Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews for 04/16/08

I was hoping to get a few more reviews out tonight, but I'm dead tired and practically wiped. I didn't even get to watch any hockey tonight. I'll make it up to you all tomorrow with the Quick Shots with some more thorough reviews mixed in there. In the meantime, enjoy this handful of reviews.

ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST #6
Written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Art by Wellinton Alves & Tom Raney

Annihilation: Conquest originated as a storyline for Nova, much like how Secret Invasion started as a New Avengers story. It's not surprising, then, that many of the problems with this event stem from the fact that many of the characters and their actions are completely inconsequential and only serve to take up space.

For instance, Ronan, Wraith and the Super-Skrull took up a lot of time and space with a four issue mini-series and many scenes with Ravenous and the modified Kree Sentinels. In the end, aside from Wraith's deus ex machina-like powers against Ultron, these characters did absolutely nothing.

In fact, the event was set up with a fairly epic scope, as the Phalanx were revealed and conquered all of Kree space and then the revelation of Ultron in A:C #1. From there, the series devolved into a rather mundane black ops mission by Starlord's team to destroy the tower, completely by passing the whole Phalanx army / conquered galaxy aspect of the series. Only in the last issue do we get the whole cosmic war aspect of the event and it comes from characters that haven't even factored into the story bringing in another deus ex machina style solution in the form of Warlock and his Technarch buddy, Tyro. To say the event underdelivered is an understantment.

However, while the event aspect of this series fell flat, that doesn't mean this was a bad book or a terrible storyline. If you can look past the enormous expectations after the original Annihilation and treat this as a regular storyline, this is actually a really good series in its own right.

That said, this issue delivered all the action this series has been severly lacking. If you aren't reading Nova, and you should be, you're left in the dark over the sudden appearance of Warlock and Tyro. Hell, you're left in the dark about Nova, Gamora and Drax and how they're back and no longer infected, but I digress.

This motley crew of heroes, with the aid of Groot's destruction of the Babel Spire, pierce the Phalanx space barrier that had engulfed and blocked off Kree space and proceed to save Starlord and company from Ultron and the Phalanx. Warlock's stomping of Ultron as he entered the fray was one of the highlights of the issue for me.

Meanwhile, with Kree space opened to the rest of the universe, the quantum bands that power Quasar are rejuvinated and it seems Warlock's, the cosmic one Ultron stole his new body from, not the Technarch one (confusing or what?), disembodied soul is now inhabiting the bands. Quasar is informed she must stop Ultron and return Warlock's soul to his body before it's too late.

As Quasar makes her way to the battle, Warlock, the Technarch one, uses his mutated techno-organic virus on Ultron, in Warlock's organic body, and Ultron's consciousness flees the body, leaving the husk on the ground. Quasar quickly revives Warlock by returning his soul to his body.

From here, things get a little too wonky for my tastes. Ultron's disembodied consciousness floats off into space and takes over the approaching Praxagora, as she, Ronan, Super-Skrull, Wraith and the army of Kree Sentinels approach the planet. Ultron then reprograms the Sentinels to be under his command and causes Praxa to detonate her star-like core, not before his consciousness flees yet another body. Apparently the entire crew survived the explosion with the Super-Skrull's invisible force field powers. Don't worry, they don't do anything else in this issue. Just there for random plot advancement.

That army of Sentinels? They return to the planet and form a giant Ultron body. His original body was made of adamantium, an unbreakable alloy. Now, he's simply cannonfodder robot armour. I guess this plan looked good on paper.

So, what's the big plan? Warlock, the cosmic one, not the Technarch, pours some of his power into Quasar's bands, she forms a new sword construct and, with Wraith's random powers doing some kind of mojo, slices Ultron, destroying his body. I guess his consciousness is floating in space or survived somehow, despite Wraith's powers supposedly keeping it locked down. The ending felt rushed and a bit contrived, but it wasn't absolutely terrible, despite my rather sarcastic tone in the description.

Oh ya, all those Phalanx? With Ultron dead, they all stopped moving. The Technarch duo went around later with Wraith and magically removed everyone's infections and, while the Kree are still quite devastated, everything is relatively back to normal.

