So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Tom Foolery]

Here’s the Ghost Rider stuff.

Spirits of Vengeance:Spirit Rider oneshot. Kushula is an Apache from the 1800s who bonded with a spirit of vengeance when her tribe was wiped out by US Cavalry troops. She was also that era’s Sorcerer Supreme. When Dr Strange recruited a bunch of Sorcerers Supreme from across time in the short lived Dr Strange and the Sorcerers Supreme ongoing, Kushula got trapped in the present day, and had a couple sporadic adventures in other books. In this oneshot, she teams up with Johnny Blaze to solve some magical whatsit involving Zarathos and some demon who is mucking with her and Johnny’s memories. Whatever, short version is she gets returned to her proper time. Personally, I thought a 19th century Apache/sorcerer/Ghost Rider in the present day sounds way cooler than a ton of other shit Marvel pumps out…like Wolverine…but what do I know.

Ghost Rider 1-6. Benjamin Percy wrote the tenth ongoing GR series, and gave it an old school horror vibe not unlike what is currently going on in the Hulk books. I thought Percy’s Wolverine series was mundane, and his current Hellverine series is closer to this series, but this run was pretty good. It starts out with Johnny Blaze living an idyllic life with his wife, kids and adopted father Crash still alive in a small town. But he’s having nightmares about a flaming skull and the meds his doctor are giving him aren’t helping. When a mysterious dark magician shows up in town, he reveals that the entire town is an illusion keeping Blaze caged and separated from the Spirit within him. When he finally changes into the Ghost Rider, he realizes he's been duped for months and something sinister has been taking hold of the country via the highways and back roads. There’s a hidden demon in him that’s been keeping Zarathos and him separated. Now that he’s back, he starts traveling the country looking for whatever trapped him and the first few issues are just creepy stand alone stories of demons possessing towns, demon truckers, and ritual killings and shit. There’s also a side story with an FBI agent named Talia Warroad, who's got some magical background, tracking the newly reappeared Ghost Rider. Eventually, during a bike race in Colorado where the winner gets a meeting with Mephisto, Johnny gets Wolverine to help him purge the demon from his soul, which turns into its own villain called Exhaust.

GR 7-10. Johnny and agent Warroad team up and begin tracking the demon Exhaust(who has a pretty cool design, with remnants of a corpse melded with a motorcyle) across the country. They eventually find out Blackheart was the one behind the scenes who inserted Exhaust into Blaze. Exhaust is defeated and Blackheart is forced to retreat back to Hell.

GR 11-15. Johnny and Talia continue to work together cleaning up Blackheart’s plans, and come across Dan Ketch’s Spirit of Vengeance. Dan was working with a secret govt project who had promised to separate him from his spirit, so he could have a normal life. But the director of the facility was using the spirit to fuel her machine to go into Hell and rescue her brother who died when they were children. Johnny and Talia rescue Danny and retrieve his Spirit from Hell, while the director gets trapped there with her brother, who was in hell for a reason because he was not nice.

GR 16 was a one off that featured the same villain fighting Johnny, Danny, and Robbie Reyes’ versions of the Ghost Rider in different eras.

GR 17, and two bookend oneshots Alpha, and Omega. A crossover with the Wolverine ongoing called Weapons of Vengeance. This was the story arc that introduced Hellverine. A govt project called Project Hellfire extracted a demon called Bagra-Ghul from a young mutant years ago and attaches it to Logan, turning him into Hellverine. But he overcomes the demon’s influence and he and Ghost Rider destroy the facility. Eventually Daken gets possessed by the demon in subsequent Hellverine books.

GR 18-21. The series concluded with Talia’s backstory as a troubled teen who was recruited into a Mephisto cult as a teenager by a charming man named Simon Skarr, that ended up with her parents dying in a car crash. Now that Simon is back recruiting children again, she and Johnny track him down, and she sacrifices herself to send him back to hell.

Annual 1. Johnny and Talia team up with monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone to stop the newly resurrected Parker Robbins aka The Hood from doing some hoodoo with a stolen magic book.

Ghost Rider:Final Vengeance 1-6. Percy ended his run on the series with this finale miniseries. Mephisto decides Johnny isn’t using Zarathos properly, and takes the Spirit away, leaving him for dead in cave in the Black Hills with a giant spider. Mephisto gives the Spirit to The Hood, who uses it to take over organized crime in Chicago. The dark magician, Zeb(from the first issue of Percy's run) rescues Blaze and they head to Chicago to confront Robbins and get Zarathos back.

Ghost Rider:Vengeance Forever oneshot. Celebrating 50 years of GR, this oneshot had various stories starring Johnny, Danny, Robbie, Vengeance, and Ghost Rider 2099.

Robbie Reyes:Ghost Rider oneshot. A Marvel Voices oneshot featuring a few stories with Robbie and introducing the new teenage roller skating Ghost Rider who’s part of the new New Champions ongoing calling herself Fantasma.

