So, What comics did you buy this week?

[jjreason]

X-Men 1 & 2, whatever volume we're on now, and Marauders latest issue. Haven't even bagged & boarded them yet because the WoW addiction is in full raging boner mode right now for some reason.

[Tom Foolery]

Started Venom a few months ago. Started strong and read the first 12 issues almost in one sitting. Donny Cates really opened up the Venom mythology. Then I stalled a bit on the War of the Realms tie-ins. Absolute Carnage was good, but then I stalled even more on the tie-in minis and oneshots…so jere we are three months later and i’m only halfway thru the run.

Venom 1-6. Venom has an episode where he becomes “feral” and it freaks him and Eddie out. They meet a soldier who tells them the US was using symbiotes back as far as Vietnam and they got the alien from an ancient symbiote buried on Earth millions of years ago. The ancient symbiote awakens and Venom and Miles have to team up to defeat it. It reveals that it’s a vessel for the Symbiote’s god, Knull and “He is Coming.” We get a cool origin story for Knull and the reasons why Venom hates fire and sound, and it also ties into the origin of Gorr the God Butcher from Thor. Venom defeats the symbiote, but it makes Venom go dormant. It’s still attached to Eddie, but only at an instinctive level. The ‘other’ voice is gone. Solid opening arc from Cates.

7-12. Several weeks have passed. Eddie wakes up detained by The Maker(evil Reed Richards from Ultimate universe) wanting samples of the defeated ancient symbiote(calling it the grendel) and trying to awaken Venom. Eddie escapes with the help of a DnA sample from the deceased Flash Thompson encoded with a Codex that is the leftover imprint of every time a symbiote bonded with someone. Codexes become important storywise down the road.
Eddie makes his way to San Francisco to confront his father and learns he has a younger brother. We learn about the accident Eddie had as a child and why protecting ‘innocents’ is so important to him. Eventually, we find out Eddie never had a sister, never had an uncle, and he’s never had cancer. It was all made up memories the symbiote implanted in Eddie to make him think he needed Venom. Confronted with this betrayal by Venom, Eddie tells him to take a hike. Also he finds out his little brother Dylan is actually his son.

13-15. War of the Realms tie-in written by Cullen Bunn since Cates was probably writing Absolute Carnage. Venomless Eddie gets caught up in the WotR in NYC. He gets a mystical asgardian macguffin amulet or norn stone or some shit and uses it to approximate an asgardian version of a symbiote to defeat a magically powered up version of Jack O’Lantern.

16 was a stand alone issue where Eddie tries to get his old job back as a reporter and helps fight crime without super powers. Also sets up Absolute Carnage.

Next up, AC and all the tie-ins.

[Tom Foolery]

Absolute Carnage 1-5. Wow! This Event was great. Some Knull worshippers bring Cletus Casady back to life(I don’t know how or where he died) to be his emissary on Earth and Cletus is all in. He has to collect the codices of all the people who’ve ever bonded with the Venom symbiote or any of its offspring so they can all be gathered in order to reconnect with the symbiote hive mind and awaken Knull. He goes after Eddie, but Venom shows up and saves him and they re-bond. So now its a race to get more codices before the other guy. Cletus has a huge headstart though, as he’s killed the entire population of Doverton(from the Carnage USA miniseries) as well as dug up the bodies of previous hosts like Thunderbolt Ross and Angelo Fortunado. The Maker has made a machine to safely remove the codex from previous hosts and they bring Normie Osborn in, but its untested so Venom has to team up with Spidey to go break Norman Osborn out of Ravencroft. Cletus, wearing the Grendel symbiote, is waitkng for them at Ravencroft and he’s infected all the inmates with a new version of the Carnage symbiote. They fail to rescue Osborn, who gets turned. So they start gathering the remaining living hosts. Venom finds Scorpion and manages to save him, but they lose Miles Morales to the Carnage infection and he gets turned. Spidey finds Cap, Wolverine, Ben Grimm and the other Avengers from Doverton. They use the Maker’s machine to remove their codices, but Cletus shows up and Venom decides he needs somebody stronger to fight Carnage, so he ditches Eddie and bonds with Bruce Banner. Venom Hulk! But Carnage takes the Venom codex from Hulk, so Eddie has to use the machine’s codices of Cap, Logan, Hawkeye, the Thing etc to become a more powerful Venom which leads to a final confrontation between Eddie and Cletus. But the final piece of codex is in Dylan’s DNA(passed down from his mother Anne Weying who was briefly She-Venom) and if Cletus gets it, he can wake up Knull, but if Venom defeats Cletus he reabsorbs the other codices and completes the circuit and wakes up Knull. Eddie chooses to save his son, kills Cletus and wakes up Knull on the Symbiote Planet. Holy shit!! This shit is why i read comics. So much fun.

