Thor: God of Thunder Reborn and Inferno: Warzones!

Thor: Vol 1: God of Thunder Reborn

Collects Thor (2018) #’s 1-6
by Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo

I started Jason Aaron's Thor run in 2014, with the Esad-Ribic-drawn God Butcher and Godbomb. We last left it at Jane Foster's turn with Mjolnir, in 2021. We pick up the hammer once again, with a newly-worthy Thor Odinson, in God of Thunder Reborn, in this year of our Lord, 2024. A whole decade later, and 6 years after its original publication date! Thor is a whole new book today. I am a whole new person. What have I missed?

Well, not much but I can’t say it was a great experience coming into this series cold, for all intents and purposes. You’re expected to know about all these Thor side characters and what they’re going through in the 6 issues told. Thor has a new arm, a new hammer and a new dog but those are backstories at this point, told in other stories.

For the uninitiated, the primary backdrop of the story is Queen Cinder’s war on the realms, these 6 issues focusing on her attempt on Niffleheim, the cold and misty land of the dead of Asgardian legend. Thor and Loki reunite with their other brother (which I guess has always been around?), and attempt to save the realm from the Queen. There’s a wedding somehow shoehorned into the story, along with a side-story set at the end of times, with King Thor, Old Man Logan as the Phoenix and a Sorcerer Supreme Doom. It feels like a mash-up “What If?” Story that’s allowed to be canon because it’s so far in the future.

Serviceable, and it has all the dry humor you’d expect from Jason Aaron, but without being immersed in the story for so long, you feel behind right from the start. The art feels “premium,” and matches the lofty themes of the magical world of the nine realms, though I didn’t find the painted art to my liking. Shapes blend into each other and digital effects take away from the painted feel of the art.

I’ve already collected all the way to the War of the Realms. See you in Volume 2, which, at my rate, could take another half decade!

More Thor? I say thee...yea!

Thor: God of Thunder -- The God Butcher and God Bomb

Thor: God of Thunder -- The Accursed and the Last Days of Midgard

Original Sin

Thor: The Goddess of Thunder and Who Holds the Hammer

The Mighty Thor: Thunder in Her Veins and the Lords of Midgard

The Mighty Thor: Asgard/Shi'Ar War and The Unworthy Thor

The Mighty Thor: The War Thor

The Mighty Thor: The Death of the Mighty Thor

Thor: God of Thunder Reborn

Inferno: Warzones!

Collects Inferno (2015) #’s 1-5

By Dennis Hopeless and Javier Garron

This is a small side-story that's part of the mega-event Secret Wars from 2015, but it's a whole lot better than it needed to be. Inferno: Warzones! is a strong, character-focused story that reads like a “What If?” that you just want to keep following after the last page. The original Inferno was a crossover X-Men event in 1989 that opened the gates of Hell to Manhattan, unleashing hordes of demons while unlocking new powers for Magik, AKA Ilyana Rasputin, a New Mutant and the younger sister of Piotr Rasputin, AKA Colossus of the X-Men, and Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean Grey. Magik learned about her demon half in that story, and Maddie channeled her magical powers and became the Goblin Queen.

Wow, talk about backstory. If you are or can get familiar with the three mutants above, you're in for a good time. The primary focus is on Colossus and his annual attempt to free his sister Ilyana from the clutches of evil, but it's really an arc: Ilyana is too far gone, overtaken by Darkchylde, her demon persona, and Colossus needs to learn when to let go. There's tragedy in that.

Plus, that arm later becomes a bad-ass demon arm that allows Colossus to wield the Soulsword.

Cue in some great side characters in a post-apocalyptic Mr. Sinister, a snarky wisecracking Boom Boom, and a darkly ambitious Goblin Queen, and you're in for a good time. Nightcrawler joins the gang, and is woefully/awesomely transmogrified into a teleporting demon dragon. It's glorious.

What makes this comic so great is that it tells such a refreshing story with fan-favorite characters that I've been reading for years. The fact that it's an "Elseworld" means that you can take liberties with the characters -- turn them into badass creatures, kill off adversaries that you couldn't kill off in the mainline universe, for the catharsis. The story feels brand new, and I just want it to keep going after the last page. The stuff of great comics.

