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« Comics: March 2011 | Main | Comics: May 2011 » ComicsDaily dose of Crom! It's the end of April, so hopefully we're done with Crom. Just to be sure, here's a few extra doses. By fnord12 | April 30, 2011, 8:58 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 29, 2011, 8:57 PM | Comics | Link Today we found out that despite his frequent invocations, Conan doesn't actually think Crom is very effective. I wonder if there's a Nasal-Ymir. By fnord12 | April 28, 2011, 8:56 PM | Comics | Comments (2)| Link Today's Crom comes from Marvel's telling of The Frost Giant's Daughter. Kurt Busiek also did a version of this story which i read in a trade that i borrowed from Wanyas. But when i went to read it, the book fell apart in my hands. It wasn't my fault! Wanyas said i didn't have to buy him a new copy, but i know that he still secretly blames me for it. By fnord12 | April 27, 2011, 8:53 PM | Comics | Comments (2)| Link By fnord12 | April 26, 2011, 8:52 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 25, 2011, 8:51 PM | Comics | Link It's a special triple-Crom as Conan meets Elric of Melnibone! Also, it's the first appearance of Kulan Gath (sort of). By fnord12 | April 24, 2011, 8:50 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 23, 2011, 8:49 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 22, 2011, 8:48 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 21, 2011, 8:47 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 20, 2011, 8:46 PM | Comics | Link Welcome to our new semi-regular feature here at SuperMegaMonkey where, in the spirit of Fantastic Four #350, we take a look at questionable appearances by Dr. Doom and determine if it was the real deal or just a Doombot. For our inaugural post, we'll take a look at a crossover between Super-Villain Team-Up #14 and Champions #16 (Oct-Nov 1977). It starts with Magneto showing up in Latveria to discover that Dr. Doom has already taken over the entire world with a mind-controlling gas. Bored with complete domination of the Earth, Dr. Doom sets Magneto free, allowing the evil mutant to challenge his dominion. After a long plot that involves the Avengers, the Beast, the Champions, and the Hulk, Dr. Doom winds up breathing in his own mind-control gas. The results are... bizarre. "Doom... must be obeyed... but i am Doom! Why does Doom not give me orders?? Why???" Conclusion: I think we can pretty safely assume Doombot. It may have been the real Doom who took over the world, but the one who shows up at the end is obviously a 'bot that Doom sent in to end the charade once he was too bored to go any further with it. By fnord12 | April 20, 2011, 1:49 PM | Comics | Comments (2)| Link By fnord12 | April 19, 2011, 8:46 PM | Comics | Comments (1)| Link By fnord12 | April 19, 2011, 3:26 PM | Comics | Link Heroes For Hire #5 - Good that we're done with the Puppet Master plot, but i can't say i'm loving this. It's definitely not up there with Abnett & Lanning's cosmic stuff. I'm hoping it'll get better now that Misty Knight is actually awake (and not running around in hospital garb fighting the Punisher the whole issue). But next issue ("Target: Spider-Man!") doesn't look promising. I'm hoping for a mission statement issue, not a Misunderstanding Fight. Avengers - The Children's Crusade #5 - This is well written. I think the Iron Lad/Stature/Vision love triangle thingy is being developed well. I like how both Doom and Magneto are being depicted. And we're getting somewhere with the Scarlet Witch plot. So i'm enjoying this. One quibble: "We've got Wolverine flying through the air backwards... who's powerful enough to do that to Wolverine?" Uh... lots of people? Including just about everyone else in this issue save perhaps Patriot and Hawkeye Lass? Herc #1 - This may come off sounding like heresy (Literally!). But i was thinking, maybe if we have to so drastically revamp the Hercules story, it might be better just to take this creative team and have them write some different characters. Hercules had a good run. But there's no reason Marvel needs a Hercules series in publication at all times. Nowadays we know that a series is going to last a few years at best. Maybe it makes sense to take some good creative teams and just put them on rotations of minor characters. We could have Pak and Van Lente writing a series about (and i'll just choose totally at random) Power Pack or Alpha Flight. Or how about Roughhouse and Bloodsport? Twelve issues or whatever and if it doesn't take off, move on to something else. At least it would let the characters dry out a bit between reboots. That said... i enjoyed this issue and look forward to more. Annihilators #2 - Dire Wraiths! I'm not totally sold on the art, but i'm liking this story. I've never seen Ronan the Accuser quite so snarky, but i can live with it; he's been through a