Its a new month and time for a recap of what I read last month. Please remember, that I have a short attention span and can’t get to everything in my read pile– so some of these reviews are for books that have been out for a while. Think of it as a recap for the casual comic book fan. Other books like DC’s Battle for The Cowl mini-series just wrapped up so my thoughts are more in the moment.
I thoroughly enjoyed Battle for the Cowl. Well the three issues within the main title, I could have lived without the one-shots, that didn’t really seem to add anything emotionally to the story. Having said that, the late Bruce Wayne’s comrades-in-arms were much more compelling here than in any of the Last Rites stories that followed Batman RIP.
So Batman is dead. Long live Batman. The Black Hand has caused all hell to break lose by destroying Arkham Asylum and unleashing all the miscreants. Its up to Nightwing, Oracle, and the rest of the B-team to save Gotham from the escapees and the all out gang war between Two Face and the Penguin. At the end a new Batman dons the cowl. Don’t worry– I’m not going to spoil it. For the life of me, I don’t understand how Jason Todd keeps coming back. How hard is it to die in the DC Universe and stay dead!?
Speaking of the dead, an old and previously deceased nemesis has resurfaced to torment Marvel’s Merry Mutants. I’ve completed reading the last ten months of the Uncanny X-Men. Even though I swore off all X-books. I just got tired of the overexposure and constant promotion of the characters, especially Wolverine. Although, during my self-imposed ban from the X-Men I did enjoy Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men. It seemed to occupy its own snarky space outside of the excessive multiple Marvel crossovers and bringing back lost characters like Colossus didn’t hurt. (Did you see that ? I do have a double standard when a writer brings back a dead person properly).
I digress, the flagship book Uncanny X-Men is currently being scripted by Matt Fraction and I’m quite pleased. I was sucked in by the cover of 503, I was expecting a Hellfire Club story. And why not, we see Emma Frost once known as the White Queen and a redhead dressed as one would assume the Black Queen.
Didn’t get a real Hellfire story, but came to find out that the X-Men have left Salem Center, Westchester County, New York for the wide open spaces of San Francisco, California. This move is refreshing in two ways:
(1) Change of scenery gives new story possibilities, think when the Ricardos and the Mertzs moved to Hollywood and honestly how many times did Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters get blown up over the years?
(2) Being in San Francisco, the constant undertone of the series gets turned upside down. Rather than hiding from a humanity that fears and hates them, now the X-Men are “out” and part of a community that accepts them.
In addition to the change of scenery, Fraction is doing a nice job of pulling in established characters that had fallen by the wayside. Namely, Dazzler and Northstar.
Dazzler was a one off creation from the disco era. Some overly ambitious marketing “genius” came to Marvel with visions of KISS and The Monkeys in their head and pitched the idea for a comic book, a movie, and album tie-ins. It never got off the ground and Marvel was left with a female superhero in a silver jumpsuit.
Northstar’s origins are more conventional. John Byrne needed characters for the dysfunctional Canadian based super team Alpha Flight. He had a dwarf (Puck), a goddess (Snowbird), an Indian mystic (Shaman), a housewife (Vindicator), a woman with dissociative identity disorder (Aurora), a paraplegic (Box), and a homosexual (Northstar). Well nobody knew that Northstar was explicitly gay. It was the 1980s and writers still had to adhere to the Comics Code Authority. Byrne just dropped subtle hints and it was no big deal.
As always there’s a parallel X-book going on, Warren Ellis picked up writing chores on Astonishing X-Men. He has managed to keep the tongue and cheek humor that Joss Whedon had on the series. See below:
I forgot to tell you who the old and previously deceased nemesis was. Its Madeline Pryor! You see redheads are special in the X-Men soap opera. The first redhead was Jean Grey. She was in love with Scott Summers (Cyclops). Jean “died” saving the team. Jean was reborn as Phoenix a being of cosmic power. Come to find out that the Phoenix was pretending to be Jean. The Phoenix “died” after being corrupted into becoming the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club.
Scott was heartbroken until he met Madeline Pryor who was ringer for Jean. Scott married Madeline and had a baby. Jean “got better” and came back from the dead, Scott left Madeline and the baby. It was then revealed that Madeline was indeed a clone of Jean created by Mr. Sinister (I’m not making this up). Anyhow Madeline dies after going to the dark side with Sinister and attempting to kill Jean. Now back where this all started, on the cover of X-Men 503 we see a redhead who we now know is Madeline Pryor calling herself the Red Queen or it could be the Phoenix Force masquerading as Pryor. All we know is that she attacks the X-Men to acquire a lock of hair from the yet again deceased Jean Grey.
So I went back and re-read Nick Fury Vs. Shield, come to find out the story was published 20 years ago. In retrospect its kind of quaint story. It was released the same year that the Berlin Wall came down. That makes it a post Cold War, pre 9-11 story. The big conspiracy was that sentient LMDs (androids) known as Deltites secretly controlled SHIELD’s military might by slowly replacing its personnel. Their next step towards world domination was replacing captains of industry so that they could wield financial power (and now that I think about it, its the plot from the film Futureworld, the awful sequel to the classic Westword).
The point is SHIELD was already compromised. So how could the events in Secret Warriors #1 shock Nick Fury? With all that’s happened–Secret War, Civil War, Secret Invasion–I guess stuff like that just slips through the cracks. Anyhow, issues three and four were a wee bit of a letdown. Basically Nick decides he needs to put the band back together after his new team of operatives blows it. So he ends up in Africa where, loyal ex-SHIELD agents are being led by former Howling Commandos “Dum Dum” Dugan and Gabe Jones. Issue five should be explosive.
How about all those Avengers books. When I was young, there was just The Avengers. It was a nice team book. If you wanted more of a particular character, then you went and bought the solo book (i.e. – Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, etc.) and some characters weren’t interesting enough to merit a monthly book (Black Knight, Mockingbird, Dr. Druid, etc). Now because of Marvel’s obsessive need to boost sales and following in the wake of Bendis’ multiyear crossover mess, we have: The New Avengers, the Might Avengers, and the Dark Avengers.
The one that seems worthy of the title is The Might Avengers. Scripted by Dan Slott, the book has nicely folded in some original cast members and history (Henry Pym, Jarvis, and Jocasta) with the next generation (the much too short lived Young Avengers). For those too numbed by Bendis’ overreaching storylines: Basically after the Secret Invasion, The Avengers have been shut down and the only official group with the name is being led by the former Green Goblin, Norman Osborn. These “Dark” Avengers are all ex-cons masquerading as heroes yet operating under government charter.
Along with running the Dark Avengers, Osborn also has The Cabal. The Cabal is made up of mostly villains and sometime heroes who can stand in Osborn’s way– the whole keep your enemies closer thing. One of the members of the Cabal is Loki. Being the Goddess of Mischief, Loki decides that Osborn is dangerous and she needs to get her own group of Avengers up and running. Its a nice tip of the hat to the Avengers cannon and continuity having Loki basically repeat history.
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