[Tom Foolery]

The AC tie-ins.

AC vs Deadpool 1-3. Carnage lures Wade to Ravencroft because Wade is the only person on Earth who has bonded with FOUR different symbiotes. I could not tell which four or when and where these happened. Anyway, typical Deadpool hijinks ensue.

AC Scream 1-3 Donna Diego, the original Scream is resurrected by Carnage and begins running amok. Patricia Richardson, who was briefly Venom for awhile in the early 2000s tracks her down to destroy her and ends up bonding with the Scream symbiote. She then tries to kill Andi Benton, Flash Thompson's former symbiote sidekick Mania. Ultimately Patricia sacrifices herself and Benton bonds with the alien to become the new Scream.

AC Lethal Protectors 1-3. Misty Knight heads to Ravencroft to look for her friend John Jameson and gets captured by a possessed Jameson and other Carnage-ized inmates like Shriek, Doppleganger Spider, and Demogoblin. A team of heroes including Iron Fist, Cloak & Dagger, Morbius, Deathlok, and Firestar assemble to go rescue her.

AC Mile Morales 1-3. After Miles got Carnage-ized protecting Scorpion from Cletus, he gets sent on a mission to kill J Jonah Jameson. With some help from Silver Sable, Miles frees himself from the Carnage-bond and rejoins the heroes.

AC Symbiote of Vengeance oneshot. Carnage tracks down Alejandra, the former Ghost Rider, who briefly bonded with Venom during Flash Thompson's series. Johnny Blaze, the king of hell, enlists Danny Ketch to go rescue her. But he doesn’t make it in time and Alejandra is killed. But she convinces Blaze to send her back to possess a villager to stop Carnage. This oneshot also served as a set up for the new ongoing Ghost Rider book that only lasted like seven issues.

AC Immortal Hulk oneshot. The entire issue takes place in Hulk’s mind where all his various personas; Bruce, Joe Fixit, Hulk, etc decide whether to accept or reject the Venom symbiote when he bonds with them in issue 3 of the main series.

AC Symbiote Spider-Man oneshot. Leave it to Peter David to come up with a story of the guy who was possesed by venom for like three panels in an issue back in the 80s.

AC Avengers oneshot. The fleshed out adventure of Spidey tracking down the heroes who were present in Doverton and bonded with Venom.

AC Separation Anxiety oneshot. Catching up with the other Life Foundation symbiotes Phage, Lasher, Riot, and Agony. They end up possessing a family in Colorado.

AC Captain Marvel oneshot. Somehow Carol’s pet cat/flerken gets bonded with a Carnage symbiote and she has to save it.

And finally Venom 17-20. The actual series tie-in shows what Dylan, Normie Osborn, and the Maker were up to while Eddie and Venom were off trying to save Norman at Ravencroft. The Maker, being a villain tries a double cross.

Next up, the rest of the series, which is 21 thru 35, and the grand finale of this tale in the King in Black Event, as well as bunch of Web of Venom oneshots that probably explain a lot of the backstory I’ve been missing. Might be next week. Might be another three months from now. Who knows.

[jjreason]

Man oh man, I need to visit the store of they're going to sell my comics out from underneath me. Today's the day.

Who are we kidding - maybe tomorrow will be the day.

EDITED: I actually did go.

Inferno 1 & 2
Trial of Magneto 3
X-Men 4
Marauders 25
BatCat 8

[Tom Foolery]

Continuing the Venom saga.

Venom 21-25. After saving the world in Absolute Carnage, Eddie gets invited to Avengers Mountain by Captain America to join the Avengers. He says he’ll think about it. Meanwhile, the carnage symbiote he reabsorbed begins trying to assert dominance over the venom symbiote. Eddie heads to a secluded island so that he doesn’t harm his loved ones. The symbiotes fight and separate and Eddie if forced to fight the Carnage symbiote on his own. Back home, Dylan has a piece of the grendel sym from AC and its unlocked his latent ability to connect to the hive mind. He uses it to telepathically link to Venom and turns it into a giant T-Rex to save his dad on the island. The Carnage sym escapes by bonding with a shark.

