So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Diabolical]

House of X and Powers of X were so god awful and deviated so far from what the X-Men are supposed to be I thought Rian Johnson wrote it.

[Tom Foolery]

The first fourth of the ‘M’ box are the Monthly Preview issues, solicits for whatever is coming out four months from now. The good news, I don’t need to read them, and it puts a dent in getting thru this box. The bad news, I keep those and bag and board them because I have a problem. And some Marvel calendars and stuff. But here’s what’s after that…

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars:BattleWorld 1-4. Tom DeFalco and Pat Olliffe offer up a retro mini that is LITERALLY set between two specific panels of the 12th issue of the original crossover event series. While I get the quirky premise and concept for this series; The original Secret Wars toyline had a bunch of action figures like Falcon, Iceman, Constrictor, Zemo, etc that weren’t in the original comics, soooooo……they did a series within the series to “correct that”. Haha. Clever. But not ‘spend $16 on a unnecessary filler series’ clever. Which I did.

Marvel Unleashed 1-4. They’ve done this before, it was called the Pet Avengers. Take all the heroic pets like Redwing, Lucky the Pizza dog, Chewie the cat(flerken), and Lockjaw and Throg, and give them their own little adventures. This time, a little dog is looking for his missing owner, who turns out to be an A.I.M. Scientist who has inadvertently given Blackheart a portal to invade Earth from Hell. The pets stop him. This was ridiculous and I loved every issue of it. More please.

Women of Marvel oneshot(s). Every year, Marvel does a oneshot that focuses on its strong female characters in stories written and drawn by female creators. There was a two issue mini back in 2011 that I am missing, but they’ve done 4 oneshots in the last 4 years. As with all anthology books, YMMV, with some stories being better than others. But ultimately, none of the stories are imperative because anything monumentally character altering is not going to happen in an anthology book. Which is also the case with…

Marvel Voices oneshot(s) several (almost two dozen have come out in the last five years) oneshots that focus on black, or latinx, or LGBTQ, or Asian, or Indiginous characters by similar creatives. The latter ones shifted away from exclusive minorities, and had themes like Spider-Verse, or Wakanda, or Avengers, etc, but the intent is the same. There’s some cool stories, and completely forgettable stories. There’s also some interesting interviews with creators who have been in the industry a long time, like Larry Hama, and Denys Cowan(just to name a couple) reflecting on how it was being minorities and slowly getting more characters that reflected them into the comics. There’s also some cool historical recaps of characters like Monica Rambeau, and the original White Tiger, etc who paved the way for more inclusiveness. It’s pretty interesting stuff, but I regret binge reading them ALL AT ONCE. I feel I did it a disservice, plowing thru them just to get them read. Also a tad surprised(that might not be the right word, as I don’t care beyond the fact I was unaware) at how many Marvel characters have been retconned as queer. Did you know Black Cat is bi? Did you know Betsy Braddock(formerly Psylocke) and Rachel Summers are dating? Did you know Hercules and Noh-Varr are in a bear/twink relationship? Huh.

Marvel Zero oneshot. They collect all the FCBD stories and later on in the summer, they put $ on it and resell it.

Marvel Must Have freebie. This one had Spider-Man/Deadpool 1, Ms. Marvel 1, and Thor 2. So the opposite of the Zero issue. Three issues that were initially like $12 and they give it to you for free. To entice you into buying TPBs.

Up next, Marvels, Mary Jane, Midnight Sons, Miracle Man and Moon Girl

[Tom Foolery]

The Marvels 1-12. A little context, since we’ve been discussing the sliding timescale elsewhere, certain Marvel characters have backstories attached to certain immovable world events; Reed Richards and Ben Grimm originally served in the Korean War, Tony Stark was injured in “south east Asia”, Frank Castle and others were in Vietnam, etc. To get around this, Mark Waid did an all encompassing History of the Marvel Universe covering the Big Bang and Galactus all the way up to the present. Part of this streamline/retcon was to make a ficticious country called Sin-Cong or Siancong where a nebulously “not so long ago” major conflict took place. This has now become the defacto foreign war for everybody.
Enter Kurt Busiek and artist Yildiray Cinar, who grafted together a pretty fun eras spanning adventure that focuses on this ficticious country from the 1940s up to the present. Busiek’s a continuity nerd to rival the late great Mark Gruenwald, so he’s cleverly using Invaders era villains, with the Monster comics of the 50’s and connecting pre-FF Reed and Ben with other characters like Crash Simpson(Johnny Blaze’s step dad), George Tarleton(aka MODOK), all to get to the present day where a black dome covers Siancong and Capt America, and an eclectic mash up of heroes have to figure out how to stop the dome from spreading. And he was doing a funtastic job UNTIL…the heroes get sucked into a pocket dimension that’s just a guy running a comic store and he’s got an old issue that tells the origin of the Goddess that’s trapped in the FORM OF A COUNTRY and shows them how to make things right. Fuckin’ lost me right there, Kurt. So, the entire maxi-series served to flesh out this fictitious country, and then mostly erase it from continuity and everyone’s minds why they fought a war there. Such bullshit.

Mary Jane and Black Cat:Beyond oneshot. Set during the time Peter was in the hospital and Ben Reilly was running around as the Beyond Corp’s Spidey spokeperson. Parker Robbins shows up in Peter’s hospital room and demands Felicia track down his missing Hood and steal it back for him. MJ and Cat have to break into Tombstone’s penthouse and steal the Hood, but then they doublecross Robbins.

