the vynsane asylum

Big week - first in 3 so there were a few things to get. Luckily (or unluckily) we needed to go to London for a medical appointment which opened the opportunity for me to visit another shop. The total is as follows (as I can't recall exactly what I got where):

1 drawer box
Leave it to Chance oversized hardcover #3 (on clearance for $3.99)
Atomic Robo v4 tpb (on clearance for $3.99, going in Thomas' stocking)
Dark Avengers (older series) 2&7, leaving me one #1 shy of a run
DD6
New Av 19
FF12
Uncanny 2 (and I did re-cancel & confirmed with shop-dude that I am now cancelled on new X-books)
ASM 675
Avenging Spidey 2
Game O'Thrones 3
Marvel Holiday Special 1
Avengers Sanction 1
Avengers 1959 4
Battle Scars 2 (which I put a mark on, due to unsafe handling, so you know this one is going to appreciate like crazy - go buy 2)
Moon Knight 2, 8
FI Fearless 4
Av Origins Thor
Thor 5,6
FI Spidey 3

Yeah that's a lot. I also got a Magni Bronzebeard DC Direct WoW figure for $16, making this BY FAR my most expensive comic week of 2011. Might as well go out with a bang.

I got 12 books this week.

Atomic Robo: Ghost of Station X 4. The awesomeness of this book is implied right there in the title. Nothing else need be said. If you aren't already reading this series, you are soulless monster and the raging inferno of Hell is too good for you.

New Avengers 19. Norman Osborn takes his ersatz Dark Avengers 2.0 out for a spin. Victoria Hand may or may not be a double agent. Squirrel Girl tries to get up on Daredevil's junk.

Avengers Academy 23. X-23 joins the Academy. Hilarity ensues. Striker comes out of the closet.

Avengers: X-Sanction 1. Jeph Loeb and Ed Mcguiness use giant panels and sparse word balloons to stretch what would've been a 4 page prologue into an entire issue.

Battle Scars 2. Somebody on another forum suggested that Marcus Johnson is going to end up being Nick Fury's son. I'm beginning to think that may be true. So we can have a black Fury in the 616 in time for the Avengers movie next year.

Carnage USA 1. The sequel to last year's Carnage mini has Kletus taking over a small Colorado town and turning it into Carnageville. Call in Spidey and the Avengers.

Ghost Rider 7. Hawkeye comes after Alejandra for lobotomizing all those Argentinians during FI.

Snake Eyes 8. The conclusion on the SE/Hawk story. Sadly, Hawk recovers. And one of the candidates for Cobra Commander bursts like a balloon. But since we already knew he didn't get picked, nobody cares.

Iron Man 2.0 11. The penultimate issue. The Palmer Addley virus infects Tony, setting up another big Iron Man fight in next months final issue.

Magneto: Not A Hero 2. Erik confronts his clone Joseph to argue about philosophies then vs now. Then they get into a big magnetic fight.

The Stand: Night Has Come 5. Stu and Tom make the return trip to Boulder.

Journey into Mystery 632. I can't recommend this book enough. Loki has to find homes for seven puppies that resulted from his releasing a Hellhound on Garm to break into Hel during FI. Garm sends the puppies to Loki because they are 'his problem now'. This is such a fun, smart title that embarrasses the other Thor book. Please start buying it so that it does not get cancelled.

Batgirl #4 - Another small piece of Barbara's "miracle" is revealed when she tells her roommate something about a "clinic in South Africa." She beats the bad guy then her mom shows up at her door.

Batman and Robin #4 - B&R escape from the bad guy with one of the dumbest named ever, Nobody (Henri Ducard's kid, Morgan). Later, Bruce and Damien have a long talk about trust, respect and the frustration Damien feels about not being told everything (especially what he feels is relevant). Nobody later tells Damien that unlike Bruce, he will teach him everything and hold nothing back.

A huge week with 20 books. 20! I spent over $60. Haven't done that in a lonnnng time. Here's what I got.

Amazing Spidey 676. Special All Villain issue! Doc Ock and his Sinister Six save the world from the Intelligencia in 2011 so they can take over the world in 2012! Also, I think the Winter Guard might've been killed.

