So, What comics did you buy this week?

[vynsane]

James Robinson is a shitty writer.

um...

[Tom Foolery]

It’s the one thing of his I haven’t read(but I did track them all down. I actually moved the series into a drawer box last weekend). But everything he’s done since that has been atrocious, so I’m beginning to think Starman wasn’t that great and it just happened to come out in the mid-90s when literally everything was shit and maybe it was just marginally less shitty enough to make people think he was good. I dunno.

[Tom Foolery]

Wonder Woman 75-81. Part of the Year of the Villain line-wide event. Lex gives Cheetah a mystical sword called Godkiller. She goes to Diana’s home to kill WW, but kills Aphrodite instead. With the Goddess of Love deceased, everyone in the world becomes ambivalent towards their loved ones. Diana’s resolve is diminished because she just doesn't care and she loses her tiara to Cheetah and her bracelets get destroyed. Eventually Aphrodite’s daughter/son Atlantiades becomes the new Love Goddess, which rejuvenates Diana’s will to fight and she subdues Cheetah with her golden lasso and takes her back to Themyscira. But her relationship with Steve Trevor comes to an end, when the absence of ‘love’ led to some honest words between them. G Willow Wilson’s final arc on the series.

Wonder Woman 82-83, 750. Steve Orlando took over writing. Cheetah is visited by the Dark Fates in Themyscira, who free her and reforge the Godkiller sword for her so she can go on a rampage to free Diana from “serving” the false god Hera. She heads back to Earth to fight a Diana now missing her lasso, bracelets, and tiara. New hero Silencer is shoehorned into a guest appearance, and the fight continues until Hera takes notice and shows up. This leads into the 80 page issue 750 where Diana convinces Cheetah to give up, then addresses Hera that Cheetah’s claims weren’t entirely unfounded. Diana breaks ties with her matron Goddess. But she gets her lasso and tiara back, and reforges her bracelets. Then there was a bunch of other stories and pin-ups and stuff.

Next, the WW continues.

[Tom Foolery]

Wonder Woman 751. Diana moves to Boston, and her new neighbor turns out to be a Boston Cop assigned to assess whether Diana being in the city threatens more disasters. Diana saves a bunch of people during an electrical storm, so she gets a reprieve from the Boston PD.

WW 752-753. A 7th Century warrior woman named Valda gets thrust into the present while fighting a giant chrome minotaur. She kills a guy in a bar fight, and Diana has to intervene. Then they team up to fight the minotaur thing and Valda stabs it and she gets lost in time again.

WW 754-758. Orlando’s last arc on the series. A woman who Diana “helped” when she was a little girl, by lying about her Nazi parents and putting with adoptive parents, finds out the truth and recruits others to form a team of Four Horsewomen to get revenge on Diana. They try to recruit Donna Troy as their fourth and she ain’t having none of that. Diana and Donna team up to fight them after they get into Themyscira to enact revenge for her Valkyrie ancestors the Amazons destroyed millenia ago. Then the Phantom Stranger shows up to pass judgment, and Diana calls him on his bullshit because he let all the bad blood build up between the Amazons and the Valkyrie’s descendants so the amount of sin would balance out his debt. The story gets concluded in an annual that I will read soon.

[Tom Foolery]

Mariko Tamaki took over the next few arcs of Wonder Woman.

WW 759-763. Diana moves back to Washington DC and befriends her new teenage neighbor and her pet rabbit. Then someone starts using mind control tech via a phone app. Diana is forced to work with imprisoned Maxwell Lord because the tech is based on his work at Lord Industries. I was like ‘oh shit, this is gonna be awkward!’ but apparently Diana breaking Lord’s neck never happened in this Nu continuity. Anyway, the perpetrator turns out to be the teenage neighbor, who is Lord’s estranged illegitimate daughter calling herself Liar Liar.

WW 764-767. Diana and Lord have to continue to team up to stop the tech from spreading on the black market. They travel to Miami and then some European country to fight Count Vertigo, then Lord inevitably tries betraying Diana because he got some vision of the previous universe where she DID break his neck and he’s salty about it.

WW 768-769. Then Liar Liar returns and tries to kill her dad and Diana talks her out of it. It was a decent ten issue run.

The series took a break for a couple months for Future State. When it came back, Becky Cloonan took over writing with issue 770, where Diana wakes up in Valhalla and keeps repeating the endless days of feasting, fighting and dying, without knowing why she's there or who she is. The rest of the series is in the newer boxes. I think the series is up to 795 by now.

