So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Tom Foolery]

7/16 book’s. There were a lot that week, so here’s half of them.

Absolute Batman 10. I was confused as to what was going on, because I realized I had commited to dropping this shitass book last month and don’t have the previous issue. I’m 99% sure Snyder is just trolling readers to see if they will literally buy the dumbest fucking crap he can come up with, because this issue, Bruce is trapped in Ark(M), the impossibly large facility housing deranged monstrosities being experimented on by Director Arkham. We find out Bruce hides all his weapons in his skin, and all his teeth have lockpicks and shit in them(that’s not even the dumbest thing in the book). His first escape attempt is thwarted by the Ark’s head of security Bane. But on the second attempt, Bruce makes grenades FROM HIS OWN POOP(I swear to god I wish I was making this up, but I’m not) and is aided in escaping from his friend Waylon, who he rides around on like a dragon. Somehow, this is DC’s top selling book. I just don’t understand…

Absolute Flash 5. Wally is fighting Heatwave in the sewers, but Grodd keeps insisting that Heatwave himself is a victim and needs help. The Rogues regroup to try to apprehend Wally again, while his father, Colonel West is suspicious of Director Thawne, and breaks into a restricted area to find aliens in jars.

New Avengers 2.
Batman & Robin:Year One 9.
Robin & Batman:Jason Todd 2.
Detective 1099. Batman, Bullock, and Penguin manage to survive the attack from the immortal Elixir cultists, and threaten the last remaining guy to reveal the mysterious leader’s whereabouts. He's down in the basement, hermetically sealed in a germ free bubble room for the next five years. Batman informs him his network has been dismantled, all his agents are dead or fleeing, and he can just sit there for the next five years, dreading Batman’s return to throw his ass in jail.

Bring on the Bad Guys:Abomination oneshot.
Eddie Brock:Carnage 6.
New Champions 7.

Deadpool/Wolverine 7. Wade rescues Maverick, so they can go break into the O*N*E facility. The director of ONE has figured out how to hack the Legacy 2.0 virus to control whoever is infected with it. She plans to make mutants with it into terrorists to justify her organization’s budget or whatever. And a possessed Wolverine takes Stryfe/Apocalypse back to his base where he can put on his power augmenting helmet and control his zombie armies.

GIJoe 9. Baroness and Cover Girl fight Raptor and Major Bludd in Paris, but are defeated and captured. Clutch hatches a plan to get Hound some energon. Baroness and Cover Girl wake up in an arena where Bludd demands they fight each other to the death for his amusement. Baroness tells him to go screw, but the issue ends with Cover Girl stabbing her in the back.

Gotham City Sirens 3. The nightclub turns out to be Despero’s spaceship hidden in plain sight. He’s sacrificing club patrons to fuel his ship. The Sirens escape the deathtraps they were all in last issue, but before they can get off the ship, it takes off.

Godzilla Destroys the Marvel Universe 1. Mole Man finds a deposit of vibranium and makes a weapon to attack the surface, but he accidentally wakes up Godzilla and a dormant Celestial in Earth’s core. Godzilla promptly destroys the Celestial by ripping its head off. As Big G traipses thru Manhattan, The Fantastic Four and Avengers try to contain Godzilla and lure him towards the ocean, but he atomic blasts the top of the Baxter Building “killing” a good portion of both teams.

Imperial 2. Hickman continues to reshape the Marvel Cosmic Landscape. The various empires of the Shi’Ar, Kree, Spartax, etc descend on the Wakandan Empire for the assassinations of the galactic leaders. But Shuri, Star-Lord, and Nova figure out everyone has been manipulated into this conflict, and a bunch of Veranke loyalist Skrulls reveal themselves on all the warships and set off some bomb that traps everyone within the Wakandan energy shields.

Krypto: Last Dog of Krypton 2. A young Lex Luthor is a bad dog owner, as he explains his ongoing plans to kill his guardian Aunt and Uncle in a fire and collect the insurance money on them. Krypto saves them from the fire and runs away at the end of the issue.

Marvel Knights:The World To Come 2. Everett K Ross takes center stage as we find out what he’s been up to for the last 26 years. And we find out T’Challa’s successor that killed him, was the son of Ross and his fiance and T’Challa adopted the boy as an infant. The first two issues have been great.

Marvel Must Haves June 2025. The First issue of Hickman’s ‘Solve Everything’ arc from FF 575, and the first issues of Wolverine:Revenge and the current ongoing Storm series. All for free.

Nightwing 128. NW enters the Titans Tower that’s been enveloped by a mutated Nite-Mite. Inside he fights different versions of himself like Deathwing, the evil NW from the future, and the ‘original’ Nitewing from Kandor, Van-Zee as he makes his way to the top of the tower to save Barbara.

Up next, the second half of 7/16’s pile.

[Tom Foolery]

The second half of 7/16’s books.

Death of the Silver Surfer 2. Some asshat CEO heads into space and against everyone’s better judgment tries to jumpstart Galactus’ dead corpse for the limitless energy he can exploit. Back on Earth, the Surfer helps a kid stuck in a tree. The cops show up and decide this situation warrants discharging firearms at Surfer and the kids. When Norrin stops the bullets from killing the kids, the little brats decide he’s a freak and throw apples at him. Meanwhile, the alien hunting chick tracks Skaar down in the Nevada desert. When Norrin shows up to aid him, he becomes aware of what the CEO is doing on Galactus’ corpse, but he arrives too late….I’m pretty sure this series is just setting up a gender swapped Surfer, because of the movie. This Major Kelly chick is gonna be the new SS when its all done.

Spider-Girl 2. Spider-Girl fights Lady Bullseye.

Predator vs Spider-Man 4. The rogue yautja is chasing MJ thru the sewers. They get to the surface, and Kraven defeats the Predator, but he triggers his atomic failsafe. Kraven and Spidey have to work together to throw it in the river before it blows up Manhattan. The other three Predators show up and Kraven prepares to fight them, before realizing they mark him as a great hunter for having defeated the rogue, and invite him aboard their ship.

Star Wars 3.
Superman Unlimited 3. Krypto and Superman fight Toyman.

Titans 25. The Titans are up against Deathstroke’s new team, but they manage to defeat them and Slade has to abandon Terra and the rest to escape. I think I keep skipping issues of this.

Ultimate Black Panther 18. T’Challa and Storm are getting closer as they track down the Vibranium entity. The high priestess of Wakanda joins forces with the Vibranium entity and suggests the body it needs to sustain itself is the eventual offspring of T’Challa.

Wonder Woman 23. Start of a new arc. There’s an island where people worship mice and only say the phrases “Mouse Man Knows” and “Mice Have Ears”. Both the Justice League and the UN and basically everybody tells Diana NOT to intervene on this island because it’ll violate like a hundred different treaties and whatever. So naturally, she goes anyway.

World’s Finest 41. Batman, Superman, and Robin are on BizarroWorld. There’s a virus turning bizarro people ‘normal’ and it’s spreading.

Exceptional X-Men 11. The trainees team up with IronHeart to fight some bad guy. Kitty is dragging her heels on committing to her new girlfriend.

Giant Size House of M oneshot. Kamala and Legion continue to jump thru time to different eras. This time, Legion manipulates Wanda into saying ‘no more mutants’ so he can use the collected unrealized energy(that originally manifested in Weapon Omega, Michael Pointer) to achieve his goals. Kamala realizes the only way to defeat him is to go back to the present ‘before’ all this happened when she initially got sucked into the timestream. To be concluded in Giant Size X-Men 2.

Zatanna 6. I lost interest in this series like three issues ago. Zatanna talks backwards way too much. I get that is her gimmick when doing magic, but I just don’t feel like deciphering endless word balloons of backward speech to figure out the plot. A bunch of Justice League Dark allies show up and help her defeat the bad guys, so good for them. I thought this was a six issue mini, but maybe not? Either way, dropped. Or finished.

Up next 7/23’s books. ‘Twas also a large pile, so I may break that into two batches as well.

[Tom Foolery]

7/23 part I.

Absolute Wonder Woman 10. Diana and her new ally, Ferdinand the minotaur battle thru Clea’s maze to escape with Petra the Siren. Ferdinand is wounded and captured, sacrificing himself to help WW get back to her Hieron. After she sends Petra thru the door, she vows to rescue Ferdi and hesds back into the maze, where Clea douses her with some trippy LSD type magic.

