So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Tom Foolery]

Dr Strange 1-5. Mark Waid started his run on Strange with Stephen forgetting how to do magic. As his connection to Earth’s magic is running dry, Tony Stark suggests he head into space where there’s infinite worlds with infinite magic. Several space adventures give Strange the tools to resupply his arcane knowledge. He picks up a new sidekick, an Arcaneologist named Kanna, as well as a troll named Eoffren who suggests Strange can just make his own mystical objects instead of using other being’s ancient mystic totems and having to pay the “toll” for using them.

6-8. Upon returning to Earth, Strange finds a Dr Strange already in the Sanctum Sanctorum, but he realizes its his former protege, Casey(from a previous Strange mini that Waid had written) under the influence of Mordo. Strange releases her soul and returns her to normal. Hooray for wrapping up dangling plot threads!
9. Was a fun one off where some demons in the guise of various real estate companies try to get Strange to sell his property on Bleecker St.
10-11. 10 was an oversized 400th Legacy issue about a mystical accountant trying to get Strange to settle his mystical ‘debts’.
12-17. Was a massive story arc where an alien mystic tries to protect his planet from Galactus by sending him into a magic pocket dimension. Galactus feeding on planets there causes a major problem that could destroy all reality, so Strange has to become his new herald and figure out a way to get him back to the real world. Eventually he has to make a deal with Mephisto to erase his newly reformed love with Clea in order to save the universe. Good story arc that maybe stretched on for too many issues.
18 was a stand alone issue where Strange ruins a family’s home trying to stop a demon entering our dimension thru their water pipes.
19. Strange makes a deal with a demon to get the use of his hands back so he can do emergency surgery on a young boy hurt in a car crash.
20. The final issue. Strange teams up with Kanna to fight some ancient alien magic demon or something. The book would continue in Dr Strange:Surgeon Supreme.

Annual 1. Strange and a bunch of other mystics like Wanda, Talisman, Brother Voodoo, Agatha Harkness are performing a ritual on Halloween to help a bunch of displaced ghosts, and Zelma, Strange’s protege mucks up the spell. I feel like the amount of time she’s been working with Strange(basically the entirety of the previous Strange run) she’d have a better understanding and not make the novice mistakes leading to the cock up. But it was Trini Howard writing again. That’s two strikes for Howard's writing.

Dr Strange:The End. One of the The End oneshots. In the future, and eldlerly Strange, the last surviving mystic, gathers up the remains of Wong and Scarlet Witch and uses them in a spell that also costs him his life to break Ilyana Rasputin out of a mystic entrapment that she’s been in for decades so that she can become the new Sorcerer Supreme.

Dr Strange: Surgeon Supreme 1-6. Mark Waid continued to write what would've been 21-26. Apparently when sales start slumping on books, they restart them with a new first issue for the final arc and then they get cancelled anyway. Now that his hands have been repaired, Strange is splitting his time between performing brain surgeries and his responsibilities as Sorcerer Supreme. Madame Masque starts selling black market ripoff mystical weapons that were created in Strange’s own forge, so he and the recently resurrected Dr Druid have to stop her. The next Strange book was Strange Academy and the new Death of Dr Strange mini thats currently coming out.

[Tom Foolery]

The last of the ‘D’ pile was a shortlived Domino ongoing that ran 10 issues and an annual, and a follow up mini by the same writer. There were more ‘D’ books I was planning on reading, but they were DC titles and I’m just not feeling DC right now.

Domino 1-6. Domino and her BFFs Diamondback and Outlaw are running their merc business and Domino’s past comes back to haunt her when one of the other experiments where she got her powers comes back looking for revenge. I’m not sure I’ve ever read Domino’s “origin” story but this story arc seemed to imply it had already been established, so maybe it was fleshed out in Cable’s ongoing from the 90s which I’ve never read. Anyway, Gail Simone does a good job writing Domino as a female and not a one-dimensonal ass kicker. The banter between the three ladies is pretty solid.
7-10. Were two two-part stories that sorta tied together. This mysterious exiled Wakandan teenage chick hires Dom’s team to steal a box which contains Morbius the Living Vampire in order to stop a vampire civil war, then she taks them with killing Longshot from the Mojoverse before he starts an interdimensional war. Turns out the Wakandan girl is sort of a precog, and eventually she adopts a super hero identity Atlas Bear after the now extinct bears from Africa.
The final arc was the “relaunched” mini Domino:Hotshots 1-5 where guest stars Black Widow, White Fox and Deadpool join the team to find a Celestial fragment that has possessed a scientist with cosmic powers and the various nations of the world are trying to take possession of it. Dom and her team are playing “who can you trust” with the others because she doesn’t trust their motives in promising to destroy the artifact rather than letting any one government have it.
Overall, the book was solid and underrated.