Annual 2. Set during the Dark Metal event. The Star Sapphires call Diana for help dealing with some rogue dark god from the dark multiverse they can’t defeat. The dark god spends way too many pages explaining its boring origin. Then the Star Sapphires all team up to defeat it anyway, and they pour all their “love” power into Diana’s sword, so she can stab the dark god whilst simultaneously claiming she loves him. The dark god is defeated, but also he brushes off the attack and shakes his fist at Diana and says he’ll see her again on Earth. I had to go back and see who wrote this buffoonish issue, and guess what….James Robinson, perennial clown shoe.

Annual 3. Set during the Event Leviathan series. The origin and first appearance of the ARGUS agent who Diana rescued from her Nazi domestic terrorist parents and placed in a different home. She helps Diana and Steve Trevor rescue an undercover ape spy from Gorilla City after Grodd took over. Then, the epilogue has Leviathan show up and explain her true history as the last descendant of Valkyries who were at war with the Amazons with centuries ago. Even though this is her “first appearance” the character is derived from a Golden Age character that was one of the GA WW’s recurring villains. Fairly decent issue.

Annual 4. The conclusion to Orlando’s run. It was kind of a uninteresting story about a hidden city becoming unhidden in South America, and I think Diana defeated the Dark Fates, but long story short, there’s a THIRD branch of Amazons besides the Themyscirans and the Bana-Mihgdall.

Next up, a couple WW minis, and then, since I already read like 99% of the X-stuff, it’s just Young Justice, Year of the Villain, and a smattering of other reading and this box is done. After that, I go back thru boxes and decide if I want to read the stuff I skipped, like Detective Comics, the Dark Metal sequel and all its tie-ins, the Empyre event from Marvel, all those Future State minis and whatever else I skipped.

[Tom Foolery]

Characters who should also be getting Alex Ross timeless variants, but thus far have not.

1. Hawkeye
2. Vision
3. Frank Castle

Those three definitely because they’re in the fucking mural Marvel commissioned from Ross that’s in their HQ.

4. Quicksilver. If Wanda gets one, her brother should.
5. Luke Cage and
6. Iron Fist. Because the other 70s mainstays Shang-Chi and Ghost Rider got one(and also Frank)
7. Mar-Vell.
8. Ms Marvel/Captain Marvel. Because if Mar-Vell gets one, Carol definitely should. But also because She-Hulk and Spider-Woman got one.

After that, it gets more argumentative.

9. Deadpool? It’s arguable he’s the most recognizable Marvel character from the last 30 years that isn’t a “classic” character.
10. Nova? He’s been around since the 70s also.
Venom? Miles? Kamala? Any Guardians, either classic or modern?
I’d be more inclined to give some classic A-list villains the Timeless treatment before getting into the more obscure heroes. Magneto, Doom, Green Goblin, Red Skull, Kang, etc

Coming in March…

Dormammu on Dr Strange #1
Venom on Venom:Lethal Protector II #1
Green Goblin on Hallow’s Eve #1
Ultron on Avengers #66
Kang on Avengers Forever #15
Mystique on Rogue&Gambit #1
Scorpion on Miles Morales #4
Black Cat on Mary Jane&Black Cat #4
Dark Phoenix on X-Men #20
Juggernaut on Captain Marvel #47
White Queen on Wolverine #31
Mephisto on Scarlet Witch #3
Red Skull on Captain America #11
Mandarin on Iron Man #4
Super Skrull on Fantastic Four #5
Leader on Hulk #13
Elektra on Daredevil #9

Also, Mysterio, Vulture, Lizard, MODOK, Doc Ock, Sandman, Kingpin, Loki, Hela, Doom, Thanos, Mole Man, Magneto, Annihilus, Apocalypse, Zemo, Electro, Abomination, Rhino, and Galactus are getting covers.

37 in total. Sweet!

[Tom Foolery]

Finishing off WW.

Sensational WW 1. Diana is trapped in a 50s housewife scenario, until she breaks out of it and helps Hawkgirl defeat Dr. Psycho. This was a shortlived series that only ran seven issues, but I only got the first one. The one-and-done nature of the issue makes me think it was going to be a new standalone story every issue.

WW:Come Back to Me 1-6. I think these were serialized stories from the original WalMart 100 page giants collected here into one miniseries. Connor and Palmiotti have Diana searching for test pilot Steve Trevor’s missing plane on a mysterious island in the Bermuda Triangle. Along the way, Jonah Hex and Cheetah show up, and eventually they are all wisked away to a far off planet where they compete in gladitorial tournaments to the death. It started out interesting, and then kinda got so over the top it felt like they were making it up as they went. It wasn’t awful, but it was scattered.