Avengers 20. Norman Osborn divides and conquers the Avengers and kicks their asses for like the umpteenth time. y'know, for being the A squad, they sure do get pwned quite a bit.

Daredevil 7. Murdock is taking some blind school kids on a field trip and their bus crashes during a blizzard. Daredevil has the shittiest luck ever.

Defenders:Coming of the Defenders oneshot. That's not the name of a porn parody. Rather it's a reprint of the first three Defenders issues ever.

Defenders: Strange Heroes Handbook style issue. Unlike other recent Handbook issues, this one actually had some A-listers in it.

Formic Wars:Silent Strike 1. The Formics kill 44 Million Chinese. Earth tries to get their shit together.

Fantastic Four 601. Johnny Storm reunites with the FF before he leads his Negative Zone Hordes against the incoming Kree invasion fleet. This is pretty epic right'chyeah.

GIJoe:ARAH 173. Steeler, Cross Country, Cover Girl, and WildCard team up with the October Guard (have they ever made a Daina figure?) as Trucial Abyssmia and Behnzeen face Arab Spring uprisings. And StormShadow and Snake-Eyes break into Cobra Commander's quarters to return his son's body to him. And ask for his help in figuring out who the new threat is.

Cobra 8. The New Cobra Commander cleans house and implements changes.

Incredible Hulk 3. Hulk gets into a subterranean fistfight with a couple of Banner's Warthog guys that Literally shakes the Earth.

Iron Man 511. The Mandarin begins fucking with Tony in earnest. Another excellent issue.

New Mutants 35. Blink joins up with the NM to fight a cosmic powered rock band that's causing natural disasters.

Marvel Index 5. More hijinks from Wolverine, Punisher, and Ghost Rider.

PunisherMAX 20. Punisher kills ElektraMAX. ElektraMAX has a penis. I'm making this assumption based on the fact that Steve Dillon draws everyone exactly the same way.

Thunderbolts 167. The Jack the Ripper story continues and gets more convoluted.

Transformers: The Death of Optimus Prime. A misleading title. He jus goes back to calling himself Orion Pax since he stepped down as Autobot Leader and the Matrix is gone. Sets up the two new Ongoing series.

Wolverine 20. There's a war brewing between the Yakuza and the Kingpin's Hand Ninjas since the Silver Samurai died. And Sabretooth is back! Leads into next month's Wolverine 300.

Wax-Men 3. Krakoa, the Living Island's grandkid asks to join the X-Men's new school. Wolverine sues the Hellfire Club for $879 Million in damages to the school.

X-Factor 229. Recently dead Madrox wakes up in an alternate future where he finds himself and his wife, Layla Miller deceased...on their wedding night. WTF?!

Uncanny X-Force 19. It's my own damn fault. I needed a 20th book. So I checked in with this book after a year of avoiding it. So, one of the best simmering subplots in the entire X-verse, nay the ENTIRE MARVEL UNIVERSE, is the fact Beast quit the X-Men and stopped being friends with Cyclops because he started X-Force. Then Beast joined up with Wolvie Not knowing Wolvie was secretly running a newer X-Force!! I mean, that's like primo drama fodder right? Beast flipping his shit when he finds out. Scott doing an 'I told you so' dance. Right? Except...no. Because of fucking Remender. You fucking insipid twat writer shit hat. In this issue, Wolvie comes clean and Beast says "I am so furious.". That's it. GAAAAAAHHH!!!! I fuckin hate you Rick Remender. Gawd you're a SHITTY WRITER!!! If there's a lethal form of crabs, I hope you get it, you prick!! Fuck off and stop ruining Marvel!!

Huh. You actually sorta spoiled Death of Optimus Prime for me; I'd assumed he actually died. Seems a bit odd that he'd simply step down and leave Bumblebee and Rodimus in charge. Still, the book has been so awesome, I'll definitely give it a shot and expect to be impressed.

Nice to see (or hear about) Wildcard in ARAH, dumb as his almost supernatural bad luck is. It always seemed odd that Hasbro would force new characters into the book, they'd seem to be Larry's new favorites for a couple of years, and then they'd vanish. Muskrat is one of the biggest examples of that; he was frickin' huge for a bit.