So next, I flipped a coin on whether to dive into Nick Spencer's Amazing Spidey run or Jason Aaron’s Avengers run, both of which are lengthy at this point.
ASM won, but there were a few small series at the front of the ‘A’ box that I read before starting on Spidey

Adventureman 1-4. An Image series from Matt Fraction and the Dodsons. A single mother in the present finds the secret lair of a Golden Age hero and magically gets his powers. There are flashback stories of the GA stuff mixed in with the current story and honestly its just an excuse for the Dodson’s to just draw whatever amazing fantasy stuff they feel like. Its pretty awesome. I thought it was a mini and only have the first four issue, but I just discovered its up to issue 8 at least.

Aero 1-12. One of two new Marvel books that are aimed at the Chinese market. I think technically this is an adaptation/reprint of books that were released over there first. So Aero is a super hero that controls air and in her secret identity, she’s an architect who loves Shanghai and won’t shut up about how beautiful the city of Shanghai is and she would do anything to protect it. She’s also trying to juggle her work, her boyfriend who wants to be her fiance(but who has time??) and being the famous hero of Shanghai. There was some confusing time jumping between present day where the city is getting attacked and a couple months ago when the city was getting attacked by similar, but unrelated crises. And her mentor also turns out to be her arch-nemesis, but is still somehow also her mentor showing her new ways to use her powers? And Iron Man shows up for the final three issues as a guest star. Apparently, I wasnt the target audience. Plowed thru all dizne issues as quickly amd best I could. Forgettable. Except they reallllly want you to know how great Shanghai is.

Asians of Atlas….sorry AGENTS of Atlas 1-5. The new all asian Atlas team led by Amadeus Cho introduced during War of the Realms finds itself helping/confronting a billionaire who has built a interdimensional hub city connecting New York, Mumbai, Tokyo, Shanghai and a half dozen other cities with the help of a kidnapped dragon. The book ends on a cliffhanger when Namor attacks and sets up an Atlantis Attacks miniseries thats somewhere else in my box and won’t get read for awhile. Cho used to be a whipsmart, arrogant cocksure character which made him a lot of fun, and writer Greg Pak seems to have dumbed him down into am awkward teenager overwhelmed by leadership. It’s also hard to juggle a dozen heroes on one team, so hardly anyone was getting proper character development. The best part was a back up story in the first issue featuring the original Agents of Atlas team written by original writer Jeff Parker.

Alpha Flight:True North oneshot. Three short stories featuring the Canadian super team. Nothing awful, but nothing remarkable either. Marvel just needs to publish an Alpha Flight book occasionally to keep the copyright current I guess.

Aliens 1. Marvel got the rights back. Its only the first issue, so can’t judge it yet.

Okay, Spencer’s run on ASM was like 75 issues or so, plus a bunch of oneshots tying into the ongoing. Here we go!

[Diabolical]

I don't think I finished the first issue of Aliens. I found it pretty dull.

I think I bought an issue or two of Aero only because of the Artgerm covers.

[Tom Foolery]

I think I got the first arc of Aliens, but I wasn’t really excited for it. Horror/suspense that works in movies doesn’t translate well to comics.

[Tom Foolery]

Amazing Spidey!
The FCBD from 2018 has Peter and his roommate Randy Robertson looking for an apartment in NYC. Pete gets sidetracked stopping a robbery by a bunch of villains including Boomerang, Rhino, She-lectro, and haha Z-lister Big Wheel. After he stops them, Randy finds them a bigger apartment with a third roommate…Fred Myers aka Boomerang! Hilarity will surely ensue in the ongoing!