WW 100 Page Giant 1-4. The second run of Giant series. A new story (or two) each issue along with three reprint stories from older Wonder Woman issues, as well as Green Lantern, and Amethyst. The four original stories had Diana team up with Harley Quinn to stop a disreputable real estate mogul who’s sabotaging buildings then buying the condemned property for cheap. He tries assassinating Harley to buy her Coney Island property cheap.
The second story had Lois Lane’s plane crashing in the Himalayas and Diana rescuing her and some mountain climbers from an ancient creature released after an earthquake. The third story had Diana fighting a creature from a crashed meteor that attacks Gorilla City. And the final story had a group of villains decide to swap their normal heroes to get the edge(Acts of Vengeance anyone?) and Diana comes up against Scarecrow, but she overcomes her fears and handily beats him. They were all decent if not memorable reads.

Up next, the end of the box!

[Tom Foolery]

There was a few X-books left at the tail end, before I start Young Justice.

X-Men FCBD 2020. A brief story with Opal Luna Saturnyne setting up the X of Swords event, and also a preview of the Dark Ages event.

X-Men Legends 1. The first issue of an ongoing that had original writers and artists come back and tell new stories from their original runs. The series lasted 12 issues, but a second run began almost immediately and its currently on issue 6 or 7. This issue is the only one I have in the older boxes, it features a story with Cyclops, Havok, and it seemingly confirms Adam-X is the third Summers brother(so would he be the fourth Summers brother? Since they created Vulcan later on to “solve” the third brother mystery.) As stupid and annoying as the idea of Adam-X is, this particular issue was good enough that I’m interested to see what happens in issue 2.

Giant Size X-Men:Magneto. Hickman wrote a small batch of GS oneshots with different characters. In this one, Emma has Magneto go and buy an island from Namor. Namor has Magneto accompany him into a deep trench to fight an ancient Kraken and defeat some ancient sea witches that killed an Atlantean science patrol. The newly purchased island is where they eventually hold the Hellfire Gala I think.

Giant Size:Nightcrawler. Kurt and some other X-Men return to the abandoned Westchester estate and find some aliens hatching their eggs. The X-Men rescue Lady Mastermind and decide to let the aliens keep their nest in the school.

Giant Size: Fantomex. The backstory of Fantomex and his genetic “twin” that were conceived in the World. Every decade, Fantomex returns with a different team(including Fury and his Howling Commandos, etc) as distractions so he can find his ‘brother’ and see if he’s ready to leave. After the fourth visit, we get back to when he first asked Cyclops and Wolverine to assist him back in Morrison’s run. The finale of this issue dovetails into the story of the next two GS…

Giant Size:Jean Grey-Emma Frost. When Storm gets infected with a techno-organic virus, Jean and Emma go into her mind in this mostly silent issue.

Giant Size:Storm. In order to cure her techno-organic virus, Storm and some other X-Men recruit Fantomex and his AIM buddy to get into the World where they separate the TO from Storm, and Fantomex confronts his ‘brother’ once again.

X-Men+Fantastic Four 1-4. Chip Zdarsky and art by the Dodsons. Franklin’s powers are depleting the more he uses them; his father is trying to solve the problem. Krakoans come to recruit Franklin over the objections of his parents. When he decides to go through the Krakoan gate, he finds out his father has ‘masked’ his mutant gene. Upset, he and Val stow away on the Marauder’s ship with the intent of going to Krakoa, but the Marauders are headed to rescue some mutants trying to get to Krakoa. The refugee mutants end up being from Latveria and the crew of the Marauder and the Richards kids both wind up as ‘guests’ of Doom on his secret Pacific island. The FF think the Krakoans kidnapped their kids and attack Krakoa, before they all realize they are on Doom’s island where Doom is offering to fix Franklin’s power depletion. A series of bad decisions by everyone escalates the situation where Doom-esque Sentinels defend the island. Franklin aborts the experiment before it’s finished to end the confrontation and decides to go with the Krakoans. Then Xavier and Magneto visit Reed about his masking the X-gene and erase it from his mind, but leave him with the knowledge that they visited him and erased his mind as a warning not to fuck with Krakoa.

X-Men:God Loves Man Kills 1-2. A two part expanded reprint of the original GN with extra framing story, as well as interviews with Claremont and Anderson. Having already read it, I skimmed thru it again. I forgot Kitty drops the ‘N-word’. Which they left in.