Venom 26-30. Eddie tracks down the Maker as he’s about to return to his own dimension. The machine explodes and Eddie and Dylan get sucked into an alternate future where Eddie never bonder with Venom, but Ann Weying did, and Dylan is the evil ruler of the planet. After “defeating” him, the two families spend a year getting to know the parents they lost( child Dylan with his mom, adult Dylan with his dad) while they are repairing the dimensional hopping machine to send them back home. When they get back, its time for King in Black!!

Next up, before the big finale, the assorted Web of Venom oneshots that were released sporadically during the regular series.

[Tom Foolery]

The Web of Venom oneshots.

Web of Venom: Ve’Nam. Rex Strickland and his team were bonded with syms and sent into ‘Nam as an operational experiment by Nick Fury. When they lose control and the mission goes sideways, Fury enlists Logan’s help to track down the rogue squad.

WoV: Carnage Born. The story of how Cletus Kasady returned to life(for like the third time) and was bonded with the grendel sym by a bunch of Knull worshippers.

WoV:Venom Unleashed. When the Venom sym went “dormant” and was still protecting Eddie in the form of a dog.

WoV: Cult of Carnage. Misty Knight and John Jameson go investigate the unfortunate town of Doverton where the entire population became Knull worshippers and sacrificed themselves to Carnage so he could get the codexes from their spines. Harsh.

WoV:Funeral Pyre. Andi Benton is living a boring post-sym life after she lost the Mania sym and was briefly Flash Thompson’s sidekick. But her codex makes her a target for Carnage. Luckily she still has demonic hellfire powers…

WoV: The Good Son. After Absolute Carnage, Dylan is staying with Normie Osborn and his parents Harry Osborn and Liz Allan. Dylan has a fragment of the grendel sym, so he amd Normie sneak out of the house to see if they can make it do stuff. Reprehensible little shits.

WoV:Wraith. An obscure D-list Marvel character returns to the Symbiote homeworld and confronts the reawakened Knull. He gets his ass handed to him and with his final breath he teleports to Earth to warn Eddie and then he dies.

WoV: Empyre’s End. This book toed into the Empyre crossover event as well. A ship full of minor Kree and Skrull characters from various other books crosses paths with Knull as he’s headed to Earth. They all die.

And lastly,
Venom:First Host 1-2. I only have the first two issues of this 6 issue mini. This is actually the final arc of Mike Carey’s Venom run, which ended so Cates could start his run. Venom had another offspring in the finale of that series and it was being ‘cared for’ by the Alchemax Corp. They end up doing experimemts on it. And the Kree soldier Venom was bonded to before Spidey found it during Secret Wars comes back to reunite with Venom, but when Venom rejects him, he bonds with the offspring called “Sleeper” instead. Sleeper returned during Cates run, after it has been out traipsing the galaxy using the now dead Kree guy’s body as a meat puppet and sort of becomes a bodyguard/babysitter to Dylan

Okay, all thats left is the big King in Black event and it’s like 40 issues worth of tie-in books! Wish me luck!

[Tom Foolery]

King in Black! There are so many holy shit! moments in this series. There’s like 4 in the first issue alone. Loved it. Here’s the main series and the six or seven mini series tie-ins. After that, I’ll recap the several oneshot tie-ins as well as the finale of the main Venom title which wrapped up in issue 200.

King in Black 1-5. Knull reaches Earth with his army of dragon symbiotes, and a couple symbiote Celestials! The Avengers, X-Men, and Earth’s heroes are ready. Or so they think. Their biggest gun, Sentry, gets ripped in half by Knull. Most of the heroes get turned by the syms. Knull wraps the entire planet with a symbiote shield before confronting Venom and ripping the sym away from Eddie and dropping him, poweless, off the roof of a skyscraper. Thats just the first issue! Spidey recovers the mortally wounded Eddie and returns him to the Baxter building where the remaining heroes try to come up with a plan. Tony Stark uses Extremis on a sym dragon to turn it into his new armor, but Eddie succumbs to his wounds and dies with Dylan at his side. All hope is lost, but then Thor shows up and we get a kick ass Knull/Thor fight for the third issue, but Thor is defeated, but not before getting a message to the black Silver Surfer. The heroes regroup thanks to Jean Grey coordinating unlikely team ups, like Blade recruiting a vampire army, and Namor’s armies coming to aid the surface. It buys them enough time for the ancient god of light, basically a “light symbiote” that is Knull’s opposite to show up, but we’ve been calling it something else this whole time; the Enigma Force! “Eddie Brock, you have been chosen.” gave me fucking goosebumps. So Eddie/Venom/Captain Universe takes up Mjolnir and Silver Surfer’s board and combines them into a super-axe and has a climactic final battle with Knull and drags him into the sun where there’s no darkness to hide in and destroys him. Freeing all the syms from Knull’s influence, Eddie becomes the new King in Black. Fucking epic.

