Kind of a slow week in comics this week, but there's some hidden gems to be found if you look hard enough. Thankfully, the Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews are here to help you out. Hit the jump for all this week's reviews!Comic Book of the Week
IMMORTAL IRON FIST #11Written by Matt Fraction & Ed Brubaker
Art by David Aja & Roy Allan Martinez
Whirling Devil Dervish! Foothammer Thunder Strike! Steel Phoenix Blow First Execution! Every single one of these attacks' names are full of win and awesome and I couldn't make these up if I tried.
This month's issue is a return to greatness after last month's slight dip in quality, in relation to previous issues of Immortal Iron Fist, which I hold at a higher standard than the other rabble. While Danny and the other Heroes 4 Hire are featured in this book helping Danny return to K'un Lun, the bulk of the issue is devoted to Davos, the Steel Serpent. Wait, scratch that. The Steel Phoenix!
As the new Steel Phoenix, Davos fights off against Tiger's Beautiful Daughter. It's a brutal and much more satisfying match than the off panel Dog Brother #1 and Bride of Nine Spiders fight. I loved everything about this fight. The pre-fight banter, Daughter's slicing off of Davos' hand and the retaliation by Davos are all spectacular. The ending attack by Davos is every bit as raw and powerful as his killing of Orson in issue six.
To counter balance all the badass kung-fu action, we get the continuation of Davos' origin, which shows him trying to usurp Shou-Lao's power after losing in his succession bout with Randall, as seen last issue. He attempts to fight the dragon himself, but loses horribly before the dragon deems him unworthy and leaves him to his shame.
Finally, there's more allusion to an inner power struggle or possible coup between August Personage in Jade and Thunderer, picking up on the strange conversations in last issue. The worst thing about this issue? I have to wait at least another month for the follow up.
Verdict - Must Read. Easily the best book this week. There's not much else to say. If you aren't reading this, you must have no money because this should be the first book on your list every time it comes out.
COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #19Story by Paul Dini
Breakdowns by Keith Giffen
Script by Tony Bedard
Art by Carlos Magno
This wasn't a bad issue of Countdown to Final Crisis. There were no groan inducing scenes and the story flowed as well as could be expected for a Countdown issue. The biggest flaw comes in the fact that I just didn't care about anything that happened here.
The Rogue(s) story has faultered with the death of Trickster. A good chunk of the book is dedicated to showing him having an imaginary conversation with Trickster as he drags him around the desert. Now, when the dead corpse's replies started showing up on the page, I began to think maybe someone is manipulating or trying to push Piper in a certain direction, but it might just be a figment of his imagination.
The Holly and Harley story received the majority of the remaining pages in the issue. Not that anyone didn't suspect, but the 'mysterious' person in the cave was the only one on Paradise Island that hasn't been seen yet, Hypolita, which really makes me wonder where all this nonsense fits. In Wonder Woman, she's alone on the island. In Countdown, Granny Goodness' Amazons control the island and she's living in a cave. All that comes from this encounter is that Holly and Harley are going to be spies for Hypolita in the Amazon camp.
Finally, Jimmy opens a Boom Tube and Forager sees the Source in his eyes and then falls madly in love with him after previously trying to kill him. At this point, I'm just praying for the "Jimmy Must Die!" part of Countdown to come true.
Verdict - Check It. Pretty average outing. No major complaints, but nothing noteworthy either.
COUNTDOWN: ARENA #3 (OF 4)Written by Keith Champagne
Art by Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens
I'm not sure what to make of Arena anymore. The entire thing has wreaked of a poorly written fanfic with the occasional quality moment. Furthermore, every issue seems packed full of cheap deaths just for the sake of killing someone and the entire thing just cheapens and detracts from the Multiverse with every death or destruction of a planet.
Continuing with that theme, this week's offering is another issue packed full of death and random hero fighting. First up was the Starmen group which featured a Stargirl and talking ape Starman waxing philosophical about the Planet of the Apes just before a deranged alien looking Starman kills the ape. Just as he's about to kill the girl, she drives her staff into his head, killing him and making her the winner.
After that is a Flash battle and, surprisingly, no one died! Amazing. This ends up being the most generic fight, which is sad considering it features three Flash's. Two vibration punches later and the winner is declared.
The final battle is the cover bout and main event of this issue, the battle of the Wonder Women. The battle saw Amazonia Wonder Woman killing the Justice Riders version with a sucker punch to the back of the neck. Now, she might not actually be dead, but the art shows her with her head on sideways, so it looked pretty definitive to me. The two remaining Wonder's turn their attention to each other and Amazonia comes out the victor over the Cold War-era Wonder Woman.