Giant Size X-Statix. A new oneshot. The survivors of the original team recruit new members, some of which are the kids of the original deceased members. I never read the original run, but it sounds suitably absurd. I’ll probably like when I get around to reading it. Led into a new ongoing, The X-Cellent which started last year.

Okay, NOW Young Justice….

[Tom Foolery]

When Bendis came to DC, he started an imprint called Wonder Comics for all the youthful characters in the DCU. Series included Dial H, the Wonder Twins, and Naomi. But the flagship title was a relaunch of Young Justice, a superteam that had ceased to exist when Nu52 rebooted everything. But a couple of continuity reboots later, the concept of when Young Justice existed was still a little muddled and unclear. Bendis reunites the original team of Robin, Impulse, Wonder Girl and Superboy and throws a few new heroes into the mix for good measure.

Young Justice 1-6. Because of all the Crises that are constantly fucking with reality not only affect Earth, they are affecting Gemworld as well. So Dark Lord Opal of Gemworld comes to Earth to give their “leader” Superman a beatdown. Clark is not in Metropolis that day, but Cassie Sandsmark, Tim Drake, and Bart Allen are all coincidentally in the area for completely unrelated, but conspicuously convenient reasons. As are Jinny Hex, the great granddaughter of Jonah, and a new Teen Lantern. They team up to give Lord Opal and his minions a thorough beatdown, but get sucked back into Gemworld where they are imprisoned. Bart escapes and finds Connor living on Gemworld with his new wife(?!) and child(?!!!). Together they go free the rest of YJ as well as Gemworld heroine Ametheyst and they go kick Lord Opal’s ass and dethrone him. The ungreatful rest of Gemworld decides to send YJ back to Earth and banish the troublemaking Amethyst at the same time, but instead of Earth, they send them randomly into the Multiverse….

YJ 7-12. The team bounces around a few different realities, including Captain Carrot’s earth, and Kingdom Come earth, before landing on Earth-3 and end up having to fight the evil versions of Young Justice and Tim’s evil version is using the codename Drake and Time decides that’s pretty cool and also starts using it(even though that’s the stupidest idea ever) for the next several issues. We also get origin stories for Jinny Hex and Teen Lantern. They make it back to the correct Earth and meet Naomi. Then Connor goes and confronts the STAR Labs bitch that marooned him in Gemworld, and she sends him to Skartaris this time.

YJ 13-15. The YJ go get help from the Dial H kids, the Wonder Twins, and Naomi(basically all the Wonder Comics heroes at once) and then Impulse goes and gets Arrowette out of retirement, and Aqualad and Spoiler for good measure! This Ultimate Young Justice squad goes and rescues Connor from Skartaris where he’s been hanging out with Warlord, then they go back and shut down the evil STAR Labs lady and her labratory of unethical experiments.

YJ 16. Bart and Connor kinda answer the unanswered questions of how and why Young Justice was, then wasn’t, then was a thing again. Since both Connor and Bart were casualties of the Nu52 reboot.

YJ 17-20. Stand alone one offs where lingering plot lines get wrapped up, like Cassie confronting her Dad, Zeus about her destiny of joining the Pantheon. Teen Lantern confronting John Stewart about her hacked illegal use of the Lantern energy. Spoiler finally bringing down her dad’s criminal empire(by the way, she and Tim are still totally in a hetero relationship throughout this entire series, and Tim’s motives for wanting to leave Gemworld and then escape the multiverse is unequivocally because he wants to get back to Steph) before the series wrapped up.

This book was a lot of fun. High energy throughout, with tons of great interaction between all the sassy young kids. Bendis is great at writing team books, and he’s a nerd for obscure continuity callbacks. He also righted the wrong of Young Justice’s erasure. The only misfire was the ‘Drake’ thing, and he was back to being Robin by the end of the series. (I’m assuming Batman put his foot down and said you can’t use your actual last name as your fucking codename you dipshit.)

Up next, a bunch of Year of the Villain oneshot tie-ins.

[Tom Foolery]

DC’s Year of the Villain wasn’t an Event perse, more of an umbrella for the various stories going on that year. Bane took over Gotham in Batman, Lex Luthor had accepted Perpetua’s gift of evolution and was causing trouble for the JL, Leviathan reared his/its head, and Batman who Laughs was stirring up trouble post-Metal.

It started off with a 25 cent primer oneshot where Lex attacks the President on purpose, then fires his entire company and publicly blows himself up. Leviathan attempted to recruit Batgirl. Then Perpetua monologued about her plans to a newly resurrected Lex.