KiB:Gwenom vs Carnage 1-3. Gwen’s sym from an alternate dimension is immune to Knull’s attempts to assimilate it, but a scientist in her world tampers with some of her leftover sym spiders and turns her MJ into a new Carnage, which for some reason is not immune to Knull. So Gwen has to fight her best friend under the influence of Knull, but who also has some unresolved issues with Gwen.

KiB: Namor 1-5. I’m missing issue 5, but back when Namor was a teenager in the 1920’s there was an all female Atlantean super hero team called High Tide. When he, Dorma, and Attuma go on a mission with them, the super heroes get turned evil and it affects the rest of Atlantean history as Attuma’s father and clan get wiped out and he blames Namor. Pretty cool revisionist flasback story from Kurt Busiek, that sorta connects with KiB because modern day Namor needs to track down the banished ex-heroes a century later to help with Knull.

KiB:Planet of the Symbiotes 1-3. Anthology stories featuring Scream, Ravencroft, American Kaiju, Hobie Brown as the new Hornet, Cloak & Dagger, and Toxin dealing with the alien sym invasion.

KiB:Symbiote Spider-Man 1-5. Leave it to Peter David to craft a retconned blacksuit Spidey adventure featuring Kang, Rocket Raccoon, Monica Rambeau, the Black Knight, Ulik the Troll, and an obscure Marvel Presents one off villain from the 70’s called Mister E into a funfilled romp.

KiB:Return of the Valkyries 1-4. Jane Foster is escorting Sentry to the afterlife when he gets absorbed by the dead symbiote celestial Knull brought with him. With the help of Dani Moonstar and a long lost Valkyrie warrior who looks suspiciously like the MCU version into freeing Sentry’s and the thousands of other trapped souls from the dead Celestial.

KiB:Thunderbolts 1-3. Mayor Kingpin tasks a bunch of villains to steal Sentry’s body and use it as a bomb against Knull. He doesn’t expect them to be successful, he just wants the political points that say he ‘helped” during the invasion. But Taskmaster and the other villains wise up to Kingpin’s ‘Suicide Squad’ and double cross him, blackmailing him into making them the new Thunderbolts team.

The Union 1-5. I thought this was a KiB tie-in, but it was only the first two issues. The UK forms a new super team, but their leader Britannia, gets killed in the first issue and Union Jack has to take over and stop Doctor Croker Dyle aka Doc Croc from stealing an Emperor Stone and using it take over England. Dumb.

Back in a few with the oneshots.

[Tom Foolery]

The King in Black oneshot tie-ins and the finale of Cates Venom run.

KiB:Amazing Spidey. Spidey teams up with Reptil to save civilians during the invasion. Sets up Reptil’s upcoming mini.

KiB:Black Knight. Dane’s Ebony Blade might be capable of killing Knull. But is unleashing the curse worth it? BK and guest stars, Aero and Swordmaster team up to help stop the invasion.

KiB: Black Panther. T’Challa and Shuri defend Wakanda against the invasion.

KiB:Captain America. After Dylan used his powers to free Cap from the hive mind, Steve teams up with Falcon and Bucky to rescue civilians. But the lingering after effects of Knull have shattered his confidence.

KiB:Ghost Rider. I think this was the conclusion of the very short run of the newest Ghost Rider series. Johnny Blaze gives up the throne in hell to Mephisto so that Lilith doesn’t get it.

KiB:Immortal Hulk. A clever silent issue set on Christmas eve. Requires too much explanation of what’s going on in the main Hulk book to make sense, but I enjoyed it.

KiB: Iron Man and Dr Doom. Tony and Victor team up to save Santa Clause after he’s possessed by a symbiote. This kinda absurd shit is why i love comics.

KiB:Marauders. The X-Men’s pirate team is on a mission to rescue Cyclops and Storm and get sidetracked into saving a boat full of trafficked humans in the Atlantic ocean.

KiB:Scream. Andi Benton and her symbiote go toe to toe with Knull. She holds her own.

KiB:Wiccan and Hulkling are on their honeymoon on a Shi’ar beach resort, when symbiotes attack. The new Kree/Skrull Emperor and his wizard husband have to diplomatically save everyone while maintaining galactic relations.

