The current format of this column isn't particularly working for me anymore: remembering issues up to, and over, a month old can be quite difficult, especially for the series not really pushing my buttons. So I'm thinking about giving things a re-jig and see what happens!
This week heralds the beginning of the second year of Marvel's 'Point One' initiative with Amazing Spider-Man #679.1, and another two of my favourite books - Daredevil and Batman - also have new issues to bring this week's quality of books oh-so very high. Read about these and more after the jump!
Amazing Spider-Man #679.1
As well as essentially signalling the end of my first year of comic collection, this issue also begins a second round of 'Point One' jump-on issue for Marvel's ongoing series. This initiative has had a wide range of successes and failures, but only Marvel will truly know whether it is all worth it.
While last year's Spider-Man 'Point One' was essentially 20 pages of advertising for Venom, which was to start a month or so later, this time around it seems like the issue is going to be an actual jumping on point for ASM.
Being the Spider-Man's 50th anniversary, and with a new Hollywood blockbuster out in a couple of months, there will be plenty of people looking to get into Amazing Spider-Man, and I don't think Marvel could have picked a better time for this Point One issue: The Ends of the Earth begins in three issue's time which, along with this issue, gives plenty of pages to get new readers up to speed with the world's most famous wall-crawler!
I'm expecting lashings of exposition about Spider-Man's memberships with both The Avengers and The Fantastic Four/Future Foundation, as well as info on both his job at Horizon and relationship status (don't look at me like that, it's important). Background on the upcoming event is to be expected as well, potentially with some extra info dropping for regular readers who don't want to feel like they wasted their money on a 're-cap' comic.
I hope this issue brings in many new readers to share in what is likely to be one of Peter Parker's greatest years yet!
Avenging Spider-Man #4
After three comics and one story, Red Hulk and Joe Madureira's run on this comic has come to a (temporary?) end and in their place come Hawkeye and a new trio of artists (Greg Land, Jay Leisten and Will Quintana) for this latest Spidey-Team-Up.
Though I was disappointed to find out that 'Joe Mad' wasn't going to be carrying on with the series, the previews have well and truly shaken those feelings from my mind - the book looks fantastic, and even makes me not mind the new-look Hawkeye so much as I have been.
If this series is going to become sets of three issue mini-arcs, where artists can go to town on Spider-Man and a whole host of Avengers characters, then count me in for the long haul if this is the kind of stuff we can expect!
Daredevil #9
The two-part story with Spider-Man and Daredevil last month was pretty cool in that they tied together seemlessly, yet totally felt like they belonged in their own series to the point where I didn't particularly notice that Spider-Man had all but dropped out of the story, returning only for one of his trademark funnies near the end.
Last month's issue also set in motion two stories that will be featuring in the months to come I'll bet, with the mystery of Matt's father's missing body obviously the more immediate of the two, though Black Cat's 'betrayal' was an interesting development in the 'super-secret-data that all the bad-guys want' arc (that's it's name, I swear).
Anyways, with a personal stake in the matter, in this week's issue, Matt goes underground to solve the matter of disappearing bodies, and comes across everyone's favourite subterrainers - the Moloids! With these crazy cats in town I can promise a great issue!
Fear Itself: The Fearless #9
I have not read many comics in which less happened than in issue 8 of this series; what a snooze fest that was. It may seem shallow that I feel that way, just because there weren't any fight scenes, but there was really nothing going on in those 20-something pages.
The Valkyrie flashbacks are gone, but in their place we got the explanation of how Sin managed to escape after Fear Itself, which could have been interesting but ended up being 3-4 pages of soldiers 'teasing' Red Skull's daughter, followed by a couple of panels of a relatively unexplained breakout.
The series started out really well, but the plot is just getting itself all tangled up for no reason. This Hellstrom guy is popping up everywhere in the MarvelU at the moment, but nowhere has particularly explained who he is or where his allegiances may lie; and everyone seems to be fighting against Valkyrie's efforts to collect the hammers when, and forgive me for being meta for a moment, she clearly has her reasons for doing so! She's a friggin' Avenger for god's sake! Yet pretty much everyone is trying to kick the crap out of her in an effort to prevent her from collecting the hammers, despite the fact Sin has an opposing team also collecting hammers - the smart thing would be to band together and help Valkyrie do whatever she's trying to do. She should either throw everyone a bone and tell them what she's up to, or concede that she can't expect faith in what she's doing when the Universe could be at stake. Urgh, I think I'm done ranting...