After he had subsumed J’onn J’onz’ body and become Apex Lex, he began bestowing ‘gifts’ to villains in their efforts to defeat their respective heroes. Several oneshots focused on villains who had or hadn’t received gifts…

YotV:Black Adam. Black ‘The Protector of his People’ Adam must be the Protector of his People when an Infected Shazam shows up in Kahndaq and Black Adam must Protect his People from a douchy, petulant Billy Batson under the influence of Batman who laughs evil poison. The people of Kahndaq prey, and Black Adam uses the power of that prayer to defeat Shazam and send him packing. One note anti-hero Black Adam having successfully protected his people, vows to continue protecting his people. Dull.

YotV:Black Mask. Roman Sionis receives a gift from Lex to become a ‘mask’ of anyone he wants(basically he’s Mystique now) and he takes over a billion dollar corporation by posing as it’s mega-douche CEO(think Zuckerberg/Musk). He tries to kill Renee Montoya, who thinks she’s protecting the CEO from a threat, and she’s saved by Batwoman. This art was so shitty, I felt like someone green lit this issue and asked Cully Hamner to draw the entire thing in 48 hours. It’s atrocious. And the story was weak.

YotV:Lex Luthor. Apex Lex is travelling the multiverse, culling alt reality Lex’s, and he takes a young red-headed Lex under his wing, only so he can put the brat in a Black Mercy coma so he has unaltered Luthor DNA available as insurance if his Apex Lexiness becomes undesirable. Doom Luthor was a neat concept, but otherwise its another weak issue.

YotV:Joker. Legendary horror director John Carpenter tells a story of one of Joker’s henchmen following Mr J around. After the henchman realizes Joker isn’t crazy and random after he threatens the henchman’s mother, he rebels against him. Honestly, I thought the twist where Joker lets the guy live at the end was refreshing. Not great, but better than the other three books so far.

YotV:Riddler. When the Riddler is annoyed Lex didn’t offer him a gift, Lex convinces Edward that the Riddler is an identity conceived by a ten year old seeking attention. After Riddler teams up with King Tut to build another death trap for Batman, he realizes Lex was right and decides to stop being Riddler. Might be interesting, but I think we all know that won’t stick so it makes the entire issue irrelevant.

YotV:Sinestro. When a heretofore unknown threat to Lex’s “plans” shows up, he needs Sinestro to go stop these over powered alien invaders called Paragons from destroying planets. A total ripoff of the Builders from Hickman’s Avengers run, are defeated when Sinestro goes microscopic and convinces the ‘civilization’ inside the Paragon’s bodies that are responsible for their regeneration that maybe they should relax and enjoy music and poetry and shit instead of repairing the Paragons injuries. He then beats this macguffin threat easily and they were never heard from again. Stupid.

YotV:Ocean Master. Orm returns to his abandoned wife and child on the surface amd tells them a story of why he desrted them; Living homeless in Atlantis, Orm gets wind of a secret amulet that controls an ancient underwater deity lost in a deep ocean trench. He swims down and retrieves the amulet, then smashes it after earning the deity’s loyalty. He then starts his own underwater kingdom made up of the unwanted citizens. As it's own story, it was pretty good, but mostly these YotV oneshots were underwhelming cash grabs.

YotV Infected:King Shazam. Billy Batson is being a jerk and Mary Marvel tries talking him down because she sees a glimmer of Billy in the infected King Shazam.

YotV Infected:Scarab. Jaime Reyes is being a jerk and his friends try talking him down because they see a glimmer of Jaime in the infected Scarab.

YotV Infected:Deathbringer. When Donna Troy and the Titans are asked to mediate for a town of super powered people (Holy shit does DC know how to bring in the readers? Lets have our super heroes argue the minutiea at HOA meeting!!) Donna becomes increasingly unstable and basically razes the town and beats the shit out of her tesmmates.

YotV Infected:Commisioner. Infected Jim Gordon realizes Gotham is a giant piece of shit not worth saving and unleashes a bunch of criminals with doomsday button that unlocks cells in case of a calamitous disaster like nuclear war so the released criminals can cause mayhem in Gotham.

YotV: Hell Arisen 1-4. The story culminated when the Batman who Laughs and his Infected attack Apex Lex. I am missing issue 3 because I didn’t know it had come out, and by the time I realized it a few weeks later, it was ridiculously expensive because Punchline debuted in it. Ugh.
Anyway, Lex figures out how to cure the Infected, and they all turn on BWL, but Lex whisks him away to his boss Perpetua. However, the Batman Who Laughs makes a case that he’s a better right hand man than Lex for what Perpetua has planned and she depowers Lex and dumps him back on Earth. Led into Dark Nights:Death Metal.