Amazing Spidey 10.
West Coast Avengers 9.
Batman 161. Htoosh continues; Much like diarrhea that keeps sending you to the toilet even after you’ve taken Pepto-Bismol. Damian outwits Hush with a robot bird swarm, and Batman, Damian, and Bane turn the tables on Hush and his crew, forcing them to flee. Joker takes a shot at Dick and Jason, but they jump out a window. Jeph Loeb(or the AI he’s using to phone this garbage in writes lines like “It is like a russian nesting doll wrapped inside an enigma..” Batman checks on Jim Gordon in the hospital and Hush sets off a bomb. Barbara confronts Batman for saving Joker’s life and they fight each other for a bit, then Nightwing, Huntress, Damian, Catwoman, and Riddler show up on the last page to pose together. I’m predicting the big “twist” of this story is the return of Alfred.

Doom’s Division 5. OWUD tie-in. The recently imprisoned Tiger Division confront their boss White Fox for killing Sunfire. But then Sunfire shows up and explains that he and White Fox were working together the entire time as a ruse to start an insurgency against Emperor Doom. Ummm…what a dumb waste of five issues.

Runaways 2. OWUD tie-in. The Runaways manage to defeat the Doombots that came for their Doombot, but go into hiding before more Doombots inevitably show up. Chase decides Gertie’s time machine is too dangerous to use and blows it up, upsetting Gert. Karolina and Alex show up at the Runaway’s base wondering where everyone is.

Emma Frost:White Queen 2. Emma suspects an inside mole for the recent X-Men attack in Rio. She and her assistant, Noor, head to Rome to investigate, but Noor is secretly working for Selene who is setting Emma up as the patsy.

Fantastic Four: Fanfare 3. Three more short stories in this anthology series. Not terrible, but nothing memorable. It is nice to see older creatives like DeFalco and Ron Frenz getting work though, even if its only eight pages of story.

Fantastic Four Presents: Franklin Richards Son of a Genius oneshot. This is a partial reprint of a bigger oneshot that came out in 2006 featuring a humorous Calvin & Hobbes-esque take on young Franklin and HERBIE getting into hijinks. Clearly timed to release because of the film.

Gotham City Sirens 4. Despero’s ship is hovering above Gotham sending out mind control signals to its citizens. The Sirens attempt to bring it down, but the ship eventually gains higher orbit, where its mind control ray can now reach the entire world.

Gwenpool 3. The ghost of GwenPool possesses her friend Kate Bishop, and then Spider-Man in order to get revenge on the Weapon X’ed up original* Gwen Stacy that killed her. *Still highly doubtful this is actually Gwen Stacy. But they are playing it like it is.

Iron Man 10. OWUD tie in. Tony and his allies confront his former protégé Vishte who has taken control of the magic-infused Iron Monger armor. We find out Vishte made a deal with Belasco to power up so he could kill Emperor Doom and take over Latveria. Iron Man defeats Vishte and fucks up the deal, causing Vishte to get taken by Limbo demons. This was the final issue of the series, which is fine by me because this run has been nothing but union negotiations and lawyers arbitrating leveraged corporate buyouts and proxy boardmembers and such. Fucking dull.

Up next, 7/23 part II. And then 7/30’s books. Not only have I been weeks behind on my reading, but none of the last three weeks of books have been put away in their appropriate boxes. There’s a big pile on my dining room table waiting to be filed…

[Tom Foolery]

7/23 part the deuce.

Jeff The Land Shark 2. Jeff continues to chase the demon that stole his shadow. This issue, he teams up with Rocket and Groot and runs around the Collector’s Museum of stuff breaking shit. Pretty funny.

Justice League Unlimited 9. The epilogue to We Are Yesterday. The time displaced Leaguers are slowly getting sent back to their own timelines, but the time quakes causing them are getting worse. The TimeTrapper(aka Doomsday from the far future) and Alpheus, creator of the multiverse arrive and warn the League that time is broken and they need to take Gorilla Grodd with them. Mister Terrific and Blue Beetle build a tuning fork and rescue AirWave from his discorporeal essence scattered throughout time. Meanwhile, Batman and WW invite Superman to the original JL cave HQ and announce that creating the JL Unlimited team was a catastrophic mistake.

Moon Knight 10. Aka Legacy issue 250. Moony and his crew attack Achilles Fairchild’s stronghold and beat up all the c-list villains he’d assembled to stop them. MK goes after Achilles himself, but right before he’s about to deliver the killing blow with his new magic sword, Achilles vanishes into thin air. Also, Zodiac is back. There was also a montage of all 250 covers in the back. Apparently the Special Edition mini from the 80s and the two mini series from the late 90s do not count towards the grand total. But everything else is there. I have all of them.

Phoenix 13. Cable is here to kill Sara Grey to prevent a cataclysmic disruption of the future she causes. Jean stops her stepson from killing her sister, but when he gets her alone, he convinces her Sara isn’t her sister, but just a manifestation of the Phoenix Force from when Jean discharged all her energy fighting the Dark Gods.

Psylocke 9. Psylocke’s childhood friend is back and in caoots with the Yokai that saved her life as a child. Now she has taken over a sect of the Hand ninja clan and wants Psylocke’s help to take over the Tokyo branch. When Kwannon refuses, Mitsuki has her Yokai spirit, the Lady in White, possess Psylocke’s body.

Spider-Verse vs Venom-Verse 3. The third round of battle commences. SpiderMan and Leopardon show up and start fighting a Power Ranger looking Venom with its own giant Venom-Mech.

Star Wars Doctor Aphra, Chaos Agent 2.
Storm 10. Thunder War begins. With her Eternity powered upgrades, Storm is battling Hadad the first thunder god and his allies. Using Maggot’s and Manifold’s powers, she is trapping them in pocket dimensions used as prison cells. But then FBI agents Ettienne and Fabiyi use voodoo magic to kill Maggot and Manifold right in front of Storm while they are visiting Bishop and Jaden in Madripoor. Then Infinity shows up looking for her “brother” Eternity. This book has been such a huge departure from what Storm usually is, but it’s been pretty great so far.

Superman 28. The Legion of SuperHeroes has been corrupted by Darkseid in the future. They come back to the present to wreak havoc. TimeTrapper(aka Doomsday rescues Superman from the LoSh and tells him he needs to fix the future to save the present. But he’ll need help, so takes him back in time to a pocket timeline he created in the past where Superboy-Prime is happy to help!

Void Rivals 21. There’s a power struggle for the leadership of the Purple guys, and the winner immediately says we need to invade the Green Guys. Skirbble and Bleenie exchange Handroids. We get introduced to a whole team of pilots, also with unmemorable names. Hot Rod and Springer help defend against the invasion, and the Skuxxoid army approaches.

Wolverine 11. Logan continues his all out brawl with Sabretooth while trying to keep his mother safe. Thank Christ, the twist at the end turns out to be Mastermind manipulating Logan into thinking Sabertooth and his mother are both alive.

Uncanny X-Men 18. The X-Men attend the Friendship Festival being thrown in their honor. Then a children’s hospital catches on fire, and both Rogue’s and Cyclops’ teams show up to save everyone.

Up next, last week’s(7/30) books.

[anarky]

It boggles my mind that Hasbro released Void Rivals figures as an SDCC exclusive, and so many people were excited because it's "one of the bestest books EVAR!!!!1!!"

That book is such fucking dreck, but it seems like we're the only two people on Earth to apparently be immune to some subliminal messages in it. And yet we also keep buying because G.I.Joe is fucking great and it's all so deeply intertwined.

[Tom Foolery]

Last week’s books.

Batman:The Last Halloween 8.
Bring on the Bad Guys:Loki oneshot.

DC x Sonic 5. The Justice League and Team Sonic all team up to defeat Darkseid. Lots of clever matchups. Twas a fun series.

G.O.D.S. oneshot. One World Under Doom tie-in oneshot. Wyn and his apprentice Mia team up with Emperor Doom to save the sun from sun eating demons.

Gotham City Sirens 5. The Sirens stop Despero’s ship from beaming a hypno-ray that will enslave Earth, defeat Despero, and then call in Power Girl to stop their spaceship from crashing. This series was okay, but last year’s miniseries was a lot more fun and unhinged. Still, I look forward to another series next summer.

Incredible Hulk 27. One and done issue. After Charlie left last issue, Hulk is on his own. He meets a young boy in the woods who’s afraid of a nearby tree. As Hulk investigates, he realizes the kid’s abusive father killed him and buried him under the tree, and Hulk has been interacting with a ghost. In a rage, he goes and kills the father.

Justice League:Dark Tomorrow oneshot. Omega creatures are hunting and killing time travelers like Waverider and Extant. One mysterious traveler calling themselves Legend goes to the Justice League and assembles a team of time displaced heroes from the We Are Yesterday arc. Jonah Hex, Batman Beyond, Huntress, Gold Beetle, etc help Legend find the source of the Omega shadow beings at the Vanishing Point. Setting up the next big DC Event called DC K.O.

Marvel Free Previews 47. Solicits for October’s books.