Danny Ketch:Ghost Rider 1-4. Another one of those retro minis set during the original series’ run. By 90s writer Howard Mackie, it involves a Morlock mutant who found a sliver of medallion that gives Danny his powers. He uses it to power up Danny’s enemies like Blackout and Scarecrow so they can kidnap Stacy and Johnny Blaze’s family to lure them into a trap where the mutant can eat them. I’m making it sound dumb, but it would’ve fit right in with the original early 90s series’ tone. Which wasn’t a bad series.

Cosmic Ghost Rider 1-5. Lastly, Frank has “retired” as Cosmic Ghost Rider. But when a bounty hunter comes to the space restaurant where he’s working for a father and daughter and kills the father, Frank lights it up. Then Monark Starstalker and Jane Foster the Valkyrie come looking for him because there’s TWO Cosmic Ghost Riders running around. Apparently, Frank got sucked into a black hole and it separated him to a half dozen Ghost Riders and he needs to figure out how to recombine them all. In the end he gets put back together, but the daughter also has Cosmic Ghost Rider powers…to be continued. This whole CGR thing is a wacky story element that worked for that one arc where it was introduced, thats gone on way too long.

Next up GIJoe:ARAH! The conclusion of the IDW run, and the current continuing run from Skybound. Plus whatever straggler miniseries IDW put out at the end there. And that will conclude the box.

[Tom Foolery]

GIJoe:A Real American Hero. The final issues of IDWs run.

279. Untold Tales. Another classic dogfight issue. The Skystriker, the Conquest, and the Stealth Fighter against a bunch of Rattlers and Hurricanes.

280. The aftermath of the original classic dogfight issue where Wild Weasel and Baroness make it back to base and crash land their Rattler. Then Baroness goes off a different mission.

281-285. The story arc was called Murder by Assassination, but it was mostly stand alone issues that introduced a few new Joes. The team is tracking a new Cobra operative calling himself the vaguely arabic Al Kawbra. He turns out to be Fred series C.G.

286-290 were “spotlight” issues. 286 was a flashback to the LRRP team when Tommy’s LRRP squad was wiped out, and he got folded into Snake Eyes and Wade Collins team. Tommy befriends SE and gets him to come out of his shell. When their CO is killed, Stalker joins the team as his replacement.
287 focused on the new recruits as the Joe team infiltrates Cobra Island and disciver they are turning it into a Casino and Resort. 288 was a Lt Falcon issue where he rescues Law(and Order) and FastDraw froma Borovian splinter cell. And after they all got recruited to the Joe team for a “special assignment” predating their first app way back in issue 60. 289’s spotlight was on Dawn and Helix as they tracked Dr Mindbender and his new C.G. Assistant who go to Revanche to have them supply the new casino with BATs designed to look like card dealers, waitresses, hostesses, etc.
290 was an Oktober Guard issue.

291-295 High Stakes. A team infiltrates the new Cobra Island casino and resort to figure out what Mindbender is doing with the Brainwave scanner. He’s trying to resurrect Snake Eyes using his original download and turn him into a Cobra Assassin. He’s also using Ghengis Khan’s DNA to make another Serpentor. For some reason I’m missing issue 294.

296-300. All In! The final arc had the newly resurrected Ghengis Khan take over and proclaim himself Serpentor Khan. They also resurrect Snake Eyes but the Cobra brainwashing doesn’t take and he reunites with Scarlet. The final issue ended on a cliffhanger with a bunch of the Joes on a C-130 transport that gets its engine blown out and they are headed for a crash landing on the island. Lol.

Larry Hama crams so much story telling into each issue. But the covers I have are inconsistent. There’ll be a great connecting cover image across five covers, and I’ll have four of them, but one will be the variant cover. At some point I would love to start hunting down all the ‘A’ and ‘B’ covers I don’t have for both the Joe books and the Transformers books from IDW, but that’s probably not a realistic goal.

Up next, a few reprint oneshots and a Cartoon miniseries that came out from IDW. And then into the current Skybound run of ARAH, which is up to 315 I think.

[anarky]

I still haven't read these as IDW was so concerned with going to #300, they published right up to the end of their contract and never released a paperback. And now they're also unavailable digitally, and neither Hasbro nor Skybound seem to give a shit.

[Tom Foolery]

That seems like a no brainer for Hasbro to keep up with the TPB series. Especially since ARAH was their only consistent Joe series coming out from IDW for the last few years. Everything else was whiffing hard.

Here’s the small smattering of Joe stuff before Skybound took over.

Snake Eyes:Dead Game 5. Rob Liefeld’s book. I can barely remember the first four issues. Snake Eyes has Thor(?)s hammer and there’s a combat to the death with some guy. Liefeld’s art is decent enough. He overdoes the splash page imagery, probably because its less drawing to do overall. It also didn’t sit right that SE “narrated” the story with his after action report. It takes away from Nate’s mysteriousness to hear/read his inner monologue or whatever.

GIJoe:ARAH Saturday Morning Adventures 1-4. An homage to the Sunbow cartoon, with accurate art simulating the cartoon’s art style. The story had Cobra Commander finding Aladdin’s magic lamp and using the three wishes to facilitate world domination. Cheesy, but fun. There were even single page PSAs at the end of each issue dealing with cyber bullying, stealing, and animal cruelty.