And by that, I mean SPOILER: The Goblin Queen takes the throne of Inferno, absorbing the Hellfire from Darkchild's smoldering body and becomes something new. Glorious.

Bonus content: The Goblin Queen introduces her son, and, proves why she would fare much better in Battleworld than Jean Grey.

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The Uncanny X-Men: From the Ashes

In the 1990's, just like there was Marvel vs. DC, there was FOXKids vs WB studios. They both competed for the precious Saturday mornings of 9-year old chezkevin, mining the decades of comic book storytelling before them. Batman: The Animated Series begat Justice League: The Animated Series begat Static Shock. X-Men: The Animated Series begat Spider-Man: The Animated Series (and that kick-ass metal theme song), begat Spider-Man Unlimited, begat me losing interest and moving on to video games.

Point being, this was the utter water I swam in. I had Spider-Man: The Animated Series action figures. I wore BTAS sneakers. I had a deck of X-Men playing cards, with the kick-ass Jim Lee art on them. I never watched the series religiously, being a fan moreso of the Spider-Man series, but I'll be damned if they roped me right back in with X-Men '97, the semi-sequel to the series that started in 1992.

X-Men '97 released this summer on the Disney+ streaming service, dropping new episodes on a weekly basis, and as an adult in 2024, it's a completely new experience from watching the original series as a kid in the 90's, but it's the same post-racial bigotry, the same melodrama, and the same bad-ass theme song that makes this show so great. Waiting for the new episode to drop every week was its own pastime. Skimming the Reddit boards for new theories, and watching YouTube to relive the episode highlights, was like being on the schoolyard again arguing about who would win in a fight. More than a nostalgia grab, the X-Men don't pull their punches. All the soap opera elements you'd expect are here, with sharp storytelling and bombastic action scenes. I was sold from episode 1.

It's the kind of content that inspires you to find the source material, and that's exactly what I did. X-Men '97 introduced Madelyne Pryor to me, a Jean Grey-lookalike that bewitches Scott Summers, leader of the X-Men and falls in love with him. They collected her "first stories," so to speak in the poorly-named trade paperback, "From the Ashes." As far as I can tell, it was merely meant to be a comic book end-of-issue bait-and-switch in terms of Maddie's uncanny resemblance to Jean Grey, but the TPB unfortunately makes that the top billing, making the Phoenix costume front and center on the cover and titling it "From the Ashes."

The Uncanny X-Men: From the Ashes

by Chris Claremont, Paul Miller, John Romita Jr and more

collects Uncanny X-Men #'s 168-176

This TPB is so much more than that, and it's absurd that Chris Claremont covered this much in a mere nine issues. The way he juggles subplots and solo character stories in this ensemble book is masterful, and his mark on the X-Men is invaluable, reaching decades after their original telling. The amount of depth he imbues in 9 issues is enough to shame some modern comics. Here're some highlights:

1. Wolverine's raw Chad energy when he murders a Yakuza boss, participates in a traditional shinto wedding to marry the boss's daughter, only to get rejected by her under the psychic control of a mysterious villain.
   
   
   
2. Kitty Pryde proves her worth against a basement invasion from some aliens, earning her place as an X-Man. She continues to explore her powers and a budding romance with Colossus emerges.
   
3. Ororo Munroe (Storm) keys in to her powers and begins to unlock a cruel side of her powers. That reflects in her personality, as she takes over from Scott Summers, stricken with grief over the death of his girlfriend Jean Grey. Storm has no choice but to fight to the death in combat against Callisto, leader of the Morlocks for the safety of the X-Men. The wordless final page of the fight scene is just brilliant.
   
4. This further reflects in Storm's costume change a few issues later. Wouldja believe: Punk Rock Storm!
   
5. Xavier extends a hand of goodwill to Rogue, inviting her to join as a tentative member of the X-Men, despite her ties to the evil Brotherhood of Mutants. Rogue struggles with adjusting to the team, and fighting against the perception that the X-Men have against her. In a display of trust, Wolverine lends his healing factor to her and incapacitates himself after a nasty fight.
   