Nightwing Annual 2025. Commisioner Sawyer is investigating Olivia Pearce’s history. It’s basically Olivia’s Secret Origins tale from the time she was with Cirque Du Sin.

Vision and Scarlet Witch 3. Vision’s son Vin leads Wanda and Vihz thru a series of trials in the Graverealm. Having completed the tasks, Grim Reaper shows up and ‘kills’ Vin again, setting up the final showdown next issue.

Sonic the Hedgehog 80.
Spider-Man and Wolverine 3. Having been stabbed by Wolvie last issue, Spidey wakes up in his Black Costume in the Savage Land. Wolverine is also there in his 80’s brown and tan costume. Spidey has to reluctantly work with his parent’s killer to escape the Savage Land while being hunted by Kraven and a team of killers. Then they get teleported to China where Doc Ock is waiting for them.

Spider-Man vs The Sinister Sixteen oneshot. J Micheal Straczynski’s final Team Up oneshot. Misleading title. Peter and MJ score reservations to a swanky restaurant, only to find a bunch of other heroes and villains have also received reservations because the chef/owner is in debt and wants a giant suoer battle to break out so his restaurant can get destroyed and he can collect the insurance. Pretty funny stuff actually. The Peter/Doc Ock narrow eye stare had me in stitches.

Star Wars High Republic Finale. Oneshot that wraps up the story. Once again, a bunch of shit happened in stuff I didn’t read. What happened to Avar Kriss? Elzar Mann? Marchion Ro? Underwhelming ending. Keeve Trennis leaves the Jedi Order. Bleh.

Thing 3. After the warehouse they were in explodes, Ben has to protect the niece of his childhood bully from the likes of Hammerhead, Bullseye, the Wrecking Crew and finally, The Juggernaut after Kingpin puts a $10 million bounty on him.

Titans Annual 2025. Phil Jimenez writes and draws a simply amazing Donna Troy story. After Donna receives a letter from her biological father who left when she was very young, she reflects on her life from being raised by the Amazons, to joining the Teen Titans, and everything else including her marriage and divorce from Terry and losing both him and Robert in the car crash. Jimenez crafts a perfect love letter to the character. Had a lump in my throat by the time I was done.

Ultimate Spider-Man 19. Richard gets grounded after what happened with Black Cat and Kingpin last issue. Mole Man breaks into Peter’s apt to warn him about the Kingpin’s plans. And MJ and Peter have a long talk about how accommodating MJ has been about…everything thats happened so far.

Ultimates 14. A bunch of CEOs hire Emma Frost to deal with all the havoc the Ultimates have been wreaking. She sends Quicksilver and Wanda to stop Hawkeye and Capt America from sabotaging an oil pipeline.

Werewolf By Night:Blood Moon Rise. A oneshot from Michael Giacchino, Hollywood composer and the director of the MCU WBN episode. Some plot involving Dracula and Man-Thing. Pretty bleh.

What If…Goofy became Spider-Man? Another Disney mashup. To keep it G-rated, “Uncle Ben” is May’s prized vintage motorcycle and sidecar that gets wrecked, prompting Spider-Goofy to heroics. Other than that, fairly strightforward adaptation of Spidey’s origin.

Savage Wolverine oneshot. Reprint of a digital series set after Krakoa went away. Both the story and art were pretty weak. I regret spending $7 on it.

All caught up until this Wednesday! Next up, a small batch of DC back reading; Human Target thru JSA. Then back into the ‘D’ box for Deathstroke, Defenders, and Doctor Strange.

[Tom Foolery]

I read a batch of DC stuff that was filling in gaps in my collection. I started with Human Target thru JSA, but I flew thru them so quickly, I went back even further and read a bunch of Green Arrow and Green Lantern books also.

Green Arrow 2. Ollie and Lian are trapped on an alien world, but still sticking it to the man. Roy and Dinah are looking for Amanda Waller, and run into Peacemaker and his new sidekick Peacebreaker.

GA 13. Countdown to Absolute Power. Roy and Lian break into a Belle Reve facility to free Cheshire, and Ollie who is fully working for Waller, stops them. Lian and her mother escape, but Roy gets taken into custody.

GA 16. Absolute Power tie in. Ollie and his family take on Bright(a corrupted White Lantern from Earth-3 who is now working for Waller) and after he has his entire family incarcerated. (Later on, we find out he was the League’s inside mole the entire time, but during the duration of this storyline, he is certainly acting like a bad guy).

John Stewart:Emerald Knight oneshot. Part of Jeffery Thorne’s GL run. Not sure if this was the finale or just a tie-in oneshot. Stewart has been imbued with god-like GL powers to fight a rogue New God called Esak.

Green Lantern 9. Hal discovers a Power Battery the Guardians left on Earth. He's now able to make new rings uncorrupted by the United Planets Battery on Oa, and with his new ring, he can break the quarantine on Earth.

GL 12. Hal and the resistance on Oa are confronted by UP Lanterns. Hal’s getting a beatdown and gets rescued by Star Sapphire. Carol confesses she left her fiance and still loves Hal.

GL 15. Absolute Power tie-in. Hal and Barry break into the Hall of Justice with a BatPlane, and Star Sapphire teams up with Dove.
GL 16-18. Hal and the rest of the resistance Lanterns finally overthrow the durlan Thaaros, president of the United Planets. Thanagar is blown up, and Thaaros is using the DarkStar ring. He gets blown up, but so does the Central Power Battery. Since all the the Emotional Spectrum Batteries were previously destroyed by the UP, none of the Spectrum is contained, leading to “fractal” combinations of the different rings.
GL 19. The new story arc begins. The Corps is being rebuilt(again) and Carol’s ex-fiance that she dumped for Hal has been empowered by a “Gray” ring imbued with the emotion of Sorrow.

Green Lantern War Journal 1, 2, 6-11. I read a few issues back in January, this is most of the rest of a John Stewart centric series. John is working at Steelworks. He’s created a green construct of his dead sister Ellie, while taking care of his elderly mother suffering from dementia. One of Thaaros’ underlings gets access to the original power source for the Dark Star, and traps Stewart there, where he faces a bunch of cosmic zombies getting infected by the power source. Eventually Guy Gardner and another Lantern named Sheperd show up and Stewart takes the Dark Star ring and “uncorrupts” it from the inside out. But his mom is killed by the bad guy, so he makes her into a Green construct also. I’ve come to the conclusion that John Stewart is the least interesting of Earth’s like twelve GLs at this point.

Green Lantern Corps 3. The newest current ongoing GLC series. After the Red Lantern Battery on Ysmault was destroyed, most of the Red Lanterns died from the feedback. Atrocitus and a few remaining Lanterns head to the remains of the recently destroyed Thanagar. A giant egg made entirely of Nth metal that was in the core lf the planet hatches to reveal Horus, the Thanagarian god. John Stewart and the GLC must protect the Red Lantern survivors from Horus and then they put them in the sciencells until a way to keep them alive without their Battery Power can be found.

Human Target 3. I only got this issue because of the Artgerm cover featuring Ice. But the premise of the series by Tom King is that Christopher Chance was posing as Lex Luthor and he got poisoned. So now he has twelve days to solve his own murder.

Hawkgirl 4. Hawkgirl teams up with Natasha Irons and Supergirl to fight a giant dragon attacking Metropolis.

Infinite Frontier 2, 4-6. Ugh. A bunch of multiverse bullshit. DC dips into this well so often it’s becoming a parody of itself. When Barry Allen, while traveling thru the multiverse literally sees a bunch of alternate worlds and says the line “Multiverse-2!” I just stopped caring. So stupid.

Justice League:Atom Project 1. Six issue mini, I only have the first issue so far. After Absolute Power, everybody’s stolen powers are being found in random people. Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi are in charge of getting the powers safely back to the proper heroes.

Justice Society of America 1-8, 11, 12. Pretty solid JSA series from Geoff Johns. Per Degaton kills the JSA team 26 years from now. The lone survivor, Huntress, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman travels back thru time to different JSA eras, including the 1940s team to recruit everyone to stop the time traveling Per Degaton before he can wipe out the JSA and replace them with his own version before they ever existed. In the process, Huntress warns Batman of his pending death. And erases her own future, causing her to be trapped in her own past. There was a Stargirl mini series where a bunch of timelost original JSA sidekicks are rediscovered, so they added like twelve new characters to the series all at once. The second arc was Huntress trying to recruit all the villains from her now deceased team in the present with mixed results. And the Legion of Super Heroes showing up from the future to prevent some catastrophe said recruitment drive catalyzes. The final issue was a standalone celebrating the 25th anniversary of Stargirl, who was based on Johns’ dead sister that died in a plane crash.