Serpentor Uncoiled. Reprint of issues 49 and 50 that introduced Serpentor and the original battle of Springfield.

Yearbook 2-4. Straight up reprints of the original Yearbooks with new covers(and $6 price tags). Each one had updates on the animated series, and the recaps of the previous year’s worth of stories. Fun nostalgia trip. I remember getting the original issues back in the day.

Yo, Joe! $8 reprint of issues 24, 50, 205, and 286. I reread 24. 50 I had just read in the Uncoiled issue above. And 286 I read a few days ago. It was the LRRP flashback issue.

40th Anniversary Issue. A retelling of Silent Interlude with new artwork by a whole bunch of artists, each one reinterpreting a page from the original story. Then they reprinted the original story. There was also an essay on the significance of that particular issue that was fascinating. All the issues before that were pretty much straight up selling the action figures. But that one introduced the first parts of the ‘lore’ of GIJoe. Questions that were raised and were answered in the Snake Eyes origin stories a few issues later, which would raise more questions. Basically everything after that issue dealing with history of Cobra Commander, Snake Eyes, Stormshadow and ultimately both Cobra and GIJoe started with issue 21.

Best of Snake Eyes. Reprints issues 2, 12, 213(the issue where SE died and Wade became the new SE), and 276.

Best of Stormshadow. Reprints issues 38, 66, 160, and 286. 286 was the LRRP flashback issue. Again.

GIJoe:ARAH 1. Skybound reprinted the original first issue yet again.(How many different reprint issues do I have at this point?) with some minor editorial changes to a speech Hawk gave that Marvel editorial changed from Hama’s original script all those years ago. Skybound let Hama restore the original script. I’d have to look at both versions to see what’s different.

While I was reading all these reprint books, I looked to see if there were any I was missing. I found a few. One was called Cobraaa! There was a SE:Origin that reprinted issues 26, 27. There was another Silent Interlude reprint different from the one above, and an ‘Anniversary Edition’ from 2018. Added them to my want list.

Up next is the daunting pile of 33 issues I bought this week. Spent over $100. Yeesh.
Then after that, the rest of ARAH!

[Tom Foolery]

The first half of this week’s books.

Absolute Martian Manhunter 1. FBI Agent John Jones survived an explosion and now he’s having weird waking dreams of people spewing multicolored smoke from their mouths that reveal their inner thoughts. Trippy. But it’s from Deniz Camp and I’ve been enjoying his Ultimates run.

Absolute Wonder Woman 6. Diana has been sucked down into Hell to confront Hades and explain how she escaped the infernal island. She also explains how she got her cool ass weapons, like her lassos.

Amazing Spidey 70. Last issue. Gets relaunched next month.
Batman 158. Htoosh begins. Batman thinks Joker is rehashing his classic gags, but the plot twist is that Hush is back! Which we all knew, because it’s right there in the title; Halsosh. Hagainsh.

Black Canary 5.
Daredevil 19.
Pool-uminati oneshot.
Deadpool vs Wolverine:Slash ‘em Up oneshot.

Doom Academy 2. OWUD tie in. Zoë has gone missing in a magic book of Latverian fairy tales and she meets the missing girl who disappeared years ago. Doyle and the others begin searching for her with the help of a librarian Doombot. But he reveals the girl, Greta, wasn’t trapped by the book, she summoned it on purpose.

Doom’s Division 1. OWUD tie in. Korea’s super team Tiger Division is now working for Doom. They have mixed feelings about it, but he seems to be doing the world a solid with the free education and healthcare and stuff. They add three new members, Aero, Wave, and Karma with the intent of hunting down the ringleader of the resistance in southeast Asia; Sunfire.

Red Hulk 2. OWUD. Red Hulk, Machine Man, Deathlok, and General Ryker manage to bust out of Doom’s prison. They lose a couple allies along the way. When they get to the surface, a giant swarm of Doombots has formed a Giant Dr Doom controlled by Doom to stop them.

Thunderbolts:Doomstrike 2. After Bucky has been framed for the nuclear destruction of Shelbyville, IN. He recruits USAgent, WWII Ghost Rider Sal Romero, and Sharon Carter to hijack a Doom train full of vibranium. They steal the vibranium, but Walker gets caught by the new Citizen V, aka Contessa Val Allegra deFontaine.

Weapon X-Men 2. Not a OWUD tie in? The first issue was. Nothing’s changed. Deadpool delivers the unconscious Logan to Baron Strucker, who wants to use Logan to make indestructible LMDs. But it was ruse, the easiest way to get Logan in the door was a prisoner, until Wade frees him so they can both stop Strucker’s plan. Also, Cable, Chamber and Thunderbird are wasting pages trying to catch up and serving no purpose to the narrative other than Marvel editorial thought it would sell books if Cable, Wolverine, and Deadpool were all in the same book.

Fantastic Four Three 30. After Doom cured him, Ben is dealing with being human again. He’s all mopey cause he can’t even stop a mugger and gets shot in the hand. He goes to his father-in-law, the Puppet Master to try and make it better, but Alicia talks him into dealing with his loss.