lot. And... Dire Wraiths! The Rocket Raccoon/Groot story i could live without (and i never thought i would say that). Black Panther #517 - Like Heroes For Hire, this one is losing me. I liked the vaguely Coming To America set-up of this series along with the non-traditional super-villain Vlad the Impaler. And i enjoyed Spider-Man last issue. But generally i feel like there isn't a lot of personality in this book; it's been a little too plot focused (and yet also moving slowly). And if i'm not enjoying the dialogue, i'm going to be focused on things like "Christopher Priest's Black Panther would never have been tricked into a Misunderstanding Fight with Luke Cage", who, by the way, seemed totally out of character and just downright stupid interrupting the Panther while he was apprehending a murderer. New Avengers #11 - Now, let's get the continuity stuff out of the way first. The Red Skull was in suspended animation since World War II, and before Captain America was dumped in the Arctic. It's 1959 in these flashback scenes, so both the Red Skull and Captain America appearing here must be the 1950s versions: the crazy anti-commie Cap and the communist imposter Red Skull. And so far i'm not really seeing a point in introducing these pre-Avengers Avengers if all they're going to do is go after a fake Red Skull. Also, Chaykin's art stinks. But the scene of Namora straddling a whale on a tidal wave crushing the Nazi base was still pretty cool. As for the modern scenes i feel like we're padding time a bit. We don't need to drag out the suspense of Mockingbird's injury for an entire issue. I'd be surprised if they killed her since they just brought her back, but either way, let's get it going. I do like Deodato's art, though. I thought the panel with the Thing, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange at the hospital was very good. Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1 - Special thanks to Wanyas for picking this up for me. But this wasn't very good. Godzilla by himself is never all that interesting; he needs to be fighting other giant monsters (and preferably performing a flying jump kick). The title (Kingdom of Monsters) is promising, as is the cover showing all the other monsters, so i assume they're coming. But the writing was terrible, and the art was just OK, so i don't think i need any more of this. On a positive note, i was pleased to see that IDW comics are building up their shared universe concept by including one of their characters from another one of their books. By fnord12 | April 18, 2011, 9:58 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 18, 2011, 8:42 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 18, 2011, 12:53 AM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 17, 2011, 8:40 PM | Comics | Comments (1)| Link By fnord12 | April 16, 2011, 8:40 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 15, 2011, 8:37 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 14, 2011, 8:36 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 13, 2011, 8:34 PM | Comics | Link First a special treat. Conan meets Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Or, at least, Fafnir and Blackrat. And now, what you've been waiting for. Your daily dose of Crom!  By fnord12 | April 12, 2011, 8:31 PM | Comics | Comments (1)| Link By fnord12 | April 11, 2011, 8:26 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 10, 2011, 8:29 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 9, 2011, 8:28 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 8, 2011, 11:00 PM | Comics | Link By fnord12 | April 7, 2011, 8:25 PM | Comics | Link Since it's allergy season, we're starting up a temporary new feature here at SuperMegaMonkey. By fnord12 | April 6, 2011, 9:37 PM | Comics | Link Captain America and the Secret Avengers #1 - Well, yeah, this comic only wound up in my hands by accident, and everyone involved is truly sorry about the matter. Referring to this as a Secret Avengers issue is a bit misleading; Captain America and the Secret Avengers is downright false. What's wrong with Secret Avengers Presents: Black Widow and Agent 13? Not that changing the title would have fixed anything. The Rob Liefeld back-up reprint (from Marvel Comics Presents #53) was surprisingly not horrible. I think the Bob Wiacek inks probably helped matters but it's true that the storytelling was actually pretty clear. And i liked the fight sequence. Reminded me of an old Jack Kirby sequence, except since it wasn't Kirby, they weren't tiny little men stabbing each other with fountain pens. Captain America #616 - It's the 70th anniversary of Captain America. Is it a coincidence that it's issue 616? I hate anniversary issue because they are full of garbage. This issue has about 15 pages of actual story and a bunch of filler. Some timeline related comments on the first story: Crimson Dynamo IV, Yuri Petrovich, appeared