Weekly Comic Review for 10/21/15
OK. I spent yesterday evening picking up stuff I needed on Cyber Monday instead of writing. But it’s for my new computer so I had a reason. But now I’m on to the writing…
Astonishing Ant-Man #1 – We spend the first half of the book on a history lesson. What happened in the last series. What is going on and went on with Cassie (including as Stature) and how he’s a bad dad. What happened with Darren Cross around the time of his origin. All the fun stuff. Why the last part? Well, it seems Cross is back on the scene and it seems he’s having a problem keeping himself up… to full height that is. Yes, even he has a shrinking problem. (Add your own penis jokes there. I’m not going to do all the work.) Now enter the Power Broker, some guy with very light purple skin and some black thing around his jaw. The guy also has an app that can be used to hire villains to attack someone. I wonder if that’s on Google Play or the iStore. Well, they send Whirlwind after Ant-Men while he’s trying to get hired for a gig and call him off just before he kills Scott. Tho his chances for that job are pretty dead. Then to finish it all off, we find out he’s in jail. No idea why. Just this sudden leap that will hopefully be explained next issue. Not that I plan to be around for it.
Justice League #45 – The Darkseid War part 5 – Well, Darkseid is officially dead… for now at least. I guess we’ll see how long this lasts. With that, everything goes wacky. Flash is still having his own crisis with the Black Racer. Batman is still on the Mobius Chair. Superman is still under the influence of the evil “solar” energy. Shazam starts hearing voices. (New ones at least. New gods in fact.) Batman send Hal off to Oa as it’s become a target for parademons. As for Luthor, Superman abandoned him on Apokolips where he is found and assumed to be this new savior. Yeah, none of that can be good. At least it’s interesting.
Secret Six #7 – The magical beings are all gathering because something is draining all the mystical energy. Three guesses who it is. While Catman tries to do some team building exercises (basketball) with the rest of the group, Big Shot keeps an eye on Alice in the hospital. Etrigan shows up at the basketball court (where things really aren’t going as well as Thomas had planned) to fill the team in while a bunch of the mages all attack the hospital causing Alice to go all magical Voltron, looking like she’s made up of at least 7 different beings. To reiterate my sentiment from the last comic… this can’t be good. I do have one question. Since when is Cheetah a magical being who could actually find a way to get to a magical tower out who knows where? While the item that changed her into Cheetah may be an artifact, she has no real magical abilities of her own. I’ll be looking forward to seeing Black Alice kick some magician ass next issue and Etrigan always makes things interesting. While this team isn’t as good as the first series, it still has the interesting misfit dynamic that draws me in.
The Shield #1 – I’ve always been used to a male Shield. The fact that it’s a young girl this time around seemed a bit odd. Checking the issue out, it seems that this time around, the Shield is come sort of spirit of freedom or something that is constantly reborn. She’s just getting her memory back though in the modern days. Not sure what happened before we first see her in modern times with amnesia other than a couple page colonial flashback. I’m really not liking what Dark Circle is doing with the old Red Circle MLJ characters. I remember reading about the characters in their second incarnation in the 1980s under Archie Comics’ Red Circle imprint. I even dealt with how DC reimaged them under the Impact! imprint. This version, on the other hand, is an attempt to make good characters dark and brooding and just not fun any more. Why can’t comics be well written but still fun?
Titans Hunt #1 – We have another title spinning out of Convergence. The cover of the book is some heroes standing over a grave with images of older Titans in a ghostly background. That seems to have nothing to do with this specific issue though. The Titans shown (Lilith, Gnarrk, Aqualad/Tempest, Robin/Nightwing, Wonder Girl/Donna Troy, Mal Duncan/Herald, and Arsenal) do all appear in the book though. The characters cross paths with each other, some having déjà vu. For a few, this seem to be related to the Teen Titans’ original mission with Mister Twister. Lilith contacts Dick telepathically to tell him that he shouldn’t have let Garth go and that he needs to remember. She also has files on all the characters including Hawk and Dove who aren’t brought into the story yet. (For some reason Gnarrk’s file says Caveboy. I’ve never seen him called that before. He’s always just used his name only.) I’m waiting to see what happens with this. I’d really love to see a “real” Titans title again with members of the old team. Hell, even Raven, Starfire, and Best Boy on the cover look more like their pre-New 52 selves than they do now. I hope they don’t fumble this on because it has a lot of potential.
Uncanny Inhumans #1 – Black Bolt, Reader, and Triton go back in time to ancient Attilan and end up running afoul of Kang. (I guess he’s decided to play with more than just the Avengers now.) Other Inhumans are out going PR good deeds for the cameras. Then, we bring in the non-Inhumans with Beast working in their lab and the Human Torch making out with Medusa. Yup. You heard that right. So did Black Bolt when he shows up in the middle of it. Messy! Actually, kind of boring too. The short back up story of a team of Inhumans searching out new ones is more interesting but really just makes me think of some of the earlier days of the X-Men hunting mutants to try to save them. The whole Inhuman storyline lately just seems like a twist on that which makes them severely less interesting than they used to be before so many humans ended up being part Inhuman too.
There’s no question this time around. The books are easy split in a 50/50 division. The top 3 will be Justice League, Secret Six, and Titans Hunt. The other three will not see a second issue in my collection.