Venom 31-34. 31 is the 32 seconds between when Knull drops Eddie off the roof and when he hit the ground. The other three issues are Eddie in the “afterlife’ which is actually the codex hivemind. There he teams up with the “ghosts” of Rex Strickland and Flash Thompson to try and reconnect Eddie with his stolen symbiote. Flash possesses a symbiote from within the hive mind, then uses it to to find his body in Arlington and reanimate/heal it the way Cletus Kasady was resurrected by the grendel sym.

Venom 35/200. The giant 76 page squarebound finale of Cates run. Eddie is adjusting to being the new king of the hive mind and sets his goal on finding the Maker, enlisting the help of the Avengers, Guardians, X-Men etc. He recommends the newly living Agent Venom to Captain America as a potential new Avenger. And Dylan and Venom bond, setting up the new ongoing series. Also had a cool cover montage in the back with all 200 Venom covers.

Venom:The End. A wonderfully absurd story set Trillions of years in the future where a raging war between AI and biologicals in the universe reaches its conclusion.

And THAT is the Venom saga all caught up. Between Venom, Absolute Carnage, and KiB, it was well over 100 issues of storytelling.

Next up, I flipped a coin. Heads was the Immortal Hulk run, tails was a bunch of stuff in the ‘D’ box like Deadpool, Defenders, Dr Strange, etc. Tails won, but I realized i wanted to read Hulk since Ewing just ended his 50 issue run last month. So Hulk next.

[Tom Foolery]

Immortal Hulk! I read the first 25 issues in like two days. Usually I break these down into story arcs, but Al Ewing is writing this old school and pretty much every issue was a cliffhanger ending and the whole run was building as a continuous story.

After the Hulk was resurrected during that weekly Avengers story(No Way Home? I read it soooo long ago) Bruce has reverted to his original schtick where he only Hulks out after the sun goes down. So Bruce gets shot and killed in the first issue and doesn’t change until that night. He’s been trying to keep a low profile and investigating “gamma related’ incidents across the country. The various personalities of Hulk/Banner are trying to work with each other in an uneasy truce. There’s also a reporter named Jackie McGee tracking the Hulk across the country. I’m surprised it took Marvel this long to introduce that character in the comics. She enlists the aid of Walter Lankowski, Banner’s college roommate aka Sasquatch. There’s also this subplot involving a ‘green door’ which is a mystical connection from Gamma radiated beings to a literal hell run by the One-Below-All who is trying to open the green door to Earth and ruin everything. After Hulk and Sasquatch tussle, Hulk absorbs Sasquatch’s Gamma and depowers him. This gets the attention of Alpha Flight leader Carol Danvers and subsequently the Avengers. After a bitchin’ Hulk vs Avengers fight, they defeat him by nuking a city with a concentrated focused sunlight cannon from space to depower Banner. Then they turn him over to the authorities, but he’s intercepted by Shadow Base, the most current iteration of the anti-Hulk Gamma Base led by General Fortean, protege of Thunderbolt Ross. They dissect Hulk and are keeping all his body parts in separate jars, but he’s immortal now and finds a way to escape. Meanwhile, Danvers is suspicious of Hulk’s disappearance after the Avengers defeated him, so she forms a special Alpha Flight task force specifically to find Banner. Called Gamma Flight. Shadow Base sends Absorbing Man to attack Hulk and overload him specifically to trigger the green door and unleash hell. Which he does. This gamma connection causes other dead gamma powered beings to start returning from the dead, like Doc Samson, and Rick Jones. Betty Banner is shot and killed by Bushwacker and comes back as the Harpy. General Fortean uses a recreated Abomination body as a sort of exo-suit to force a final confrontation with Hulk and his allies, which ends up with Fortean dead and Hulk commandeering Shadow Base and its black book military budget of billions for his own goals. Issue 25 was set billions of years in the future where a world-breaker cosmic Hulk destroys everything in the cosmos, an alien AI sends a data packet back thru time to show how to defeat Hulk and change the timeline, but it’s intercepted by The Leader.
Al Ewing is leaning into the horror elements of the very early Hulk stories and it’s fucking fantastic. Every issue builds on the one before it. Looking forward to the second half of the series that wrapped up in issue 50. There was also a handful of oneshots released during the series as well.

[Ran]

Had to laugh a little at that because "The Green Door" is a swingers club in Las Vegas.

