Matt Graham
Rogue and Gambit #5 – The conclusion! Kelly Thompson for X-Men, please.
Venomized #5 – This thing is emblematic of the Marvel cycle. Venomverse was a dumb, fun idea, with excellent execution that defied the pitch. Poison-X took that energy and mashed it up with the X-Men Blue squad – for me, it worked until the end, when the story beats stopped being about Venom and the X-Men, and focused on dovetailing into Venomized.
Venomized took the dumb, fun idea of the Venomverse, dropped all of the Venomverse characters (No MJ or Host Rider? Outrageous.), and midway in tossed Venom, Carnage, and the X-Men into the background to attempt to put Kid Kaiju over as a dangerous threat, and the most desired hero for the villains to consume.
I made it this far, but **** this event. **** it.
Hunt for Wolverine: Weapon Lost #1 – Not thrilled to be diving into 16 issues to milk the mystery, but the Hunt for Wolverine one-shot surprised me by exciting me. I liked all the ideas presented. I even went back to flip through Legacy after those last few pages.
Yeah, the timeline seems strange now, and comparing the Jean Grey pages from Legacy to their recreation here makes me wonder if ideas were changed, or if the story was delayed, but whatever – I liked how the one-shot decided plot points would be handled, and I liked that it felt like one of the most X-Men books since…well, Soule’s Astonishing is good, but there was a magic here, an X-Men feeling, that Blue shies from and Gold hits wide off the mark from.
It earned my interest, something other books haven’t tried to do in a while. Look, this mini has Daredevil teaming up with Cypher! The mind reels.
Death or Glory #1 – I’m trying to cut books, not add, but Death or Glory has a few things going for it:
It’s penned by Rick Remender. Deadly Class is one of my favourite books, bar none, and Low, Tokyo Ghost, and Black Science have earned my trust in his originals. It’s illustrated by French artist Bengal, whose energetic and fluid drawings have long inspired myself, and are a perfect match for Remender’s idea.
It’s a heist story told on the American highways, with muscle cars, trucks, crooked cops, mob enforcers, and simple stakes: a daughter attempting to save her father.
A story on the knife edge stabbed between Mad Max and the Fast and the Furious is right up my alley.
Avengers #1 – Cautiously optimistic on this one after having not kept up with Avengers since Uncanny Avengers in 2012. Too many titles, too many Avengers, and too many events that kept shaking things up while never getting time to settle. I’m not expecting one title with a focused roster to be the Morrison JLA-type celebration of Marvel I dream of, not after seeing the preview pages.
Still. This is the first time a very long time the Avengers have an A-List roster on paper. It’s good to see Cap, Iron Man and Thor as the core. It’s great to see Panther front and center. I like the rotating cast member idea, right now filled with Dr. Strange.
I’m less sure about Ghost Rider’s inclusion. I’m disappointed She-Hulk’s series was rushed to conclusion, even if she’s on this book. There was a lot to unpack with where that book was heading, and now it’s going to be overshadowed by other big personalities, if not ignored. And Captain Marvel. Carol. One of my favourite Marvel characters, the character that wears the brand as her mantle, and somehow hasn’t had a must-read presence or any real development put into her outside of The Ultimates. DeConnick’s run brought us the costume, but it came with divisive storytelling. The attempt to put her in charge of Alpha Flight as a pesudo-Deep Space Nine attempt was nice in idea and execution…until Civil War II ravaged it all, leaving Christos Gage to limp the back half of the run to conclusion. And Captain Marvel’s latest series was hard to read – the Dark Origins “finale” to the series made effort to skip and rush through the story just to end it.
The book has a roster I like. A single title with a monthly(ish) focus is a good idea for Marvel’s latest relaunch to take time and breathe and maybe stick the landing for once. I don’t have consumer faith that any of this will be taken advantage of to make a head turning, lapsed reader luring, pull list adding title. Prove me wrong.
Go Go Power Rangers #9
Red Sonja #15
Astonishing X-Men #11
X-Men Gold #27
Mike Maillaro
DC NATION #0 – I know it’s only 25 cents, but I don’t think DC should be charging for this book at all. It’s purely promotional for their upcoming books. I am looking forward to MAN OF STEEL and NO JUSTICE, but I still think it should be a freebie.
BETTY AND VERONICA FRIENDS FOREVER #1 – Kind of Archie’s attempt to “have our cake and eat it too.” I did enjoy the MY PAL ARCHIE mini series which was new Archie stories using more of an old school feel than we’ve gotten since the ARCHIE relaunch, so I will pretty much definitely be giving this one a try since it’s in the same mold.
STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION THROUGH THE MIRROR #1 – A weekly series picking up where MIRROR BROKEN left off. I am really looking forward to this one a lot!