JSA 2, 3. The current JSA ongoing by Jeff Lemire. He’s juggling what seems like 70+ JSA members at this point and none of them are getting enough page time to be interesting. But heaven forfend you don’t include whichever character is someone’s favorite and risk losing readers.

Alan Scott:Green Lantern 3. Alan teams up with Jim Corrigan, the Spectre, in the 1950s to investigate the death of a young man who happens to be Alan’s lover. I had previously read the rest of this mini.

Up next, this week’s books! And then back into the ‘D’ box.

[Tom Foolery]

August 6th’s books, plus a couple back issues I missed.

Absolute Superman 10. Kal and the Omegas mount a rescue operation to save Jimmy. Kal has a final showdown with the Peacemaker Christopher Smith, who’s been upgraded by R’as Al Ghul’s Lazarus Corp. When Kal makes short work of him in seconds, R’as has Smith executed for failure. Then then big plot twist, Primus the leader of the Omega Men, is really Talia Al Ghul, and the entire resistance was just a front to try and recruit Kal to R’as’ side as his “son”.

Absolute Green Lantern 5. Jo and Hal continue their confrontation, and we flashback to the moment Hal killed Abin Sur for Todd’s death and triggered the Black Hand in the process.

Amazing Spidey 9.
Batgirl 10.
Birds of Prey 24.
Capt America 2.
Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League 1. Just what it sounds like; the two villains hatch a heist of the Watchtower Satellite.
Daredevil:Cold Day In Hell 3.

Deadpool Kills The Marvel U One Last Time 5. Final issue. As the overpowered Deapool goes to confront Flux Paradoxica, she reverts back to Alphie, who confesses that she’s a sub personality of Flux who realizes her evil dominant personality needs to be stopped, and begs DP to end her/their life to save the multiverse. But also, she realizes that since the multiverse is infinite, there are infinite versions of her still out there, so DP’s job will never be done…setting up another sequel I guess?

New History of the DC Universe 2. Everything from Superman’s debut up thru the first Crisis On Infinite Earths. Pretty much every page was just splash page of every major DC hero, and a bunch of their Rogues. The only major retcon was that Cyborg was present for the Justice League’s debut, but then he went into suspended animation before they formally convened as a team, and when he came out of suspension, he joined the New Teen Titans, so they reconciled the NU52 stuff with the original unvarnished continuity. Also, a secret US Govt thinktank called Project Superman was a catch all for a bunch of heroes origins. Metal Men, Capt Atom, Firestorm, Killer Frost, Element Woman, and Man-Bat all fell under this umbrella, just to name a few. Pretty sure it wasn’t that coordinated originally.

One World Under Doom 6. Reed challenges Doom to a worldwide televised debate. While Reed is making salient points, Doom appeals to the emotions of the world populace, pointing out Tony Stark created free energy with his arc reactor and kept it for himself. Hank Pym could solve world hunger with Pym Particles and just uses them to make himself giant. Storm could stop global warming, instead she terraformed Mars and then ruled it herself. T’Challa hoards Vibranium. Mutants cured death and kept it to themselves. Reed himself has thousands of patents that would better serve humanity and he just uses them for the FF’s personal amusement. Doom’s pretty much winnig the debate, but Sue Storm, Wanda, and Black Widow break thru the dome covering Latveria and reveal to the world that Doom is using the souls of every Latverian to power his magic.

Red Hulk 7. OWUD tie in. Ross is being experiments on by Capt Ryker’s War Wolf to try and turn Red Hulk into a mindless weapon. Deathlok and Machine Man are trying to mount a rescue.

Superior Avengers 5. The Avengers fake an Annihilus invasion of Wakanda and then double cross Kristoff before heading back to the future. Kristoff survives, and he and Ghost follow them into the future. Abomination was secretly infected by Annihilus and unleashes his plague once they return to their time.

GIJoe:ARAH 319. BOTH infiltration teams; the ninjas in Springfield, and the covert team on Cobra Island, are simultaneously compromised. The issue is one giant exciting extraction for both teams. And Cobra Commander escapes from Destro’s lair in Scotland.

Gwenpool 4. The other shoe drops. The Gwen Stacy isn’t the original. It’s the clone from the Clone Conspiracy Event from a few years ago.

Hellverine 9. Aki meets up with his ex Aurora and sends her to Nevada to check a possible breach into Hell where Severith and the HellHulk are planning to take out Mephisto. When she doesn’t come back, he has to look for her and finds Mephisto waiting with an offer to team up to stop Severith.

Marvel Free Previews 44. May’s issue for July’s Solicits. I missed it the first time around.

Moon Knight 11. The Midnight Mission celebrates Marc’s birthday and the success of Achilles’ defeat. They invite Marc’s daughter Diatrice to the party. She and Marc have a good talk on the roof, then he uses his new magic sword and convinces it to give up the soul of their magic living haunted house that Achilles’ henchman used to ‘kill’ it.

Rogue:Savage Land 5. Final issue. Rogue and Magneto defeat Zaladane just in time for the story to catch back up in Uncanny X-Men 274.

Secret Six 6. Final issue of the mini that I dropped after issue 1. I bought this to round up for my free issue. The US Govt has completely erased Amanda Waller’s memory and put it on a flashdrive. The members of the Six are divided on whether that means Waller is still guilty, and what they should to about it, her, and the flashdrive. Jay ends up breaking up with Jon Kent over it.
StarWars:Legacy of Vader 7.

Storm 11. Thunder War continues. The council of Storm Gods decide whether to side with Hadad or Storm in the coming conflict. Many of them side with Hadad, and Beta Ray Bill calls bullshit on them. Eternity goes to the House of Ideas to ask the One Above All for help with the coming conflict. Hadad is releasing Black Winters to distract the other foundational beings like the Phoenix Force, Infinity, and the Never Queen. Galactus warns Storm she might have to do this alone. This book is getting bonkers. Also, the cover is Ororo riding a hippo, which is fucking awesome.

Ultimate Wolverine 8. Abigail Brand leads a team including Wolverine in his fancy new uniform on a rescue mission. Which turns out to be a trap when Angel is unleashed and kills Brand and Beast. Wolverine advocates outting him down, but Kitty Pryde argues they made the effort to deprogram Logan, and should give Warren the same benefit.

All New Venom 9. Venom, Sleeper, and Flash Thompson are fighting the SCAR Guardsmen and Doc Ock to rescue the Toxin sym and Sleeper’s Cat construct. Rick Jones is pissed Sleeper’s been using his as a host without his consent. Flash absorbs the Anti-Venom into himself so he can be the host for Toxin while they escape. Once they’re free, MJ heads back home and has a serious talk with Paul that ends with her breaking up with him.

Wolverine by Chris Claremont. An original story that was first released in a $200 Paragon Slipcase collection, but its ‘rereleased’ here for a much more reasonable $5. Set during Claremont’s original run. Sabretooth shows up to kill Mariko in Japan, but Logan and the X-Men are there to thwart him. Creed realizes Kitty has the ‘soul’ of Ogun in her and lets the X-Men know, which causes strife because Logan hadn’t shared that with them.

Wolverines and Deadpools. The Shadow King is looking for a new host body, and has decided Ellie Camacho is the perfect candidate.

Uncanny X-Men 19. The Mayor of New Orleans pitches an X-Men themed quarter as a tourist attraction. Deadpool and Outlaw show up to attack the Outliers as a diversion while some bigot human assholes attack the diner that Jubilee visited in last year’s FCBD issue which predates all the From The Ashes ongoings. Jubilee returns to the diner to save the owner and her mutant daughter from the armed dicknozzles.

And now I can get back to the ‘D’ box and hopefully finish it off. The last stuff in there is the current One World Under Doom event and tie-ins. But there’s Deathstroke, Defenders, the Devil’s Reign Event, and more than one Doctor Strange series, plus whatever else I can’t think of. The box after that is, I think, Catwoman thru Daredevil.

[Tom Foolery]

Here’s the ‘D’ box continued.

Deathstroke Inc 1-5. Both Slade and Black Canary are recruited by a new secret organization called T.R.U.S.T. as agents policing both super-villains and heroes. Both of them are suspicious and agree to join for different reasons to uncover the organization's intentions. Alongside the mew Toyman, they take down various villains like H.I.V.E. and Cyborg Superman. Eventually, they realize TRUST is just the Secret Society in new clothes. Slade decides to kill the Society’s leaders, The Calculator and the new Libra and take over the whole operation. Black Canary declines Slade’s offer to join after they fight, and she reports back to Oracle and the Justice League.

6-7. Slade’s daughter Rose shows up with Respawn, the cloned offspring of Slade and Talia al Ghul, that was created as a failsafe backup for Damian. Slade embraces Respawn and his son and begins to train him.