Scott Summers and his new girl, Maddie Pryor get the top billing in this collection. Since all of these issues released monthly, each story provided the framework for a larger story to develop in the background. The mysterious villain that sabotaged Wolverine's wedding is none other than the Mastermind, AKA Jason Wyngarde, a mutant humiliated by Jean Grey in the past, and motivated to take revenge on her by torturing the friends that have survived her. It results in a double-size issue where Jason uses his illusionist powers to convince the X-Men that the Phoenix has returned, in the form of Maddie Pryor, seemingly wiping out the Avengers, the other heroes of the Marvel Universe as well as killing the world's leaders.

It's secretly a Scott Summers issue: he's the one that figures out what's actually going on, and when all the X-Men turn against him, convinced that the Phoenix has possessed him, he uses his tactical skills to turn them around, without harming them (too much), so that they can all band together to fight the actual threat. Finally, to make a statement on Storm's evolving personality, she whips up a vicious storm to flush out Jason Wyngarde, and Scott has to revive his lover back to life:

Claremont gets how to make an ensemble book. He understands the dynamics of these character's relationships with each other and with themselves. He allows the characters to grow and evolve, and what a sight to behold. What a great X-Men trade, and I can't wait to read more.

More highlights:

An instant classic, Kitty Pryde tells it like it is:

This issue cliffhangs on the first appearance of Maddie:

Their relationship evolves as Scott reveals his superpower to her:

Scott says goodbye to Jean:

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Batman Vol. 7: Endgame and Legion (2016), Season 1

Somehow we've become a Batman blog and I can't say I mind it all that much :)

Batman Volume 7: Endgame
by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

The last we saw Joker, he was de-faced and left for dead in the infinite cavern system beneath Wayne Manor. He thought that he could show Batman how the Bat-family of superheroes had made him worse, a weaker person and wanted to show him how he could be a true Bat-king, with the Joker as his jester. Obviously, it failed but now he's back with a vengeance.

Things lead off with the Justice League turning on Batman, thanks to a new Joker serum that's individualized to each member of the Justice League. It climaxes in a sweet fight between Superman and Batman, and the underlying backdrop that Joker is going to release the serum to all of Gotham City, to get revenge at Batman for rejecting him.

There's some interesting beats here: ideas like the Joker being this immortal being that's been responsible for numerous tragedies in Gotham City, Batman allying with his rogues gallery to prevent the spread of the serum, and Batman attempting to bargain with the Court of Owls for the sake of the city. But it's all dressing on top of a story salad as old as time: Joker threatens city, Batman saves city. This time, it's Batman too who is left for dead in a final battle scene, along with the Joker, presumably setting up a future "Who will be the Bat" storyline.

This story turned out to be a lot like the Joker: a whole lot of bluster, plenty of fanfare, without much substance. More blockbuster than anything else, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Follow along for more New 52 Batman:

Volume 1: Court of Owls

Volume 2: City of Owls

Volume 3: Death of the Family

Joker: Death of the Family

Volume 4: Zero Year -- Secret City

Volume 5: Zero Year -- Dark City

Volume 6: Graveyard Shift

Volume 7: Endgame

Legion (2016) Season 1

Directed by Noah Hawley, starring Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza and more

----------This review is spoiler-free but mentions the names of characters and some plot points. Most screencaps are from this excellent tumblr series https://wellntruly.tumblr.com/----------

Ah, comic book adaptations. We've come such a long way since the box-office super-smash, Howard the Duck. It's crazy that we're at the point now where there are new comic book adaptations on streaming services, on a monthly basis with a superhero movie releasing on the regular, multiple times a year. Legion presented by FX came out sometime in the middle, maybe before all of this, and it's only secretly a comic book adaptation. At least, as far as Season 1 goes.