in the Champions, 1976 publication date. That means Bucky was active as the Winter Soldier much later than i'd realized; i kind of thought he was active during the "Hero Gap" period and then put on ice. Now it looks like he was active concurrent to the modern Marvel heroes. I enjoyed the idea of Bucky having to fight a giant bear-man in a Russian prison; a little cliched but nicely drawn. I guess Ursa Major (and maybe the other members of the Winter Guard) were arrested after disobeying orders and helping War Machine fight those Skrulls? Seems odd that he'd be willing to take orders from Petrovich. Still, that was good enough. Anything else in this book worth commenting on...? Brubaker's second story was too sentimental... Chaykin's story was crappy (and ugh, the art!)... i actually enjoyed concept behind the story about the small town that agreed to hide the AIM lab but i don't think it was done very well...the Baron Blood story's art was too "indie" for me... i might have liked the Hate-Monger clone story better if i wasn't already predisposed to not liking anything in this issue... and the Union Jack story was too sentimental. Black Panther #516 - Spider-Man's a bit late; he's supposed to show up in your third issue. But i appreciate him showing up, because he's funny. Avengers #11 - I like JRJR's art, but it's so distinctive that sometimes i make associations that i'm not supposed to. Like, since he drew the Eternals series, when i first turned the page to the scene with Xavier, i was sure that the big security robot thing was a Celestial. But still, i like the art, and i didn't mind that just about every page in this issue was a splash panel. Epic scope and all that. Good stuff. Good fights, nice cosmic scene with Eternity. Bendis did a better job summing up the Red Hulk and making me like him than Parker's been doing in his own book, i think. And now Thanos. We'll see if that's for real, considering that Abnett & Lanning left him stuck in the Cthuluverse. Also, have i mentioned that i really like the Oral History segments in the back of all the Bendis Avengers books? I thought this was really funny regarding Mantis: Tony Stark: I was never thrilled with the fact that she always referred to herself as 'this one'. Clint Barton: At first I thought it was a language thing and then I realized it was just a diva thing. "This one." I always wanted to go: which one? This one? Which one does when? Secret Avengers #11 - I think i like Brubaker's Secret Avengers better than his Captain America recently (anniversary issue aside). We're delving into this John Steele from Brubaker's Marvels Project, and i'm enjoying that. I loved that weird Alien-head snake-leg thing from the Shadow Council that we got a glimpse of; first time in a while i've seen something in a comic that freaked me out a bit. Interesting stuff. And i liked (what seemed to me to be) the Beast setting up a Cerebro-like device that Cap could use to scan Steele's memories. I'll also say, and this is totally random, that i thought it was a nice touch that one of the scientists was kind of an overweight and messy looking guy; it seemed a bit more real to me. Scientists in comics are always of a certain 'type' and this guy didn't fit that mold. But mainly, i just think it's a well written book. By fnord12 | April 5, 2011, 10:01 PM | Comics | Comments (5)| Link John Seavy at MightyGodKing lays out his "One Year" concept for a Marvel series: And since this occurred during one of the most crossover-rich periods in comics history, we have plenty of mutual data points to tie the other Marvel books into a cohesive timeline. "January 1983" doesn't necessarily translate across every title to the exact same moment in Marvel Time, but we know that Secret Wars happened within that span. So Johnny and Alicia started their relationship during that year, Tony Stark lost his company and had his bout with alcoholism, the Hulk turned intelligent, and Spider-Man got his black costume. (And a lot more such happenings, which he describes...) Basically, it was a busy freaking year. :) (You may feel free to contribute further momentous events in the comments section, but I think you get the idea.) The plan for the series I want to write borrows from DC's "52"; only instead of telling a "missing" year of continuity in real time, this 52-issue weekly series would go back and retell that 365-day span of Marvel Time in real time. The reverse of decompression, it would try to convey to the readers the sheer chaos that exists in the Marvel Universe, and what it feels like to live in a world moving that fast. A year where snow fell in summer, where gods and more-than-gods walked the earth, a year where Iron Man quit and Captain America got fired, a year of destruction and creation and joy and sorrow...Marvel. One Year. I am! I am! By fnord12 | April 4, 2011, 3:54 PM | Comics | Link |
