So, What comics did you buy this week?

[anarky]

The latest ARAH and the first volume of Vision arrived yesterday. I was too tired to read them when I got home, though.

Atomic Robo was supposed to arrive today. According to the post office, it was left in my locked mailbox at about 6 PM. I got home at 8. All the rest of the mail was there, but no Robo. Goddammit. Not sure if one of the incredibly lazy-ass postmen (who do shit like reporting things as delivered, then deliver them a day or so later at their leisure) was working the route today, or it was legitimately left in someone else's box by accident.

Either way, I reported it to the postal service, because, fuck, I want to read Atomic Robo.

[anarky]

And misdelivered. A neighbor brought it by this morning.

Back to ARAH (which I read last night): "Cobra World Order" is a masterpiece of marketing. Because this was hyped as a huge event, and it's business as usual. Granted, that's very good stuff (this is one of the better stories in the new run so far), but the Cobra scheming is nothing remarkable (they took over the fucking US back in 156, remember?).

I thought for a bit that Duke and Roadblock were getting shoehorned into the Snake Eyes origin story. No big deal (this is G.I. Joe, which even George Lucas thinks has too many coincidences, but we're all used to it), but they weren't. Not sure if Claire's rescue in Trucial Abysmia took place before Snake Eyes lost his face or not, or who the other guy who seemed to have the same skills was supposed to be. (The fact that practically ever desert adventure the team's ever had takes place in Trucial Abysmia is another of those coinkidinks.)

Incredibly minor nitpick: Duke didn't seem to be familiar with the French language or French food in the flashback to how he met Claire, but he was supposed to be tri-lingual (English, French, and Spanish) when he enlisted, and is so good at picking up languages that he learned a few more after enlisting.

Also interesting to see Crystal Ball exhibiting actual supernatural powers, when Hama's always portrayed him as a bit of a faker in the past.

Love the characterization of Destro and his forces during the collapse of the Silent Castle. Destro is such a great villain and his rock-solid sense of honor makes him a perfect foil to Cobra Commander.

I also really like Dice's new mask. It's cool that some of these "lost" characters can get updates, even if only in the comic.

[DeckardSmith]

12 books this week, 6 of them CW2 related. Events!! Amiright?

New Avengers 13. CW2 tie in. Songbird's triple agent status exposed. Bobby mounts a rescue of Hawkeye because of what happened in issue 3 of CW2. The Maker attacks.

Civil War II 3. Another hero dies by assassination from a fellow hero because the Inhuman precog said he'd break bad. There's a trial.

CW2 Choosing Sides 2. Various heroes react to Rhodey's funeral. And a couple back up stories I didn't read. That Nick Fury art is awful.

CW2 Amazing Spidey 2. Ulysses says Clayton will go bad, so Spidey confronts him about it. Which pisses Clayton off and makes him go bad. Self fulfilling prophecy!

CW2 Gods of War 2. Didn't read it yet, but Herc and his team fight the Modern Gods pantheon.

Daredevil 9. DD and Spidey team up to steal a briefcase with a bunch of incriminating evidence on NYCs underworld figures. DD tells Spidey that he used to know DD's secret identity, but now he doesn't.

Deadpool 15. CW2 tie in. Wade goes to kill Ulysses, then has a huge fight with Black Panther. The Mercs break into Wade's safety deposit box, so he fires them.

Guardians of the Galaxy 10. The GoGs finally get around to rescuing Peter in an anticlimactic finale to an overlong and boring arc where nothing ever happens. Like most Bendis written Guardians issues. But how awesome is that Art Adams cover??

Gwenpool 4. MODOK figures out Gwen isn't actually a deadly assassin and tries to kill her, but with her dumb luck, she defeats him and takes over his criminal empire.

Silk 10. The confrontation between Silk and Black Cat reaches its climax, as SHIELD shows up and takes down Cat's criminal empire.

Vision 9. Victor Mancha accidentally kills Vin, because he found out he was spying on the Visions for the Avengers.

ANX-Men 11. Apocalypse Wars! Beast and Evan come back to the present after not really resolving anything in the past. Utterly pointless bullshit.

Also got a magazine sized freeb issue of all the post CW2 relaunch titles coming this fall. My god, I cannot keep up with Marvel launching like 50 new titles every fucking year. Quit carpet bombing the racks, you bastards.

[anarky]

Also got a magazine sized freeb issue of all the post CW2 relaunch titles coming this fall. My god, I cannot keep up with Marvel launching like 50 new titles every fucking year. Quit carpet bombing the racks, you bastards.

Not only that, but if there's a cool-sounding new direction on one title that you don't read, there's not a hell of a lot of incentive to get into it if it's almost a given that it will be canceled by issue #10 and restarted with another new direction a month later.

[Diabolical]

Is it true there are no more X-titles in the relaunch?

[Tom Foolery]

Marvel said both Spidey and X-books will have books out then, but theyre focusing on the Clone Event in Spidey, and the Death of X Event for the X-Men.

[jjreason]

I enjoy reading comics, but I'm tired, so tired, of the reorganizing & relaunching. It might kill my desire to buy them - I could likely just from my own collection for the rest of my life anyhow.