Godzilla vs Fantastic Four oneshot. A new series of oneshots featuring Godzilla vs Marvel heroes. After the FF stops Godzllla, the Silver Surfer shows up and tells them Galactus has made Gidorah his new herald. The FF has to team up with Godzilla to stop him, and SS powers Godzilla up with the power cosmic for the battle. Super fun story from FF writer Ryan North thats ruined by Romita Jr phoning in another subpar art duties.

Green Arrow 22. The Freshwater Killer(s) kidnap the lead detective on the case, and Ollie has to track her down.

Incredible Hulk 23. A lowly forest demon has claimed Charlie’s skin in accordance with the old laws. Hulk has to squeeze the demon out of her body, so she can reclaim in. Then she eats the poor guy. Sorry, but he didn’t do nothing wrong. The abandoned skin was fair game according to the old laws. After, Charlie tells Hulk that Banner mentioned going to see Dr Strange about her condition. Hulk freaks out that she mentions Banner and he ‘leaves’ leaving Banner and Charlie in a muddy field.

Infinity Watch 3. After Star rewrote reality at the last minute before Zavala killed them all, Zavala starts sending unpowered supervillains in this new reality to reacquire his Infinity sword. But the Green Goblin gets ahold of the sword and realizes he can re-rewrite reality with it. Then the Infinity stone hunters from another dimension from the first issue show up.

Up next, the second half of the read pile.

[jjreason]

Saga 72 finally arrived to end the "season". Book is now 2/3 of the way done according to BKV's comments in the letters page. This was very much a stand alone issue featuring what I'm assuming we'll look back on as a turning point (in the war which provides the backstop for the story anyhow).

Either that or they didn't have much else to add & gave us a nice juicy red herring to suck on for the next 6 months.

[Tom Foolery]

I have decided after I catch up on GIJoe, I’m gonna go back and catch up on Saga. I’m about twenty issues behind.

But first, here are the rest of this week’s books.

Justice League Unlimited 5. The League is anticipating the terrorist network Inferno to attack a G20 summit of world leaders. The League and the summit get teleported into a pocket dimension and attacked by aliens. Airwave reveals himself as the mole in the JL and Inferno is revealed as…the Legion of Doom. Awww…boring. Do better Mark Waid.

Marvel Free Previews. Solicits for June’s books.

Rogue:Savage Land 3. Rogue and KaZar and Magneto are up against some zombies and Zaladane is involved. Honestly, I’m not fallowing it very closely. It’s kinda dull.

StarWars:High Republic:Fear of the Jedi 2.
Star Wars:Rise of Skywalker 2.

Superman 24. Superwoman goes on her first official Justice League mission when a bunch of Khunds invade Markovia. Meanwhile, Mercy is trying to get Superman to sign off on selling tech Supercorp has made so they can turn a profit. Then Superwoman returns from Markovia with Superguns. Mercy reveals she’s the bad guy and she’s used the Absolute Power power stealing tech to make a cloned SuperLex!

Ultimate Spider-Man 15. Peter and his family are hiding out in AZ now that Kingpin has targeted their family. Peter and his son use their Spidey powers to free Sandman from a hidden research base. And Kingpin threatens JJJ and Ben about publishing their story by killing every single Ben Reilly on the planet.

Ultimate Wolverine 3. Winter Soldier is sent after Resistance members Gambit, Kitty Pryde, and Natasha Romanoff. Kitty recognizes Logan and she triggers some of his repressed memories.

Wolverine:Revenge 5. The finale. Logan kills Sabertooth and faces off with Colossus’ son. The son uses his aunt’s magik sword to open a portal into Limbo where he impales Logan to the ground and leaves him in hell. Which is exactly where Logan wants to be, in a perpetual fight with the never ending hordes of demons….

Laura Kinney:Wolverine 4. Laura and Bucky team up to head to Iowa where a Hydra general from WWII is hiding out. When they stop to get gas, they run into some anti mutant bigots and have to kick some ass. Also, the writer seems to think there’s lots of abandoned mining towns in Iowa. I can assure you there are not.

Wonder Woman 19. Tom King concludes his first major arc with Diana imprisoning the King of America. But the entire story was the King telling the story of his capture to Diana’s daughter Trinity, and that story isn’t over as it teases the next big arc where Diana is killed by the King’s daughter.

Uncanny X-Men 12. When he was young, Remy received a favor from a mutant loan shark called The Vig. The Vig has returned to collect what he’s owed, and he wants one of the X-Men’s new students. Remy declines and kicks his ass.

X-Manhunt Omega oneshot. While Cyclops is trying to return Xavier to prison, Sage, Storm and other X-Men are advocating for his freedom. Lilandra fixes the tumor in Xavier’s head and he decides he’s retiring and gonna head off into space. Tearful goodbyes are had by all. Professor X is a giant dickwad. He fucked things up on Krakoa and turned the entire world against mutants again, and now he’s all like ‘I would just like to leave all this unpleasantness behind. Including all the mutants being held in the prison that used to be my school. Oh well. Peace out fuckers.’ Fuck off and good riddance you Clown King.

Up next, the rest of GIJoe ARAH. And then Saga.

[Tom Foolery]

I’m all caught up with ARAH!