Mary Jane and Black Cat 1-5. Part of the Dark Web mini event. Dark Web was basically Inferno 2.0 when the now evil Ben Reilly teams up with Madilyn Pryor to unleash hell on NYC again. But this particular series has MJ and Felicia in Limbo trying to recover Belasco’s soulsword for him so he can take a shot at reclaiming his throne. The girls team up with S’ym(with the clear understanding that they will betray each other at some point) to recover the sword, and then they trick Belasco at the end. Annnnddd….Mary Jane has superpowers now. WHAT THE FUCK? She has this device on her arm that she spins like a slot machine, and it gives her RANDOM FUCKING SUPERPOWERS. Lawd, give me strength.

MotU:Revelation 1, 4. A couple issues of the prequel to the new Netflix cartoon. Kevin Smith wrote it. Meh. I think I bought the first issue, and found the other one in a quarter box.

Midnight Suns 1-5. They changed Sons to Suns because it’s gender neutral. A new team of occult heroes(and Wolverine, because that jackhole needs to be on every superteam ever. *sigh*) have to stop an apocalypse forseen by one of the students at Strange Academy. Not much happens, but Agatha Harkness gets de-aged from her old granny look to a MILF because of the MCU.

Miracleman 0. A bunch of short stories to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the character’s modern age reboot in the 80s. And yet another tease of him showing up in main 616.

Miracleman:Silver Age 1. Gaiman and Buckingham finally getting to finish their original 80s story. This was a 7 issue series, but I only got the first one.

Moon Girl. There were three one shots; Miles Morales, Avengers, and X-Men. Someone kidnaps Devil, and Luna goes to Wakanda, the moon, and Counter-Earth to find the High Evolutionary and get her partner back. When she gets back home, her parents finally figure out she’s been amateur superheroing. Uh oh!

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur 1-5. A new miniseries has Luna start up a roller derby team to make friends. One of them turns out to be a nine-year old influencer who is secretly a Kree spy who is brainwashing people in NYC with hair care products. Look, this was a fun quirky series and I didn’t dislike it, but the most realistic thing was the nine year old super genius is best friends with a time displaced T-Rex. Pre-teen Roller Derby teams? Nine year old influencers having the clout to bamboozle half of New York? My suspension of disbelief only gets you so far…

Up next, Moon Knight, Ms Marvel and whatever's in the back of the box. It’s almost finished.

[anarky]

"tRANSFORMERS" Volume 1 (collects 1-6)

What the fuck?

This is like buying a blu-ray because the movie is directed by Martin Scorsese, and it's supposed to be a glorified pornographic Led Zeppelin music video starring Natalie Portman, and then you put the disc in, and it's Marjorie Taylor Greene having aardvarks shit all over her nude body.

How the fuck did even the dull IDW reboot get canned for this?

I forced myself to read it all since I paid for it. I'm not sure even loyalty to the franchise will make me pay for more. This isn't me bitching that I don't like the direction. This is an objectively dogshit comic book. Everyone involved in the making of this turd should be executed for crimes against humanity.

The art blows. I can do abstract, but this isn't fucking Stretch Armstrong and Optimus Prime shouldn't be able to suddenly make his arms three times their normal length (and rubber, to boot). There were multiple points in the book where I could not decipher what the fuck was going on. And I read a lot of fucking Rob Liefeld's Image dreck.

If you took two special ed kindergarteners, filled them with cheap whisky until they were on the brink of death, then bashed in their heads with a wrench, they could make a better comic using only cat litter for art supplies.

The story was worse than the art. There's no characterization whatsoever; what little attempt at it is "Hey, you remember this guy! Here he is!" Everyone is the fucking same. Absolutely nothing follows any sort of narrative logic. "We're all almost dead from lack of power? Why don't I have a protracted battle? Hey, look, here's another Autobot, repaired with absolutely no explanation! Good thing we apparently got more power somewhere!" Or "Hey, I'm going to randomly walk into the fucking Matrix for no reason."

The only sense I could make of the story was that the "writer" has a weird hard-on for forcing crappy torture porn into the framework of an 80s cartoon.

I'd seen spoilers about Optimus getting Megatron's arm. What the shit? No, not why did they do that (because it's actually not a terrible idea). But he tears his own arm off to beat up some generic 'Con (who shouldn't be generic), then suddenly has Meg's arm, then a few pages later there's a random cut to armless Megatron IN WHAT LOOKS LIKE A DIFFERENT FUCKING CONTINENT! Really, what the shit happened? I'm guessing the same indecipherable bullshit with Decepticons scavenging each other for parts then mysteriously being fine and dandy and all talking the same again. Except Soundwave, who some dumb fuck thought should have borderline unreadable blue speech bubbles.

And this shit is actually popular? Seriously? How goddamned stupid are people? This honestly makes Chuck Austen look like fucking Neil Gaiman.

Is the G.I. Joe this bad? I know it's getting good reviews, but so is this shit. Even if it's fucking amazing, I don't know if I want to follow it if it's closely tied to this "tRANSFORMERS" fuckery.