Issue 1 sets up the new status quo. Peter get his PhD revoked because he “plagiarized” Doc Ock from the Superior Spidey days, and subsequently loses his science editor position at the Bugle because of it. But MJ is back, so it aint all bad.
2-5. ESU offers Peter a position thanks to the advocacy of Dr Curt Connors on his behalf. Connors has the Lizard thing under control full time and wants to help Peter get his science credentials back. He’s working on the science thingie that radiated the spider that bit Peter way back when. When Taskmaster and Black Ant try to steal it, it activates and splits Peter and Spidey into two separate beings! Spidey has the power, but none of the responsibility, and powerless Peter has to figure out how to recombine them before they both die while Spidey evades him and just does whatever he feels like. Eventually they recombine. They also introduce Kindred, a creepy new adversary for Spidey lurking in the shadows. Unfortunately I know who Kindred is, so the mystery is already ruined for me.
6-7 was a two parter where Boomerang invites Peter to the Bar With No Name for Spidey trivia night, and they get into shenanigans when Kingpin puts a contract on Boomerang and the other villains in the bar try to collect. But Peter and Fred end up bonding a little.
8-10. The NYC chapter of the Thieves Guild do a major heist of ALL the heroes’ hear(Cap’s shield, IM’s armor, Thor’s hammer, etc) to announce their return. Spidey teams up with Black Cat to retrieve the stolen stuff and double cross the guild. Then Spidey and Felicia have a heart to heart and Peter re-reveals his secret identity to her since she ‘forgot’ when Peter erased it from the world, but she remembered she had dated Spidey and she knew something was wrong.
11-13. Spidey teams up with his new advocate JJJameson when the son of Big Man Frederick Foswell hatches a revenge plot against his dad’s former boss.
14-15. Taskmaster and Black Ant have been rounding up villains with animal themes and they target Rhino who crashes into a restaurant where Aunt May is eating dinner. Spidey and Rhino team up to fight Tasky and Ant but when the room collapses Spidey has to rescue the people in the resturant and Rhino gets captured. Spidey also discovers a homeless man who turns out to be an amnesiac Ned Leeds.
16 was a Kraven centric story leading into ‘Hunted’ the next big arc. After the last big Kraven arc, when he got resurrected by his family and then killed them all off in the Savage Land except for his daughter, Kraven went to the High Evolutionary and had him make 88 clones of Kraven. One of them killed the other 87 and Kraven declared him his one true heir. Then the Kravens enlist the aid of Arcade to make a ‘game preserve’ in Central Park and Taskmaster and Black Ant have been capturing animal themed villains to put in it for ultra-rich assholes to use remote controlled Kraven-Bots to hunt them.
To be continued!

[Tom Foolery]

Amazing Spidey 16.HU was a Black Cat issue that explains how she got trapped in the Central Park ‘preserve’ and her attempt to rescue Lizard’s son Billy while she’s in there.

17-22 was the big Kraven arc “Hunted”. It’s a spiritual sequel to the famous Last Hunt story. With the help of Taskmaster, Black Ant, and Arcade, Kraven has kidnapped most of the animal themed villains and placed them in a ‘hunting preserve’ in Central Park inside a force field designed by Arcade, and released Kraven-bots remote controlled by big game hunters paying money for the privilege. But since he hates big game hunters also, he’s hardwired their interfaces so if the villains destroy their bot, the feedback kills them. It’s all a plan to get to Spidey to make the choice to kill in order to save an innocent life, in this case killing the Lizard to save his sin Billy. Spidey refuses, and Kraven realizes he’s been defeated, so he dresses up in the Black suit to confuse his clone/son into re-killing him thinking he’s Spidey.
There were 3 other .HU issues focusing on The Gibbon, Vulture, and Lizard and their parts in the story.
23 was an epilogue where the clone/son blames Spidey for ‘tricking’ him into killing his father and takes on the mantle of Kraven. Vulture and some of the other villains escape and form a “Savage Six” to pop up down the road. And the final scene reveals the Chameleon is also brewing a revenge plot for his dead brother.
24. The villain lurking in the background for the last 24 issues reveals himself to Peter in a dream where he kills Mysterio and gives himself a name; Kindred.
25 was an oversized issue where we see Mysterio isn’t really dead, MJ saves the day all by herself and her popularity resurges, the new female Beetle recruits an all female Sinister Syndicate, and a cliffhanger ending where Spidey 2099 crashes into an oilrig out in the ocean.
26-28 has the new Syndicate going after Pete’s roommate Boomerang because of something he stole way back in the FCBD issue and his ongoing beef with Mayor Kingpin because of it. Spidey has to save Boomerang and find out what he took, but we won’t find out until later.
29 was a stand alone issue where Peter’s sister Theresa needs his help to track down her spy partner and rescue him from Chameleon, but doing so puts a strain on his relationship with MJ, who is leaving for the airport to go to LA to star in a movie after her resurgence from issue 25. This adventure will be told in The Amazing Mary Jane series, which was either a very short ongoing, or a lengthy mini. To be read later, as I believe i put it in the ‘m’ box.
30-31 was an Absolute Carnage tie-in where Spidey has to rescue Norman/Cletus from Ravencroft, but also involves Kindred breaking into Ravencroft and based on his monologues towards Norman, it’s pretty obvious who it is even if they don’t actually reveal his identity yet.

