the vynsane asylum

jjreason wrote:Now over $8.50 for one new comic with bag & board in Canada.

Shit. Aren't TPB's around $20 apiece there?

jjreason wrote:Powers of X 1. I still haven't read either last week's or this week's - almost like I'm scared to be disappointed or something. Now over $8.50 for one new comic with bag & board in Canada.

They’ve both been good. He’s setting up the macro-story much like he did in Avengers.
One thing I noticed is that the Powers of X is actually “Powers of Ten” and that the four time intervals are increasing factors of ten. So year “zero” when Xavier meets Moira and begins planning his dream. The first power is ten years later, the second is 100 years, and the third is 1000 years.
But the first jump is the “current” Marvel U, which means the dreaded sliding timescale rears its ugly head and everything that has happened has happened in the last ten years.


The pricing is getting ridiculous. I feel like half my books are still $3.99, but there’s been a lot of $4.99 and $5.99 books over the past month or two.
I get about 20-30 books a week and I’m always bumping up against $100 every week. Since I’m not reading the current stuff, I don’t know what I should be dropping because I’m afraid I’ll miss out on something and not be able to find it later.

Also this week I got Venom Annual #1, which will go nicely with the Venom Annual #1 I got LAST YEAR...
The Friendly Neighborhood Spidey issue I got was all scuffed to shit. And there were only two copies and one of them was the “Venomized” variant cover I didn’t want, so I had to get the only regular cover and didn’t realize it was smeared until I got home.
Also accidentally got the Venom cover for FF. Ugh.

anarky wrote: Shit. Aren't TPB's around $20 apiece there?

$24.99 for the average 5-6 issue TPB I believe. I haven't bought one at the store in ages, I binge them when indigo does their buy 2 get 3 a couple of times per year.

I'm not feeling Powers/House of X, at least not yet.
They feel holier than thou preachy and...off. Most of it makes no sense yet. I like ambiguous set ups, but I'm so far removed from the X world, it's just babble to me.

I've been slowly cutting back because of pricing issues.
Thankfully many of them were the easiest of cuts - cancellation.
Hawkeye, Scarlet, and Paper Girls have all ended, with Squirrel Girl soon.
I fell behind on the Star Wars stuff, so I said enough of those.
I want to finish King's big Batman story, then be done with both Batman and Detective Comics.

After those, it'll just be Punisher, Criminal, Lazarus, something else I'm forgetting, and the occasional mini series.

I didn’t realize Scarlet had ended. Those five issues I found earlier this year were the entire run? So I have inadvertently collected that entire run across two publishers without meaning to. Did it have a proper finale or did it just get canned due to low sales?

I'm behind on my reading, but I think the story is over.
Or at least taking a break until Bendis wants to continue.

Issue #5 came out in March, with 1-5 arriving regularly.

Apparently I missed Valkyrie by Jason Aaron last week so I need to track that down - hopefully still in stock.

Back to the “A” pile! But first, we catch up on the ongoing Star Wars books.

Star 67-69. Keiron Gillen finished his SW run with issue 67. He had written the first Vader ongoing, a majority of the Aphra series, and stepped in when Jason Aaron left the main series, so he’s been doing Marvel’s SW since they got the license back five years ago.
68-69 Greg Pak and Phil Noto take over and split up the heroes and send them looking for their next homebase across the galaxy. Hoth is on the list, so the comics are catching up to ESB.

Dr. Aphra 33-34. Aphra finds an ancient Jedi artifact created by a rogue Jedi that lets you, at the expense of a kaibur Crystal per shot, fire a ‘lightsaber blade’ across great distances. Like a Jedi Sniper Rifle. The Rebels want to use the Death Star plans they have laying around and create a version of this sniper rifle on a system sized scale so they can assassinate Palpatine without getting too close.

Also, found the three Venomverse, and Venomized issues I was missing, so now I know how that ended.

Okay, back to the ‘A’s!

America 3-12. Okay, so I applaud that this character exists and in other series and appearances(of which I have the entirety of)she’s a lot of fun. But this book....I was NOT the target audience here, and I struggled thru this run. It was boring and focused too much on the gay Latina part of the character and the super heroic spectacle was an afterthought. Gabby Rivera’s writing did not gel with me at all. Sorry. Won’t even bother recapping it because honestly I can’t recall much of it.

Angela:Queen of Hel 2-7. This book, on the other hand, was fantastic. A follow up to both the first Angela series, Asgard’s Assassin, and the Secret Wars’ Angela Witch Hunter 1602 mini, this was sort of a trilogy of books, or perhaps one 17 issue series. In this one, Angela goes to rescue her one true love Sera, from Hel. In order to do that, she has to find a loophole and face three trials in order to challenge Hela for the crown, and free Sera. An absolutely wonderful love story between a sassy sorceress angel, and her tongue-tied badass cosmic warrior woman lover. Marguerite Bennet crafted a great story here. Recommend

Atomic Robo:The Temple of Od 1-5. Pre-WWII, the Japanese kidnap a Chinese scientist working of theoretical zero point energy use during their invasion of China in order to Weaponize it for the War. AR is sent in to help the Chinese resistance re-kidnap him back and stop the research from falling into the wrong hands.

Real Science Adventures 1-6. Two stories, one featuring the She-Devils of the Pacific stealing a Flying Fortress from their pirate rivals, and the other about the British super-spy The Sparrow taking out a Nazi super-Weapon in occupied France.