[Tom Foolery]

Immortal Hulk 26-33. Having taken over Shadowbase, Banner delivers a manifesto about humans destroying Earth with their corporate greed and corruption, and targets a specific company; Roxxon and its CEO Dario Aggar, aka The Minotaur. Repeated sabotaging of Roxxon facilities turns Hulk into a celebrity anti-hero, so Aggar fights back and releases a bunch of bioengineered kaiju on Phoenix AZ in order to lure Hulk there amd make matters worse by killing one of the monsters and releasing thousands of smaller creatures inside. Then Aggar’s secret weapon shows up, Xemnu the Titan ‘saves’ the day and through broadcasting, he makes the world think he was the heroic Hulk all along, as well as every other hero on earth. For instance, someone didn’t remember Daredevil saving them, but Xemnu. The only one who remembers he’s the real Hulk, is the childlike identity stuck in Banner’s head. But then the Green Scar version shows up and helps the child version transform Banner into the Hulk and issue 33, which was also oversized issue 750 Legacy has the Hulk beatdown Aggar and Xemnu and save the world. But we learn that Rick Jones and some of the other Gamma Mutates are actually being controlled by the Leader from the other side of the ‘green doors’.

Hulk 34-39. Having saved the world, Hulk is getting good press and returns to the town the Avengers destroyed fighting him. While there, Rick Jones/Leader overloads with him gamma and he beserks and becomes public enemy #1 again. The Leader is also manipulating things back at Shadowbase , and it turns out he’s infiltrated Banner’s psyche because HE’S been the Green Scar persona. Shadowbase gets destroyed and A huge battle breaks out in Banner’s mind and the Leader ends up killing the Devil Hulk persona and extracting Banner into the underworld. The two remaining personas, Joe Fixit(who is now controlling Banner’s body) and the child like Hulk are now alone and on the run with no allies.

Hulk 40-44. Gamma Flight apprehends “Joe” but he escapes, and crashes into Coney Island where the Hulk fights the Thing for an issue before Joe emerges and tells him he's beating up a child, then they go eat hot dogs and talk it out. Henry Peter Gyrich assumes command of Gamma Flight and kicks the old team out and replaces them with the U-Foes, who track Hulk down and beat the spit out of him. But when X-Ray tries to overload a depleted Hulk with cosmic rays it powers up the Joe Fixit persona and he emerges as a new form of Hulk and fucks them all up.

Hulk 45-50. Joe realizes he need to confront Leader in the Underworld to save Bruce, so after a confrontation between the Avengers, the ex-Gamma Flight, and Hulk’s Gamma Allies, Reed Richards sends Hulk thru a macguffin machine and he battles a super powerful Leader, who is possessed by the One-Below-All in the underworld. The One-Below-All reveals he’s actually the One-Above-All and, short version, he created the Hulk(or orchestrated the destiny leading to the Hulk, its complicated) to be an agent of change/chaos to protect reality. Hulk recovers both Bruce and a depowered Sterns and when they go thru the green door a final time, the personas are recombined.
There was also a subplot set in 1901 that intertwines the destinies of the Sterns and Banner families. Two Brothers, Sam and Robert Sterns are working with radium and a new ‘gamma’ wave radiation, when Robert accuses Sam of sleeping with his wife Beatrice. He kills his brother with the radium and then goes and kicks his pregnant wife out and makes her use her maiden name from now on. You’ll never guess what it w….its Banner. Beatrice Banner.

The series got a little trippy at the end, but it was a solid run that will go down as one of the best Hulk runs.

There were a few oneshots scattered throughout the run, which I’ll get to next. And out of curiosity, I read the first issue of Donny Cates new first issue which came out this month to see how he picked up where Ewing left off.
After that, I’m definitely gonna hit up that box of various “D” titles. There’s a bunch of Deadpool, Defenders, at least two short lived Dr Strange ongoings, and I’ll catch up with the rest of the Daredevil series leading up to Devil’s Reign which starts this week. And the DC Dark Metal event. Probably other stuff I’m forgetting.

[Tom Foolery]

The four Immortal Hulk oneshots.

Great Power. Banner wakes up and feels the Hulk is missing. Spider-Man wakes up next to him and turns into the Hulk. They enlist the help of the FF to figure out how it happened. Turns out Loki, trying his hand at being a hero, removed the gamma power from Banner not realizing it just found its way into the nearby Spidey. The nerds all brainstorm and figure out a way to reverse it.

Threshing Place. A girl goes missing in a small town, which starts getting ravaged by a monster. The nearby ag-research farm was experimenting with gamma infused crops to get greater yield and the little girl IS the monster. Hulk smashes the farm and absorbs the gamma from the girl.