To be continued!

[jjreason]

I purchased X-Men 7 which was pretty good & the BatCat special which I'm saving to read once I have the complete limited series to get through. Happily they have kept up with the release schedule for this book which I was nearly 100 percent sure was going to fall behind. 3 issues to go.

$17 for 2 new comics.

[Tom Foolery]

I love Clay Mann’s art style, but that dude is notoriously slow. They delayed Bat/Cat several months to give him a head start on the art and they still had to have Liam Sharp come in and pinch hit on a couple issues already.

[jjreason]

So is it an elseworlds continuation of where Tom King left Batman when they chose to hand it over to James Tynion, or is it actually part of the main story that takes place prior to the events of the current run?

[Tom Foolery]

I think it went alt-universe, but it’s hard to tell because it’s telling three stories simultaneously and bouncing between past, present, and future with very little narrative signpost as to where they keep switching. I suppose there’s nothing explicit to contradict the present stuff isn’t happening somewhere in the current continuity. I haven’t read the current ongoing Joker book to know what happened to him after the Joker War arc that Tynion wrote after he replaced King.

[jjreason]

Copy. Hopefully they release the last few issues in a timely fashion so I can binge it in one sitting.

[Tom Foolery]

More Amazing Spidey!

ASM 32-36. 2099 is in Trouble… there was mini-event with an Alpha and Omega issues, and a bunch of oneshots for the FF 2099, Conan 2099, etc but I didn’t dig them out to read, so this is just the ASM part of the crossover. Miguel got thrown into his past and is looking for Peter’s help, but he can’t remember why. Meanwhile, the Foreigner is trying to buy black market Infinity Formula from the Chameleon to help heal Silver Sable. Spidey and his sister Theresa are on the trial of Chameleon and try to stop the sale. The wannabe ruler of Symkaria, Baroness Karza(?) fakes an assassination attempt on Dr Doom, so that he’ll retaliate and he tries locking down Manhattan looking for the killer. Spidey talks him down, but the whole thing was a political ploy to give Baroness the edge in retaking control of Symkaria. Pretty sure all this takes place BEFORE the Dr Doom series i read because he took over Symkaria in that one.
37 was a between arc issue where Spidey is using a probability generator to predict crimes and stop them before they happen. Norah Winters convinces JJJ to join her online clickbait news website. And Kindred ressurects Sin-Eater.
38-40. Chance the hitman is running a supervillain gambling casino in an airship above Manhattan and is betting on Super-Hero battles. And Spidey goes on JJJ’s podcast and they hash out their underlying issues in their new friend dynamic.
41-43. The Boomerang subplot gets resolved with some deep dives into Spidey lore. The object Boomerang stole was a map to all the missing pieces of the Lifeline Tablet(look it up!)that he’s trying to keep out of Kingpin’s hands. And the last piece is being protected by Gog(look him up!). At the end, Peter adopts Gog as his new housepet. Nick Spencer was reading some old comics for this one. Even I was like wtf?

To be continued!

[Tom Foolery]

The ASM book starts picking up speed as all the plot threads Spencer has peppering for the last 40+ issues start paying off.

44 was a prelude to Sins Rising. Peter has a dream about Overdrive being attacked by Sin Eater and its clear Kindred is messing with his head. But the dream Peter experiences is actually a mass dream shared by his allies; Miles, Gwen, Jessica Drew, Anya, and Madame Web as Kindred draws them into his master plan.