“Please keep talking. So we can all pretend that our problems are all in our heads.” - Sydney

Legion is about a man with paranoid schizophrenia, in his fifth year at a psychiatric hospital named Clockworks, until he meets a girl, Sydney Barrett. She opens a new world to him where he discovers that maybe the voices in his head aren't really a disease -- they're part of his super powers. Season 1 explores this idea in a myriad number of ways, from flashbacks to dream sequences, to musical montages and more.

Legion didn't do all that well commercially, and concluded after three seasons. In my opinion, it was ahead of its time and the world just wasn't ready for it. There are all these jarring, nonlinear cuts that could really turn a viewer off, but in my mind that's not a bug. It's a feature. The mind doesn't work in a linear fashion, at least not always and not all minds. Binging is an ideal format to experience the show, when you can go straight from one episode to the next, but I can imagine that it took the right kind of person who was going to watch it serially, as it came out.

The penultimate episode is this amazing set of  musical sequences, capped by a silent film rendition of the action climax. It's not about the fisticuffs in this series, and sometimes the show will just skip right to the aftermath of an intense action sequence -- such as when we view the aftermath of David's visit to Divison Three. The action isn't just on the screen -- it's in the mind, and it's conveyed so creatively here, whether that's through a dance montage or dream hike up to a floating ice cube.

I've never seen such an eclectic, brave show like Legion. It addresses mental illness and childhood trauma in a unique fashion, that in my opinion feels so right. The mind isn't linear. We jump back and forth between memories all the time at a whim. Legion predates similar Disney+ series like Moon Knight and WandaVision, yet it feels miles ahead of them. And I adore these shows! I can't recommend Legion enough -- I can only guess that, when it did come out maybe I wasn't ready to appreciate it, but now that I have, I'm so freaking glad to have experienced it. 

-------------Spoilers follow, with/without context. You've been warned-------------

1. Ep 1: The bollywood dance scene set to French music. This might be in my top 3 this season. I love returning to it, and did you know, the DVD for Season 1 actually has an extended version that they didn't use? What a travesty!
2. Ep 4: The slow reveal is a fantastic use of the medium -- where we slowly see what Amy's, David's sister, prison cell looks like.

1. Ep 5: Where Sydney learns what's going on in David's head. He's provisioned out a "mindspace" where they can actually touch ('just electrical signals in your brain'), but even that isn't a safe space from the terror living in David's mind. What's normally a beautiful song turns to horror.
2. Ep 6: Lenny puts Sydney to sleep. This is lowkey my favorite scene in the season and it took me so long to find it on YouTube. Under the guise of music therapy, Lenny as the psychiatrist of the mind Clockworks hospital suggests listening to some music on her headphones, all the while there's a throbbing, bleeding piece of flesh on the wall. Sydney's hesitant but agrees, cueing a haunting but beautiful musical sequence. She seemingly floats away and gets tucked into David's childhood bedroom, like Lenny is tucking her away into a corner of David's mind, to get her out of the way. It's such a quiet scene with a mountain of style and a confident atmosphere. Certainly my favorite scene.
3. What a fantastic sequence in Ep 6 led by Aubrey Plaza, as "Lenny," the parasite living in David's mind. Context is everything here -- it's a wordless, musical dance sequence that conveys what Aubrey is doing in his mind, now that David is imprisoned in a small corner of his own mind. Lenny goes through his memories one by one, devoid of David and has her way in each room-memory. Brushstroke wipes appear as she dances, conveying each time in David's past that Lenny was a part of it, all along. This TV show is so good at "showing," not telling, and it's bits like these that make me love it. Scenes without dialogue are just as important, if not more so than scenes with dialogue.
4. Ep 7 -- The silent film scene. Sydney and Kerry attempt to break David out of his mind-prison, when Lenny attacks them. Honestly there's so much going on here that needs explaining that I'm just going to save it here for myself

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Serials: X-Men: Red #1, VS #1, Quantum Jack #1

Samurai Jack: Quantum Jack #1
by Fabian Rangel and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell

This is a fun read, evoking the cinematic action of the cartoon. I guess the conceit of this miniseries is that Jack is not a samurai -- in different issues, he's a space pirate, a luchador, different "quantum" possibilities of the original universe. You get the sense of scale here, with Jack's space pirate gang stealing a portable prison, holding some kind of divine person.