Oh, I also read Void Rivals Volume 1. I got it whenever it came out, read up to the gratuitous Jetfire appearance, and fell asleep. And didn't want to pick it up again. I figured if TF built from that, I should read it first, so I finally did today. Did Kirkman have a massive stroke that destroyed 90% of his brain? If not for following it up with "tf," this would be the worst comic I've read in years. At least it seems like this whole fucking volume could've been the premise of a solid Claremont single issue, and he might've made me give half a shit about either alien dumbfuck.

[anarky]

Just realized I read two trade paperbacks today and they both sucked.

This was actually a pretty good day otherwise, and I fucking ruined it. I should re-read the first fifty issues of Wolverine Vol. 2 and cleanse my palette now.

[Tom Foolery]

The Joe books are the only good thing about this Skybound launch.

I have enjoyed both of Williamson’s Joe minis. And I fucking hate Duke, mostly because of the cartoon, but he’s not so annoying in this one. They changed his origin so he’s a USAF pilot instead of Army, but that’s the extent of my lore rage to this point. You may not like the Cobra-La stuff either, but compared to last few attempts IDW did with GIJoe, this stuff is great.

[Tom Foolery]

Moon Knight! After the events of an Avengers arc where Moon Knight helped Konshu take over the world, Konshu was imprisoned in Asgard, and Marc Spector was left without his benefactor. This is where Jed McCay starts MK’s ninth ongoing series. Spector has returned to NYC to open his Midnight Mission, a haven for those who travel the night.

MK 1-7 The new series slowly builds up it’s new supporting cast. Marc is seeing an Avengers’ ordered shrink as part of his rehabilitation. There’s a nerdy neighborhood kid named Terry. MK has rescued a few vampires who were turned against their will, including a teenage girl named Reese who helps at the mission. Tigra, his former West Coast Avengers teammate shows up, but she’s secretly there to keep tabs on him for T’Challa. And a former Hydra agent calling himself Soldier, who is directionless and pledges himself to the Mission after MK saves his mom from zombies(or something). There’s also a new secret mastermind setting up confrontations to test MK. At first, Marc thinks it’s a Dr. Badr, who turns out to be Konshu’s other Fist calling himself Hunter’s Moon. But their animosity turns to reluctant allies, when the true villain reveals himself; Terry is Zodiac, and he wants to tear Marc down, so he can build him up as a better unhinged vigilante without morals. To that end, he blows up the Midnight Mission and almost kills Marc and Soldier. MK begins roughing up former allies of Zodiac at the Bar with No Name trying to track his new nemesis down. Game on!

8. Was a standalone issue for Hunter’s Moon because Marc was incarcersted during the Devil’s Reign event(Mayor Fisk vs all of NYC’s vigilantes). Badr fights a new version of Stained Glass Scarlet.

9. Marc enlists the aid of an obscure Dr Strange “villain” the House of Shadows. It’s pretty much an entity that possesses buildings to become a haunted house and MK asks it if it wants to be the new Midnight Mission. Fucking great.

10-12. Zodiac continues to escalate things by sending endless villains to test Marc, and Hunter’s Moon is killed. Konshu resurrects him, but lets them know, since he’s incarcerated his waning power means the next time one of the Fists dies, it’s permanent. Zodiac and a bunch of villain recruits attack the mission and Reese gets shot and the bullet passes thru her and kills Soldier, but her vampire blood accidentally turns him. The battle reaches its climax and MK is about to kill Zodiac, when the Steven Grant persona emerges and stops Marc. None of MK’s new allies knew he had D.I.D.

13-14. With Zodiac now incarcerated, MK sets his sights on The Structure, a vampire enclave that has set itself up as a pyramid scheme to recruit more vampires. And also all of Marc’s identities reaching an understanding about how they need each other.

15-18. Moon Knight and his allies work their way thru the vampire heirarchy until they confront the Struture’s leader, The Tutor. They pretty much wipe out the Structure and leave one vampire alive to take a message back to Dracula, NYC is Moon Knight territory and off limits.

19-25. A new threat begins making itself known. Someone is killing all the old members of MK’s Shadow Cabinet(from his early 90’s series). A new Midnight Man is running around breaking into rich people’s houses, stealing shit. Tigra goes to stop him, and turns out to be Marc posing as his old nemesis to fund the Mission. The new threat reveals himself to be a new Black Spectre, and he’s recruiting all the villains MK has defeated in thid run, including Zodiac. And he’s building some kind of device under NYC that will turn everyone in the city crazy and kill each other.

26-30. The end of the series. The new Black Spectre turns out to be Dr. Plesko, one of the Shadow Cabinet who got killed. He almost sets off his sinister machine to destroy the city, but a mortally wounded Marc manages to destroy the machine as the building he is in explodes. Reese, Tigra, Hunter’s Moon, Soldier, and 8-Ball agree to honor Marc’s legacy and continue the Mission.

MK Annual 1. Jack Russell kidnaps Marc and Marlene’s daughter to fulfill some kind of prophecy that will end all werewolf curses.

MK Annual 1. Marvel is physically incapable of putting a ‘2’ on an Annual anymore. This was part of the Contest of Chaos arc. MK is fighting Korean super man Taegukgi from Tiger Division. They are fighting over some magic crystals in the Pine Barrens of NJ until MK figures out what’s going on and is like ‘fuck it’ you can have them.

Moon Knight:Black White and Blood 1-4. Anthology series told with B/W art except for red hilights. Three short stories per issue. As with all anthologies, some are good, some are not.