Sins Rising Prelude. A oneshot that delves into Stan Carter’s past and brings readers up to speed on his motivations having returned from the dead at the hands of Kindred.
45-49. Sins Rising. Sin Eater is back and ‘cleansing’ villains of their sins with his new magical shotgun. As he removes their motivations for villainy, he also absorbs their powers. After publicly defeating the Lethal Legion, he earns a cult following with hundreds of disciples wearing his mask. Meanwhile, Spidey’s allies, calling themselves the Order, decide to intervene in Spidey going after Kindred after they all dream of his death via Madame Web’s clairvoyance. This culminates in the $10 issue 49 super sized issue where Sin Eater going after Norman Osborn who is now the head of the Ravencroft Institute. Spidey saves Norman despite his reservations and Spidey and Green Goblin team up to stop the overpowered Sin Eater. They escape but then Norman gets super creepy on Gwen and Peter goes ballistic and throws Norman out of the escape sub and leaves him for Sin Eater, thus setting off Madame Web’s visions. Sin Eater shoots Norman and “frees” him of the Goblin persona.
50-55.LR was a set of side/tie-in issues where the Order team up with Dr Strange and Black Cat to stop Sin Eater, who was rejected by Kindred after he had served his purpose, but he snares Morlun in a trap and steals his powers. All of this is happening concurrently with the main story arc.

50-55. Last Remains. Kindred is revealed to be Harry Osborn! After dismissing Sin Eater, he releases the “sins” he had aquired from the villains and they possess the Order, turning them into evil versions who attack Spidey. Spidey goes to Dr Strange for help, then has Black Cat steal an artifact that will help him defeat Kindred and he goes off to confront Harry alone. Harry has exhumed all of the deceased loved ones in Peter’s life, Captain Stacy, Gwen, Jean DeWolfe, even Uncle Ben and has them arranged at a table. Forcing Peter to confront his “sins” Kindred keeps killing Peter and reviving him over and over, until Norman and MJ show up to talk Harry down. Norman fake kills MJ and then he and Kingpin trap Kindred in a Darkforce cell and take him back to Ravencroft. 55 is very now iconic cover thats going for $25.
I’m not exactly sure of the end game for this story arc, but at one point Harry made Peter relive the coda sequence from One More Day that led into Brand New Day and it made me say “oh shit!” because that’s when they brought Harry back and they never really gave an explanation as to how or why he was back. So this is a dangling plot thread like 15 years in the making and it’s elevating this entire Nick Spencer run for me. And there’s still like 30 issues left in the run. Shit’s getting good!

56-57 were a Last Remains post mortem where Norman is trying to help Harry and he enlists Peter’s help, but Peter flips out and decks Norman amd says he wants nothing to do with him or Harry anymore. Carlie Cooper also is researching the exhumed bodies and realizes there’s an extra body, but before she can call MJ and warn her who the body is, she is attacked by Kindred’s centipede thingies. Cliffhanger!

[Tom Foolery]

The last batch of ASM stuff in my older to-read boxes.

58-60. Martin Li was “cleansed’ by Sin Eater. But when Kindred rejected Sin, the powers were returned to their original hosts. Li goes to FEAST to ask Aunt May for help, and Mr Negative’s ninja demons show up. Spidey beats a bunch of them up, but Li gives himself up before Aunt May is hurt. Mr Negative makes a deal with Mayor Kingpin to get his crime district back in exchange for getting Kingpin the Lifeline tablet from Boomerang. Peter also a talk with MJ about the fallout of Harry/Kindred and he gets some stuff off his chest, then we find out MJ is mysteriously working with Quentin Beck because of his connection to Kindred. EDIT OH! And when Dr Strange was helping Peter in the last arc, he noticed something peculiar about his ‘soul’ and he went and confronted Mephisto about it! That was a ‘holy shit!’ Moment for me.
61-62. Spidey gets a new job and costume that lets him livestream his adventures as an influencer for JJJameson’s new clickbait online “News’ channel TNM(Threats’n’Menaces) and he has to re-reteam with Boomerang as Kingpin sends most of NYC’s crimebosses to find him. Meanwhile, Robbie Robertson and Tombstone both discover their kids are secretly dating each other.