Overall, I was unimpressed with this batch of books and in hindsight I would’ve waited and bought them on clearance instead of paying full price. Oh well.

The only thing left is a Villains 100 page Giant, and a Yondu miniseries. Then this box is done.

[Tom Foolery]

Villains 100 Page Giant oneshot. One of those half new, half reprint issues. The new stories featured the Joker, Deathstroke, and Harley. The reprint stories featured Darkseid, Reverse-Flash, and Poison Ivy. One of the rare occasions where all three new stories were pretty good.

Yondu 1-4. I’m missing issue 5. A mini series where the original OG Yondu, the Native American pastiche from the 30th century travels back in time to “team up” with his ancestor, the current era’s Redneck pastiche based on the MCU version. But they don’t actually get along. The present day Yondu steals a cosmic macguffin, a chalice holding the cosmic remnants of Galactus’ former herald, the Fallen One. Being chased by a bounty hunter, the two Yondus(Yondi?) wind up on what’s left of Galador, thought destroyed during the Infinity Event series by the Builders in the lead up to Secret Wars. I’m missins the climactic issue, but I cheated and read a synopsis; Future Yondu dies protecting his ancestor, who is guilted into becoming a hero. I was annoyed they retconned truckdriver Yondu into becoming a thing, but that aside, this series was pretty good.

And a bonus couple of issues I read to be filed away.

Aquaman 44, 45. An amnesiac Aurthur was rescued by a bunch of ‘retired’ sea gods living on some obscure island. They do a ritual and dunk him in the ocean and he figures out he can breathe underwater. Then he and some chick on the island go to visit her ‘mother’ who is a Salt goddess or something.
Meanwhile, because of some outdated Atlantean laws, Mera is in Atlantis entertaining potential suitors since Aquaman is missing presumed dead.

Green Arrow 49. Oliver is fighting Count Vertigo and bummed out about Roy being dead. The next issue was the final issue which I read back in June six months ago.

So that’s the final box. Now to go back and read some of the stuff I skipped. Either gonna read Death Metal or Empyre.

Hoping to finish up the leftover reading quickly so I can get to business of organizing and cataloging everything on cbrealm. I missed my self imposed deadline of the New Year.

[Tom Foolery]

Flipped a coin, Empyre won. Also, since I read Excalibur with the X-Men stuff, the only books left in this box were Empyre and some Eternals books, which I think I had already read(back when I was still reading books every week as I bought them). Anyway…

Road to Empyre oneshot. The Skrull family from Meet the Skrulls are ambushed and their house blows up. While they are on the run and regrouping, they “recap” the events of the Kree/Skrull war, acting as a primer for the upcoming event, without resorting to just reprinting the previous issues from the 70s and 80s.

Empyre:Avengers 0. The Avengers are invited to the blue area of the moon, where the Cotati have planted a garden meant to rejuvenate their species. The Swordsman and Mantis’ son Quoi greets them and asks for their help against the Kree/Skrull alliance of warships descending on the Moon.

Empyre:Fantastic Four 0. The FF get stranded in space and barter for help to get them to a Casino World run by an Elder of the Universe called the Profiteer. There they find a Kree child and a Skrull child being forced into perpetual combat with each other for the casino patron’s amusement and wagering. Franklin and Val(with help from their invisible mother) break the bank and use it to buy the children’s freedom. Then on their way back to Earth, they come across the Kree/Skrull fleet headed towards the Moon.

Empyre 1-6. Teddy’Hulkling’Altman has become the new Emperor of the newly formed Kree/Skrull Imperium(what with him being the lovechild of Mar-Vell and the Skrull Princess Anelle) and they are going to destroy the Cotati. The Avengers step up to defend the Cotati’s newly formed garden on the moon, until it blossoms and PLOT TWIST it turns out the Cotati are the bad guys and want to destroy all animal life in the Galaxy. The Kree/Skrulls have a failsafe that will blow up the Sun before the Cotati’s deaths spores spread. Mantis returns to try and stop her son, but The Cotati army spreads across the Earth as the heroes of Earth fight back. The main battle takes place in Wakanda, where the plants want the vibranium enriched earth to increase the effectiveness of their death plants. Teddy gets imprisoned and replaced by his evil Skrull Grandmother and implements the failsafe! Reed Richards and Tony Stark have like ten minutes to stop the Sun from exploding and stop the Cotati from overrunning the Vibranium mound. They heroically save the world in the nick of time. Fun stuff from Al Ewing and Dan Slott, with Valerio Schiti on art.

