Latveria Takes Norse Refugees or What I Read in April

Hopefully, I’ll have discipline to keep up with this one and make it a monthly post.  I figure I might as well gab about what’s on my night stand other than news magazines shouting about economic doom and gloom.  And speaking of Doom.

J. Michael Straczynski is the first writer in almost twenty years to write decent dialog for Victor Von Doom.  Yes he’s a nutjob, but he’s also brilliant, egotistical, and ruler of a small European principality with diplomatic immunity.  He shouldn’t sound like Doc Ock or Two-Face.  I was spoiled by John Byrne’s epic run on the Fantastic Four with his classic Doom stories:

• FF#237 - Terror In a Tiny Town.  The team is miniaturized, given amnesia, and placed in Pleasantville.

• FF#246-247 – Reed and the gang restore Victor to the Latverian throne.

• FF# 258-260 – Victor wields the Power Cosmic briefly only to “die” in a supermarket parking lot in Queens.

• FF#277-278 – Victor comes back with a vengeance and launches the Baxter Building into space.  Forcing Sue to prove she’s the badass of the team getting them back to terra firma.

Because it reminds me of the Byrne days, this has to be the second best panel of April.

Straczynski has made Thor a must read and a joy.  I haven’t been this excited about the title since the days of Walt Simonson.  A brief set up: Loki is now female, somehow he got a hold of Sif’s body.  Asgard no longer floats in its usual stellar position in the Nine Worlds, its sitting in Oklahoma of all places.  Balder and Loki are discussing relocating the kingdom to… Latveria!?

The best panel of the month is also inside the most confusing book I read, the two part Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert story, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Part 1 (Batman #686) and Part 2 (Detective Comics #853 )  I know that Batman died at the end of Final Crisis.  But it was really confusing coming on the heels of the conclusion to the excellent Black Hand storyline.

Not to spoil the story, but we’re treated to a surreal wake for Batman.  All of the cast members are invited and each tells a different story about The Batman they knew.  So I guess its Bruce working through the whole being dead thing?  Anybody out there, please enlighten me.  I have to admit I am digging the Battle for the Cowl books more than I anticipated.

The best book I read in April was Secret Warriors #1.  First off, I know it came out months ago, but it took me a while to get to it.  If you have a reading pile. you know how that goes.  Next, nothing from the peanut galley about my taste being Marvel and DC centric.  I do like indies, its just that I haven’t been keeping up with Umbrella Academy lately and does Danger Girl even count since Wildstorm is a DC imprint?

I digress, Secret Warriors is appropriately subtitled Nick Fury Agent of Nothing.  I came to the book with serious reservations since Brian Michael Bendis has a story credit.  I was none to thrilled with his never ending Civil War or the epically boring Secret Invasion crossovers (I can’t figure out how an invasion of the Skrull Empire can be made less exciting than watching paint dry, but Bendis succeeded).

Luckily, Jonathan Hickman has the scripting duties and he shines putting Nick Fury at the center of a… conspiracy- no shock there.  SHIELD has been shuttered in the aftermath of the Skrull invasion.  Nick is scouring the globe to find all of the spy organization’s hidden equipment and files before HAMMER and Norman Osborn can get to them.

The wrinkle is that HYDRA has been pulling strings within SHIELD for years.  Which is a weird revelation, considering the number of times that SHIELD has been reorganized.  Anybody remember the late 1980′s maxi-series Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD, when the LMDs (life model decoys) were replacing all the agents?

As a long time fan might suspect, when you do a HYDRA story you have to have Baron Strucker back from the dead for the umpteeth time.  OK, I’m ragging on the book a bit, but really it was the best read– if only for the scene where Nick Fury sneaks into the Oval Office for a chat with the new guy.  I’m not wild about the covers in this series so here’s the classic Silver Age Steranko image of Nick.