey's tactical abilities and war experience. Could get good once we get past the cross-over. I'm also interested to see if readers accept the swap from Iron Man to War Machine as well as they did for Hulk/Hercules. The difference being that this is a different writer as well. Guardians of the Galaxy #5 - Alright, it's true. It has nothing to do with Secret Invasion. Still good though. They do need to move on with the Starhawk stuff; it feels less like the development of a subplot and more like the Skrull plotline is an interruption on the planned story. I hope the reveal about Cosmo is reversed or a misdirect. I suspect it will be. Mighty Avengers #18 - Man, that Nick Fury is a hardass, huh? Hercules #121 - Super good. I know people reach for Walt Simonson's Thor for comparison, and it's a good one, but something i like about this that Simonson never did was actually go back and re-tell the old myths, which are very enjoyable with Marvel's rowdy version of Hercules as the main character. I guess Marvel Thor is so different from the Norse myths that it may not have been possible. Anyway, regardless of what you're comparing it to, this is a lot of fun. By fnord12 | September 25, 2008, 7:28 AM | Comics | Link Hold onto your head, cause this one might send it spinning. Spider-Man writer Marc Guggenheim: "Here's my attitude, if anyone is upset about the marriage going away, then they must all be pro gay marriage," he continued. Because if you're pro gay marriage, you understand the distinction between a marriage and a civil union -- that a civil union is not equal to a marriage. We downgraded Mary Jane and Peter to a civil union. If that bothers you, then you're pro gay marriage." By fnord12 | September 23, 2008, 2:07 PM | Comics | Comments (2)| Link Secret Invasion: Young Avengers / Runaways #3 - One more issue for the teams to find a way to broadcast that Dorrek exists and is on Earth to the Skrulls, and you'd have a perfectly satisfying ending to Secret Invasion. Ending where it does, the series seems to lose a little of its dramatic importance, but that's to be expected in what is actually a tangential mini-series, even though it's felt to me to be as or more significant than what's going on in the main books. I'm definitely liking Yost as a writer. Miyazawa has an enjoyable manga style but his fight scenes are a little disjointed (and i still don't like Nico's outfit). Secret Invasion #6 - Remember when Bendis used to be the "decompressed storyline" guy? Now he's got enough plot in here to make Stan Lee blush. There's a lot to like: the message the Skrulls have for the people of Earth was really good; i'd like to have seen , and people's reaction to it, developed out over a full issue or so that a la Childhood's End, instead of just having a bunch of deluded Obama-kid stereotypes falling for it and looking stupid. The Skrull's grudging respect for Richards was good as well. But a lot of other things seemed really rushed - the bad guys joining up with the good guys could have used a lot more attention, and Thor's return just plain sucked. And even if Lenil Yu's pencils are better than they were in the New Avengers, never, ever let him have two double-page spreads. That's just ridiculous. (And i know this may be more of an easter egg than anything, but one of the Super-Skrulls has Galactus powers? That doesn't even fit the concept of the Skrulls getting their powers by analyzing Earth's heroes.) By fnord12 | September 17, 2008, 7:34 AM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | September 10, 2008, 11:32 AM | Comics | Link These Superhero Mega Packs are pretty cool. They make a Galactus and even a Fing Fang Foom. I might have gotten them if someone had told me about them when they first came out. By fnord12 | September 8, 2008, 6:53 PM | Comics | Comments (1)| Link X-Force #6 - I had no problem with the art. The characters that showed up at the end had been introduced in previous issues. I think with the exception of Lang and Stryker, most were late 90s and early 00s characters that i'm not familiar with, but Lang and Stryker were recognizable. There was a strange sequence where Wolfsbane looked like she was wearing a weird mask in her human form, but i'm going to allow for the possibility that it was deliberate - possibly she was in a half-changed mode. As for the story, it was a better conclusion than i was thinking it would be, better than the last issue or so, but still not living up to the potential i saw in the first few issues. It's still early in the series so there's a good chance the team will find its groove. I thought the scene at the end, with Cyclops and Wolverine looking at a screen with their bad guys and going "who's next?", is a nice sign that they're continuing with the proactive theme. Daredevil #110 - Warning: This issue actually ends with Matt Murdock smiling. Maybe he'll turn out to be a skrull. This arc was good. Even it if was a little overt in its goal of making DD less depressing, it was a necessary step in restoring something of a status quo to a series that, while very good, was getting way too dark. I'm not liking the promo art by Dodson for this "Lady Bullseye", though. Hopefully, he won't be drawing the actual interiors (actually, i'm pretty sure he's not, if i remember from skimming the preview in that DD Saga recap book that came out a few weeks ago.). Avengers Initiative #16 - Woot to the SKull Kill Krew. I'm trying to remember if these characters should still even be alive. I'm pretty sure part of their original story was they were all dying and they needed to take care of all the skrulls before they died. Maybe it was resolved in the end of the series. Anyway, good stuff, and the Freedom Ring plot was good as well. Thunderbolts #123 - Osborn rules. Nova #16 - I like the character development for the Super-Skrull, but i always worry that when they develop out the bad guys they wind up turning them into good guys and then we lose all our cool bad guys. With the cliffhanger it seems like that won't be the case here, but i think that's a ruse. Also, was the whole "losing the Worldmind" plot Mighty Avengers #17 - I'm trying to figure out if the idea that the Skrulls are having so much trouble imitating Hank Pym is Bendis sort of redeeming a character that he's got a reputation for bashing, by saying he's so unique and independently minded that the Skrulls can't handle his personality, or if it's Bendis bashing Pym further, saying he's so erratic and unstable that the Skrulls can't control it. Either way, i enjoyed this. Although i do feel like we're close to scraping the bottom of the barrel on the "what were the Skrulls up to" parts of these tie-ins. And min pointed out that the Skrull that replaced the Pym Skrull that was killed at the diner had the same name as the diner Skrull. And it definitely wasn't an out of sequence scene or anything like that. Probably min is the only person in the world who noticed; i don't even read those Skrull names. Maybe Xrtl'lrt or whatever just happens to be a common Skrull name. New Avengers #44 - Wanyas is right in that the supposed big reveal for this issue wasn't really all that big; i thought we already knew that the Skrulls used Reed's mind to figure out how to hide themselves. This still was good, even though it seemed more like an issue of the Fantastic Four than the Avengers. Completely unrelated to this issue in particular, i do hope when this Secret Invasion is all over, they do find a way to basically reset to the status quo on Super-Skrulls. I know i'm not normally an advocate of resetting to the status quo, and i'd like it if the Skrulls did retain their ability to not be identified by scent/mental/technological detection, but i wouldn't want to have all these super-skrulls running around. It makes the original not very special. By fnord12 | September 4, 2008, 10:56 AM | Comics | Comments (3)| Link |