There were a few oneshots and minis that tied into the main story(and just about every regular ongoing had tie-ins also) so those get read next.

[jjreason]

Saga 61 digital edition.

Saga's back, FUCK YEAH! Somethingsomethingsomething and suck on my balls!
(*Sung to the tune of the Team America World Police song)

[Tom Foolery]

Saga 61 digital edition.

Saga's back, FUCK YEAH! Somethingsomethingsomething and suck on my balls!
(*Sung to the tune of the Team America World Police song)

I’m about ten issues behind on my reading.

But I did finish up the Empyre stuff.

Lords of Empyre:Hulkling. The oneshot where we see how the Kree and Skrulls approached Hulkling to be the new Emperor of their combined Empires. Dull.

Lords of Empyre:Celestial Messiah. In his ascension to Messiah, Quoi has to go thru a ritual akin to a Native American vision quest. There he sees a plant avatar of his mother Mantis, who tries unsuccesfully to convince him to not go thru with his plan to attack Earth. Dull.

Lords of Empyre:Swordsman. The Cotati shaman who resurrected himself as the deceased Swordsman and who has been raising Quoi is salty because his ‘human’ elements precludes him from rejoining the Cotati hive collective. When a branch of Cotati on Earth(where Mantis was born and raised by the Priests of Pama) is destroyed by Alchemax raiders looking for new biotech, it tips him over the edge into convincing his son to burn the world. Dull.

Empyre:Savage Avengers oneshot. Time displaced Conan is trying to just live his life in Mexico, when broccoli attacks and he and Venom team up to stop them.

Empyre Avengers 1-3. Several team of Avengers battling Cotati around the world. Luke Cage, Vision and Dr Nemesis fight Samuel Smithers aka Plantman, after he sides with the Cotati and takes over Central Park. Wonderman, Quicksilver, and Mockingbird have to defend a Mexican town against Cotati, as well as infighting Kree and Skrull soldiers who are more interested in wiping out the plats than they are avoiding killing human civilians in the process, and finally KaZar, Wanda, and the Black Knight have to stop an invasion in the Savage Land where the plants have co-opted Man-Thing and KaZar’s wife Shanna onto their side. Lots going on, but nothing really at stake in this side series.

Empyre: Captain America 1-3. After saving Washington DC from plant people, Cap has to rally NATO to defend the world against the worldwide attack and ends up heading to Mexico City with a small group of US soldiers to fight a mountain sized plant monster threatening to erupt the dormant volcano. Meh.

Empyre: X-Men 1-4. Hickman and his tag team of X-writers Brisson and Duggan craft a hugely entertaining tale. Scarlet Witch, trying to make up for that time when she decimated mutantdom, tries to cast a spell to ressurect the 16 million dead mutants on Genosha. It doesn’t work. The Cotati land there, to use Genosha as a staging ground for their invasion of Wakanda and there’s an army of mutant zombies waiting for them!! Krakoa sends a small team to investigate, and throw in those old ladies from Hordeculture for good measure, and you have a four way battle between the zombies, the plants, the mutants, and the old biddies. Fucking fantastic!

Empyre Fallout: Fantastic Four. After the events of Empyre, Thor sends Quoi and the Cotati to barren, distant planet after he uses his mother Gaea’s powers to turn the world into a lush jungle. Then the Profiteer returns and demands the two Kree and Skrull children returned citing they are conscripted soldiers which she has under contract with the Kree and Skrull empires. Hulkling rips up the contract and N’kalla and Joven are “adopted” by Ben and Alicia. Then Uatu returns on the final page(he’d been dead since Original Sin like ten years ago) setting up whatever Slott had planned next in FF.

Empyre Aftermath: Avengers. Emperor Hulkling and Wiccan get married officially. Abigail Brand shows up and slaps Carol Danvers and dramatically quits Alpha Flight because AF wasn’t informed of the Cotati and she blames the Avengers and their exclusive club for making decisions that get millions of humans killed. Hulkling deals with SuperSkrull(who killed his Earth mom) and Captain Glory(who helped his grandmother plot his deposing) by sparing both of them and forcing them into his diplomatic corps. There’s a future plot twist where Abigail Brand is leading a pack of Krakoans against the Kree/Skrull empire as a last page teaser.

The last stuff I had already read. But here’s what they were.