I’m not gonna recap every issue because I don’t want to spoil it for Chux. But Hama has really stepped up his game when the license transferred over to Skybound. I don’t know if it’s because his new editorial team is jiving better with him than the IDW guys, or if there’s some kind of professional one-upmanshop going on with Josh Williamson’s reboot series(which is awesome) but Hama stepped on the gas for these first 15(and going) issues.
The 301st issue picks up right where the cliffhanger of the last one left off. Then there’s a HUGE plot bomb(literally) that sets events in motion for the next dozen issues. A major character dies. Serpentor teams up with Revanche AI. They try to assassinate Zartan and pin it on Destro, which brings both MARS and the Dreadnoks into the mix. And its pretty much Cobra Civil War 2.0 with the Cobras on Cobra Island invading Springfield, with the ninjas in the mix for good measure. Oh, and Snake-Eyes can speak now. He’s not like a verbose chatty cathy or nothin’, but it’s surreal to see word balloons from him.
314 was a stand alone issue, and 315, which just came out last week, is the fallout of everything that's happened so far, and sets up the next arc.

But goddamn, this book is firing on all cylinders. The art from Chris Mooneyham and Paul Pelletier has been fantastic, and Andy Kubert’s covers are on fire.

After this week’s books, I’m gonna binge some Saga.

[Tom Foolery]

This week’s books

Absolute Green Lantern 1. Abin Sur arrived on Earth and his giant GL Logo crushed an entire town. One of the survivors, Hal Jordan made it out, but he’s been infected with a black hand that kills people and he can’t control it. Jo Mullein shows up with her new GL ring to stop him. Suitably creepy horror vibe to start this new ongoing, the third Absolute title in the second wave.

Absolute Superman 6. Kal arrives on Earth and crashes into the Kent farm. But Jason Aaron immediately turns a familiar story on its head when the govt comes to collect the alien, so he isn’t raised by the Kents in this reality.

West Coast Avengers 6.
Batgirl 6.
Batman:Last Holloween 6.
Birds of Prey 20.
Concert of Champions oneshot. Variant cover.
Daredevil:Cold Day in Hell 1.
Deadpool 13.
Deadpool Kills the MU One Last Time 1. Third miniseries in the trilogy begins.

GIJoe:ARAH 21. A reprint of Silent Interlude.

GIJoe:ARAH Silent Missions:Beach Head. They’re doing a series of ‘Silent’ oneshots for the next five weeks. Beach Head crashes in a helicopter behind enemy lines in an Eastern Bloc-esque country. A couple of young kids help him hide and evade Cobra forces.

Hellverine 5. Akihiro drowns and goes to hell, where Mephisto offers him the choice of accepting Bagra-Ghul or refusing and staying in hell forever. But Aki flips the script by carving a possession cipher into the demon with his claws. So now Bagra-Ghul works for him. When he returns to life, Project Hellfire is there asking him for help with a Hellhulk, whatever that is.

Ironheart:Bad Chemistry oneshot. The daughter of the original Chemistro has teamed up with the Controller to attack Chicago. Riri asks the original Chemstro for help to stop his daughter. Meh.

Marvel Rivals oneshot. Based on the new video game. Some multiverse bullshit that’s just an excuse for heroes to fight each other.

Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur 10th Anniversary Special oneshot. The original creators return for a new story. Lunella recruits a bunch of heroes to deal with Impossible Man. Then she celebrates her 10th birthday. Also, a new story featuring DevilGirl and Moon Dinosaur, set in the far future about Lunella’s great great granddaughter and her pteranodon.

Moon Knight 7. Moon Knight needs Henry Pym to come up with an antidote drug to the Glimmer that Achilles is peddling. But they don’t know how to find Pym, so he has 8-Ball and his ‘fake’ gang of villains the ‘Pool Party’(its just the other Midnight Missioners in stupid billiard themed disguises like ‘Pocket’ and ‘Chalk’) attack Nadia VanDyne aka the Wasp to lure her father out of hiding. Then Hank and Tigra have a heartfelt reunion.

Psylocke 6. Psylocke is having hallucinations after her confrontation with the Taxonimist, so she and Magik head to New Orleans to visit Deathdream, one of the new trainees of Rogue’s Uncanny team. But Rogue assumes they’re there for a fight.

Spider-Boy 18. Bailey’s friend Christina has a set of keys belonging to Mr. Negative. She asks Bailey to help her rob the bank that holds the deposit boxes the keys go to. Spider-Man shows up assuming Bailey is there to stop the bank robbery, not instigating it. Then Mr. Negative shows up…

Miles Morales 32. God War part 1. Anansi gets Miles into a beef with Ares’ herald Zip Zyphyr as an excuse to break some truce between the Olympian and African pantheons. Thor and Hercules show up and stop the fight, but then Ares and his newly powered up Agent Gao arrive and challenge Anansi to a battle. He accepts. Miles is like ‘what the fudge-aroonies??’