Thunderbolts #170
Now this is a book that makes sense! I thought the last issue was really good, especially after the Dullsville that was the previous Luke Cage-centred issue last month.
The T-Bolt's have continued to fall further and further back in time, and are currently in the Middle/Medieval Ages. Last issue Troll and Boomerang went toe-to-toe with the Black Knight, and whooped his ass, Boomerang taking his sword as spoils of war.
While the rest of the team were trying to figure out a way for them to return home, Arthur and his round-table Knights show up with Merlin, who promptly shows up the entire team with his baddass magics.
With the Thunderbolts defeated, last issue then promptly put a very cool spin on the Arthurian legend, in only a couple of pages, that hints towards some pretty nasty stuff happening this week!
I am liking this series more and more with each issue (exceptions not withstanding), so I urge anyone thinking about getting into a new series to pick this one up!
Venom #13.2
Yet another appearance from Mr Hellstrom last week, popping up with Doctor Strange to see what the happy-haps were and they find, due to Johnny Blaze's magic medallion, what's happening in Vegas, is staying in Vegas (see what I/they did there?).
A pretty solid series so far, with cool villains and four fights going on simultaneously while never feeling too hectic - though I did predict incorrectly which bad-guy would match up to which hero, it made more sense to me that Alejandra would be against the preacher-looking guy, and Venom would be against the guy that looked like a white Venom, but I digress.
I believe this issue will 'centre' around X-23 and her battle against her cheerleader antithesis. X-23 is probably the character in this series that I know the least about, yet she seems like the most interesting (inner-battles over whether she has a soul or not, for example), and I would have been interested in getting the ongoing with her in it, if it hadn't been cancelled/wasn't about to end. Hopefully the character will have some closure from this series, if not her own.
Winter Soldier #2
This series had a pretty good first issue - it introduced the two main characters very well, established their relationship without throwing mountains of exposition at us, and set up the plot of the first arc/basic premise of the series very simply.
I asked for awesome fight scenes and espionage and got both by the barrel-load. Bucky's narration over the first infiltration scene was pretty much perfect and set a tone I expect the series will follow. The art, too, emphasises the tone - dark, muted colours and a 'sketchy' style ensure you know that these are people whose lives depend on not being seen.
The first arc's plot is appropriate, if a little predictable, and see's Bucky and Black Widow attempting to uncover more of the 'sleeper' agents from the program that turned Bucky into the Winter Soldier. This story will allow for background explanation for Bucky's history without seeming too contrived, so is a pretty good call in my opinion.
Batman #6
Batman #5 was absolutely outstanding. If you read comic reviews I am certain you will have only seen full marks for that issue. The way the comic built up around Bruce/Batman losing his mind was fantastic, even going so far as to forcing you to rotate the book to be able to read it to the point where you are reading it upside-down and backward - best use of the comic medium I have seen (though it does make me wonder how they treated those sections digitally).
It has been announced recently that the Court of Owls will be the focus of the first book-spanning event of the New 52, starting around Batman #9 in a couple of months so we can expect to be seeing the Owl's influences in books beyond this series, including Nightwing and Catwoman to name just two.
I really cannot praise this series enough. This along with Action Comics are definitely my two stand out DC comics of the moment. Get this series! (Though judging by sales counts you probably already are!)
Also out this week:
Marvel
Avengers #22
New Avengers #21
Ultimate Comics: X-Men #7
Uncanny X-Men #7
Wolverine #301
DC Comics
Catwoman #6
Green Lantern Corps #6
Nightwing #6
Supergirl #6
Wonder Woman #6
Dish Out!
Dish's Stack is where i talk about the comics i will be buying this week! Judge my taste all you like, but that's what this is! I will normally focus on my thoughts of previous issues and possible developments, but nevertheless be wary of minor (or possibly major) spoilers if you do not keep very up-to-date with series or previews, but I'll do my best not to reveal anything too surprising
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