Wow, this has to be one of the best batches of moments in a given week since I started doing the Moments of the Week. Amazing Spider-Man, Batman, Red Robin, Green Lantern, Thanos Imperative and more contribute to a mammoth sized edition of the Moments of the Week. Hit the jump and enjoy.
Ant-Man & Wasp #1
Ant-Man remains ever the irredeemable hero.
Black Fox is the old guy in the bottom panel and I couldn't find the scene where he blackmails/coerces Eric into helping him by holding Eric's Wii hostage. You'll remember the two used to play the Wii together back during Eric's Irredeemable Ant-Man series.
Amazing Spider-Man #648
First up, the "goblin culture" lines up with
what we know about the upcoming
Osborn miniseries. It's an odd twist to have Osborn go from top cop HAMMER leader/insane Green Goblin super villain to skinhead/nazi analogue, but I'll wait and see how this plays out before making a judgement on it.
The second part is
Phil Urich on the bottom. He was the
Green Goblin (a good guy version!) for all of 5 minutes during the Clone Saga and I actually enjoyed his ongoing at the time. He played a great mentor role for Spider-Girl in the MC2 Universe as well. Not sure how I feel about the menacing look they've given him for this appearance, but nice to see him again.
So,
Frontline is now the
Daily Bugle? I understand the desire to keep things never changing in comics, but without Jonah at the helm, it's not the Daily Bugle, even if Robby is still there. Should have let it be Frontline until they wanted Jameson back as an editor in chief.
Venom symbiote was seperated from Gargan in this issue. Is this related to the Carnage miniseries, where they are studying the Carnage symbiote, or will it end up being studied/contained at...
...Peter's new job is at a Google-like tech company. Will they end up with the symbiote? Who knows, but it's about time Peter started doing something with his life.
This was the preceding page where everyone tests Peter with random science questions. I loved how his answers were all based on personal experience.
Hobgoblin returns and looks incredible.
Like the use of Twitter for the narration/thought boxes in the Spider-Girl back-up story. The 'not my dad' line at the end was great.
Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science #1
Robo reading some 'pulps' with Tesla.
Sorry, I meant 'illustrated periodical'.
Avengers: The Children's Crusade #3
Wiccan meets his mom, the
Scarlet Witch, who has amnesia supposedly, and finds out she's going to marry
Dr Doom.
Avengers Prime #4
What he hell is this?
Bor can and has lifted Thor's hammer, yet cannot do so here? And apparently Bendis believes the hammer is tied to Thor and Thor alone and cannot be used by anyone else while he still lives? The enchantment is for whomsoever is worthy, not for Thor alone. Thor just happens to be worthy. Really don't get this page at all.
Batgirl #15
Cute origin recap for the Batman family for the new recruit, Proxy.
Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne #6
Worried about Superman and the rest being stranded at the end of time by Batman? No worries, he used the infinite amount of prep time at the end of time to create a new time sphere for them.
Batman's cool end of time costume ends up being possessed by Darkseid's hyper adapter and linked to Bruce's nervous system. They tear it off with no ill effects and send it packing in a time spear.
Well, I guess he does end up 'dying' (don't worry, he got better, just had to let the omega energy drain out of him for a few minutes and he was fine to be revived). Confirms that Darkseid tried to possess Hurt's body though.
Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors #4
Has
Sodam Yat gone insane from his time in Daxam's star? He's acting like some messiah and going to war with the Guardians, so seems like it to me. However, it could be mental coercion from the bad guy/rogue Guardian harnessing the various ring's energies and the dude using mind control in the unknown sectors pushing Sodam in this direction.
Universe-wide Death Star laser using lantern energy?
I'm with Kilowog on this one - don't like the way they handled this. Not what the corps stands for at all.
Justice League: Generation Lost #13
Maxwell Lord completes his mission for the White Lantern entity by preventing Kingdom Come from coming to pass.
To add insult to injury, Max makes everyone see the killing as Captain Atom being the killer and they now label him murderer.
And the final insult? Magog's spear goes critical after his death and Atom is forced to absorb all the radiation from the explosion, which tosses him back into the timestream. I'm sure he'll be blamed for the huge crater left in the city afterwards as well.
New Avengers #6
Dr Voodoo, the new Sorceror Supreme, gets to die in his first major outing.
REBELS #22
Are those clones of Lobo/Czarnians (his race)? If so, we're screwed. Well, maybe not. Lobo did wipe out his entire race once before. I'm sure he could do it again against some clones.
Red Robin #17
Former
Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, finally makes an appearance in a Bat-title.