Immortal Thor 22. Okay, so this is an amazing issue. Al Ewing wrote it in such a way, that each page can be read leading into the following page, or the preceding page, based on a coin flip. I read each page, and then re-read both the preceding page, and the next page, and the story works. All the way back to the beginning of the book as if you were flipping ‘tails’ the entire time. Solid, clever story telling device. The premise is that Thor and Skurge are in the Forever City, trying to get to the center of it, but it’s a maze of both time and space.

All New Venom 5. Venom and Agent Sleeper(Sleeper+Rick Jones) fight and defeat MODOK. Robbie Robertson visits Paul Rabin, Dylan’s current guardian, with his hypothesis about who the new Venom really is. And the final page of the issue reveals Mary Jane Watson is Venom.

X-Men 14. While searching for a missing girl from town, who is close to Idie, Quentin Quire gets ambushed by Wyre. When Idie finds the little girl, she reveals her unborn sibling that she absorbed in the womb is the mutant and it(not she) is currently controlling the girl.

Awwww yeah, time for Saga! Bring tissues.

[anarky]

Marvel spoiled Venom's ID on a Facebook post WEDNESDAY MORNING.

I'll admit I'm out of it with the Spidey titles, but that seems unspeakably wrong.

[Tom Foolery]

Binged Saga from issues 55 up to the current issue 72 which begins another hiatus on the book. Fiona and Brian are 2/3rds done with their 108 issue opus.

I won’t spoil it. Although I know very few of us are reading it, this is a Firefly/Game of Thrones situation where eventually you’ll all want to read this masterpiece from the beginning. Two heartbreaking moments happened during this binge. First off, their spaceship/tree/home was set ablaze, leaving them homeless and second Petrichor killed Sophie, which might be in the top three gut punch moments in this entire series. The reasoning being that surely, I wouldn’t call it plot armor perse, but the tragic backstory of Sophie and overcoming it might preclude said heartwrenching moment from happening. But that’s on me, assuming shit.

Anyway, y’all should read Saga. Do the TPBs have all the letters pages? If not, read the floppies. His annual questionnaires and subsequent answers from readers, as well as the annual costume contests, are as much a highlight as the story itself.

Up next. I was going to just start in on the next box, which is Dark Ages(a mini Marvel event from a few years back), up thru the current One World Under Doom event(which I’m keeping current with already). But I need to tackle the growing Star Wars back log, and I have another big batch of current DC books I bought at a show a couple months ago. So I decided, I’m doing all three at once. I’ll read a SW series, a DC backlog starting with Titans, and a series from the ‘D’ box and work thru all three piles simultaneously. We will see how it goes.

[Tom Foolery]

Last week’s books.

Amazing Spider-Man 1. Legacy issue 965. I’m about 90 issues behind on Amazing. But I flipped thru this one to see what Spidey’s up to. Peter is looking for a job(isn’t he always?) and finds one at the Rand Corp thanks to a friend from junior high. But he has to cut the interview short when the Rhino attacks. Rhino is being manipulated into a rsge filled frenzy and his heart gives out, but Spidey does CPR on him. Spidey investigates Rhino’s apartment and a hidden agitator sets off his Spidey sense. Also Roderick Kingsley and a mysterious other person are plotting in the shadows… There was also a back up story about Norman Osborn with horrendous JRJr art.

Absolute Batman 7. Bruce’s childhood chum, Matches Malone, was undercover at the new Ark M mega-prison facility, but he dies from a gross infection. Batman investigates and meets Absolute Mr. Freeze.

Batman & Robin 20.
Batman:Dark Patterns 5.
Daredevil 20.

Doctor Strange of Asgard 2. Loki claims innocence for the death of Asgardian sorceress Hulda. After Strange ascertains Loki might be telling the truth, he enlists the help of a few new Asgardian friends to solve the mystery of who wanted her dead.

GIJoe:ARAH Silent Missions: Jinx oneshot. Jinx plants a bomb and escapes from a Cobra facility in 30 seconds. Each page is one second of silent action.

Incredible Hulk 24. Banner and Charlie go to the Sanctum Sanctorum to ask Dr. Strange for help, but Clea is there instead. But it’s not Clea! The monsters replaced Clea in order to get the wolfskin back from Charlie. Hulk fucks them up, but Thor shows up on the last page.

Phoenix 10. Jean convinces Adani to give up the portion of the Phoenix Force that Jean gave her, so she go back to being a normal kid. On the last page, it’s revealed that Jean’s sister Sara is still alive and she’s in some alien cult or something.

Spider-Gwen 12. We flashback to how Gwen acquired a cosmic cube back on Earth-65(which is why the TVA is hiding her on Earth-616 at the beginning of this series) and Loki is trying to convince her to give up the power because she’s in over her head. Phoenix shows up on the last page.

Star Wars:Jedi Knights 2.
Storm 7. While on a mission in Brazil to stop a giant anaconda infused with Super Soldier Serum, Storm is confronted by several storm gods from different pantheons. After she fends them off, she gets ready for round two, and is confronted by Thor.

Action Comics 1085. Superman has a nifty white Super costume to fight cybernetic polar bears unleashed by Kilg%re the sentient AI program. Meh.

Transformers 19. Flashback to Megatron getting kidnapped by the Quintessons and forced to fight endless tests against hordes of Sharkticons.