Atomic Robo; The Spectre of Tomorrow 1-5. The main story was about hidden cyborg sleeper agents suddenly being activated all over the world, but the more hilarious half of the story was AR’s Tesladyne dealing with their HOA neighbors in the New Mexico desert while they are trying to build their new base. The HOA basically being their “next door” neighbor, Richard Branson(who keeps referring to himself in the third person as Sir Richard Branson) tying up their construction in red tape from his Spaceport down the street. OMG, fucking hilarious.


Next up, Avengers, Avengers, and more Avengers.

House of X 2. Don’t think we didn’t notice Life #6 is conspicuously absent from your story, Hickman. What are you up to, you magnificent bastard?
Also, didn’t Moira die from the Legacy Virus? That makes so much more sense now.

Some assorted Avengers ongoings.

A-Force 8. The issue I was missing from its 10 issue run. Part of Civil War II. Dazzler correctly calls Capt Marvel out on her preemptive arrest bullshit, and then immediately after, Carol tries to detain Nico for a future murder of someone she’s never met, which sets off the chain of events where she comes in contact with the victim. Tony was Right. Carol was Wrong. Civil War II.

Great Lakes Avengers 3-7. The mildly amusing, yet ultimately inessential adventures of the Detroit based super screw ups.

Occupy Avengers 2-9. After Killing Bruce Banner during CWII and being acquitted, Hawkeye went on a cross-country soul searching adventure, recruiting a new sorta Avengers squad along the way. Issue 2 was the second part where he teams up with the new time displaced RedWolf.
3-5 Clint and RedWolf head to Chicago to fight/reluctant team up with the Supreme Power Nighthawk and his tech sidekick/reformed supervillain Nightshade when they find an old SHIELD safe house manned by LMDs of OG Nick Fury and his Howlers who don’t realize they are LMDs. At the end Hawkguy and RedWolf add Nightshade to their team.
6-7 A small Iowa town is populated by Skrulls tired of war after the secret invasion and hiding out as humans. They are being hunted by more militant Skrulls. Hawkeye recruits Wheels Wolinski from the 80’s maxi series The Wolfpack as they inadvertently get in the middle of the Skrull-on-Skrull conflict
8-9 Secret Empire tie in. The team is part of the underground group of heroes trying to help farmers distribute their food to needy families in the new Hydra-controlled America. Hawkeye gets called away by Black Widow for whatever was happening in the main SE book, and the rest of the team kinda goes out Butch and Sundance style at the end of the book. Not actually shown, but implied, so they might still be around. They also killed off Nighthawk in a single panel flashback from when Hydra first took over. He wasn’t in costume, wasn’t playing hero, just one of the many civilians who were killed in the initial assault. That’s pretty hardcore for a character that’s been around for almost 20 years and had a couple of his own minis and one (short lived) ongoing for awhile.

U.S.Avengers 8-12. Roberto ‘Sunspot’ DaCosta’s AIMvengers team deal with Secret Empire for a couple issues and then go rescue Cannonball from Skrulls in outer space before the series ended. Al Ewing always writes fun series. Sadly, every book he’s on only seems to last about 12 issues. He’s currently on Immortal Hulk which seems to be getting lots of rave reviews. But this U.S.Avengers series was a blast. Recommend.

Next up the end of Uncanny Avengers, the end of Mark Waid’s 2017 series, and then the Legacy relaunch weekly ‘No Surrender’ arc which went up to issue 690 and led into Jason Aaron’s current series relaunch.

I think Ewing's Hulk is ending at 25 - likely to be started again right after as per usual.

Hmmmph. Over already? We can’t have nice things.

Uncanny Avengers 25-30. Rogue’s Unity Squad closed up their series after HydraCap disbanded the team and ‘fired’ all of them.
25 was a Secret Empire issue where they fought a giant eldritch demon while trapped in the dark dimension dome over NYC.
26-27. The team fights Graviton and deals with the fallout of Secret Empire. And Johnny Storm inherits $5 Billion from Reed and Sue.
28-29 Beast and Wonder Man team up for old times sake. Dr Voodoo uses Cytorrak energy to rebuild Avengers Mansion and accidentally summons Juggernaut. Fight.
30 was the wrap up issue.

Avengers 1-11, 672-674. Mark Waid’s flagship title after Civil War II
1-6 was an awesome Kang story where Vision tries kidnapping baby Kang before he becomes an evil time traveling conqueror. Kang retaliates by murdering all the Avengers as children so they never become heroes. Then things get really crazy and fun. Damn fun story from Waid.
7-8 Iron Doom sorta joins the team. Wasp totally squee’s around super scientist Doom. Funny stuff. They also have to fight Avenger X from the “.1” miniseries.
9-10 were Secret Empire tie ins.
11 was the fallout issue of Secret Empire and Parker Industries collapsing. The PI penthouse was their HQ and Parker was “funding” the team.
672-674, the series reverted to Legacy numbering and had a crossover with The Champions, the teen heroes who split from the team after CivilWarII. They have to team up to stop High Evolutionary from crashing Earth and Counter-Earth into each other. Nutball.

Next up, the weekly “No Surrender” arc, and a miniseries and a oneshot. Then I think it’s on to the “B”s. Bane, and Tom King’s Batman...

Powers 2 & House 2, Batman 76. Now 26 issues behind in my reading on Batman.... and counting....