A short week, but spoilers aplenty!
Outsiders Five of a King Grace and Wonder Woman: A little hokey at times, but funny and charming at times too. Andreyko knows how to write believable women, and grounds the story in some humanity instead of just being another superhero quest.
Fantastic Four #549: Take down of the Frightful Five using teamwork of all things, and a universe-spanning threat for the Fantastic Four + 2 to deal with. Solid.
The Initiative #6: “Looks’ like our team’s got it’s own ‘Deus X-Man.'” “Heh, that’s pretty good.” A pretty good story about the Initiative’s “shadow strike force” being used during World War Hulk. The only problem with WWH is that every tie-in just seems to show, again and again, what won’t beat the Hulk, without any progress.
Countdown #35: Ah, so Granny Goodness = Athena means that all the people training (like Holly, one of the main characters) are going to be come Female Furies on Earth. Maybe that means that most of the plots going on have to do with Darkseid’s infiltration. At least there’s some more hints of what’s to come then, instead of just being a bunch of disparate plots.
Action Comics #855: I subscribed to this because of Eric Powell’s art doing Bizarro, and it does not disappoint, and he adds in several funny background touches. The story itself ends up going nowhere and just being plain weird at times… but I think it has the potential to be really good in the rest of the arc.
Teen Titans #50: Not bad, I sort of wonder what the point of putting in a few pages directly from this month’s Blue Beetle is… but the reminiscences of Young Justice issues were great. That’s a series I need to read.
52 Aftermath Four Horseman #1: I still don’t get why these things need their own miniseries… for example, most of this was about Superman and Batman… seems perfect when you have a title already starring Superman and Batman. This one actually has a lot of potential, but being an opening issue spending a lot of time in recap from 52, not quite enough happens.
Amazons Attack #6: I can only say three things about this issue, and series as a whole: WTF? The last page reveal is the whole time Granny Goodness (who hadn’t appeared in the series at all) defeated the entire Greek Pantheon. I mean… come on now.
World War Hulk X-Men #3: Ah, so, just an excuse to make the Juggernaut evil again? And the Hulk can be stopped by hurt feelings?
Wonder Woman #12: And to finish off the crap of Amazons Attack, amnesia to reset character development!
Ex Machina had a release this week…
Which I want to read (esp. after rereading the fourth trade this week) but it wasn’t available to me. Probably be in next week’s reviews.
Young Justice was, and still is, one of favourite titles. The humor was good. The characters were some of the best. Even when it got weird with Slowbo ( think Robin mixed with Lobo ) and Snapper Carr, I throughly enjoyed it.
I really dislike the whole World War Hulk. I read most of it and all felt really wrong and disjointed, completely undoing all the good that Planet Hulk did.
Gotta find some Young Justice. I don’t know how much of it is collected in trades either.
World War Hulk is sort of a mixed bag for me. If it was just the main title being a big, constant fight against Hulk, I could deal with that… but not 4+ spin-off books of “Who will Hulk beat up this week?” And unlike Civil War: Frontline, WWH Frontline isn’t driving the plot at all, so in addition to “Hulk is everywhere” syndrome, it hasn’t felt like its accomplished anything yet. I’m sure by the end they’ll be SHOCKING REVELATIONS.
And no matter how bad World War Hulk gets, it’s no Amazons Attack (currently my low bar in crossover/events.)