Flatline. One of Banner’s old professors confronts him in a diner. She’s also gamma powered(isnt everyone) and she’s trying to get Banner to reconcile his inner adversity with the Hulk(my god, isnt that what this book has been about for the last 60 years??). Nothing exceptionally insightful for the characters, but there’s one montage of panels showing Hulk waking up after Banner attempted suicide in different ways, jumping off a cliff, eating a bullet, anchoring himself at the bottom of a lake, etc, and the Hulk retaliating by letting Banner wake up in inconvenient places like on top of a roof, on top of a billboard sign, in a pile of cow manure etc. that will stick with me.

Time of Monsters. Set in Jordan in 9500 BC, a shaman sacrifices a local village boy who was planning to run away with the shaman’s son. The boy is exposed to some gamma meteor fragment or something and becomes a monster, and goes back and wrecks the village.

Last Call. There was also a oneshot celebrating Marvel’s 80th anniversary where Marvel brought back creators from famous runs to tell more stories. This one was by Peter David and Dale Keown reuniting to tell a story set after Betty had died during David’s original Hulk run and he calls the suicide hotline and talks to Betty’s friend Veronica to tell her Betty was dead. Then Mr Hyde shows up and the Hulk bests him up.

Next up, Deadpool!

[Tom Foolery]

It was going to be impossible for whomever followed Duggan’s years long Deadpool run, but Skottie Young(best known as the guy who draws the baby character variant covers for every comic ever) took the back to basics approach and his 15 issue run was pretty enjoyable.

1-3. The first arc has Wade trying to set up his merc business in a strip mall after he reset his memories to the “factory default” at the end of Duggan’s run. A celestial(but one of the shittier ones) shows up on Earth and only DP can stop him because he’s got a leftover cosmic weapon from when he was out in space, so the Avengers ask him to help. Plenty of clever vs Avengers gags, like Wade sucker punching Captain America and running away. The twist is Wade hired some aliens to send the celestial to Earth so he could drum up business.
4. DP heads to Weirdworld to find a mob accountant who went there to hide/escape. Because of the weird time distortion, he ends up being there for twenty years, marries Jennifer Kale and fights in a decades long war at her side to save Weirdworld. Then the accountant shows up, Wade kills him, and heads back to Earth.
5. A senior citizen mall walk-a-thon turns into a zombie outbreak when one of the old biddies trying to cheat to win gets her grandson, Black Talon, to use his voodoo magic to erase the competition.
6. Deadpool is in a funk and isn’t trying to stop a guy from assassinating him, until he finds out the guy’s name is Killpuddle, which Wade thinks is hilariously stupid and breaks him out of his funk and kills the guy and gets back to normal.
7. A bunch of kid’s hire DP to kill Santa because he isn’t leaving gifts at Christmas. He finds out one of the elves staged a walkout and all the elves went to work for the Roxxon corp. Wade kills that evil elf and the rest head back to the North Pole.
8. Silly Seal hires Wade to kill Ziggy Pig’s evil twin or cousin or something thats taken over Ziggy’s amusement park. I thought it was hilarious they worked Silly and Ziggy into continuity.
9. A film noir homage where Wade hires Jessica Jones to find out who literally stole his heart from his chest. Jessica and Wade needs to happen more often. Funny stuff.
10-12. A back up story back in issue 1 sets up this arc, where Wade was the “Joe Chill” to some young kid and killed his parents in front of him. So he spends his life training to be a vigilante called Good Night to get revenge on Wade.
13-14. War of the Realms tie in. Wade goes to Australia and teams up with the local heroes to get rid of the troll invaders by convincing them to go next door to New Zealand and be part of the Ring of the Lords tour.
15. Wrapped up the series with Weasel teaming up with Mephisto to get Wade to be Hell’s new assassin in exchange for leaving his daughter Ellie alone. He agrees, then becomes so annoying in hell, that Mephisto can’t deal with him anymore and tears up his contract.

Annual 1. A little boy is having nightmares, so DP steals a macguffin amulet from Dr Strange and goes to Nightmare’s realm to fuck his shit up. But Nightmare wasn’t doing anything, the kid’s next door neighbor was doing creepy shit to the kid, so Wade kills him.

Deadpool:Assassin 1-6. I think this was a transition mini by Cullen Bunn and Mark Bagley between Duggan and Young’s series. Deadpool gets into a beef with BellaDonna and her assassin’s guild because Wade poaching contracts or something. They send a bunch of d-list Marvel assassins and Wade kills most of them. Then he teams up with Threnody until she double crosses him by trying to take Weasel’s pregnant wife and use her unborn baby to feed Threnody’s demon baby.