Moon Knight:City of the Dead 1-5. When a young boy is assaulted by Jackal cult members, Marc has to go into the Duat, Egyptian City of the Dead to rescue the boy’s soul. There he is assaulted by the Jackal Knight, his dead brother Randall and the new avatar of Anubis, who has gathered an army of MK’s dead nemeses that he’s killed over the years, like Midnight. But aiding Marc is the Scarlet Scarab, aka Layla El-Faouly his dead ex-GF who is now the defender of the Duat as the avatar of Tarawet(they had to make the MCU character into a comics character). The kid who was attacked turns out to be Osiris in mortal form, and he sacrifices himself to waken the egypitan god. Thankful, Osiris sends Marc back and lets the kid live, and Layla is also alive at the end, but Marc doesn’t know it.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight 1-5. The current series that just started. Reese and the others are carrying on Marc’s Mission work, when a new Moon Knight shows up and demands they leave the Mission. After several issues, they figure out it’s Max Coleridge aka The Shroud trying to take on Marc’s legacy. Tigra convinces him that it’s not his legacy to bear and he agrees to stop, and then he burst open and all the dark force inside him blacks out the sky because Blood Hunt begins!

Okay, I’m loving how Jed McCay is taking so so many underutilized obscure characters and giving them new life, rather than just creating new ones. Marc’s shrink is Andrea Sterman, a character from Nomad’s 90s series that worked into Thunderbolts and eventually the V-Batallion. He turned 8-Ball from joke Sleepwalker villain into a redeemable ally. He took a couple shitty Speedball villains and turned them into legit assassins. One of the first villains to show up is Rampage, who was an old Defenders/Wonder Man villain, that became Punisher’s new microchip, and then the second Jigsaw. There was an iteration of the Enforcers that only had one previous appearance in Web of Spider-Man when he was wearing the Spider-Armor, and McCay manages to give them new life. I kept having to look up the obscure one off villains he was recycling, like Commodore Planet from an old Power Man issue. He re-used a freakin’ haunted house from Dr. Strange!! Haha what?! He’s also really good at referencing previous MK stories, like mentioning the failed TV show from Bendis’ run or acknowledging the ShadowKeep from the end of the 90s run. In short, he’s threading this quilt with thread that’s already woven into the grander Marvel continuity and I love it. Part of the reason this took me a little extra time to read was all the time I was spending looking up villains on the Marvel wiki with 3 or less previous appearances.

He’s also writing Dr Strange and he just started the newest Avengers ongoing. And he’s doing the current big mega-event Blood Hunt. Based on what he’s done here with Moon Knight, I’m now much more looking forward to reading those. Highly recommended Moon Knight run.

Up next Ms Marvel and some other stuff. The box is almost done. Then probably another catch up on current stuff.

[Tom Foolery]

The rest of the ‘M’ box.

Ms Marvel:Beyond the Limit 1-5. While visiting a cousin in Chicago, Kamala touches a mysterious energy box that’s being used to study quantum-blah blah blah. She inadvertantly merges into another universe and the Ms Marvel there is killed. A young woman from that universe gets stuck in the 616 and she’s understandably pissed because her hero is dead and she thinks her universe snapped out of existence. But the mini series goes on to treat her like she’s the super villain. Kamala and her friends stop the girl and get her back to her universe, but the other Ms Marvel is still dead and everybody is like ‘whoopsies! Oh well, live and learn…’ Also, Millennial comic writers have this huge preoccupation with food. Everybody is always stopping to eat and describing what they’re eating. It’s not just this series, I’ve noticed it in other recent reads. It’s weird.

There were three Ms Marvel oneshots; Wolverine, Moon Knight, and Venom where the Peacock Tattoo guy from X-Force is trying to steal DNA from the Krakoans living in the Treehouse. Ms Marvel teams up with aforementioned heroes in a decent, but not great story to stop him. And that guy was a lot cooler when he was a mysterious villain. When you know he’s the lame Genegineer from Genosha(or his clone. Or his son(?) it’s kind of a limp noodle ending.

Fallen Friend:Death of Ms Marvel oneshot. All her friends, family, the Champions, and Avengers attend Kamala’s service at her Mosque. Since Marvel knew she was coming back before they even killed her off, I feel like this was in poor taste and a cheap cash grab to sell an extra comic.

Ms Marvel:The New Mutant 1-4. Kamala gets resurrected as a Mutant! Iman Vellani, who plays her onscreen, co-wrote this new series. Now that she’s an X-Man, who are all being hunted after the Hellfire Massacre, Kamala is undercover at Empire State University where she discovers a secret Orchis run operation beneath the school experimenting on mutants and she single handedly shuts it down. And she’s coming to terms with “who she is” because now shes an Avenger, a Champoin, an Inhuman, and now a Mutant and an X-Man. But what she’s really becoming is a MarySue. She’ll probably be revealed as a lesbian and/or trans in an upcoming event.

