Weekly Comic Review for 5/2/12

I started this on Wednesday but am just getting a chance to finish it.

Avengers Academy #26 – This issue is a tie-in to the Avengers vs X-Men crossover going on right now. Wolverine brings the young mutants to the academy to safeguard them. While a few of them play well with others, Surge and a bunch of the others whine as much as Cyclops with their “You think of us as second class citizens! Oh pity me!” Plus, we get to see some of Sebastian Shaw which I know nothing about recently since I don’t read the X-Titles. Put that stuff in an X-title where you won’t just confuse people.

Defenders #6 – This story is mostly about Iron Fist and Silver Surfer. I’m not sure when the Silver Surfer became a shape shifter but some of the stuff he’s done since the series began is just odd. It seems that someone is killing the Immortal Weapons are getting killed off and it turns out it’s the Prince of Orphans who should have been after the Defenders. Plus, the history of the Immortal Weapons is related to the wish machines/engines too. At least the notes at the bottom of the page are in English again.

Dial H #1 – This is one of the new titles in the second wave of the New 52. This time around, the dial isn’t on a watch or anything. It’s part of a phone booth. You still get the traditional “guy turns into a hero and instinctively knows who he is” bit. I’m not sure if the main character will stick around or if it will be rotating characters like in the old H.E.R.O. series. It’s only the first issue so we’ll have to see where it goes. I’ve always been a fan of the dial so I hope they do good by it.

Earth 2 #1 – I was expecting this to be the traditional Earth 2, but it looks like Flashpoint affected all 52 universes somehow. (WHY???) We start off with the death of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman while fighting Darkseid’s forces. Supergirl and Robin (Helena Wayne) fly off into a portal which leads to Earth 1 (see World’s Finest #1 below). This sort of leaves the world without heroes but we meet Jay Garrick (Flash) who is a teenager, Al Pratt (the Atom) and Alan Scott (Green Lantern) leading to the start of the heroes we knew as the older group. At the very end, Jay finds the god Mercury which I assume is how he’ll get his powers this time. We’ll have to see how things go with them recreating Earth 2 and who else they use.

Green Arrow #9 – It’s the end of the Triple Threat storyline with Ollie turning his back on his new “girlfriend” due to some treachery from her sisters and goes back to a world that thinks him dead. Overall, this wasn’t a great storyline. Not sure how long I’ll keep getting this if it doesn’t pick up soon.

Red Lanterns #9 – It’s more in-fighting while the Red Lanterns continue to fall apart. Bleez shoes up and tries to take control of the falling apart corps. With everything going on around with all the other corps, I wonder if this group will be gone soon. There’s not much growth in the storyline really. More “Oh, no. We’re dying still”. More “This Earth Red Lantern is weird so we’re going to blame him” and “Stop making

Stormwatch #9 – Midnighter and Apollo take on a Red Lantern. Meanwhile, the rest of Stormwatch takes on a former member of the team who’s come back and has a warning about the group being the team. Could be a war between Stormwatch and the Shadow Cabinet.

Teen Titans Annual #1 – This is the start of the Culling, Harvest’s way of finding the best of the teen metahumans to be in his Ravagers. We get introduced to Lightning and Thunder, who are brother and sister now instead of 2 brothers. We also get to meet Artemis (same name as in the Young Justice cartoon but she’s not an archer). We don’t learn much about her past or why she’s there given she’s just a regular human and we probably won’t either as she doesn’t survive the issue. The Titans meet up with the Legionnaires as Harvest tries to pit them against each other and then starts the Culling by throwing more teens against them after. There’s a lot of characters thrown in in this first annual of the New 52. The story is going to continue through Superboy, Legion Lost, and Teen Titans and they will continue into the new series The Ravagers later this month. Who knows where this is all going and who will survive but with old names redone like the previously mentioned Thunder and Lightning as well as Terra and Beast Boy and a couple of the Gen 13 crew who have popped up over in Superboy, who knows what will come out of this. Hopefully something good.

Worlds’ Finest #1 – Believe it or not, DC is creating a spin-off of a title that premieres the same week as the spin off. As mentioned above, Supergirl and Robin leave Earth 2 through a portal and end up on Earth 1. Once there, they take on the names Power Girl and Huntress. This title takes place 5 years after Earth 2’s first issue where Karen Starr (Power Girl) is a wealthy tech mogul who is using her money to try to find a way to get herself and Helena back home. I gave the title a try to see what it’d be like. Honestly, it would be nice to know what happened during those 5 years after they came out on Earth 1. Even a little info. All these jumps DC keeps making to “get to the good stuff” seems kinda sloppy in my opinion. They don’t need to give me any more reasons to hate the new universe. The book isn’t terrible but isn’t great either.

X-O Manowar #1 – Valiant Comics is back with it’s first title since the relaunch. We start out with a retelling of X-O’s origin. He’s a Visigoth fighting the Romans back in the olden days. He doesn’t have the armor yet but it has been introduces as an alien device. I’m not familiar with his origin back in the old series so I can’t speak on if anything has changed but the story seems decent and the characterization is good. This is the first of 4 titles advertized so far with the other 3 being Harbinger (June 2012), Bloodshot (July 2012), and Archer & Armstrong (August 2012). Hopefully the return of Valiant will be interesting. I remember enjoying a number of the titles back the first time around.

There are a number of good titles this week. My top ones are going to a few of the new ones this week: Dial H, Earth 2, and X-O Manowar. This is as much for the hope of something good to come as anything else. I want to see where they titles go. Check them out and let me know what you think. I’m really interested to see how the new Valiant books do. I’ll have to look up what brought the comic line back into production as they’ve been gone for quite a while. I wonder what other ones we might see after these 4. Eternal Warrior? Quantum & Woody? Turok? Magus? Rai? Geomancer? The list goes on and on.