VENOMIZED #5 – I am really feeling Venom event fatigue by now. It’s hard to imagine that all these Venom events lately are going to have any kind of lasting impact. They have been fun reads, but at this point, I am just kind of bored with Venom and the Poison and symbiotes.
AVENGERS #1 – Nice timing with AVENGERS INFINITY WAR coming out this week. This is supposed to be a great jumping on point for AVENGERS. Great creative team with Jason Aaron and Ed McGuiness, and the cast seems like your All Star Avengers roster.
ROGUE AND GAMBIT #5 – This has been one of the best X-Men related stories I’ve read in a while. I definitely want to see Kelly Thompson doing more X-Men in the near future!
HARBINGER WARS 2 PRELUDE #1 – I know a lot of people have had a lot of praise for it, but HARBINGER RENEGADES really didn’t do much for me. I am not even sure what HARBINGER WARS 2 is about, but I think Valiant needs to stop doing all these big events and just focus in on the terrific month to month storytelling we get in most Valiant books.
Dark Ark #6
Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers #9
Action Comics Special #1
Batman #46
Curse Of Brimstone #2,
Exit Stage Left The Snagglepuss Chronicles #5 (Of 6)
Green Arrow #40
Green Lanterns #46
Nightwing #44
G.I. Joe A Real American Hero #251
Spawn #285
Astonishing X-Men #11
Captain America #701
Hunt For Wolverine Weapon Lost #1 (Of 4)
Infinity Countdown #3 (Of 5)
Spider-Man #240,
Star Wars #47
Weapon X #17
X-Men Gold #27
Matt Graham: Damn, charging for DC Nation. At least the Dynamite 25 cent issues are a full issue of story.
James Fulton
DC Nation #0 – I have no intention of reading Bendis’s Superman, and will need to be very impressed by whatever Justice League stuff is in this, which is essentially a FCBD offering that DC is charging a quarter for, but I’m obviously going to be picking this up. I just don’t have very high expectations.
Death or Glory #1 – Rick Remender is a master at writing first issues, and for the most part, is able to maintain momentum throughout a series. I’m looking forward to this new title, with art by the terrific Bengal. It’s also cool that the first issue of the new (last?) arc of Black Science comes out this week too.
Harbinger War 2 Prelude – I was going to skip HW2, as I haven’t kept up with the Harbinger Renegades or Faith titles, but then I saw that this prelude is written by the guy who wrote the excellent Secret Weapons, and focuses on Livewire. How that led to me pre-ordering the whole event, I don’t even know…
Spider-Man #240 – I really don’t feel any kind of way about Brian Michael Bendis leaving Marvel, except for how it’s going to affect Miles Morales, my favourite of his creations. There are way too many plot lines to wrap up in this issue, so I’m sure it’s going to frustrate me, but it is what it is. It’s interesting that Marvel has not released any of their plans yet, with regards to what is going to be happening to Bendis’s books (Miles, Jessica Jones, maybe Defenders) now that he’s gone.
This week, I’m also looking forward to new issues of Deathstroke, East of West, Sex Criminals, Stray Bullets, Walking Dead, Star Wars, and Come Into Me.
John Babos
7 books this week.
Action Comics Special #1
Astonishing X-Men #11
Avengers #1
Batman #46
DC Nation #0
Deathstroke #31
Green Arrow #40
Phil Allen
Not a big week for me, but still some pretty great reads.
DC Nation #0 – The first glimpses of No Justice and Brian Michael Bendis’ Man of Steel mini-series, plus The Joker gets involved in Bat/Cat’s wedding plans. And for just $0.25, anyone even remotely interested in any of these stories shouldn’t be passing on this.
Koshchei: The Deathless #5 – Only one issue left after this, and with pretty much collected editions coming out of the Hellboy-verse over the next couple months, I think I’ll take some time to start back-reading the rest of our collection. My wife has been reading all things HB for several years, whereas I have only been reading the last couple years; I know where things are now, it’s time I learned how they got there.
Nightwing #44 – I dropped Nightwing way back in it’s late teens, but I liked Ben Percy’s Green Arrow run so I’ll be picking this up again.
Sex Criminals #24 – It’s been good having this back on the shelves, and with the arc wrapping up I’m hoping it won’t be too long until the next. Understandably Matt and Chip are pretty busy these days, though.
Star Wars #47 – I wondered how long it would take to close the gap between Episodes IV and V, and it seems like we’re getting close. The Mon Cala fleet is almost in Rebel hands, and the solicits for the arc starting in issue #50 indicate something big is coming. This remains one of my favorite series, Kieron Gillen is doing some great work.
Action Comics Special #1
Batman #46
Bombshells United #17
East of West #37
Green Arrow #40
The October Faction: Supernatural Dreams #3