Eternals:Secrets from the Marvel Universe. A oneshot that reprinted back up stories written by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio in the original What If series concerning the history of the Celestials, Eternals, Deviants, and Inhumans on earth, collected together. Fun stuff. I miss Gruenwald.

Eternals 1-3 Keiron Gillen’s new ongoing where the Eternals are trying to solve the mystery of who killed Zuras. This was one of the last books where I was still keeping up with my weekly reading. So so long ago….

Event Leviathan 1-6. Bendis and Maleev’s DC event where the mysterious Leviathan destroys all the other secret organizations in the DCU, including ARGUS, Kobra, the DEO, Spyral, etc and sets up a new normal. Good stuff. One of the few things I read as it was being released.

So that box is finished. I think I’m going to read the DCeased minis(DC zombies) and the big Dark Nights:Dark Metal series and all the oneshot tie-ins. Ive decided to skip the Future State stuff and I’m going to read the long Detective run first thing AFTER I organize all the books.

So it’s DCeased and Dark Metal, then the sorting begins…

[Tom Foolery]

When they announced DCeased, I did a hard , but I picked up the headshot variant covers(most of them, I’m missing the Joker cover of issue 4).
It turned out to be a fun read, even if it mostly a series of downers. And there was a oneshot and three subsequent series, so it must be selling well.

DCeased 1-6. After being defeated by the Justice League on page one, Darkseid kidnaps Cyborg and takes him back to Apokalips to infect Vic with a variant of the Anti-Life Equation. But after adding an element of death from the Black Racer, it alters the equation. Cyborg escapes back to Earth, and an infected Darkseid hurls himself into the core of the planet and obliterates Apokalips. We’re only five pages in! Cyborg’s return to Earth immediately infects the internet, so anyone who looks at their phones gets infected, and after that anyone infected biting anyone infects them. The infection spreads astronomically. Nightwing and Robin attack Batman and infect him. Green Lantern looks at his phone while camping with Dinah and Ollie, forcing them to kill him with a Canary Cry, and Dinah inherits his GL ring. Aquaman investigates a cruise ship and is overwhelmed by the infected onboard. Batman, wears a Mr Freeze cooling suit, which slows his metabolism enough to bequeathe the mantle of Batman to Damian, then he succumbs and Alfred kills him with a shotgun. Superman fails to save Perry White and his own father in time. They start gathering the survivors at the Daily Planet and at some point start preparing two giant Arc spaceships on Themyscira and in Poison Ivy’s Gotham Jungle to flee with the few remaining million survivors. The US Govt sends Captain Atom as a solution, but he gets sabotaged by a micro infected Ray Palmer and Atom self detonates, destroying the entirety of DC, Baltimore, and Metropolis. The few survivors in Green Lantern’s energy sphere regroup in the nothing that’s left of Metropolis. Lex Luthor joins them, overwhelmed by the destruction. Then an infected invisible J’onn J’onnz tears thru the team, killing Luthor and wounding Flash before Firestorm incinerates him. Infected Flash begins circling the Earth, killing millions at superspeed and Superman flies from the opposite direction and eviscerates Barry. But Barry impales Superman in the process. Realizing he’s going to turn, Superman leaves Earth but doesn’t get far enough. He returns and starts wreaking havoc and basically decimates NYC. They load the Arcs and the Amazons sacrifice themselves when Aquaman and his infected Atlanteans attack so the ships can escape. Wonder Woman fuses a magical sword with kryptonite to kill Superman and goes with GL and Cyborg to stop him. During the battle WW is killed and Superman heads into space to destroy the ships. Jon Kent realizes he's the last defense and flies out to stop his infected father. The collision breaks Jon’s arm and knocks him out, but it gives them enough time for the GL Corps to show up and stop Clark, who turns and flies into the sun and absorb its energy, dooming the Earth. Cyborg uses the lasso of truth on the infected Diana and asks the infection if there’s a cure. She says he was the cure all along, before ripping his head off. The series ends with the two arcs limping into space looking for a new Earth to call home. Holy shit! Like where do the three other minis go from this ending??!

DCeased:A Good Day to Die oneshot. Mr. Terrific, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, Blue Beetle, BooSter Gold and John Constantine come up with a plan to travel back in time to stop the infection before it happens. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for any of them, except Hellblazer.

Next up the Unkillables, and Dead Planet minis that continue the story. A fourth mini is currently coming out, but those are in the new boxes.

Not gonna lie, Tom Taylor and Trevor Hairsine took a tired zombie premise and delivered an exciting read.