Of note, the High Evolutionary seems to be set up as the next big bad of the universe or possibly a plot thread for the new Guardians of the Galaxy series. With Ultron and the Phalanx distracted, he took the army of Warlock pods he was entrusted with last issue and flees to continue his research. He could conceivably create an unstoppable army of sorts from this, so this will be picked up sometime in the future.

Verdict - Check It. I liked it, but I'm a bit biased with regards to this book. There's a lot of flaws I'm easily able to overlook that many might scoff at. While not a series I'd call a true event, this is still an enjoyable story. Disappointment over this not being as good or better than the original Annihilation is the biggest detriment and something most people will find hard to overlook when evaluating this series.


AVENGERS: THE INIATIVE #11
Written by Dan Slott & Christos Gage
Art by Stefano Caselli

This storyline took a rather different route than I expected. I had some issues with it, but it was still another great issue of this series.

Last issue, we ended with Cloud 9, Komodo and Hardball running into the old New Warriors, made up of Justice and several ex-NW Initiative members. This led me to believe we'd see the old team in action again and this is where some of my disappointment came from with regards to this issue. What we ended up getting was one page of Justice getting owned in one hit, another with Slapstick reduced to a blob of goo (he gets better) and then the Mighty Avengers come out of nowhere to take over for the D-listers. Or, at least, that's how they came off based on this development.

There was an interesting scene with Warmachine as they showed how Cloud 9 and company and KIA made it to MVP's home. While passing through the Negative Zone portals to other Initiative bases, Cloud 9 has a funny "explanation scene" with Warmachine before he opts to stay behind and delay KIA. We only see the aftermath of this battle as the Scarlet Spider's pursue KIA, but it shows Rhodey with his helmet off and half his face was cybernetic. Anyone know when did this happen? Was it during his time with ONE? I never heard of anything like that happening to him, so this was a bit of a shock to me.

Back to KIA, as I said he owns the old New Warriors, not to be confused with the new New Warriors made up of ex-X-Men (holy messed up adjectives Batman), the Mighty Avengers step up to bat and pretty much hold their own against KIA. They aren't exactly super effective, but they aren't one shot'd like every other character that's gone up against him.

This buys Cloud 9 time to use her womanly wiles on KIA, who is a clone of MVP, who, while only having seen Cloud 9 once before dying, somehow has feelings for her and this distracts the killing machine from not killing her on the spot as she gives him the kiss of death with a toxic cloud kiss. Momentarily stunned, KIA gets held down by the Scarlet Spiders weird robot leg arm things as the other clone of MVP (ARGH CLONES!) sticks the mind wipe device on KIA's head, effectively making him brain dead and stopping him.

Mutant Zero was in this with Gyrich for a panel or so and we find out she goes back to a "zero room" and she literally had to leave Gyrich when she started feeling weak and head right back there. This is an old mutant we've all seen before and I have no idea who she is or could be.

Overall, the KIA arc has been a fun, action packed romp that had lots of character building moments, specifically with Cloud 9, Hardball and Komodo, three of my favourite characters in this book. Hopefully we get to deal with some aftermaths of this arc before getting sucked into all that Skrull madness.

Verdict - Must Read. It's confusing talking about a book when I have to differentiate old and new versions of teams with the same name or deal with four characters that are all clones of another character, so this review might come off a tad negative in connotation, but I really enjoyed this arc. All that remains is to deal with the aftermath and hopefully find out Slott didn't kill off half the characters in the book.


COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS #2
Story by Paul Dini
Story consulting by Keith Giffen
Script by Sean McKeever
Art by Jesus Saiz and Jimmy Palmiotti

I should really just stick this in the Quick Shot reviews because I have absolutely nothing good to say about it and I could describe the events in a paragraph, but I think I need the space to vent my frustrations, so here we go.

This is a weekly series. As such, we expect some form of continuity from week to week. Last week, we had Darkseid, about 6 to 8ft all, battling Superman and ending with a giant sized Jimmy Olsen. Mary Marvel was happily WHAP-ing away with Kyle and Donna and Ray was dancing in Jimmy's head with Apokalips anti-bodies hunting him down.

This week, Darkseid and Jimmy are doing Godzilla impressions, Mary is missing in action, Kyle and Donna are fine and saving people from Darkseid and Jimmy's fight and the explanation for Darkseid being 100ft tall is that "he's freaking Darkseid". Amazing.