Space Pirate Jack thought he was just doing a gig, but now he gains a sense of duty in protecting this being, diverging from his values as a space pirate. The action is fun here, and there's certainly some story, but it's not enough for me to continue at $3.99 an issue. I'll wait for the discounted trade.

VS #1
by Ivan Brandon and Esad Ribic

Anything with Esad Ribic's name is an instant buy on it. The creators bill this as a "space gladiators" story, so it's kind of like Hunger Games, but ridiculously beautiful.

Two separate scenes occupy this issue: a pulse-pounding flashback battle between space gladiator Satta Flynn's team and some other team, and (what seems to be) a scene in the present where (gasp!) Satta has amputated his leg and is watching that flashback battle on a vid screen. It's an expert use of time here -- how does past Satta get out of the situation we saw him in? What is current Satta going to do without two legs? It makes him a sympathetic character and gives me all these questions which I'm hungry to answer for next ish.

X-Men: Red #1
by Tom Taylor and Mahmud Asrar

The world needs a story like this. It seems that the X-Men's story of persecution will always be relevant, and now that Jean Grey is back from the dead (the adult Jean Grey, not the teen Jean as seen in "All New X-Men."), she wants to find a way forward for the world, recruiting the help of superheroes like Namor of Atlantis, T'Challa of Wakanda, and Nightcrawler along with the geniuses of the world to brainstorm with her.

Beautifully drawn by Mahmud Asrar, you see what makes Jean such an inspiring character, from the initial rescue scene of a mutant teen, to another rescue of a baby, to Jean's speech at the UN to recognize the mutant nation. Classic superhero drama at its finest, with a modern take on Charles Xavier's original dream of human-mutant peace.

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Trades for 12-16: Snikting all day

Have you seen this? Comics' own stuffed bull, Bully, has done a semi-regular segment on "How many X-Men books are out this week?" The number is probably not as bad as it was in the 90s (not having read any comics from that time, I assume it was a general cesspool of pouches and muscles), but it's still pretty bad. Seven x-titles in one week? Talk about excessive. It's astonishing that the market can support such a large number. It's uncanny. It's giant-size.

Speaking of Canadians, we've got two Wolverine books on the chopping block today. Neither of them are very substantial, but they are things that I read, and things that I would rather talk about than twiddle my thumbs.

Wolverine: Old Man Logan
by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven

The Civil War team takes on a dystopian Marvel Universe in this nine-issue collection, starring an aged Wolverine. Millar does a great job creating a Wild West world that still adopts Marvel traits, such as Venom-possessed T-Rexes and Moloids that collapse entire cities. He nails Wolverine as a Clint Eastwood cowboy type, and he gives him a new status quo as a hermit who tells people to call him "Logan" and hasn't popped his claws in fifty years. When he doesn't have enough money to feed his family and pay rent to his landlords, the Hulk clan, he has to go an an adventure with a blind, grey-haired Hawkeye to get the money.

Each issue reads pretty well, with a set obstacle for the Logan/Hawkeye duo and an exciting cliffhanger. It must have been a delight to read this serially. The problem is, each issue reads more like a newspaper serial than a comic -- without enough details to really merit the 22 pages. The creative team took nine issues to tell the story, and they could have done a lot more with it than they did. Millar created a whole world successfully, but, I finished the thing in one sitting in 40 minutes. That can't possibly be worth the retail price of $29.99. For a paperback.

That said, it's a quality read with brilliant art from the art team. Morry Hollowell colors McNiven so beautifully. But the bottom line is, every other form of entertainment is cheaper than this, and comics really need to do better.

I did not get these from the library, as I usually do, or with the next comic book. I did a swap with a friend of mine. And, that last page in the story is so Lone Wolf and Cub.