ASM:Wakanda Forever. One of three oneshots that headlined the Dora Milaje in a mini adventure. The other two oneshots were X-Men and Avengers and will get read later.

ASM: Going Big oneshot. As part of their 80th Anniversary, Marvel was having older veteran creators come back and do new stories for their marquee characters. Gerry Conway and Mark Bagley collaborated for the first time on a story that had Spidey going up against human traffickers and MJs cousin Kristy gets kidnapped while writing a news article. Conway threw in Punisher for good measure. Erik Larsen did a short back up story as well. Fun stuff.

ASM Annual 1. Saladin Ahmed wrote an early tale of the Black Suit from the perspective of the symbiote as he takes Peter’s sleeping body out on adventures night after night, leaving Peter more and more exhausted every day.

ASM:Full Circle oneshot. A $10 jam session where several writers each wrote a chapter and left the next writer to figure out their cliffhanger ending. Kinda like the old DC challenge, but all in a single issue. Pretty fun experiment from Hickman, Duggan, Spencer, Thompson, Ewing, Zdarsky, and Aaron with a bevy of superstar artists.

ASM:Daily Bugle 1-2. This was a 5 part mini, that got cancelled after 2 issues because Covid. Not sure if the rest of it was released digitally or something. But it’s doubtful they’ll ever print the final three issues. It was a pretty good start though.

So, I’m reading my older boxes first, and the rest of Spencer’s run is in the “new” boxes from after I moved. When I finished the Hulk and Venom runs, it was like a half dozen issues so it wasn’t a big deal. But Spencer’s run still has 20-30 issues including tie-ins, oneshots, etc. Debating on whether to finish it, or wait and come back after I read all the other “older” stuff first. Which may be several months. Not sure how much I have left because I’ve been bouncing around quite a bit. I was gonna tackle Aaron’s Avengers next and then Slott’s FF run.

[Tom Foolery]

It’s getting good, so I’m ripping thru the last dozen issues of Nick Soencer’s Amazing run.

ASM 63-65, King’s Ransom oneshot. Kingpin’s plan to find the Lifeline Tablet reaches its conclusion. The various crime lords try to use Tombstone and Robbie Robertson’s children as bait to find Boomerang and Spidey enlists the help of his former New Avengers teammates to find Boomerang before Kingpin does. But Boomerang has been playing the long con to get Spidey to help him find the final tablet piece and he double crosses Spidey and gives it to Kingpin so Fisk can ressurect his dead son, The Rose.

66. Kindred gets his father to open his cell and then beats him senseless and escapes. Peter meets Betty Brant at the airport and finds her pregnant. And kidnapped Carlie Cooper wakes up in a cell next to….Harry Osborn….

67-69, Chameleon Conspiracy oneshot. Theresa Parker finds Chameleon in a Symkarian prison and demands answers about her past, and it’s implied she might be a deep cover chameleon, but she rejects the premise and decides to keep being Peter’s sister even if it’s a lie. Meanwhile, Chance and Foreigner are attempting to steal the Clairvoyant machine from Peter’s classmate and a war erupts berween them and Chameleon’s agents aboard Chance’s floating casino, and Spidey enlists the newly not-dead Ned Leeds in stopping them and preventing the casino from crashing into Manhattan. In short codas at the end of each issue, Kindred is getting Doc Ock to recruit the original Sinister Six.

70. Prelude to Sinister War. Dock Ock, Electro, Sandman, and Raven “recruit” Lizard by using the thingie from the very first story arc to split Doc Connors and Lizard into two people. Then Kindred enlists their final member, Mysterio and we see all the pieces falling into place for ALL the rival Sinister teams; the original six, Vulture’s team he recruited during the Kraven story arc, Beetle’s all-girl Syndicate, Foreigner and Chance’s team with Taskmaster, Black Ant, and Slyde, and finally Boomerang’s Foes of Spidey with Shocker, Speed Demon Overdrive, etc. Goosebumps! Also, Carlie Cooper wonders how she’s in a cell next to Harry when the final cadaver she discovered after Last Remains was ….Harry Osborn.

The final four issues 71-74 and the Sinister War miniseries are all that’s left to read! So much shit is gonna go down!