Weekly Comic Review for 12/2/15

OK. Finally caught up to this month at least.

All-New Inhumans #1 – Yes, I’ve been annoyed at the “everything is about Inhumans” thing at Marvel lately which is probably just to try to hype things up for the movie when it comes out. I read that it was about Crystal going after new Inhumans go I thought I’d give it a try. The first thing we start out with is Gorgon training Flint and Grid who are already under his tutelage. Well, at least it’s because they are going to visit Crystal. Then we go cliche. The mob had an Inhuman in a cage and Crystal goes all gung ho on them, including the obligatory “Inhuman who hates that he’s an Inhuman” guy. After Crystal wins, there’s warm hugs and then we’re off to investigate some “spears” that seem to power up Inhumans. This gets interrupted by news that the Terrigen cloud (How the heck long is this thing going to be floating around the world? Hasn’t been about a year now? Can’t someone stop it?) is headed into a really bad area. Seems like the same Inhuman drama as usual so not sticking around here. The Inhumans were cool when they were a small group. Now there seems to be more of them than mutants. Partially because a number of mutants are actually being revealed an Inhumans that somehow never went through the normal Inhuman process but still have their powers. UGH!!!!

All-New X-Men #1 – Well, the team seemed to take some “me time” but it’s time to get back together. There are few changes this time though. Laura is now Wolverine, Jean is not around since she’s joining Storm’s other team, and Kid Apocalypse and Idie Okonkwo (whoever they are) are tagging along for some reason. (The reason why they are there or even how the X-Men became associated with them is never even explained.) Warren and Laura are on a skiing/training vacation while Hank is off with the 2 mystery mutants. Hank and crew head out to Austin to pick up Bobby who is showing off making ice sculpture. This is when we find out that Hank’s trailer has more in common with a TARDIS than one would expect. It’s huge and multi-leveled. It even has bamf powered teleportation. (No time travel that we know of yet tho.) Scott is off looking into the Ghosts of Cyclops, a group of renegade mutants. The Ghosts attack the mall he’s at so Scott tracks them down and they attack him in a library. The battle brings the rest of the team to him and things get on their way. The issue builds up well and the relationship of the original characters is connecting well. I’m sure it will take longer to really incorporate the other 2 new members. I just hope they address the fact that Bobby is gay still.

Doctor Strange #3 – The title continues with the absurdity that does not befit the doctor. For most of this issue, Stephen runs around naked in his astral form fighting slugs that eat magic. While I appreciate Doctor Strange going around naked (albeit with the naughty bit strategically covered all the time), I’d really enjoy it more with a better artist. After overloading the slugs with magic (food coma), he an Wong head into the slugs’ home dimension to find that the magic users there have all been killed. We then see another brief view of the beings trying to destroy magic. All these stupid little critters are a lot less interesting than trying to find out who is trying to destroy magic and why. As much as I’m a fan of Doctor Strange, I’m not sure how much longer I can stick with this interpretation of him.

Extraordinary X-Men #3 – Jean tries to convince Logan to help the X-Men while he goes on with his “Poor me. I’m doomed to kill the X-Men even though I’m in a totally different reality.” This is not the Wolverine we’ve known. Meanwhile, the X-Men fight off the demons of Limbo while trying to safeguard the refugees and other mutants in the school. Luckily, it turns out one of the rescued mutants can speak to and control demons. Just as things start looking bad, Jean convinces Logan to help and the 2 join in the battle.

Green Lantern #47 – Hal returns back to earth to visit his family and ends up getting convinced to get a haircut. While at an amusement park with his brother and his family, some guys from the previous issue set off explosives that blow up the place and injure Hal’s nephew. Meanwhile, the Sinestro Corps is being hunted by none other than Parallax from Convergence. Wonder what will happen when Hal meets Hal.

Guardians of Infinity #1 – I’m a fan of the original Guardians of the Galaxy. The new group is ok, but I grew up with the old one in the Avengers and their old title. That being said, I figured I’d check this out to see what it would have. The first story starts with the modern Guardians (Drax, Groot, and Rocket) investigating a ship. While there, they run across the future Guardians (Vance, Charlie, Martinex, and Nikki), both teams thinking they are still in their own era. (I still don’t understand why they changed Nikki’s hair from flames to whatever the metal things are.) They end up getting attacked and try to escape. The group (less Charlie 27) go through a doorway that leaves them in the year 1016 with a whole new Guardians of the Galaxy for that period. (Really?!? Is there one for 16 A.D. too?) That’s really not too bad tho, especially compared to the second story. The Thing is an intergalactic wrestler and Rocket is acting as his agent. Seriously. I wish I was joking. I couldn’t even bother reading past the first half of this story it was so stupid. I’d like to see where the next part of the first story goes but I hope the second story is better next issue. Hell, just do a full issue on the follow-up of the first story and we’ll be good.

Lobo #13 – Lobo, in all his drugged out state, decides to take out a whole bunch of space mercenaries. Then, while having delusions about the trio he teamed up with on Earth and all the women who wronged him, he decides to try to take on Hal Jordan who takes him out by taking him up into space and then dropping him back down through the atmosphere. Lobo regenerates well, but that still had to hurt between the heat and then the landing. But don’t worry. He regenerates just in time for his series to end. Given how well it started and how quickly it went down hill near the end, this was probably a mercy killing.

Midnighter #7 – Midnighter vs. Prometheus. Need I say more? This is a battle I’d really look forward to seeing. It’s funny seeing Midnighter take Prometheus down when the JLA had such a hard time doing it. Tho I doubt this one is quite at the level of the one that took Arsenal’s arm. It was still fun. Midnighter had to move on tho with his boyfriend gone now. He does leave Apollo a gift though of a picture of him as a kid. I wonder if they will start reconciling now. We also get a brief bit about Deadshot stealing something from Spyral. I wonder if this means we’ll see more of Grayson or if that was just an item from the Garden that they had. Guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Time for our top 3 of the week. All-New X-Men and Midnighter definitely make the cut. I’ll give the third spot to Guardians of Infinity just for the first story.

Now, to backtrack a little bit… I was going to comment on this under the Green Lantern title but I thought I’d wait until the end. We have pre-Crisis Superman from Convergence appearing over in Superman: Lois and Clark. Now we have the Parallax that went with him showing up in Green Lantern. I wonder if that means we’ll be seeing the Supergirl and Flash that were left at the end sometime soon too. We’ve already got the effects of Convergence seeping in through Titans Hunt. (Which is something I’m really excited about.) I wonder what else we’re going to see.We saw the original Earth 2 even though it’s been changed now. I wonder if we’ll have a chance to get that back. (I’ve already chopped Earth 2: Society from my pull list so I’ll just have one last one that I already have to review.) I’d really like to see a few of the things from pre-New 52 come back. I hope DC takes this as a chance to right some wrongs they did with the New 52.