Ultimates 11. Thor and Sif lead an insurgency against Loki in the Nine Realms.

LK Wolverine 5. Laura and Bucky fight a Nazi whos been hiding out in Iowa since WWII. After defeating his giant robots, Laura stabs him.

Uncanny X-Men 13. The new students go off on an adventure and find a secret mausoleum full of dead mutants from the beginning of the 19th century.

Up next, this week’s books.

[Tom Foolery]

This week’s books.

Absolute Flash 2. The ‘rogues’ continue to hunt Wally in the desert. Wally’s conciousness keeps slipping thru the time stream, so he’s experiencing memories and the present simultaneously( Dr Manhattan-esque) including more details on how Barry died. Then he gets a vision of two distinct futures, one where he’s a superhero, and the other where he’s a monster.

West Coast Avengers 6.

Detective 1096. The conclusion of the story. Batman figures out the serial killer is actually Joe Chill’s ex-wife, not his daughter. He saves Joe’s life and the other Bats shut down the child prison where the company was harvesting orphan blood to keep people young.

Cable:Love and Chrome 4.
Sam Wilson:Capt America 4.
Catwoman 75.
Daredevil:Unleash Hell 4.
DC x Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Superior Avengers 1. One World Under Doom tie in. Kristoff Vernard utilizes his father’s time machine to go into futures where Doom’s takeover was a success to recruit heroes to come back and serve as his super-team. Killmonger, Onslaught, Abomination, Ghost, and the female Doc Ock are on the team. But they’re secretly there to stop Doom from fucking up the future by assassinating him now.

GIJoe:ARAH Silent Missions:Spirit oneshot. Spirit Iron Knife and his eagle Freedom stumble on a secret MARS facility in the woods thats experimenting on cybernetic animals. They have to take down a dude in a giant armored power-suit.

Godzilla vs Hulk oneshot. Set in the 70s. Thunderbolt Ross and Banner are on a successful Kaiju hunting task force that has already taken out Fin Fang Foom, Surtur, and the Hulk(?!) and have now set their sights on Godzilla. When Dr Demonicus, another member of the team, double crosses them by unleashing a kaiju amalgam of all the previously killed monsters, Banner releases the Hulk and reveals he had Rick Jones framed as a patsy and killed. Hulk infuses a dying Godzilla with his gamma blood and the Hulk-Godzilla defeats the evil new kaiju. Fun stuff from Gerry Duggan.

Iron Man 7. OWUD tie-in. Stark has to convince Doom’s agent Victorious that accepting Stark’s offer to supply arms to Latveria is the best way to maintain order in Doom’s new world. But since this is a Marvel comic, Iron Man has to fight Victorious with his giant sword.

Nightwing 125. A cop with questionable ethics is gunned down, and the main suspect is a Bludhaven boogeyman who preys on dirty cops called Captain Hallow. Cool new villain.

Power Man:Timeless 3. Power Man has to team up with Apocalypse on Arrako to fight Aeon the Blade. But then Aeon uses his blade to split the Void away from Luke and form a separate entity.

Spectacular Spider-Men 14. The Spiders find and rescue Billy Connors with the Lizard’s help. Based on the cover of the next issue, I suspect that this series is coming to a close. It has that ‘final issue’ vibe where all the characters are posing in a group shot.

Summer of Superman Special. Oneshot setting up all the upcoming story lines for the Superman books. Validus is time skipping and fights Superboy in the past before skipping in on Lana Lang and John Henry Iron’s wedding in the present and causing a bunch of tornadoes in the process. The twist is that Booster Gold sent Validus from the future as a warning. A future where the Legion of Super Heroes are all evil Darkseid acolytes.

Star Wars:Legacy of Vader 3.
Titans 22. Didn’t read it, but Deathstroke is back.

Ultimate Wolverine 4. The art for the entire issue is a metaphor of a wolf attacking a bear. The captions are three scientists freaking out because ‘the subject’ is awake and breaking free of his restraints. The aftermath, we see Logan has killed a bunch of security and scientists before being corralled. So they stretched out three pages worth of storytelling into a full issue. And we find out they’re using Jean/Phoenix to keep Logan in check.

Web of Venomverse:Fresh Brains oneshot. Leading in to the upcoming Spider vs Venom verses event, we get three stories of multiverse Venoms. One is a mouse in a lab. One is Katie Power from Power Pack. And the third is a Venom who succeeded in killing Spider-Man, and then felt bad, so continued his legacy as a reluctant hero.

Wolverine 8 aka Legacy issue 400. The Adamantine is possessing Romulus, until Logan stabs Romulus in the mouth. Then the Adamantine just forms itself into a golden samurai or whatever and vows revenge after Logan rejects his/its offer to bond with him. Then it promptly fucks off somewhere. In a second story Arcade kidnaps Logan and the Wendigo kid and puts them in one of his mazes so Logan can watch the Wendigo eat some hostages(A. How convenient that Arcade can gas Logan and keep him unconscious long enough to put him in this elaborate maze designed SPECIFICALLY for Logan. And B. Why does Arcade give a flying fuck about a kid possessed by the Wendigo curse enough to want to teach Logan a lesson by having the kid eat innocent people in front of Logan? Sloppy fucking writing.) In the third story, Logan gets a letter…from his mom. Who is STILL ALIVE. There was also a fourth Elseworlds tyoe story about a Wolverine samurai in ancient Japan.
Since this was Legacy issue 400 we got a cool cover montage of all 400 issues. Apparently, Wolverine:Origins was not part of the legacy numbering, but Wolverine:Weapon X was.