8-10, plus Shadow War:Alpha, SW:Omega, and SW:War Zone. The crossover event between DS, Inc, Batman, and Robin’s books. I read these completely out of order and years apart. I read the Batman portions when it came out, and the Robin issues last year, and now I’m getting around to the final third of the story. The premise is that someone posing as Deathstroke assassinates Ras Al’Ghul when he turns himself into authorities. This sets off a war between Talia’s League of Assassins and Slade’s Secret Society with Batman and Damian caught in the middle. Slade ends up getting killed and the true villain is revealed as Geo-Force, the former Outsider and brother to Terra, whom Slade famously manipulated into betraying the Titans. Afterwards, the Society resurrects Slade in a Lazarus Pit and the events dovetail into the Dark Crisis event where Deathstroke was the main villain in yet another multiverse ending event.

11-15. While Dark Crisis was going on, DS’s solo book ended its run with a Deathstroke:Year One arc that revealed the story of how Slade went from failed military experiment to professional assassin. It was actually a pretty dull unimaginative story from Ed Brisson.

Defenders 1-5. Al Ewing tells an imaginative story where the Masked Raider, wielder of the Infinity Mask recruits Dr. Strange to help him stop Carlo Zota, the last surviving member of the Enclave, a group of scientists from the 40s responsible for Adam Warlock and other shady plans. Using wild tarot magic, Strange recruits Cloud, Harpy, and the Silver Surfer to aid them, as they travel backwards thru time chasing Zota into previous iterations of the cosmos. Along the way, they recruit Taaia, the mother of Galen, who will eventually become Galactus. As they regress thru earlier and more rudimentary versions of the cosmos, the twist is revealed that the Masked Raider is actually Zota himself trying to stop the cycle of him becoming his own enemy. Fun, time tripping insanity from Ewing.

Defenders Beyond 1-5. Equally trippy sequel series from Ewing. After Strange’s death, he triggers a failsafe that recruits Adam Brashear, aka Blue Marvel into using the tarot cards to recruit a second team of Defenders, including America Chavez, Tigra, a Loki alternate from the seventh cosmos that survived the Secret Wars mega-event, and Taaia from the previous Defenders series. Along the way they recruit The Beyonder and visit various fundemental realms like the Phoenix’s White Hot Room and the Never Queen’s realm of Could’ve Should’ve before finally visiting the House of Ideas and confronting the One Above All. The OAA warns them of the coming Enigma, which ended up ended up being the Nathaniel Essex omni-temporal Dominion that the Phoenix battled at the conclusion of the Krakoan saga. Since I read these out of order, I’m not sure if one was a retcon of the other, or if the entire thing was coordinated in advance. But either way, Ewing swings hard with these fundamental concepts of the Marvel Universe in an entertaining way.

Demon Days. A series of oneshots; Mariko, Cursed Web, Rising Storm, and Blood Feud. After reading Ultimate X-Men and the first couple of these oneshots, I realized I’m not a Peach Momoko fan. There was a fifth oneshot I didn’t get, as well as a follow up series called Demon Wars that I didn’t get any of. The premise is that Mariko is the child of Yokai, Japanese demons, and was raised by a woman pretending to be her grandmother to protect her from another Yokai who wants her power. There are some characters like Black Widow, Mystique, Sabretooth, etc who are in the story, but their characters bear little resemblance to their main Marvel personas. I just got bored with it and didn’t even finish the final two issues. Which is rare for me.

Devil’s Reign 1-6. The conclusion of a giant arc that was building in Zdarsky’s DD run over several years, which I haven't read yet. Wilson Fisk, mayor of NYC realizes that he used to know DD’s secret identity, and someone erased it. When DD goads him on it, Fisk retaliates by outlawing vigilantes in NYC and using deputized villains as his Thunderbolts to arrest several high profile heroes like Reed and Sue, Moon Knight, and Ben Reilly, who was Spider-Man at the time. The rest of New York’s heroes form a resistance, and plot to have Luke Cage run against Fisk in the next election. Fisk discovers the Purple Man’s children helped DD erase his identity from the world, and uses Killgrave’s powers to influence the voters of NYC. He then uses Killgrave’s power on himself to ‘remember’ Matt Murdock is Daredevil. Fisk confronts Matt’s brother Mike(who has been posing as Matt) and beats him to death, setting up final confrontation between the heroes and the Thunderbolts, and between Fisk and Matt that ends with Fisk on the run, Luke Cage as the new Mayor, and the world thinking Matt Murdock is dead.

DR:Superior Four 1-3. As part of the main event, Fisk gave Doc Ock access to the Baxter Building after the FF were arrested, and Ben and Johnny became fugitives. Otto then recruits three multiversal variants of himself based on Hulk, Ghost Rider and Wolverine. Some kind of quantum entanglement nonsense where they are trying to solidify their power levels by absorbing other multiverse Ottos. They kill a heroic Spider-Ock, and then battle a Dr Doom/Dr Strange/Dr Octopus variant who has been trying to stabilize the multiverse. The main Doc Ock merges with a Man-Thing variant to defeat the Doom/Strange variant, and then combines the Man-Thing and Doom/Strange versions into a new hero to replace the Spider variant they killed. The whole thing was weird and didn’t seem to fit into what was going on in the main Devil’s Reign book.

DR:Villains for Hire 1-3. Focusing on Fisk’s Thunderbolts team and USAgent John Walker working undercover for the FBI and the DA to build a case against Fisk.

DR;Winter Soldier oneshot. Bucky learns Fisk has compiled files on every hero, so he breaks into Gracie Mansion to steal his file and gets his ass kicked by a sleepwalking Fisk. Mostly is was Bucky being mopey about being a brainwashed killer for decades. He gets his file and learns about his extensive kill files, which set up some story arc over in the Capt America books.

DR: Moon Knight oneshot. Moon Knight is in the super-prison Myrmidion where he befriends 8-Ball, and gets imducted into an illegal fight club being run by the prison guards. Turns out MK got himself arrested on purpose so he could gain access to Mountain Man Marko and dissuade him from threatening his ex-wife and child by beating the ever loving shit out of him and blinding him.

DR:Spider-Man oneshot. After Ben Reilly is captured, the Thing and Human Torch break him out and he has to battle Fisk’s son The Rose to rescue one of his support team at the Beyond Corp.

DR:X-Men 1-3. Fisk’s anti-vigilante policies conflict with Krakoa’s diplomatic concessions, so Fisk and Emma Frost use other legal maneuvers on each other. Flashes back to when both Frost and Elektra were working for Fisk to help him consolidate his criminal enterprises. When a young girl witnessed Elektra killing an enemy of Fisk’s she and Emma had to work together to help the girl disappear, but now Fisk is accusing Emma of killing the girl, so she has to find her and prove she isn’t dead. Pretty good series. Fun seeing Elektra and Emma having a unique history together.

Devil’s Reign:Omega. The final oneshot that shows Matt Murdock’s funeral and set up the new status quo for Mayor Luke Cage as well as the next DD ongoing and a new Thunderbolts series(which I read way back in March 2024. It was pretty forgettable.)

The main Devil’s Reign series was great. Apart from the Moon Knight oneshot and the X-Men mini, the rest of the tie-ins were forgettable.

Up next, this week’s books, and then I’ll finish off the Doctor Strange stuff in the box. After that, I guess I’m gonna do another batch of Star Wars.

[Tom Foolery]

8/13’s books, plus a back issue I was missing.

Batman & Robin 24.
Batman:Harley Quinn oneshot. This is a reprint of the very HTF and expensive oneshot that officially introduced the character of Harley into the main DC continuity.
Batman:Dark Patterns 9.
Batman Gotham by Gaslight:League For Justice 2.
Bring on the Bad Guys:Red Skull oneshot.
Eddie Brock:Carnage 7.
New Champions 8. Whenever I see a group shot on a cover, I think ‘Hmmm…that looks suspiciously like a ‘final issue’ cover’. And sure enough…
Daredevil 24. My god, these awful looking JRJr covers are just getting more and more lazy. Why is he ruining BOTH Daredevil AND Amazing Spidey every month? Ugh.

Fantastic Four 2. OWUD tie-in. The FF are trapped in different time eras, but still cleverly manage to work together to get back to the present. Only then Reed gloats to Doom about how they recovered from his time-travel spell, and Doom just resets time to like thirty seconds ago, but this time he knows about their failsafe timesled and erases it from existence. Lol. Fuckin’ love this book. Ryan North GETS the FF.

Magik 8. Illyana and Dani are trying to find a way to separate Liminal from their friend Cal’s body. The society sends them on a mission to Vegas to stop some dark magic users, but it turns out the society is evil after all and the guys in Vegas were just people who had escaped the cult.