After a couple pages of this ridiculous farce, Atom, completely unmolested by anti-bodies, takes the repository of the New Gods souls out of Jimmy's head, shrinks Jimmy back to normal and then crushes the device in his hands. It was the size of a baseball or larger at this point and I'm confused as to how it got inside Jimmy's head in the first place if it was that big, but whatever, it's Countdown.

After that, Orion shows up and kills Darkseid after 15 pages of giant energy explosions. What, where'd Orion come from? Didn't he die in Death of the New Gods? Where have you been? This is Countdown, we don't explain these things. We drop a boomtube, introduce a character we've never seen in 50 other issues of this series and kill of the big bad Darkseid unceremoniously in a dozen repeated panels that feature Orion and he blasting each other with energy explosions.

On top of that, Superman and several other heroes are on the sidelines and Superman tells everyone not to help because this is Orion's fight, despite his constant interference in the Death of the New Gods storyline. If he cared so much there, why let him fight on his own here against someone that just destroyed half of Metropolis? For the cherry on top, after Orion kills Darkseid and is critically wounded, Superman tells everyone not to go help him or try to save him and this is his moment or some jazz. Superman. Tells people not to try and help someone. He can move at the speed of light and get him to someone that can treat him or boomtube him somewhere, yet let's him die in the gutter or whereever he wanders off to.

Verdict - Avoid It. I can only imagine what this carnival freak show of a comic book has in store for next issue. I guess the Salvation Run villains will arrive in Metropolis from a boom tube and start a big brawl or some other garbage. Maybe Mary Marvel's disappearance will be explained, who knows?


IRON MAN #28
Written by Daniel & Charles Knauf
Art by Roberto De La Torre

This was another amazing issue of Iron Man and brings a close, for now, to the Mandarin arc. I honestly expected this to be dragged out a little longer and, based on the ending, it might just be put aside for all the Skrull business coming up (note: I assume this will have tie-ins to Secret Invasion).

If you've been following along, you'll know that the Mandarin put a beat down on Tony and his actions have caused Tony and SHIELD to be taken to task for causing some rather large political no-no's with nothing to show for it.

Under questioning from the UN, Tony states his case about the Mandarin and the airborn Extremis virus, but they refuse to take him seriously since he has absolutely no proof whatsoever. This causes Dugan, who's not dead or a Skrull here, to execute Tony's "do things like Nick Fury" order as SHIELD, without Tony knowing, locks down the UN under Maria Hill's orders, who is far from the bitch most make her out to be in this series, and Dugan escorts Tony to a waiting escape exit where his old red and silver Iron Man armour is waiting for him in another nostolgia inducing splash page of goodness, much like the incredible issue #25 had with the old red and yellow armour.

From here, we get an interesting break down of the situation by Tony as he pieces together everything he knows about the Mandarin at this point and, with a little help from Dugan and Senator Kooning's actions, pinpoints his current hideout in China. It ends up being a bio research lab of one of the Mandarin's companies that specializes in climate research, specifically cloud lining and manipulation. Turns out he's going to seed the clouds with the virus and have death literally rain down on everyone.

As expected, we get an epic rematch between the two, of which the highlight is definitely Tony ripping a handful of rings from the Mandarin's back. During a break in the battle, Mandarin informs Tony the missile payloads are already being launched and there's nothing he can do about it.

As you recall, Tony's Extremis powers were locked due to his pysch evaluation by Doc Samson with a power inhibitor on his ankle. With little other choice, Tony lasers his back heel off and slides the ankle bracelot off in time to use his Extremis powers to scramble the missiles guidance and launch them into the stratosphere where airborn Extremis becomes innert with the extreme temperature.

The Mandarin apparently takes his own life as he destroys a large container of Extremis, resulting in Tony freezing him and the virus. The issue ended with the Mandarin's frozen body cast being cracked open to reveal an empty shell, implying he escaped somehow.

Aside from the Extremis deus ex solution to the Extremis virus, this was an excellent conlcusion to a storyline that has been building since the end of Civil War. If political thrillers with plenty of action are your thing, this book has been exceptional and I'd recommend picking up the post-Civil War trades. This volume of Iron Man has probably been the best period for stories in Iron Man's long history.

Verdict - Must Read. Action, suspense, satisfying conclusion to a long running storyarc and lots or wiggle room for any fall out or follow up to the events. Not much to complain about here.

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