Tim let's her know what's up with Bruce and how she's part of the family and even leaves the old costume with her, which she doesn't put on, but does keep, leaving the door open for her to return at some point.
Tim is officially the new Dick Grayson. He's got Lynx, above, his "fiance", the bald League of Assassins chick that follows him around, Stephanie and who knows who else on the side. You can tell he learned from the best.
Tim needs a new home now that he's back in Gotham and he ends up buying the theatre on Crime Alley to set up as his new base of operations.
I skip a page between these two, but it all added up to a great Bruce/Tim moment.
Bruce even gives Tim some 'Catwoman' advice for handling the Lynx situation (Lynx is an undercover cop from Hong Kong that no one in Hong Kong knows about and doubles as a villain. Tim broke her out of prison earlier in the issue.)
Thanos Imperative #6
The Many Angled Ones make an appearance as Mar-Vell prepares to kill Thanos. And is that the Infinity Gauntlet? It only appears as he's summoning his sacrificial sword for killing Thanos.
Thanos ends up tricking Mar-Vell into bringing Death into their world again and it sets off a chain reaction that kills everything in the Cancerverse as Death finally comes back to that universe.
And what does Thanos get for killing an entire universe for his beloved? The cold shoulder. Forever alone. ;_;
With an enraged Thanos vowing to destroy all life in our universe and royally pissed at not gaining the affections of Death again, it's up to a Cosmic Cube wielding Starlord and full Nova Force empowered Nova to stay behind and ensure he doesn't go back through the rapidly closing Fault.
They get a memorial and everything, though there's a clear window for their eventual return. Still, if it ends like this, it's a great way to cap off this chapter of the cosmic line.
Thor #617
I had hoped that Fraction wasn't seriously making Thor miss his evil brother so much that he'd go out of his way to revive him so quickly. I was wrong.
What bugs me most about this is that Thor doesn't have the Odinforce anymore. He's not as powerful as he once was and shouldn't be the one off reviving everyone like he did in JMS's earlier issues. Additionally, Gillen had set up the ultimate trick for Loki in his death. He was no longer bound to the afterlife or endless cycle of death and rebirth or fate of Ragnarok that bound the other Asgardians. And he even convinced everyone it was a noble and heroic sacrifice. Yet now he's back not even a year later and this time he's a child instead of a woman for the new take on the character. And Thor's all happy about it. The mind, it boggles.
Ultimate Comics Thor #2
Loki ends up being
Baron Zemo for the surprise twist in this miniseries. Explains how he knows so much about Asgard and how to get there.
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23 comments:
Glad to see Eric acting like his old self and not the bland personality he had in Secret Avengers.
lol, I read that page in Red Robin and thought, "Damn, Tim's worse than Dick now. I bet Kirk'll say something about it in MOTW!"
ASM:
*Phil Urich was last seen in Loners, where he was crazy like a fox(stole Darkhawk's amulet and assualted Turbo). He then joined some AIM wannabe, the Fujikawa group (alongside with his new best friend Hollow, who may or may not be Penance from Gen X). Unfortunately, the mini was unconclusive, and we never learn what kind of agreement he made with Fujikawa. I just hope Slott won't pretend it didn't happen.
*I'll gringe every time Jameson appears and don't blame Spider Man for the death of his niece. It should be his major grief against Spidey.
*My favorite moment in this issue was the jab at the Spider Marriage, but maybe it's just because I lurk too much scans daily.
*Nice way to give Parker a dream job; a bit too easy, but at least it makes more sense than this teacher job with regular presence required.
Generation Lost: It's one of the more pathetic death ever for a hero. Especially the fact he is begging for his life. I know most people hate Shattercable, but isn't it a bit harsh?
NA: Ok, they better bring back Dr Voodoo as soon as they can. Giving a minor character a relevant role, just to kill him would be beyond lame.
That's it. Now I'm gonna have to get ASM #648 next time. Thanks a lot, you guys.
is there a subscription option for *just* 'moments of the week'?
At least Cosmo survived Thanos Imperative. For now (if he died there would be no reason to buy comics anymore).
New Avengers, that's just a weak way to "radically change magic in the Marvel Universe" with a character death who really didn't need to die. Even worse will be the cheapening of the death when Voodoo comes back to life in 3-4 months.
huh I think there is some evidence for the anonomous's view over on the power rankings recent debate lol
nice work kirk
How can you destroy the Eye of Agamotto and kill the Sorcerer Supreme and then leave that story to simmer for who knows how long? Perhaps we've never needed a DOCTOR STRANGE ongoing more than we do right now. *sigh*
Fraction's THOR has been just about the biggest disappointment over three issues. Nonsensical characterizations, a plot that moves nowhere, a very quick undoing of the stories told by JMS and Gillen. As a life-long reader and fan of THOR, I've been very displeased. Where's the Fraction who wrote THOR: AGES OF THUNDER and SECRET INVASION: THOR? Those were good! Maybe he needs to have an omniscient narrator to write good Thor stories.