Miles Morales 36. The conclusion of the God War. Miles convinces all of Ares’ allies that maybe he’s a bit of a cunt, and they all team up to stop him from destroying the Brooklyn Academy. Having defeated Ares, Anansi fixes the school and returns everyone back to where they were before the challenge began, and concludes Miles’ obligation as his avatar.

Spider-Man and Wolverine 4. Spidey and Wolvie are fighting Doc Ock as the teleporter bracelets keep sending them to different locations like the Great Wall of China, Rome, and NYC. The new bad guy, Dreadshadow knows Peter’s secret ID and has some beef with him and ‘heroes’ in general. Then Theresa Parker shows up and confronts Logan about killing her and Peter’s parents, and shoots him with a bullet made from a Muramasa blade!

Star Wars: Jedi Knights 6. Qui-Gon, Mace Windu, and Aayla Secura are investigating the death of a fellow Jedi. They suspect murder, then Mace and Aayla get shot with sleeping darts and the guy from the first issue, Corlis Rath, attacks Qui-Gon and poisons him.

Transformers 23. They misspelled the Adler Planetarium. Sorry, it’s like on page two and immediately jumped out at me (Alder.) and I’m already annoyed by this entire series, so….the Decepticons are attacking Chicago, and Prime is still in a coma or whatever while the spirit of Sparky Witwicky is leading him to enlightenment. Ultra Magnus rallies the Autobots to defend Prime’s body. Beachcomber throws himself in front of Starscream to defend Prime and gets blown away. Prime wakes up and Megatron challenges him to a one on one battle. One shall stand, one shall fall. Ummm, next issue is the final issue?? Or maybe just the writer’s final issue. But probably we’ll be getting a fresh new #1 here soon enough. But wait, if he’s leaving, why did he waste all that time making his fucktarded third grade fanfic Transformer into a thing? And can the next writer immediately Poochy him? Please?

Trinity 3. The eldest of the three Trinity variants keeps trying to rescue one of the time-corgis from a Cerberus, but getting her mother killed. Or saving her mother and getting the Corgi killed. Or hesitating and getting them both killed. After several dozen attempts, she gets dejected until her dad(whom she never met) Steve Trevor shows up and gives her a motivational speech to keep trying until she ends up saving them both.

Ultimate Spider-Man Incursion 3. Miles travels to Japan and teams up with Nico and Maystorm to rescue his sister from the Silver Samurai, but she gets snatched away again, this time by Magik. Having only seen Peach Momoko’s versions of Nico and Maystorm, it was interesting to see them drawn as “normal” teenagers.

Ultimates 15. The Ultimates investigate the ancient myth of Sheng-Qi, the wielder of the Iron Fist from 10,000 years ago, who is rumored to have been reborn in the Hulk’s Heaven. There they clash with the Immortal Weapon, Uranium Brother #235 untilShe-Hulk rips his head off.

Laura Kinney:Wolverine 9. Laura’s sister Gabby has been hanging out with Xarus, the son of Dracula fighting vampires in Paris. When a witch living in the catacombs under the city curses Gabby, she returns to Laura for help, and they go see Clea at the Sanctum Sanctorum only to have the witch show up and kidnap Gabby.

Exceptional X-Men 8. Mr Sinister clones Axo and it takes the other kids a while to notice.

X-Men 20. Cyclops and Agent Lundqvist from O*N*E* get into a fist fight over Cyclops lying and withholding info from him, and they both get thrown in jail.

Giant Size X-Men 2. Kamala’s time journey comes full circle and she recruits her Marvelous X-Men team(Phoenix, Cyclops, Rogue, Shadowcat, and Wolverine) to stop Legion and convince him not to destroy reality, and instead just return to the White Hot Room and reunite with the David Haller persona. Then she goes home and outs herself as a mutant to her family. There’s also a backup story with Mystique and Destiny teasing the upcoming Age of Revelation event.

Up next, a pile of Dr Strange books. Hopefully I can get thru them just in time for issue #450 which comes out in a couple weeks.

[Tom Foolery]

8/20’s books. There’s quite a few from this week, so I might split the reading in two.

Absolute Batman 11. The origin of Absolute Bane, which is pretty similar to his actual origin. Except he was imprisoned WITH his father the entire time in Santa Prisca, and when the time came, the mysterious multi-trillionaire known as the Joker convinced him the rebels war could end if he just kills his own father. Which he did. In the present, there’s a ‘What if?’ scenario that plays out as if Bane confronts Batman one last time, beats the shit out of him and then the defeated Bruce is subjected to the Venom procedure and turns him into a Bane-Bat. But what really happens is Bane shows up to kill all of Bruce’s friends. I keep saying I want to drop this series. I really really want to. But I kinda feel like down the road it’ll be hard to find back issues because it’s so fucking popular. Ugh.

Absolute Flash 6. A flashback to the origin and recruitment of the Rogues to the Olympus Project. They were a disgraced Spec Ops team that was about to be incarcerated for a botched operation in the middle east. And a tease to the 1940s of the origin of the Project Olympus under Jay Garrick. Meanwhile, Wally tries calling his dad, who gets blackbagged for making contact with his son. This one I am dropping. Unlike Superman and WW, which are great, and the GL book which is intriguing enough to keep up with, this one is just mildly interesting. It’s not bad, just not good enough to keep dropping $5 every month. And you just know the beancounters at DC are salivating at the Absolute line’s success and we’ll be getting Absolute Titans, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Nightwing, Robin, Plastic Man, etc down the road.

Amazing Spidey 10.
New Avengers 3.
Batman & Robin Year One 10.

Detective Comics 1100. Holy crap. One thousand, one hundred issues of Detective! Tom Taylor, Greg Rucka, Mariko Tamaki, and Dan Watters all deliver short stories celebrating the Dark Knight in this slightly oversized special issue. I have an uninterrupted run back to issue 572(Aug ‘87).

Black Cat 1.
Catwoman 78.

GIJoe 10. Baroness and Cover Girl have to outwit Major Bludd in their deathmatch in order to save Baroness’ parents from Raptor. Clutch and Hound go on a secret mission to find Energon and get ambushed at a decommissioned MARS facility by Destro’s men.

Godzilla Destroys the Marvel Universe 2. An errant footfall from Godzilla destroys the Bar with No Name, causing dozens of super villains to join the street heroes in the fight against the atomic giant. Dr. Strange manages to banish Godzilla into a pocket dimension,,but his sheer rage starts making reality itself shake!

Imperial 3. Richard Rider has to unlock the Xandarian worldmind failsafe and with it, the answers to who is behind the betrayal. The secret architects of the gigantic war that has erupted are revealed. A wager between Maximus the Mad and the Grandmaster which began a year ago has led to the undoing of the Galactic Council. But the Grandmaster decides to revert everything back to the way it was, and is doublecrossed by Maximus and his brother….HOLY SHIT, THE INHUMANS ARE THE BAD GUYS!! Hickman promised to shake up the status quo, that’ll do it!!

Justice League Red 1. Red Tornado is continuously running endgame scenarios for universe ending catastrophes, and realizes he needs a black ops JL team operating without the oversite of the main League. He recruits Power Girl and GL Simon Baz(man, it must be hard for DC editorial to find stuff for all TEN of Earth’s Green Lanterns to do to stay relevant) to stop an alien race’s giant robot, but it turns out to be a harvest droid for planting seeds. And Black Adam shows up. Not sure if I will keep up with this series.

Krypto 3. Krypto is lost in the woods and finds a little lost girl suffering from exposure. He brings her to a hospital.

Marvel All-On-One: The Thing vs the Marvel Universe oneshot. Ben returns home from a mission in space and is immediately attacked by the rest of the FF. And then the Avengers. And the X-Men, and all the heroes and villains of earth. They turn out to be robots, built by the Impossible Man, who had designed a giant mystery on planet Popup for Ben to solve, but Ben just started Clobberin’. Honestly, the plot doesn’t matter too much, because every page was a splash page of Ben punching everyone. Great fun from Ryan North and Ed McGuinness.

Nightwing 129. NW manages to make it to the center of Titans Tower that's overrun with Nite-Mite’s altered reality. But in the process, the young kid he had saved from the gangs several issues ago has bonded with the reality warping properties of the fifth dimension to become the original Kryptonian hero Nightwing, Van-Zee. The new Nightwing is both Van-Zee and eleven year old Bryce Moran and they decide to become Bludhaven’s new protector, whether the city likes it or not.

Psylocke 10. Final issue. Kwannon manages to break free of the White Lady’s influence and stop her childhood friend from destroying the Hand’s Tokyo branch and rescuing the children the Hand were raising as assassins there.

Vision and Scarlet Witch 4. Vihz and Wanda confront and defeat Eric in his Gravesrealm pocket dimension, only to be confronted by the eldritch creature that had ‘sponsored’ his power play; Gargantos!!