Ms Marvel:Mutant Menace 1-3. Follow up mini from the same creative team as above. While dealing with a lot of anti-mutant hysteria in New Jersey, she also teams up with Lila Cheney to fight Mojo, and is dealing with some zombie X-Men that Or his has made from the corpses of X-Men left behind whenever they resurrect. There’s one more issue that comes out next week. When Ms Marvel was first introduced, she was a nerdy superfan who was dealing with quirky powers and trying to be a hero like her idol. But know that she’s on several superteams and is the leader of the frickin’ Champions, it’s hard to roll with the ‘awe gee whiz’ attitude without seeing all the plot armor. The character is getting annoying. Cool heroes have flaws, and she’s not allowed to have any because she’s the poster child for inclusiveness at Marvel. And don’t get me wrong, I think it’s dope she’s Muslim and female and Gen-Z and I’ve enjoyed that aspect of her stories more than the cliche super hero antics. But she is definitely turning into a MarySue. When Capt America AND Spider-Man AND Wolverine all look up to you, there’s a problem.

Murderworld 1-5. This was a series of oneshots Avengers, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Moon Knight etc. But it was actually an Arcade mini. 200 normal people are invited to a deathmath where the soul winner gets $100 Million. Normally, when heroes get stuck in Murderworld, they have plot armor and you’re reasonably assured their gonna survive. In this series, everyone is expendable. Each oneshot was LMDs based on the title heroes killing the contestants. Clever concept from writer Jim Zub.

Namor:Conquered Shores 1-5. Set in the future, the Kree attacked Earth and melted all the icecaps and scorched the atmosphere. Almost all the heroes went into space, leaving only a few behind. An aging Namor has ceded leadership of Atlantis to Namorita and is trying to build an undersea sanctuary for the few remaining humans on the surface. Steve Rogers is aiding him, but Luke Cage and the other survivors are suspicious. When a contingent of AI robots led by Machine Man try to sabotage the refugees, Namor confronts his old frenemy Jim Hammond. The series is mostly them standing around regretting the fiery rancor of their youth. The plot twist is that Namorita ordered Attuma to get Machine Man to destroy the sanctuary and kill Steve Rogers and the 20,000 humans inside because they just don’t like people. Namor is exiled and he helps Luke Cage, Jim Hammond and Frankenstein’s monster start a new human society in the remains of Latveria with the survivors. Bleak. And kinda dull.

Naomi:Season 2 1-6. Follow mini series for Bendis’ new super prodigy at DC. He created this character and she immediately joined the Justice League and Batman and Superman were all like ‘woweeee, you’re so cool and can we have your autograph, you’re in charge now!’ In this followup mini, an evil Justice League from the dimension where Naomi’s parents came from show up and Naomi beats them single handedly. Then she stops all crime on Earth and in the Universe. That last part didn’t happen. That's probably the next mini.

Night Thrasher 1-4. Duane Taylor returns to Harlem to deal with excessive tensions between the cops and citizens. Rage(now calling himself O.G.) has recruited a bunch of underage homeless kids to wreak havoc and stuff. When things escalate to a showdown between marching citizens and a barricade of cops, Night Thrasher shows up and is mad when the cops won’t listen to reason from a vigilante in a mask tells them to calm down. Oye. Sad, pointless misfire. Night Thrasher could be a cool idea if they could get past his cliche stereotype origins.

Not a lot of fun reading in this batch. The Murderworld stuff was the most interesting thing. But the box is finished!

Next up, time to catch up on the current stuff. As I’m halfway thru the alphabet, the M thru X pile builds up quickly(30+ issues in just a couple weeks)Gonna be ‘catching up’ much more often.

[Tom Foolery]

Catching up

Nightwing 114. Fallen Grayson part 1 of 5. Tom Taylor begins the final arc of his NW run. Awww…I finally catch up on the reading and it’s coming to an end. Heartless begins his final plot to bring down Dick and the Pennyworth Foundation. At a fundraiser, it’s revealed the deceased Blockbuster’s illicit crime fortune was donated to the Foundation, making it look like it’s swimming in dirty money. Dick is blindsided by reporters.

Penguin 10. Penguin continues to methodically take back control of Gotham’s underworld from his own children. Tom King is always excellent.

Red Hood: The Hill 4. Batman shows up to help Jason defeat a demon dream monster attacking his amateur vigilante squad, and Jason gives Batman the lowdown on who’s making a play for the Hill’s criminal empire. Dull.

Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver 4. The end of the mini. Just as Wanda, Pietro, and Vision are about to be crushed at the bottom of the ocean, Pietro asks Wanda ‘hey, you should just use magic and get us out of this’ and she does. Because magic does whatever you need it to do when you’re a writer. Neat! They get back and defeat the Wizard, and Vision confronts the Angel who hired the Wizard but she/it tries to fry his AI brain with multitudes of “truth”. Luckily, his daughter is his own cloud server backup and they figure out this Angel is gonna be the main antagonist in Wanda’s new ongoing later this year. Finally, the twins go have a chat with their newly resurrected not-father Magneto.

Sensational She-Hulk 8. Ganymede and Jen are about to have a throwdown on the space resort circling the sun where Jen and Jack were on vacation. But Jack steps in and explains that Ganymede’s new boss is actually a bad guy, so she goes after him instead. Jen is sad when Jack leaves with Ganymede, but he comes back and they get honest with each other about their feelings and then probably shagged for the rest of the vacation.

Spider-Boy 7. Guest stars Thor, Capt America, Squirrel Girl, and both Spideys show up to rescue Bailey from Madame Monstrosity, who has turned herself into a giant animal amalgam. Then High Evolutionary shows up and collects her as an oddity he wants to experiment on. But Bailey’s mom, who is a cat now, still doesn’t remember him.