Even if none of the reviewers are reviewing the series (which really sucks), it's not hard to recognize that R.E.B.E.L.S. never goes long without some sort of "Moment of Awesome/Oh ****!" There were one or two other moments I would have added, but otherwise, a fitting choice.
The revival of the Czarnians enmasse would be a great threat to the universe...and fun for Lobo. Not often one gets to genocide their own race twice. I wonder if they cloned his fourth grade teacher.
OK, someone explain brooding Bruce in his murder clothes carrying a scimitar like it's a briefcase...
I'd seen that page with Peter demonstrating his intelligence earlier and I was trying to determine what about it bothered me, and I think I've figured it out. There are two problems that I see with that scene.
1) Peter was just fired rather publicly for falsifying a photograph, and now he's being hired to do research? That doesn't make any sense. At this point, an employer shouldn't consider him to have sufficient integrity to do work like that.
2) Peter's demonstration of his intelligence here only serves to highlight the fact that he hasn't been making any use of his intelligence since BND started. If Peter is so effortlessly smart that he can get hired by a think tank this easily, then why was he nothing better than a freelance photographer for the past two years?
Basically this scene just continues the Spidey "Brain" Trust's habit of changing the status quo to what they want it to be without worrying about questions like "How did this happen?" and "Does this make any sense?" We may love to see Peter finally getting to use his brainpower in his professional life, but that doesn't excuse the sloppiness with which it came to be.
head explosions always mean no resurection :)
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Thor became bonded with Mjolnir in THOR #602.
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It's like 3 pages after the page that you scanned.
Hey wait: wasnt Nova in an Avengers title? And if he had the whole Nova force with him does that mean no more Nova Corps??
Yep, the nova force is all with Rich, and Worldmind kind of shut itself down now that it has nothing left to preserve.
Wonder how long it takes this news to reach Earth this time, and if everyone there just shrugs their shoulders and goes "meh."
I would then fully support the remaining Guardians and Inhumans to take over the world.
@Ken - Reed was monitoring the Fault in a recent Fantastic Four issue. I don't think they'll have a memorial or anything, but it was nice to see some cosmic stuff acknowledged by some of the big guns on Earth for once.
@Klep - Now that there is no brain trust, just Dan Slott, I think we can expect future stories to have a little bit more cohesiveness and not constantly change the status quo to fit a writer's style.
Besides, you are talking about BND here. Of course it would be sloppy. ;)
Avengers Prime gets worse and worse. Horrible shame, what with the lovely art.
It's too bad they couldn't get Bendis to read any of the recent Hela appearances. Like the whole last storyline by Gillen or what PAD is doing with her in X-Factor.
But then no one at Marvel has ever been able to consistently remember that Hela is Thor's niece and Loki's daughter.
It's so much easier just to write one-dimensional characters. Much like every time Bendis touches magic users in the Marvel universe and shows us very clearly that he has absolutely no understanding of those characters, their history or even how their powers work.
thanos imperitive was so bad , such a bad cop out
Nova fans might watch the Avengers to find out what "Nova Antiquus" is. It's one of the prophecies leading up to the Kang/Ultron War.
My guess is that this will be a temporally-displaced version of the original Nova Prime from ancient times, and not Richard Rider. I think Marvel should keep Rider and Quill in limbo until they're ready trouble let Abnett and Lanning do another galactic epic.
I've said it before, but A&L really did a great job and made these second and third string characters their own. If you think about it, Rider and Quill must be analogues of Abnett and Lanning themselves. Think about their collaborative partnership when you look at that pic of the two heroes charging at Thanos.
Any plans to produce an annotated guide to Grant Morrison's Batman? Something that clarifies the connection between 7 Soldiers, JLA Confidential, 52, his Batman Run, RIP, Final Crisis, Batman & Robin, and the Return of Bruce Wayne? It'd be a decent primer to the upcoming Batman Inc.
When is the next Moment of the Week? The column is one of the highlights of my weekends and I'm going through withdrawals
The writer on Batgirl left Cassandra Cain, the last Batgirl, out of his little "intro to the Batman family". An intro that will doubtless be posted many times in the future, to fill in new readers... who will walk away with no idea Cassandra ever existed.
I'm sure that he has his excuses, of course, just as I'm sure that after several years of hearing excuses for DC's treatment of the character and her fans I have no patience for them any more.
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