Wolverine: Noir
by Stuart Moore and C.P. Smith

It's really a strength in these comic book characters that we can adapt them to different genres. Batman gets adapted to gothic horror. Wolverine gets adapted to steampunk wild west. In this one Wolverine becomes a hard-boiled detective in the noir setting of The Bowery. As in, "I don't know much about Hell. But I know a lot about the Bowery."

Man, that line kills me. I'm a sucker for good hard-boiled narration like that, and Noir has plenty of it. Unfortunately, that seems to be its only strength. A lot of the prose refers to Wolverine as an "animal," as in he has to avoid his "baser instincts" and such. There's really little evidence that Wolverine has this struggle, save for one flashback in the fourth issue. In the rest of the story, it's this annoying non-factor that the writer tries to build up as a significant theme, and fails. Throughout the whole thing, I had a hard time sympathizing with Wolverine and, by the end of it, I was ambivalent, as opposed to struck by his tragedy, as the writer would intend. Chalk it up to long-time-comic-book-reader-ism.

The worst culprit in this collection isn't the writing. It's the drawing. There's a lot of shortcuts that the team takes, and it really shows.

Why would the building be more detailed than Wolverine's figure, right in front of us? It looks like he was drawn on with a marker. The finishing team did a terrible job on this one. The art overall is a shame, because you have these tight panels that show someone's face, and it works. It really works. You can see the hairs on Wolverine's face and his expression. And then you have visual disasters like above.

And by the way, this thing costs $14.99. That's how much Marvel is asking for this, a digest-sized, 4-issue story. I'm pretty aghast at these current Marvel paperback prices (paperback!). When I started buying comics in 2008, it used to be that hardcovers collecting at least 12 issues were $29.99, with a few extras, like an introduction and some sketch art. Floppies were $2.25. Now they'll make anything hardcover: even four-issue storylines, and charge $24.99, or they'll make the paperbacks collecting 9 issues $29.99. Floppies are as low as $2.99, and many are $3.99. What happened comics?

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Trades for 12-8: Hulkamania 2012

I don't have internet in my apartment anymore, so I walked 1.2 miles with my 6.4 lb laptop in order to post this. If you wanted to quantify it, you know, not that anyone's keeping track or anything, that is how much I care about this hobby.

And we're back, fans, to Comicsmania XXIX! It's an absolute debacle here in the Blogspot arena as chezkevin takes on a no-holds-barred, four-color free-for-all! Who will win? Who will lose? Who will return the comics back to the library??

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis
by Warren Ellis and Kaare Andrews
collects the five-issue miniseries and the 1st issue director's cut

There was a lot of fanfare when Warren Ellis took over the title that Joss Whedon and John Cassady built. I didn't read too much in to the hype, and I don't regret it. Xenogenesis tells a passable story that takes too many issues to resolve and presents not many ideas worth the five-issue volume.

Warren Ellis delivers in a way you'd expect, spinning a story of pseudoscience: an outbreak of mutant-esque births in an African village draws the attention of the X-Men, who rush to investigate in their own snarky way:

The real draw of the collection is. . . the drawings. Man, if you've seen Kaare's work on the The Incredible Hulk covers, you would be just as excited as I was to see Kaare's designs. Since the X-Men are visiting Mbanawi in peace, they don some basic "help relief volunteer" costumes, complete with X-cap. Kaare chooses to draw storm with a relentless mohawk, and everybody on the team has a different design. It's refreshing to look at. Armor's armor now expresses itself too, via emoticon:

Sick. He goes a bit wild with Emma Frost's design though. Click over to J. Caleb's EDILW for coverage on the depiction of her ta-tas. All in all, you'd have to be a pretty rabid fan to pay $25 retail for this hardcover, when its material is so sparse. I'm gonna take down this comic with a RING OUT.


