Comic Book Moments of the Week for 09/22/10

How's the weekend treating you?  Whatever your answer is, it's about to get better with another edition of the Moments of the Week.  We've got time travel, Hulks, Zatanna, Dr Doom, dead Galactus, Nemesis and more.  Hit the jump to enjoy.

Avengers #5

Might want to click for a larger image, but this is basically the Avengers equivalent of DC's chalkboards from Booster Gold that list a bunch of time travel related hints and clues towards past/current/future stories and leave fans with a whole mess of speculating to do.  As Bendis/JRJr have made this one as complicated as all hell to simply look at, let alone decipher, I'll let you guys figure it out.

Don't usually like pointing out random bad art, but what is up with Hawkeye's arm?  It's like Romita drew it too him too small to fill the panel and just kept extending his arm into oblivion.  If you look at the bow, his hand would be well off the edge of the panel and beyond where he'd grip it.  He's been having a lot of odd looking art lately.  I assume he's overworked between his Marvel and Kick-Ass work.  He's usually rock solid on consistency, so it's just disconcerting to see things like this showing up more and more in his work. 

Now, while he is having some odd anatomy problems (as seen in the Hawkeye moment above), JRJr can still deliver the goods when he wants to.  This Ultron is fantastic. 


Avengers Academy #4

Norman Osborn gets his first big appearance (more of a cameo last issue) since Siege and he's back to being the calm, cool and collected Osborn that we saw throughout the entire Dark Reign.  I was expecting a continuation of the completely random Goblin nutso Bendis turned him into for Siege.  He even ended that event with the Goblin taunting him in his jail cell, yet he's acting perfectly rational here.  Just makes his characterization in Siege all the more out of place.  I'm curious as to if this connection with the Avengers Academy members will be followed up on in Osborn's upcoming miniseries.

Being smacked in the mouth is preferable to being given cancer. 


Batman: Streets of Gotham #16

Great looking Zatanna splashpage.

Zatanna is "escorting" Bruce "Hush" Wayne on this public outing and Hush can't help but rub in how she'll never be with Bruce.  Loved the tone and subtext of this scene.  Worked really well.


Fantastic Four #583

Kristoff?  Wow, I haven't heard mention of him in a lonnngggg time.  Last I heard, he was time displaced by Stryfe.  But not like that would stop Dr Doom from retreiving him.  As Kristoff has ties to Nathaniel Richards (his possibly being Kristoff's father as well) and how Hickman is using Nathaniel a lot in Shield and Fantastic Four, it was only a matter of time before Kristoff returned.  The middle scene, for those unaware, is a reference to when Doom was captured by the Intelligencia in World War Hulks and had his intelligence drained off by the Leader and the rest of that group.

Doom is actually suffering some side effects from that Intelligencia machine based on this panel.  Valeria, who recently discovered her father's Bridge machine, which was used to meet that Council of Reed Richards in Hickman's opening arc, is working on her own agenda and requires Doom's aid.

That agenda?  Not sure, but I think she's picking up where her father left off after the Council was attacked by the Celestials and she now will try to 'solve everything' herself.  She even used the bridge to save four several of the Council of Reed members, who are now hiding around the globe based on that weird globe speech bubble and how they teleport/disappear afterwards.  Other option is that is reference to the various "cities" that Hickman has introduced on his tenure and the Reed's simply went back through the Bridge portal.  I think it's the former though and they are now on our Earth. 

And the final moment is the Silver Surfer finding the corpse of Galactus that Reed hid away (the one from Mark Millar's run that was from an alternate future and used as a power source).  There's an ominous tone to the narration on the previous page with the surfer before revealing what he's looking at.  I'm quite interested in seeing where Hickman goes with this.


Flash #5

Flash ended up breaking the mysterious mirror in this alternate world and wakes up on trial.  I'm not following this book, so I can only assume he hasn't murdered anyone lately and it's a reference to the  Silver Age death of the Reverse-Flash. 


Green Lantern Corps #52

Boodika's Alpha Lantern body gets inhabited by Cyborg-Superman and we get a little internal struggle visualized.  Cyborg doesn't show up again/reform in any other nearby machines and Boodika is free of his influence/back to her pre-Alpha Lantern personality (though still has the Alpha Lantern body), so I'm not sure if Cyborg is dead for good this time or what.


Hulk #25

Red Hulk can no longer drain radiation off the Hulk or other characters.

When Ross gets lippy with Banner, Bruce reminds him who he is.


Millar & McNiven's Nemesis #3

Speed lines, speed lines everywhere!  Kidding aside, really brutal and well done scene.  Should look great if they make the movie.

Great finish to the fight sequence.

And just shortly after Millar does something great, he's back to his shock schtick by having Nemesis kidnap the police chief's kids and having the daughter get pregnant from the gay son in one of the most convoluted "edgy and extreme" scenes from his career.  Incest?  Bombs on wombs?  WTF am I reading? 


Secret Avengers #5

Sadly, Nick Fury turned out to be an LMD.  Brubaker tried to make me care and differentiate the LMD from the run of the mill LMDs, but it didn't really do it for me.  All I could think in this origin sequence was how this might relate to Hickman's Secret Warriors and the Leviathan/Zodiac stuff he has planned.

One interesting thing was the inclusion of John Steele, a forgotten Silver Age character that Brubaker recently reintroduced in his Marvels Project.  I was not expecting him to be involved and it makes me wonder where it places this Shadow Council in the grand scheme of things as Steele isn't a bad guy (or wasn't, who knows now). 


Supergirl #56

Bizarro World gets blowed up (put together?) to kick off this issue.  Some giant alien snake thing is doing this.  Not sure why.


Thor #615

Another Thor-Loki rememberance scene in this issue of Thor.  I liked the more brunt version Gillen did a few issues back.  Not sure if Thor would be blowing off Sif to lament over the loss of Loki, half-brother or not, but I did enjoy it.  Always reminds me of the painted Loki miniseries from several years back where it delves into their brotherly love/hate relationship more (though in an out of continuity tale).

The cosmic villains of Fraction's Thor.  They appear to be coming from some other reality where space is collapsing in on them/the universe is dying (sounded like the Negative Zone to me, but supposedly somewhere else) and they are going to take up residence in the void left by Asgard being on Earth and not in its place in the whole scheme of the 9 worlds of the world tree.

Heimdall notices the coming of the new aliens.  To be honest, the Asgardians just came back to life.  It's been maybe a year Marvel time.  I'm not sure how he can say death is coming "at long last" with how short a time it's been since they died and were reborn previously.


Titans #27

Roy upsets that children are being used to power machinees that make some crazy super drugs and reacting to the horror that they are rigged to die if forcibly removed from the machine?  Is this some sort of redemption for him?  Is he acting human again?

Nope, just sad all those drugs are being destroyed and wondering how it tastes.

Related Posts