Spider Gwen:Ghost Spider 1. New ongoing series. For some reason, the TVA is pulling a witsec on Gwen and she’s now permanently living in the 616. She’s not allowed to use her powers or costume, but she does anyway.

Miles Morales 20. Shift is adjusting to living with Miles and his family. Miles and Shift, along with Ganke and Kamala, take their little sister to an art fair in the neighborhood. Some f-list supergoon shows up and they all stop him tout suite. Next issue is a Blood Hunt tie-in, and I read the 2nd issue of that seried where SPOILER Miles turns into a vampire on the cliffhanger last page.

Superior Spider-Man 7. Otto has infected everyone in Manhattan with spiders manipulated with his brain augmenter, basically turning everyone into Otto! The only two people not affected are Spidey and AnaMaria. They have to stop Otto before he uses the recently recaptured Supernova to boost the energy signal and do the same thing to the entire planet! Dan Slott is never afraid to do goofy over the top shit when he’s writing Spider-Man.

More current catching up on the way!

[Tom Foolery]

And again…

Spectacular Spider-Men 3. As the issue begins, both Peter and Miles are immersed in dream fantasies that are making them very happy. Peter along with his wife, Gwen, and their two beautiful children, are excited that their parents Aunt May and George Stacy have begun dating. Meanwhile, Miles is on a romantic date with Kamala Khan. As we flashback, we find out both of them went into the sewers to find some missing friends of theirs and were ambushed as the villains of this arc are revealed…Arcade and Mentallo, who have built some kind of dream machine! This book has been pretty good so far.

Symbiote Spider-Man 2099 3. Kron Stone in the Venom symbiote convinces Miguel in his new symbiote that they should be sym-bros. Dr Strange 2099 astral projects to them to confront Miguel, and they decide to head over to the Sanctum Sanctorum to kill her physical body. Alarmed, Strange decides to go to Doom 2099 for help.

Spider-Punk:Arms Race 4. Oi! Bruv! Its a right plum ‘arry on the guv, innit? Cheeky…sorry I didn’t read this. The previous eight issue I read were enough.

Edge of Spider-Verse 4. More alt dimension Spideys. Including introducing the pregnant, motorcycle riding Spider-Woman from the movie in the comics for the first time. And the final story has Araña recruiting the Weapon VIII Peter from the first issue into The Spider Society, which is the next multiverse series debuting next month. I got the regular cover, and also a variant that homaged issue 107 of the original Marvel Star Wars comic.

Thor 11. Now that he’s wanted for two murders on Earth, Thor makes himself scarce back to Asgard and calls a meeting of all of Odin’s offspring. Their goal is to find their other missing sibling, Tyr, who has been kidnapped or otherwise joined up with the In-Betweener as an agent of Oblivion. Sort of a G.O.D.S. adjacent crossover.

Ultimate Black Panther 4. While T’Challa has been missing for several months, Queen Okoye is having trouble placating the masses of Wakanda. When the King does finally return, he invites her to a secret meeting because he knows what’s going on in Wakanda. He says the only people they can trust are in this room, and reveals Killmonger, Shuri, Storm, and Himself.

Ultimate Spider-Man 5. The secret origin of Harry’s new Green Goblin. After he buys out Stark-Stane from Wilson Fisk, he finds a hidden cache of Iron Man tech, and uses it to build the GG armor, as well as intel about who the real villains on this new world are.

Ultimate X-Men 3. Two Japanese girls are going to school. They might be mutants? There might be mutants in this book? Or it could be recipes for making rice.

Venom:Separation Anxiety 1. David Michelinie’s newest retro-Venom series. Eddie heads to Colorado, thinking Parker will be there on a news assignment, but instead it’s Joy Mercado doing an article on the Vault supermax prison. She invites Eddie to be her photographer. When they get there, some armored villains try to break Killgrave the Purple Man out and he accidentally gets symbiote on him, turning him into a new purple-sym who can make people do whatever with just a touch.

Void Rivals 9. Puddlecum got stabbed last issue. Gizzledrip is trying to find a Transformer that was just hanging out the last time he was in the wasteland. Conveniently, that TF hasn’t moved in years, just waiting in case the plot required him to be in the same exact location because that’s how dumb fucking writing works. Anyway, it’s Springer and he has to fight Plimbus, the big evil guy chasing Dorky and Shmorky across the nerd planet. A planet that, if the subtle writing suggested by the Quintessons at the end of the issue is true, is also a giant Transformer.

One more batch of Current stuff, then back into the boxes.

[anarky]

Void Rivals 9. Puddlecum got stabbed last issue. Gizzledrip is trying to find a Transformer that was just hanging out the last time he was in the wasteland. Conveniently, that TF hasn’t moved in years, just waiting in case the plot required him to be in the same exact location because that’s how dumb fucking writing works. Anyway, it’s Springer and he has to fight Plimbus, the big evil guy chasing Dorky and Shmorky across the nerd planet. A planet that, if the subtle writing suggested by the Quintessons at the end of the issue is true, is also a giant Transformer.

So they didn't know what the fuck a Transformer was when they happened upon Jetfire,but Gizzledrip knows Springer.

And IDW lost the license for what reason, again?