[jjreason]

Nightwing Rebirth 1 - bluck. Didn't give one rat's ass about any of this - story or art-wise.

Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps Rebirth 1 - not bad. Might pick up #1 of the main series & have a read.

DD & Punisher 3 - I would fail a pop quiz about which storyline is happening in which book right now between Punisher, DD & their combo book.

[jjreason]

$93 worth from the past 2 weeks and I haven't read any of it yet:

FREE Marvel mag with the upcoming books
DKIII 5 hardcover
Vision 9
OM Logan 8
GotG 10
DD9
CWII 3
AN X-Men 11
Vader 23
SW 21 regular & Snowtrooper variant
Uncanny X-Men 10
Batman 3
Ultimates 9
Justice League 1
Superman 3

[Tom Foolery]

Batman 3 came out? Shoot, I missed it.

[jjreason]

Not sure if it was just this week or last.

EDITED - perused that Marvel mag about the upcoming books. Fuck me, that's almost stressful seeing how many series restarts they have planned. It made my stomach go floopy (or maybe that's because I was reading it on the john, but that's for another topic).

Deodato & Lemire on Thanos might be good, I'll likely give that a go.

The X-Men limited series is a yes for sure.

The Avengers titles had me stressed out - really not sure what to do there, all in or all out? I liked the look of the 1.1 issue - kinda classic & I'll grab that issue for sure.

Bendis on Iron Man is hard to pass on even though I'm not behind them replacing everyone.

I might start buying Thor now, the ads made me wistful & thinking it's time to check in (even though it's not Thor Thor - it looks like he's coming back & I can see any groundwork they lay to that end.

[DeckardSmith]

12 books this week. Just got around to reading them last night. 1 First Issue, 1 Final Issue, and 4 CW2 tie ins.

Ant-Man 10. Ant-Man and his crew successfully break into Cross labs (despite half of them ditching throughout the mission) and defeat Cross, but his ex-GF Darla's reality TV crew captures everything on camera and that is why he's in prison in the present.

Black Widow 5. The SHIELD Agent following BW makes contact with her before she delivers the macguffin files to the Lion and blows himself and the couriers with the files up, so the Lion makes good on his promise to release whatever dirt he was blackmailing BW with to the public.

Contest of Champions 10. Final Issue. The last of the contestants who don't get themselves killed manage to defeat Maestro and destroy the Iso-8 sphere, then head back to Earth and enjoy a pint with Nigel at his local pub. This was a fun series, I'm glad I stuck with it.

Deadpool: Mercs for Money 1. First issue. The mini series was so successful(probably tha is to DPs name on the cover) it got upgraded to ongoing. The Mercs get hired by some shady organization to kidnap Negasonic Teenage Warhead. She handily beats them all thanks to her precog abilities, but then Wade convinces her to go peacefully.

Nova 9. CW2 tie in. I dropped this with issue 2, but needed to round up to 12 books this week. An unexpected team up with Nextwave's The Captain made this a pleasant surprise.

Spider-Man 6. CW2 tie in. Jessica Jones spies on Miles and his friends at school. Iron Man shows up and makes his pitch to join Team Tony in the CW2 debate. Miles's mom goes to Jessica to tell her to stop the investigation, but then asks what she found.

Spidey/Deadpool 7. An "inventory" issue from 1968 featuring the "very first team up" between Spidey and DP.

Star Wars 21. A story told from the point of view of a Stormtrooper Sgt and his squad fighting the "terrorist" Rebels.

Darth Vader 23. Aphra and the droids try to rescue the Emperor while Vader confronts Cylo.

Ultimates 9. CW2 tie in. With a precog warning from Ulysses, the Ultimates have time to prepare for an interdimensional traveller that's threatened Earth several times in the past. And Thanos is all up in Anti-Man's head.

Wolverine 10. CW2 tie in. Laura, Gabby, and Old Man Logan bond over a burglar break in at Laura's apartment. Then Ulysses gets a vision that Old Man Logan is going to kill Gabby and SHIELD shows up.

Uncanny X-Men 10. Apocalypse Wars! The half hearted non X-Men event is over. Angel and Archangel merge into...Archangel. Monet absorbs Emplate and also his need to feed on mutants.

[jjreason]

God damn, the Apocalypse wars were lacklustre.

[Tom Foolery]

God damn, the Apocalypse wars were lacklustre.

That editing group has been back burnered by Marvel so hard. There's no focus in hardly any of the books.
I'm almost buying X-Men books out of habit because I have such a large back catalogue of them.

[jjreason]

I have jumped off X before only to feverishly try & go back to fill in blanks later too many times. It's easier just to buy them as they come out.

Seriously though - Bendis needs to write an OGN to get rid of ALL the ALL NEW X-Men stat & they need to reduce things back to one X-Men book & a Wolverine book. Only Old Man Logan has made any sense at all over the last 3 months.

EDITED - and of course a Deadpool book & you leave Kitty in Guardians, Storm in Black Panther & rotate one other X-book through the works - X Factor with Pete Wisdom maybe or a New Mutants type thing. It's not rocket science.