Superman: The Coming of Atlas
by James Robinson and Renato Guedes
collecting Superman #'s 677-680, backed up by Jack Kirby's story "Atlas the Great"

Yo, it used to mean something to collect a story in a hardcover. This collection feels as heavy as a rice cake, and offers not nearly the same amount of nutrition. Atlas comes up all in Metropolis's grill to fight Superman, and eventually loses to his dog, Krypto. Very little else happens in these four issues. There's a hint that there was some conspiracy to the fight, but that's not touched on at all except in a handful of pages. In the introduction, James Robinson said that his intent was to make Atlas the "Namor" of the Superman-iverse. He failed. There are contextless flashbacks that fail to flesh out his character, and he comes off as nothing more than a really angry dude who likes to pick on Superman and his super-pals. Kirby's backup did a far better job.

And then, for some reason, after Superman beats up Atlas, there's a whole page spent on him yelling at Metropolis to accept his dog.

It's. So. Silly. I'm sure the story sounded good in Robinson's head, but it just didn't work when it got to the page. This lightweight comic collection loses early with a TAP OUT BY LEG LOCK.

Marvel Visionaries: Peter David - The Incredible Hulk vol. 5
by Peter David, Jeff Purves, Dale Keown, Sam Keith and Angel Medina
collecting Incredible Hulk #364-372 and Annual #16

I'd heard about Peter David's run on Incredible, but I never expected it to be this fucking good. David continues his story of the Gray Hulk, a powerful entity without the Hulk's ability to get stronger and madder, but with enough smarts to talk and wisecrack. It's tied to the time of day, so Banner knows that he'll lose control every time the sun is gone. This makes for some great stories, as the Gray Hulk takes on the Abomination, a biological poison, Mr. Hyde and more.

It wouldn't be Incredible without huge fights, and David nails that to a "t." The fights are exciting, engaging and awesome. Issue 368 stands out particularly well, in which Mr. Hyde philosophizes over the Gray Hulk and over the monster that's inside Banner. While he's punching his face outside a running train as the sun sets. Whattascene.

There are some great themes here as Banner goes across the country, looking for his wife Betty Banner and running into the military and alien invasions. That Gray Hulk can talk really gives us some insight into how the Hulk might feel, and that makes the story that much stronger when we can compare it against Banner's feelings. I'm really surprised at how powerful these stories are, and that's what makes this volume a TKO.

BONUS SCENE: he's unstoppable! He's ineffable!

 He's striated! He's THE ROCK!

Start here for some more scans I liked.

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Library trades for 12-26: Magneto and Animal Man

X-Men: Magneto Testament
by Greg Pak and Carmine Di Giandomenico
Collecting the five issue miniseries from 2009
Marvel Knights, $19.99


This one's a straight narrative about the escalation of anti-semitism in Germany, starting with things like the Nuremberg laws and ending with a revolt at the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It follows the life of one Max Eisenhardt, a German Jew before he adopted the name of Erik Magnus Lensherr, before Magneto. The transition to the concentration camps are meticulous and believable, and Pak researched the hell out of everything in the five issues. There are numerous citations at the end of it, along with supplementary material and a teacher's guide.

Magneto Testament is a respectful, no-nonsense take on the Holocaust and Marvel's one mutant who survived it.

Animal Man Vol. 3: Deus Ex Machina
by Grant Morrison, Chas Truog and friends
collecting Animal Man #'s 18-26 (1989, 1990)
DC Vertigo, $19.99

Collecting the last third of Grant Morrison's famed run on Animal Man, I had no trouble skipping straight to this one without reading the first two. The first two issues contain the infamous "I see you!" page where Buddy Baker (A-Man) learns that he's a character in a comic book. It's an exciting moment, but the story doesn't end there. Somebody's had his family murdered, so the next two issues involve Buddy's climb up the ladder for revenge.

But no it doesn't even stop there! Unsatisfied with the revenge that he wrought, Buddy seeks the help of Booster Gold to travel back in time to save his family! It doesn't work (of course), and he returns to his own time to find Psycho-Pirate -- the one man who remembers the Earths before the Crisis, and brings back a myriad of the people who were lost in the crisis! And one of them was Overman, hellbent on nuking the entire world.