[Tom Foolery]

Void Rivals 9. Puddlecum got stabbed last issue. Gizzledrip is trying to find a Transformer that was just hanging out the last time he was in the wasteland. Conveniently, that TF hasn’t moved in years, just waiting in case the plot required him to be in the same exact location because that’s how dumb fucking writing works. Anyway, it’s Springer and he has to fight Plimbus, the big evil guy chasing Dorky and Shmorky across the nerd planet. A planet that, if the subtle writing suggested by the Quintessons at the end of the issue is true, is also a giant Transformer.

So they didn't know what the fuck a Transformer was when they happened upon Jetfire,but Gizzledrip knows Springer.

And IDW lost the license for what reason, again?

I don’t think he knew he was a TF, I just called him that for brevity in the recap. However, Shmekelfart didn’t seem to think Springer would be able to help Pretzelsnarf medically, but he traipsed them out to the middle of nowhere anyway. Luckily, the unhelpful giant robot was patiently sitting crisscross applesauce for a verrrry long time in case the one person he’d met in the ass end of whereever might show up again. Also, You can’t refer to Pidgepodge by a name he’s already been called by. Their names are unmemorable, so a new one is needed every time you bring either of them up.

[anarky]

Sorry. Pretend I called him Orca Semen.

[Tom Foolery]

Almost caught up.

Weapon X-Men 4. Old Man Logan betrays the rest of the Wolvie-squad and lures Phoenix out so he can stab her for Onslaught. But, plot twist, when Onslaught absorbs the Phoenix force, he’s overwhelmed with goodness! Which OML thought might happen! So it was all a ruse, and everyone lived happily ever after. Hooray!……….fucking stupid.

Ultimates 1. Iron Man’s team jumps out of timespace six months after their disastrous debut in the Ultimate Universe oneshot. Since they can time jump back and forth, they retroactively tried recruiting a bunch of heroes with their nano-spheres(see Ult Spider-Man for one of the very few success stories) but this time, they get Hank Pym and Janet VanDyne to unlock their powers and join the team. So, the interesting thing that I noticed with Ult Spidey and BP is that the stories are taking place in real time. One month passes between each issue of those books. And here they note that The Maker will wake up from the trap they placed him in in 18 months. So, even though they can jump around in time as much as they want, they have that 18 month deadline to defeat the Maker. Which I think is brilliant on the part of Hickman, to get in, tell this new Ultimate universe’s story arc in a year and a half and not let the entire concept stay past it’s welcome. Readers will get bored and sales will slump after too long, but Hickman already has the ending in place.

Venom 34. Blood Hunt tie-in. Dylan is fighting a vampire priest who wants to turn him into a vampire, but the guy doesn’t know Dylan is half human, half symbiote, so when he gets bitten it kills the priest. Also, the Venom symbiote has bonded to the undead body of Lee Price to fight an apex Klyntar predator. But Venom tricks the predator into biting him as well, and the pain feedback kills the predator. The Meridus shows up, being unstuck in time after Carnage showed up and destroyed the garden. He absorbs Lee Price into himself, leaving the symbiote with a warning of the coming Venom War…

What If…Venom 4, 5. In the final two issues, Venom bonds with Loki, and Moon Knight has to get the other three previous hosts; She-Hulk, Logan, and Dr Strange to give up their bits of the sym so MK can use them to stop the Loki-Venom from doing…whatever. This series went downhill because the first issue with She-Hulk was set in the era where Venom first bonded to Eddie, but bonded with Jen instead. But the finale seems to be taking place in the current timeline because Moon Knight is running his Midnight Mission in his current MK costume, including running around as Mr. Knight in the white 3-piece suit. So, which is it? Made the entire story suck for me.

Wolverine 50. The grand finale. The three way showdown between Logan, Victor, and Graydon quickly becomes a two way when Victor immediately kills his own son on the third page. While X-Force are dealing with the last of the Sentinels guarding Krakoa, Creed leads a poweless Logan in his adamantium armor designed by Forge into the heart of Krakoa. At the Quiet Council table, Creed traps Logan in the Pit, giving him all the painful memories of failure in his entire life. But Phoebe Cuckoo and the rest of X-Force show up, and she severs Creed’s bond with Krakoa. Their about to finish him off, when Logan stops them. Forge’s armor was also kickstarting his mutant powers, and now he’s ready to finish things with Creed once and for all. Armed with the Muramasa blade, the two bitter rivals have a final gory battle, and Wolverine chops Sabretooth into like fifty pieces. After, Phoebe says goodbye to Quentin’s severed head and turns him off. The Exiles return to their ship, and X-Force heads back to join the fight in the Rise/Fall minis as the Krakoan Age ends. The issue had a couple back up stories as well, one by Larry Hama, and a preview of the new ongoing by Saladin Ahmed.

Wolverine:Madripoor Knights 4. Wolverine and Cap head to rescue Natasha, who’s being forced to fight the Hand’s Tamashi demon for her soul. The demon consumes Nat, and Cap and Logan jump in after to save her, but they all get spit out as corrupted versions of themselves. Oh my gosh!

Wonder Woman 9. Diana is being held by the King in a basement prison cell. The entire issue is her “talking” to Steve Trevor in a variety of settings as her way of mentally coping with the torture she’s enduring.