Aside from the fights, there was the backdrop of the newly vampiric Liberty Files Batman rallying the troops for one last desparate attack against Monarch. He's deduced that Monarch is a Captain Atom and that it is conceivable that the other Atom's would know how to stop him. He gives the device the Blue Beetle was making last issue to one of the Captain Atoms and sends him off around the Multiverse with it to gather other versions of himself with the hope they can stop Monarch. The issue ended with several Captain Atom variations all gathered together for next week's finale.
Verdict - Check It. I really don't know if I like this book or hate it. It's fun to see hero fights. It's just something fans always wonder about, but it all feels so cheap and inconsequential and I have no idea what Monarch is hoping to accomplish. He discarded Forerunner, who proved stronger than just about everyone, including entire Justice Leagues, on most Earths, so why gather weaker people in the first place? The art is still atrocious, too.
INCREDIBLE HULK #112Written by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente
Art by Khoi Pham
This issue actually started off pretty good. It looked like Hercules actually realized he was doing the wrong thing by aiding the Hulk and ignoring authorities. Heck, even Cho looked like he might actually stop being a total dick at one point there. Shame the issue ended the way it did.
Basically, Herc gives up after drinking a few gallons of merlot and makes Cho give up with him. SHIELD refuses to give them amnesty due to the fact they both destroyed a SHIELD helicarrier a few issues ago. They don't intend on locking them up or forcing them to do any black ops killing or anything. No, the things they ask them to do are so heinous that the two decide to break out of the complex, cause even more property damage and be general asses.
What was this oh so terrible pennance they were being asked to do? Why, they honestly expected Cho to use his intellect to help them devise the most efficient and effective clean up and relocation program in the countries history! Cho was right to slap that hand away and make basically tell the families and loved ones of the thousand's of displaced people from WWH to shove it. Seriously, why help the people who had their lives destroyed by the person you actively supported?
At least Hercules kind of, sort of had a reason for rebelling. For some reason, Pak had Ares, an Avenger, acting as SHIELD's interrogator and liason for Hercules. Ignoring the history between the two of them, Ares isn't exactly the sanest hero and outside of said history, there's no other reason for him to be here. Pak wanted a fight to set Herc off and he was using Ares regardless of how much sense it made to have him there. Oh ya, all Ares asked him to do was cleanup the Stark Tower and then rebuild it by himself. I doubt Tony Stark would even let Herc do this, but this didn't seem too bad when you consider how powerful Herc is. The cleanup would take a bit, but wouldn't really be difficult and only an idiot would believe he'd actually be forced to build a tower.
Verdict - Check It. The issue had parts that were good, but Cho is easily the biggest asshole of a character I have ever met. He couldn't take a couple weeks to help with the clean up and relocation of the thousands of families that lost their homes, jobs and everything that made their lives worth living? Ya, it made much more sense to go destroy even more things and plot to take down the world's peace keeping task force. I wish Hulk had stomped him into the ground at the end of WWH.
MIGHTY AVENGERS #6Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Frank Cho
Well, I honestly don't know what to say. This so-called 'conclusion' to the Ultron story was nothing but a joke and after all the delays, the art looked rushed and sloppy compared to Cho's earlier issues. Actually, the art starts off great, but progressively gets worse as the issue goes on, ending with a terrible rendition of Spider-Woman.
The issue picked up where we left off last issue with Ares entering Ultron's mouth after being shrunk with Pym Particles. We get a little bit of explanation as to what, exactly, Hank actually did with the Commodore 64 he requested. Apparently, he made a small computer trip, written completely in Fortran or BASIC or some other outdated language and gave it to Ares. He, basically, has to just attach it to a big glowing orb inside Ultron's body and it will destroy it and revert the DNA back into Tony Stark.
First off, what the hell? The basic assumption is that Ultron will not have bothered assimilating outdated code and it will make it vulnerable to that programming language. Again, what the hell, Bendis? This doesn't make sense even in comic book science. Any old language like that wouldn't even be able to interface properly with Ultron and Tony's Extremis body, let alone be a super virus that could shut it down and reconfigure Tony's DNA.
I was also under the impression the ending would explain Ultron's appearance in Annihilation: Conquest, but the only thing that happens is Ultron's old visage turns on a computer monitor in Hank's lab, show's his face to no one and then shuts the monitor off. In all honesty, I figured Sentry would throw Ultron into the Sun or something and the Phalanx would pick his broken body up in space. I guess it'll be up to the Conquest guys to explain Bendis' retarded usage of Ultron.