Buddy Baker stops him and oh man you best believe it's not over yet. The final two issues are Grant Morrison meeting up with Buddy Baker, and Buddy demands to know why Grant's been making his life hell. Morrison brings up his cat, Jarmara, who died. He doesn't get to have Jarmara back, but anything can happen to Buddy, simply because his writer writes it so. So Morrison writes his family back to life, reuniting Buddy with his wife and kids. This neatly dovetails to Lemire's current work on Animal Man!

Deus Ex Machina is an exciting, challenging comic book that gripped me from start to finish. Next time you see it, give it a try.

Library trades for 9-19-11: The adventures of Magneagle and Tortavier

Check out this wicked splash from Spectacular Spider-Man #1. The symbiote's separated from its host, and it's taken on the form to beat down Spider-Man. Notice the "ribs" on its side -- that's actually Venom's symbol, given shape on his back. How cool is that?

My local library's come through with a last few of my holds, and I couldn't help but share them
with you.

Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 1 (2004)
by Paul Jenkins, Humberto Ramos, Wayne Faucher

Collecting the first five issues of The Spectacular Spider-Man, Jenkins spins a mystery in NYC over the "vampire killer," a being that kills New Yorkers by attacking their adrenal gland. Given the big dude on the cover, it's pretty obvious who it is, so Spidey has to struggle to help NY cops figure it out while Eddie Brock struggles against his own demons. In the issues, the story is Peter's as much as it's Eddie's. I think it's paced pretty long for how it ends, but important changes are made to Eddie Brock (DUDE HAS CANCER), and it's handled tastefully. Ramos on pencils is highly stylized, but fun when you get used to them. As a Spider-Man fan, I think this is an important piece of comic book, but as a regular person, it's passable.

Marvel Fairy Tales (2010)
by C.B. Cebulski and friends

This thing totally came out of left field! And it's awesome! Each issue collected tells an individual story, mashing the Marvel Universe with classic fairy tales, ie: She-Hulk as Dorothy with her companions Captain America (cowardly lion), Iron Man (tin man) and Thor (scarecrow). Being immersed in comics as I am, it was a hoot figuring out which character from the fairy tale is which character from the Marvel U. I imagine it'd be the same for fairy tale readers too, so this would be a great book for casual readers. The trade collects all four of the Avengers Fairy Tales miniseries, but only issue 1 of Spider-Man Fairy Tales and issue 2 of X-Men Fairy Tales. It turns out that the X-men one's my favorite.

The story's from Cebulski and Kyle Baker, based on the African tale, "The Friendship of the Tortoise and Eagle." At first read I had no idea who the tortoise and the eagle were supposed to be, just that the tortoise had a big "X" on his shell, and the eagle had these weird marks on his face, kinda like a helmet. A helmet. . . to keep out telepaths. Only after staring at the first page for a while did I get it - and it was like BAM! It's a whole new story! The two are Magneto and Xavier!

Here's a summary: Eagle's family was brutally slaughtered in the camps of Auschwitz, so he bears a great deal of demons in him. Compassionate tortoise, loved by his family but ultimately shunned for his red "X," sacrifices himself to save his family from eagle's attacks. The two bond over their loneliness, but after eagle murders in order to save turtle, he can't bear to stay friends, for fear that he'll lose control. Turtle refuses to quit and vows to help eagle keep his demons at bay. Angered by Turtle's efforts, eagle grabs turtle and drops him from a mountain, cracking his shell and literally breaking his legs turning him into a paraplegic.

For serious.

Turtle says "Arrgghhh! My legs..."

The folktale illustrates this tragic relationship between eagle and turtle, and it's incredibly compelling to me. In light of the X-Men film this summer, it goes even deeper. Here're these two different people, completely different backgrounds, yet they work together and combine their talents for the greater good. Who doesn't want to see them win? Why can't they win? Why can't eagle be friends with tortoise???

What really made this stand out from the others was the art. The other stories had a dozen characters to introduce, and a lot more dialogue bubbles. Having only two characters, the art is allowed to breathe, and you can tell so much from tortoise's eyes. Comic books are visual and this thing is a feast for the eyes. Check out eagle's fury:

AW YEAH BABY MAGNEAGLE FLAP YOUR WINGS DON'T LET NOBODY STOP YOU!