World’s Finest 27. Myxlptlk and Bat-Mite are helping Bats and Supes fight an invasion of evil mites from their dimension helping their villainous counterparts wreak havoc on the world. Mark Waid cleverly uses the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and even 6th dimension to help turn the tables, including powering up an army of Jimmy Olsens with every goofy power he had from the old 50s and 60s comics. Fun stuff.

Next up, the final X-books. There’s only a handful, but there’s a lot happening.

[Tom Foolery]

The end of the Krakoan Age.

X-Men Forever 4. The Essex Enigma Dominion finds Hope’s mother nine months before her birth and tries to rewrite history so Hope won’t kill the Phoenix Force in the White Hot Room and thus reignite her. Jean Grey realizes what’s happened/is happening/will happen when she sees an Enigma compromised Hope. So she goes back and both she and Essex make their case to a woman who now knows she will be dead in nine months and she will never meet her daughter, who going to have to sacrifice herself for the X-Men to stop the Dominion. Louise chooses Pheonix/Jean. Which ends up being the moment in the Phoenix’s life cycle that is both the end and the beginning, thus closing the loop. Jean Grey is the Pheonix entity’s “mother” as she/it impregnates Hope’s mother. In the “present” Hope fires the Legion Rifle, killing the Phoenix so she can be reborn in the deceased Jean Grey’s body, but the explosion kills Hope, closing the loop. Heady stuff. But now the reborn Phoenix can stop the Enigma Dominion. There’s also a subplot where Destiny and Mystique break into Xavier’s cell and demand he unblock Destiny’s memories of Kurt being born, which he does.

Fall of the House of X 5. Cyclops and a team of X-Men have crashed the SWORD space station into the Orchis satellite to stop the destruction of Earth. Three teams, one in space, one in Washington DC, and one in NYC are all fighting Nimrod simultaneously as he’s neural linked his three versions together. Storm super charges one of them with electricity which feedbacks into the others. Which creates a Lorentz force, a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field….enter Magneto and Lorna Dane. Nimrod(s) is destroyed. Orchis is destroyed. Which just leaves the Enigma Dominion…

Rise of the Powers of X 5. The newly (re)born Phoenix Force/Jean Grey confronts the Essex Dominion and his army of dominions. The rest of the dominions decide it ain’t their fight and fuck off, leaving just Essex vs Pheonix. Enigma begins travelling thru time, altering infinite events to suit his plan, and the Phoenix follows, trying to put out infinite tiny fires. It’s a battle across space and time. Meanwhile, Xavier finds Moira telepathically thanks to a subconscious suggestion he left in her 13 year old head. He basically lays everything out that Moira, who has now been absorbed by the Dominion, is the backdoor. And if she really wanted a utopia for mutants, which was the original plan for Krakoa, she has to willingly call out to Phoenix, acting like a homing GPS across all space-time, but knowing it will end her. Reluctantly, Moira agrees. Which lets Phoenix find Enigma and simultaneously destroy him across every single moment that ever existed. A young Moira waits for her powers to activate in her next life. She counts down the seconds; they don’t activate. She is free. That is A LOT to wrap your head around. Trippy as fuck.

X-Men 35 aka Uncanny X-Men 700. Logan interrupts the convoy transporting a captured Xavier with the intent of killing him, but Magneto intercedes. Charles and Max have one final conversation about their philosophical differences, but then Xavier senses something. A Krakoan gate returns and Kafka walks out. The survivors of Krakoa in the White Hot Room have spent the last 15 years perfecting the resurrection protocols without outside interference. They have actually created the utopian Krakoa and have brought EVERYONE back to life. All 15 million dead Genoshans. All the children. They returned to let everyone who left get closure with their loved ones around the world, and to get the original Krakoa to go with them. Exodus refuses to let them leave, but is quickly punched down by Apocalypse. Apoc is furious that fifteen years has made the survivors “soft” and demands to be put in charge, but the X-Men fight him and the Krakoans reject his ideology. Apoc realizes he’s wrong and leaves. The Krakoans give everyone the choice of leaving or staying, and all the major characters stay(so we can have X-Men comics) and the Krakoans say they’ll return when the world is ready for them. Then there’s a bunch of little 1 or 2 page vignettes that set up all the new ongoing series for the next phase.

And so ends the First Krakoan Age. I'm glad they didn’t erase it entirely. It was a wild fuckin’ ride. Not to everyone’s tastes, but I (mostly) liked it.

And lastly; The X-Men Wedding Special. This year’s Marvel Voices Pride issue is the wedding of Mystique and Destiny. It’s mostly the typical pre-wedding jitters etc, and various short stories of guests trying to find wedding gifts. But I laughed when the whole thing is a ruse to get all the heroes together, so Mystique can break into Wanda’s place and steal some shit while Destiny is fake marrying a Mystique clone provided by Mr Sinister. As Rogue notes ‘These two were being gay and committing crimes since the 19th century!’ After everyone rushes out to stop Raven, she busts in and has Kurt hurriedly marry his two moms before they jet out. I loved it.

X-Men ‘97 3. Another prequel issue to the new show. The X-Men fight a version of Sinister’s Marauders. Meh.

All caught up on current stuff again. The next box is Iron Man thru some M books like Marauders and probably more stuff with ‘Marvel’ in the title. But I might detour and read some Batman stuff, because there’s like two full boxes of Batman and if I read it all at once I will get burned out and stop reading and be back in the same boat where I’m 16 boxes behind. I’m also gonna start sprinkling the Star Wars stuff in.