Wonder Woman 20. When Diana’s mother is accused of killing Ares after they had a one night stand. Diana calls in Batman to prove Hippolyta’s innocence. Zeus gives them 24 hours to solve the crime. After that, Hippolyta will be made mortal, and Batman will be sacrificed.

World’s Finest 38. First part of a crossover between WF and the new JL Unlimited series. Kinda intriguing, given that WF takes place in the past, and JL United in the present. In this first part, in the past, Batman, Superman, and Flash team up to stop Gorilla Grodd from brain swapping Superman to take over the world.

X-Factor 9. General Mills recruits ex-members Havoc and Frenzy on an unsanctioned mission to recover the AI system the Chechens stole last issue before Doom can use it to make brain controlling software. The ‘real’ team was dispatched to apprehend Polaris, leading to a showdown between her and Angel. I feel like this book doesn’t know what it wants to be.

Zatanna 3. Having been stabbed by the thingamajiggie sword, Zatanna is ‘trapped’ in a 1940s type noir film scenario where she has to fight Clayface.

Up next, I’ve been trying to make a dent in the Star Wars back log. It’s slow going.

[Tom Foolery]

I read the first three issues of Star Wars:High Republic way back in August 2022. Can’t recall anything about them, and my recap here was vague and made the series out to be uninteresting. So, picking up where we left off…

SW:High Republic 4-8. The Jedi of the Starlight space station have been tasked with keeping order in the Outer Rim. There’s too many new characters to bother remembering their names. This first arc is about an alien sentient plant fungus called the Drengir spreading its evil from planet to planet and infecting inhabitants. Some of the Jedi get infected. One guy loses his arm. They eventually defeat/imprison the plant. They discover it was unleashed by a group of militant space pirates called the Nihil who are making a power play to usurp the Republic’s influence in the Outer Rim.

SW:HR 9-14. Two Jedi go undercover in the Nihil to learn what they're planning. The Nihil have some secret alien weapon that causes the Jedi’s connection to the Force to go tits up and they get scared to death. As the Jedi try to find a defense against this mysterious weapon, the situation escalates to where the Nihil attack the Starlight station and blow it up!! The series concluded with issue 15, but for some reason I never got it, so I don’t know how it concludes.

SW:HR: Trail of Shadows 1-5. Running concurrently with the second arc of the series above, an esteemed Jedi is killed by the mysterious Nihil weapon. A Jedi investigator is teamed up with a regular private investigator, who moonlights as a lounge singer(or maybe she’s a lounge singer who moonlights as an investigator) to figure out who killed the Jedi. The series culminates with the Starlight exploding!

SW:HR: Eye of the Storm 1-2. A two part series by Charles Soule that gives us the origin story of the leader of the Nihil. And also better explains that the mysterious weapon the Nihil are using is an alien creature that feeds on Force connections. The series concludes with the Starlight exploding! So, all three of these series conclude on the same cliffhanger…and I don’t know how any of it ends. Bleh. And the teaser at the end of the series says the High Republic continues in the fall with the Jedi Quest. I looked it up, and it was an entirely different series released by Dark Horse and now goes for $25. What the ass? Of all these first HR series, this last one was the only one I was fully entertained by. The history of his people and the rise of Marchion Ro to the leadership of the Nihil was interesting.

SW:High Republic 1-10. The second series didn’t follow the first series at all, so I was confused. It actually goes back several decades earlier. The series takes place on the moon of Jedha where several different factions of Force users(not just Jedi) try to co-exist. One such faction tries to rile up the citizens of Jedha against the other factions and everything goes to shit. It was eh. Again, they just throw a bunch of new characters at us, without justifying why we should care about any of them.

Up next a few more HR minis, and one more HR ongoing. I started with the High Republic stuff, partly because, continuity wise, it’s first, but also because I felt it was gonna be the least interesting of the SW stuff and I wanted to get thru it while I was motivated.

[anarky]

The thing that's either a blessing or a curse with High Republic is that it's incredibly intertwined. You have to read all the adult novels, young adult novels, kids' novels, adult comics, all-ages comics, and manga, as well as a few audio dramas, to get the full story. All together, it's a really solid narrative. I can't imagine reading any one of them and really being able to follow what the hell is going on. It's quite a gamble to do something this ambitious, particularly with mostly new characters. I'm not sure if it's paid off for Lucasfilm, at least in the most literal sense that it should make a lot of money. It's not even comparable to SOTE; at least that was designed so any one part was still a full story.

Also, the galaxy was incredibly gay during the High Republic. I say that as someone with no issues with representation. But when something like 95% of the characters are not cisgender heterosexuals, and the other 5% are Yoda and Yaddle, it does make you wonder how there was enough procreation to even get to the Original Trilogy.