Up next, the second half of this week’s books.

[Tom Foolery]

8/20 part 2.

Spider-Girl 3. Spider-Girl vs Paper Doll, who has been robbing clothing shops to create content for her social media influencer account.

All New Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider 1. Picking up where the last S-G series left off, Gwen and her dad are now living on Earth-616 thanks to Gwen’s cosmic cube powers. She’s juggling her relationship with anti-hero Black Tarantula, trying to start a new band(which Cindy Moon aka Silk joins as the bass player) and investigating a series of gruesome killings which I’m pretty sure are her abandoned artificial symbiote suit still running around.

Star Wars 4.
Superman Unlimited 4. Superman is in Gotham and gets turned into a Man-Bat. A Superman-Bat that Jimmy Olsen and Damian Wayne have to stop before it infects a bunch of other heroes. I think I’m dropping this one also. Not because it’s bad, but it’s not ‘essential’ like the main Superman book is. Pretty sure these will pop up down the road in $ bins.

Titans 26. Beast Boy and Cyborg go on a road trip and team up with the Doom Patrol to fight one of Beast Boy’s original nemeses from his DP days, the Zookeeper.

Ultimate Black Panther 19. Inan reveals her suspicions to Killmonger that Shuri is the traitor within T’Challa’s inner circle. T’Challa gets his ass beat by Z’non, the spirit of Vibranium. He is saved by Bast, the elder god, who offers to upgrade his power set to defeat Z’non.

Venom:Black, White, and Blood 1. Another B/W anthology series with short stories from Michelinie, North, and DeMatties from different eras of Venom’s history.

Wolverine 12. Logan figures out his mother is really Jason Wyngarde aka Mastermind fucking with his head. After overcoming his mommy issues(which he conveniently hasn’t had for the last 200 years, but all the sudden they are an issue because writers can’t come up with anything decent to do with Wolverine anymore) he kills(or maybe he doesn’t and it’s in his head) Wyngarde.

Wonder Woman 24. Diana is helping the young girl on Mouse Island and running afoul of the armed guards on the island.

World’s Finest 42. Batman and Superman have to team up with Bizarro Batman and Superman to stop the infection that’s turning all the bizarro people “normal” while also stopping Bizarro Brainiac from enlarging cities. They also discover the planet’s gravitational field is unstable due to it being a cube and not a sphere.

Exceptional X-Men 12. Kitty Pryde has been sucked thru a space time portal into her past, and her students have to travel back in time to find her.

Up next, the Dr Strange books. Which I’m almost done with.

[Tom Foolery]

Jed MacKay began his Dr. Strange run with the mini series,

Death of Doctor Strange 1-5. Doctor Strange is having a typical Sorcerer Supreme day, walking his ghost dog in the park, teaching at his Academy, helping fellow magic users fight demons etc when a mysterious stranger(whom he recognizes)at his front door binds him in powerful magic and stabs him to death. With his death, many spells and wards he had protecting this dimension suddenly become weak, and various other dimensional beings like the Faltine begin “attacking” Earth. But Strange’s allies, like his wife, (who now remembers her marriage to Stephen because his death nullified the amnesia spell he had placed on her in the previous Dr Strange ongoing) realize the dimensional warlords are fleeing an even bigger threat; the Three Mothers, and their Peregrine Child invading this dimension to feed on it’s ambient magic and users. But Strange had a failsafe in place in case of his death. He had “borrowed” one week of his life from very early in his career, prior to him even becoming Sorcerer Surpreme, and this 1960’s version of Stephen shows up to help solve his own murder. The killer is revealed to be Kaecilius, former lackey to Baron Mordo, who had been sent by a conclave of magic users, including Clea’s mother Umar to kill Strange. Eventually 60s Strange manages to bring back the older version of himself, and they defeat the Three Mothers. But Strange’s resurrection is only temporary, as Death has claimed Stephen’s soul and she won’t give it back that easily, so before he dies, he passes the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme to Clea….

There were several oneshot tie-ins to the Death of Doctor Strange:
The Avengers
Bloodstone
Spider-Man
White Fox
Blade
Black Knight/X-Men
all of them dealing with one crisis or another related to the breakdown of all the magical protective spells that dissipated with Stephen’s death. None of them were as good as the main storyline, which was an excellent start to MacKay’s run. Side note, I guess I had forgotten Dr Strange wasn’t Sorcerer Supreme from the beginning. His entire original run of Strange Tales, he was just a magic user. It wasn’t until his run in Marvel Premiere in the early 70s that the Ancient One died and passed the mantle to him, which led into his mid-70s/early 80s ongoing.

Strange 1-10. Clea Strange became Sorcerer Supreme for this series. Her first order of business is to bring Stephen back from the dead, but she’s opposed by the Harvestman, Death’s own Sorceror Supreme. He requests Clea’s help to stop a mysterious new criminal organization called the Blasphemy Cartel who is bringing former heroes back to life as revenants filled with the haunted souls of wayward ghosts. Thunderstrike, Shadowknight, Black Goliath and finally, the Sentry are the zombified heroes brought back to o-pose them. Along the way, they discover the Blasphemy Cartel is the former SHIELD subdivision dealing with magic called WAND. When SHIELD disbanded, WAND was taken over by a former agent now called Director None. And the Harvestman himself is Stephen who has been tasked by Death to stop the revenant plot in exchange for his resurrection. The book ends with Stephen returning to life and reclaiming the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme, whichnled into the third MacKay series, but first…

Dr. Strange:Fall Sunrise 1-3. This was a four issue mini that I only have three issues of. But it was by Trad Moore, whose art style I don’t like, and the story was uninteresting. I got about halfway thru the first issue, before I stopped reading. I flipped thru the other two issues, but couldn’t tell you whatnit was about. Skipped.

Doctor Strange 1-5. Stephen is back and tidying up loose ends from his absence as Sorcerer Supreme. Wong and Pandora Peters have restarted WAND by recruiting former villain Freaky Doctor Zee to police magic users. Someone is killing the warlords who invaded earth during the Death miniseries. Pandora suspects Clea is the killer, but when Clea’s mother Umar marries fellow warlord Tiboro, the real killer is revealed as General Strange, a variant of Stephen the Vishanti recruited to fight in the War of the Seven Spheres, a 5000 year long conflict(a reference to a story arc from Strange’s 90s series. Jed MacKay loves to dig up obscure story elements and reuse them. Its great). General Strange kidnaps Clea’s new unborn baby sister to use in building a new army to continue the War.

6-10. Stephen has to borrow magic from the Trinity of Ashes, the Vishanti’s enemies in the 5000 year war to combat his alternate self. Eventually he and Clea manage to subdue his alternate self and rescue the baby. Stephen takes the General back to the Sanctum where he promises to try and undo 5000 years worth of PTSD.

11. A one off where Clea and Stephen are babysitting her new toddler sister at the circus and run into a new version of the Circus of Crime

12. Another one off that focuses on Bats the ghost dog. A shadowy entity invades the Sanctum, and only Bats can sense it. It’s the ghost of Stephen’s brother Victor who was trapped in the Crypt of Shadows, and escapes, trapping Bats in there instead.

13-14. Stephen assembles a Secret Defenders team including Black Cat, Taskmaster, and Hunter’s Moon to deal with a sentient Fantasy Role Playing game that is possessing its players. He convinces the game to let the kids go, and then introduces the game to the General so they can create an immersive world together.

15-17. Blood Hunt tie-in. Stephen gets turned into a vampire. Clea separates his astral form from his vampire body. While they were dealing with the vampire invasion in the main Blood Hunt series, Victor’s ghost takes posession of Strange’s vampire body. Wong tries to stop him, but can’t. Bats calls upon the God of Dogs to help him escape the Crypt, and he bites Victor’s ghost which ejects him from Strange’s body and leaves it cured of the vampirism. Which dovetailed back into the Blood Hunt mini.

18. Final issue. Stephen is dealing with the fallout of having given the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme to Dr. Doom and MacKay wrapped up any loose plot threads on his run. This was Legacy issue 444. The Doctor Strange of Asgard mini accounted for 445-449, so a giant sized 450th issue is coming out soon, which kicks off the next chapter by a new writer.

As with his Moon Knight run, I’ve really enjoyed Jed MacKay’s work on this series. His X-Men run has been kinda mediocre, and I haven’t read his Avengers stuff yet. But this was a fun run.

Up next, I think I’m dipping back into the Star Wars run for the Crimson Reign portion of the Crimson Dawn arc, and depending how many books that is, maybe the Hidden Empire stuff too. But also, this week’s books.

[Tom Foolery]

8/27’s books. The first half.