And I think they did once make a Daina figure, in a comic pack during the weird "most of our shit is Valor vs Venom, but we release comic packs with three kitbashes and repaints from the original 1981 line" period.

Sorry, for spoiling it. But better you hear it now, than be sitting around for six months assuming an epic Death issue is coming and then go 'awwww...wtf? Cop out.' Plus, Bumblebee and Rodimus are still fighting like li'l bitches. I won't tell you who the stars of the two different Ongoings are, but I bet you can figure it out.

I already know Bumblebee is playing politics on post-war Cybertron while Rodimus goes off looking for the quasi-mythical Knights of Cybertron (the Thirteen?).

What I want to know is where the fuck is Grimlock? He isn't dead, y'know. And he outranked almost everyone else in the earlier incarnations (and could beat the shit out of everyone he didn't outrank aside from Prime and Fort Max... and the one showdown between Prime and Grimlock in the UK comic ended in them laughing about it when they realized they were too evenly matched).

Seriously, if the factions aren't at war and there are new non-affiliated Cybertronians, and Bumblebee's struggling to govern them, a machiavellian anti-hero would be a good character to work in.

Speaking of which (though not really), where is Sixshot? Did Black Shadow (whom I've become sorta fond of since his 2011 figure kicks so much ass) ever appear outside of the flashback in LSOTW where he's also a Phase Sixer? And I don't remember if Overlord died in the end of LSOTW or not. Focusing on Decepticons who are practically invincible and exist entirely for genocide (and are damned good at it), and how they react to the new state of things, now that sounds like it'd be interesting.

But you see what I'm talking about with the "short-term favorite" Joes, right? Not guys like Budo or Ozone who are clearly tossed in because they have a figure and then fade away after an issue or a storyline. Muskrat must've gone on all but one mission for a two-year period. Hell, go back further and Ripcord qualifies; after the invasion of Springfield, he just sorta went from being one of the main main characters to never being seen again. I'd honestly forgotten how important he'd been with Candy and the Zartan switcheroo when the movie came out and wondered why they made him the main character.

Ripcord is one of my fave Joes because of his sojourn onto Cobra Island.
But yeah, remember how the entire Lt. Falcon wave got featured in a two issue story and then...gone. And they were such a bizarre group to be 'teamed' together. Chuckles, Law & Order, Fast Draw...

And it was the McFarlane issue(s, if you count the unpublished one that was released years later), too.

Speaking of which, I wish Hasbro would make a 30th Anniversary Chuckles. I know they released him in the 25th line. But they're re-doing Falcon for the Slaughter's Marauders/Renegades set, it appears. So why not finally make a Chuckles that's the fucking mountain of a man he usually appears to be in the original comics. McFarlane drew him as big as Joe Fixit.

Course, if they had a goddamned bit of sense, some of these awesome IDW re-designs would make their way into the 30th line. As fucking shitty as the original Crystal Ball was, you can't tell me you wouldn't kill to have that fucking Rasputin-like Crystal Ball from IDW. Or either Cobra Commander. Or especially the new Crimson Guardsmen.

Hey, since they won't do it, you think the Talon Karrde figure might be a good start for the new Crystal Ball? The head and the torso part of his coat look pretty dead-on to me.

So, What comics did I buy this week? Thanks for asking!

FF 601
DD7
Avengers 20
PunMax 20
ASM 676
WX-men 3 (and that's it - really).

Also, the back issue sale is in full effect, so I grabbed a few IDW Joes (main series) to nearly complete my run: 15,17,19-22.

Big load of IDW Joe - 20/24 issues of the main series, Cobra & Snake Eyes to be exact from my go-to store in London (Christmas with my side today).

Now if a jigga was going to read these, would he read them 1-1-1, or 1-8,1-8,1-8? I'm leaning towards 1-1-1.

I'd go storyline by storyline, bouncing from Origins - Joe - Cobra. Trying to read them 1-1 would be confusing. They don't line up as neatly as they could.

I concur with the Distinguished Gentleman from California. Read them as Arcs. Technically, the entire Origins series takes place before the other two.

Without spoiling details, did Chimaera (or whatever his name was) from the first Origins arc ever reappear? I hope he's not completely gone.