Black Panther vs Deadpool 1-5. After Willie Lumpkin gets injured as collateral damage in a fight between The Wrecker and DP, Wade goes to Wakanda to ask T’challa for a piece of vibranium that can save Lumpkin’s life. T’challa says no and hijinks ensue that ends up with the vibranium mound getting teleported to New Jersey. The writer Daniel Kibblesmith writes a pretty good Deadpool. Funnier than i was expecting.

Deadpool 1-10. The newest ongoing had Kelly Thompson take over as writer. After a centuries old contract forces New York to cede Staten Island to monsters, Deadpool goes in and kills the monster King. And because of their by-laws it makes HIM the new King of the Monsters. Elsa Bloodstone co-starred as Wade’s new sorta love interest. Thompson got better at finding the rhythm and voice of a Deadpool comic as it went on. She wasn’t great, but there were some truly hilarious DP moments in the book.

Season’s Beatings oneshot. Jason Latour(before he got canceled for being a creep) strung together short holiday themed vignettes like Squirrel Girl getting Dr Doom a christmas present and Kate Bishop and Quentin Quire solving a mall santa’s murder with Deadpool as the connecting narrator.

Deadpool Nerdy Thirty oneshot. DP had his 30th anniversary and literally everyone who’s ever written a DP ongoing came back and contributed. The problem is that each story was only about 4 pages each and its hard to tell a memorable story in 4 pages.

Next up, more ‘D’ titles!

[Tom Foolery]

A variety of ‘D’ books.

Death's Head 1-4. The OG Freelance Peacekeeper gets a new mini. DH is becoming obsolete and can’t keep up with his contract obligations to the new redneck Yondu, so he gets turned into scrap and wakes up a couple years later being used as sound gear for a heavy metal band on Earth. The concert is being attended by Hulkling and Wiccan. They fight DH and Wiccan uses some magical hooey to discover a potential future where a Death’s Head 5.0 is a valued member of the Avengers. The magical feedback causes this newer younger emo/goth/millenial version of DH to materialize under Wiccan’s bed. With the help of some other Young Avengers like Kate Bishop, they all track down Earth-616’s version of Evelyn Necker who originally created Death’s Head. They fight some rogue DH 4.0 versions and Necker before she ultimately decides to go with the original DH back out into space and help keep him upgraded and at the top of the merc game. Didn’t really capture the satiric, bombastic nature of the classic DH, and he felt more like a supporting character in his own book. There were brief moments where he shined, but overall not impressed with Trini Howard’s writing.

Deathstroke/Yogi Bear oneshot. DC did a bunch of oneshots where their characters teamed up with Hanna-Barbera characters. It was weird. I only got it because Deathstroke.

Defenders:Best Defense oneshots. A non-team non teamup. Immortal Hulk. Dr Strange. Silver Surfer. Namor. Each had separate stories by different art teams that were different parts of a mystery about a threat to Earth. And a final oneshot that brought the four heroes together to save Earth from a cosmic train that absorbs solar systems in its path and uses them for fuel. But without them actually teaming up to stop the threat. They just each did their part without the others being aware. A clever storytelling device that honors the original premise of the Defenders.

Dr Doom 1-10. Chris Cantwell writes a fantastic Doom story that perfectly captures Doom. Doom starts having visions of a peaceful utopian Earth that he’s he’s the leader of, and is happily married, with two children. In the present, the world is planning to fix climate change by opening a small black hole on the moon. Doom thinks its a stupid plan and says so on (inter)national TV. When the moon base is sabotaged and Latveria is blamed, Doom becomes the world’s most wanted man. With the help of Kang intermittently popping in and out of time, Doom figures out he’s been set up by neighboring Symkaria who attempt to put a puppet ruler on the throne of Latveria. Doom eventually takes back his country and the cedes Symkaria with the UNs blessing in exchange for fixing the expanding black hole in the moon. Then there’s this great exchange between him and Reed Richard’s where Reed is trying to pay him a complement on his plan, but since Reed lives rent free in Victor’s head, Victor changes all the math at the last minute and the explosion throws him into the perfect future timeline he was dreaming. The future Victor is telling him all about how he has to let go of all the baggage that makes him imperfect until Doom’s arrogance can’t take anymore and he kills future Victor with his armor’s hand cannon, then whips out the ultimate nullifier and erases the entire reality. Fucking classic Doom. I loved it.