Weekly Comic Review for 11/23/11
OK. And now on to the next week with a little more substantial of a list.
Alpha Flight #6 of 8 – Alpha Flight takes on Alpha Strike (or at least portions of each team) when Alpha Flight attempts to rescue Northstar’s boyfriend, Kyle. They get away with him but he’s still fighting the Master’s programming. Alpha Flight keeps on with their plans to try to overthrow the Master of the World and the Unity party. One of the best parts of the issue is when the Master is telling Heather’s daughter about his origin. The artwork is very “little kid” style which is kind of cute.
Fantastic Four #600 – We get the old title back just in time for the big issue. This really shouldn’t be a surprise even if they hadn’t been advertising it so much. It’s a double sized issue in the middle of some big event involving the Kree which I have no clue about since I don’t usually read either of the FF titles. Due to an attack, the Future Foundation kids move the top of the Baxter Building to the moon which causes Reed to send Spider-Man to find out what happened. He finds the creatures trying to break through to the Negative Zone. When the door opens, who is on the other size but Johnny Storm. Not a big surprise as I predicted when he “died” that he’d be coming back soon. The book is actually in 3 parts. That was the first part. The second part was from Johnny’s side showing what happened to him while he was in the Negative Zone. The third part revolved around Black Bolt and Medusa and a group of female Inhumans. There are a couple really short additions at the end, one about Galactus and the other about Franklin and Leech (with bad art). I don’t know about the back story in the early part (and was surprised to see Crystal married to Ronan the Accuser) but the other stuff was interesting.
Fury of Firestorm, the Nuclear Man #3 – The company chasing down the Firestorm protocol send out one of the early test subjects called Helix. To take him on, Ronnie and Jason form Fury again and this time Jason is able to find a way to control Fury just in time to take down Helix. Overall, it’s still not really working for me and I think I’ll be dropping this one.
Green Lantern: New Guardians #3 – Kyle’s power level with the 7 rings seems to be move than the the Guardians can handle. Sadly, it seems a human can’t manage to wield all 7 and it starts to burn Kyle out and most of the other rings are destroyed. The Guardians try to take his ring from him but can’t. The only other ring left is the orange one which turns out to actually be one of Larfleze’s constructs which changes shape into one of his corps constructs as the other colored lanterns crash in. Just as they fall, we get an appearance by Larfleze himself. Things are just starting to get interesting.
Justice League Dark #3 – John Constantine catches up with Zatanna briefly as the other “members” play their parts through various means. Shade approaches Mindwarp who was first introduced during Flashpoint. At the end, June Moon and Deadman (Can all magical characters see him now?) run across the Enchantress. This is yet another comic that is just going nowhere and will probably get dropped.
Savage Hawkman #3 – Hawkman keeps tracking down Morphicius. He finds someone who can help but it turns out the guy is one of Morphicius’ “plague” (whatever that is). While Hawkman battles the people (or whatever they are) that chopped up Morphicius, he helps reconstitute Morphicius’ body which leads into another battle next issue. As much as I like Hawkman, I just can’t get into this title right now. Yes, this is another one headed for the chopping block.
Shade #2 – How do you get a second issue when you’re killed in the first issue? By having that body be a shadow construct. That’s how. How a shadow construct bleeds, I don’t know. Shade decides to head out to find out who wants him dead. He says good bye to Hope for the time being and meets with Bibbo before leaving. He lets Shade know about Will Von Hammer whom he he meets up with to track down the source of all this mischief. So far so good. I’m a fan of Shade and looking forward to what this mini-series brings.
Teen Titans #3 – With the front cover proclaiming “Red Robin vs. Bunker”, I was dreading the normal hero fighting hero story we always get. Luckily, the Battle is only a couple frames until Bunker realizes it’s Red Robin and then he goes all fan boy. The story actually picks up with Kid Flash saving Solstice. Who knows what this new timeline will bring to the character who seems to have changed drastically. Bunker it seems is jumping a train after leaving Mexico. His powers seem odd an a bit unstable. Not really a great character which is sad given he’s supposed to be gay. Gotta love a gay character making lavender constructs. *sigh* And in the end we get to see Skitter/Celine in her human form. These new Teen Titans aren’t really the best step in the right direction.
Ultimate Comics Hawkeye #4 of 4 – We get some background story on the people in the floating cities. It turns out the heads of the 2 cities are bothers called Xorn and Zorn. (Given their look, X-Men fans who go back far enough might have seen this coming.) They offer a chance for other people to come to the cities too. A few members of Hawkeye’s team stick behind. In the end, Clint gets a sample of the Serum for Nick and the story leads into his appearance in the Ultimates title. I would actually rather see Hawkeye keep his own title.
Since there’s more titles, I’ll do a top 3 this time. My picks for this week are Fantastic Four, Green Lantern: New Guardians, and Ultimate Comics Hawkeye.
Right now, I’m collecting a list of comics from the New 52 that I’ll be cancelling, It seems like a lot of people are dropping titles right and left from the new DC stable. They are still bringing in new ones. As a back-up story is a sneak preview of the mini-series reboot of the Ray. This character isn’t related to the Happy and Ray Terrill. He does reference Ray Terrill’s origin though. This character is a Korean American who gets his powers from the usual unbelievable mishap. I don’t plan on picking it up. What I am looking forward to is the JSA relaunch that has been hinted at. I’m not sure when that will be happening though. Actually, what I’m really looking forward to is a “deboot” back to the pre-Flashpoint universe or an escape from the “Flashpoint event” that has been discussed in the Legion titles.