Absolute Wonder Woman 11. Diana re-enters the maze to save Ferdinand, and encounters Io, her first Amazon ally who has been protecting people trapped in the maze. After helping them escape, WW takes the fight back to Clea.

Avengers 29.
West Coast Avengers 10.
Immortal Legend Batman 1. I wasn’t going to bother with this Elseworld series, but I needed an extra book to round up and get a free issue.
Bring on the Bad Guys:Mephisto oneshot. The Dormammu issue also came out, but I thought it was a re-order so I need to track that one down.

Deadpool/Wolverine 8. Logan is starting to resist Apocalypse’s Legacy 2.0 influence. Deadpool and Maverick, under O*N*E* director Talyn’s programming are dropped into Apocalypse’s lair to fight a giant zombie dragon. Stryfe/Apocalypse powers up Logan into a ‘roided up monster to fight them.

Runaways 3. OWUD tie-in. Karolina and Alex look for their missing friends. The Doombots return to claim the Runaway’s Doombot and Nico triggers her latent magic powers to teleport the team to safety. This series has such great dialogue and character development. I hope they bring it back as an ongoing again.

Emma Frost 3. Emma escapes her incerceration after being betrayed by her assistant and escapes Rome. She heads to Tokyo looking for allies, but they betray her also, so she heads back to NYC.

Fantastic Four:Fanfare 4. Final issue of the anthology series with two decent Sue Storm stories, but the final story was a turd from Daniel Warren Johnson, who is quickly rising the list of my least favorite writers.

Incredible Hulk 28. Hulk returns to New Orleans where Jericho Drumm’s brother lures him into the remains of the abandoned Strange Academy building at the behest of the Mother of Horrors. He descends into the underworld to face the Eldest down.

Imperial War:Black Panther oneshot. T’Challa realizes the Wakandan Empire was set up and does his best to convince the other Galactic empires to stand down. He has better success with some than with others. Gladiator and the Shi’Ar side with him. But Hulk is convinced Wakanda assassinated his son Hiro-Kala, and he wants revenge. Setting up the new ongoing.

Imperial War: Planet She-Hulk oneshot. Jen has been tasked by Hulk to keep the peace on Sakaar for five days. This includes solving the murder of Hiro-Kala’s majordomo where all five of Hiro’s wives are the suspects. Setting up the mew ongoing.

Jeff the Land Shark 3. Jeff lands in Rogue and Gambit’s bedroom while chasing the shadow demon of himself. Then he gets teleported to Madripoor where Logan and Kwannon are attending a Luna Snow concert and they get attacked by ninjas.

Justice League Unlimited 10. The Trinity is at odds with each other over the vetting process of the League members. Superman is opposed to intruding into member’s private lives, so Batman goes behind his and WW’s back and tasks Red Tornado with new protocols. Meanwhile, the Time Trapper(aka Doomsday from a million years in the future) is attacked by Darkseid’s LoSH in the future. The League has to try and operate on his fatal wounds without triggering his built in time altering safeguards.

Marvel Free Previews 48. Sept’s solicits for November.

Robin & Batman:Jason Todd 1-3. I had these in the Batman box, but decided to move the first series, and this follow up series into the ‘R’ box, so I read the entire Prestige mini. Early in Jason’s career as Robin, and he’s already acting out. Both Bruce and Alfred are wondering if making him Dick’s successor was the correct decision, and even a team-up patrol with OG Robin Nightwing raises concerns. Then a new vigilante called the Wraith lures Jason to help him take down the drug peddlers responsible for Jason’s mom’s OD. Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen deliver a serviceable story, but mostly I kept thinking about the timeline since Barbara is Oracle in this particular story, which I don’t think originally matches Jason’s stint as Robin. And it made me think about how old Dick and Jason(and Bruce for that matter) are in relation to each other.

Death of the Silver Surfer 3. Norrin has been trapped on the B.A.N.s space vessel. When the FF arrive to free him, they face off against Major Koh, but she’s starting to question her boss’ motivation thanks to a psychic connection between her and the Surfer. Man, they are telegraphing so hard that Kelly Koh is going to be the new Silver Surfer so that we can have a Surfer with bewbs like in the movieverse….will it stick? Time will tell.

Up next, the second half of 8/27’s books.

[Tom Foolery]

8/27’s books. Part Deuce.

Miles Morales 37. After the events of the God War arc, Miles’ life is getting back to normal. Misty Knight contacts him for a job as her ‘intern’ at Heroes for Hire to investigate a series of burglaries. After they come up against two young super powered thieves; one employing Kitsune foxes, and the other exhibiting ‘luck’ powers calling himself White Cat, Misty makes a call to another luck powered thief for assistance. Enter Felicia Hardy.

Spider-Verse vs Venomverse 4. The two factions continue to battle each other until they all decide fighting is stupid and stop fighting. Then the two entities that kicked off the war open portals and unleash two giant armies of Spiders and Venoms. To be concluded next month, when I guarantee nothing permanent will result.

Star Wars:Doctor Aphra 3.
Superman 29. Superman and Superboy-Prime head into the future to save Booster Gold(who Superman no longer has any memory of) and they come across the survivors of several different Legion teams who tried to stop Darkseid’s Legion and were decimated in the process. When the Dark Legion attacks, Prime switches sides and blindsides Superman. This story arc is getting pretty good, and I think it’s the set up for the next big DC Event.

Thing 4. Ben and the young girl he’s protecting are being hunted by tons of supervillains after Kingpin put a $10M bounty on Grimm’s head. Juggernaut, Black Tom, Moonstone, Rhino, Jigsaw, Hate-Monger, Grizzly, Red Ghost and his apes, and a version of the Sinister Six all show up. When Madame Hydra and a cadre of Hydra agents finally grab the girl, she exhibits her mutant power and explodes.

The Mortal Thor 1. The world has been retconned. Norse Mythology is and always has been a myth. Beta Ray Bill was the founding member of the Avengers. And average mortal Sigurd Jarlson is just a man who has recently moved to NYC(although he doesn’t really remember how he got there) and he’s just looking for work in construction(because he’s good with a hammer). When a shady firm wants to hire him and some other construction workers to be scabs and break a strike line, he says no, which earns the ire of the firm’s hired thugs. Sigurd has to teach them a lesson. With his hammer. The second act of Al Ewing’s Thor run begins here.

Doomed 2099 oneshot. This is a sneaky One World Under Doom tie-in without the OWUD banner on the cover. Doom 2099 keeps recruiting time displaced heroes(and villains) and returning to the present to confront Emperor Doom and convince him to give up the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme, lest it wreak havoc on the future.

Ultimate Spider-Man 20. Peter, Harry, Gwen and MJ go to dinner so that the first three can come clean about EVERYTHING to MJ, and the ramifications that their war with Kingpin will have on everything. Richard has a talk with Uncle Ben about the pico-suit and his relationship with Felicia.

Void Rivals 22. Both factions on planet splitty come into open conflict over the prospect of Zeta’s Unity. Hot Rod and Springer are caught up in the battle. Sprongsy is fighting that other dude even though they both are after the same thing. Skuxxoid and Pythona are both approaching the planet respectively. Shit’s coming to a head, yo.

Wolverine and Kitty Pryde 5. I had skipped the last couple issues of this, but I needed an extra couple books to round up and get a free issue. Kitty and Ziggy Trask have swapped bodies and the shared trauma has made them besties. Everyone fights a giant snow samurai. It’s a samurai made of snow. Sometimes Claremont still puts out bangers. And sometimes he doesn’t. Like this.

X-Men 21. With Scott still in county, Magik leads a team against the Upstarts and fucks them up. Jughernaut literally rips a dude’s head off. I’m sure that’s gonna have consequences down the road as to whether he stays on the team.

X-Men:Tooth and Nail oneshot. Reprint of a couple digital first stories starring Magneto and Beast. These oneshots from Alex Paknadel have been pretty good with character development for these characters. More so than A LOT of other endless issues that have been written over the past several years.

X-Men:Age of Revelation 0. This was a “secret” shadow release that came out last month. My guy didn’t know anything about it, but I found a copy at another LCS. It’s a primer for the upcoming Event crossover where all the X-Books are rebooting to an alternate future for the next several months. Xorn is the narrator explaining now Douglas Ramsey joins the X-Men, and things escalate to where Mutants have taken over Philidelphia and most of the Eastern United States, Washington DC is a crater, and the few remaining X-Men are resistance fighters. The hook is that they are gonna bring the younger Cyclops from the present into this dystopian future to somehow prevent it from happening. Part of me is like ‘oye. Another alternate timeline event’. But I also just finished Jed MacKay’s Dr. Strange run and I’m digging his Moon Knight run. Not to mention the Blood Hunt series was pretty epic, so I’m willing to be optimistic about this.

Up next, Star Wars.