The only good thing to come out of this issue was the fact Bendis didn't actually kill off Sentry's wife. How she survived is a mystery to me, but apparently Ultron used a hologram or life model decoy or something to make it look like she was killed so Sentry would go insane. It's actually never explained outside of her showing up and saying she's alive. Oh ya, Spider-Woman shows up with the Skrull Elektra body at the end of this issue. The big solicit stating how this is an important Secret Invasion moment is just that one panel at the end of the book.
Verdict - Avoid It. Nothing to see here, move along.
WORLD WAR HULK: WARBOUND #1Written by Greg Pak
Art by Leonard Kirk
This was surprisingly good. Anyone remember that Gammaworld Cho developed for Hulk from a few months back? Apparently the Leader got his hands on those plans and put them to use here.
Picking up where Aftershocks left off, Warbound follows the, well, warbound as they flee the SHIELD personnel tasked to hunting them down in the sewers. Unfortunately, the SHIELD taskforce nearly gets eaten by alligators, prompting the warbound to aid them.
In the end, the warbound end up being teleported away by an unknown benefactor, who turned out to be the Leader. Ms MODOK, or Agent Waynesboro as she prefers to be called, is the only SHIELD operative that manages to tag along on this teleport.
The end result of this displacement has Hiroim captured and his Oldstrong powers being used to power a strange machine as the other warbound make their way to his location. Turns out the Leader is using his powers to initiate Gammaworld, a large gamma powered dome that is inpenetrable. I don't know all the details of Gammaworld, outside of what Cho stated a few months back, but the warbound are trapped inside with the Leader. Not sure what's going to come of this, but looks promising so far.
The issue ends with a backup "Tales of the Warbound", which I assume will be featured at the end of each issue. This issue sees Agent Waynesboro interrogating a survivor from WWH about various members of the warbound. The first up, featured in this issue, is Elloe and a tale of her early life. It was the best part of this issue and I really enjoyed. Elloe is one power hungry bitch is all I've got to say about this story.
Oh ya, the survivor being interrogated? None other than Miek, fresh off his Hulk foot to face adventures in WWH. Apparently he survived that final encounter and is in some sort of healing vat in Prison 42 in the Negative Zone. I'm torn on his surviving WWH. On one hand, it was a deciding factor in Hulk's rage and showed him as a true villain for that story and was supposedly the first person he ever killed. This cheapens the only significant thing to come out of WWH. On the other hand, I liked Miek before Pak arbitrarily made him evil and insane and I'm happy to see him alive.
Verdict - Must Read. If you had any interest in World War Hulk, this is book is a must read. Even if you disliked or didn't buy into the hype surrounding that event, I think this issue has a lot to offer and the back up tale is worth the cover price alone if you ask me.
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6 comments:
did the you find that one scene in new avengers between ms marvel and the dude with the glasses a bit odd. I thought that was the hint they were talking about.
Lindy Reynolds is a skrull.
"The only good thing to come out of this issue was the fact Bendis didn't actually kill off Sentry's wife. How she survived is a mystery to me, but apparently Ultron used a hologram or life model decoy or something to make it look like she was killed so Sentry would go insane. It's actually never explained outside of her showing up and saying she's alive. Oh ya, Spider-Woman shows up with the Skrull Elektra body at the end of this issue. The big solicit stating how this is an important Secret Invasion moment is just that one panel at the end of the book."
Wouldn't Lindy's "resurrection" be the sign that she was actually replaced by a Skrull?
Hmm, it didn't even occur to me she might be a Skrull. I just thought he was having another mental breakdown or something. It makes a bit of sense, but I find it hard to believe the Skrulls are just sitting around waiting for the perfect moment to replace someone.
And the Skrull would have to find a furnature store, buy all the exact same finishings and bed clothes, clean up the dead body and blood and do it all in the span of an hour or whatever amount of time these six issues takes place over. With all the world's computers taken over by Ultron, I doubt any stores are selling anything with the banks and registers down.
But hey, Bendis rarely cares about minor things like continuity or reasons when it comes to his 'big events', so I doubt he'd let such small things stop him.
Re MIGHTY AVENGERS #6:
Thanks for noticing the glaring error concerning the impossibility of the virus having any effect on Ultron. It's hard to tell whether Bendis is unaware that computer models and programs aren't automatically compatible with each other, or whether he doesn't know how computer viruses are created and executed on PCs.
Another glaring mistake reviewers have been missing is Pym's misuse of "reverse engineering."
The reviewers' and readers' failure to notice these mistakes doesn't mean they're stupid, but they evidently don't read the dialogue very closely.
Steven R. Stahl
I was thinking more along the lines of Lindy being a skrull before the series even began. Perhaps during one of the Sentry mini-series' or New Avengers.
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