So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Tom Foolery]

Mariko Tamaki’s Detective Comics run. I read the first issue of it(1034) on my last Detective binge. The daughter of a prominent Gotham family(who are mob-adjacent) went missing. Here’s what happened next.

1035-1040. As the investigation continues, both Batman AND Bruce Wayne get implicated in the young woman’s murder. Her father, Worth, seeks assistance from the Penguin to exact his own investigation and retribution on Wayne, whom the corrupt GCPD have put into custody. Batman and Huntress tentatively team up as they are working the same case from different angles(as shown in the backup stories in each issue). The real killer is one of Mayor Nakano’s staff, but it’s only because he’s infected with some alien bug thing that spits out a rage inducing venom that causes people to go crazy and kill people around them. Huntress gets infected and it gives her a new superpower that allows her to “see” when violence is about to be committed. Tamaki also introduces a new journalist character named Deb Donavan that pops up throughout her run. Liked it except for the bug infection thing.

1041-1042. A cabal of villains including Worth and Penguin lure Batman into the sewers and intentionally infect him with the rage shit, but he fights thru it. The bug thing escapes and lays a bunch of creepy eggs in the sewers for later.

1043-1045. Part of the Fear State event. When a new(ish) villain named Nero attacks the Mayor’s office, Mayor Nakano has to escape into the sewers, and reluctantly has to team up with Batman. They sort of hash out their differences, and Nakano agrees that he’s been so focused on vigilantes being the villains, he’s ignored all the other monsters in Gotham.

1046. An epilogue to Fear State where Batman decides he’s leaving town for awhile. Also sets up the new Arkham Tower for the next arc.

1047-1058. Shadows of the Bat. ‘Tec went weekly for the next few months. With Batman gone, the rest of the Bat-family got to shine here. Gotham opens the new Arkham Tower to replace the Asylum that was destroyed on A-Day. The Mayor agrees to a 30 day trial period with a small handful of inmates before a wider commitment. Something is hinky in the facility, so Batwoman, Nightwing, and some of the others go undercover to suss out what’s happening. It turns out the doctor running the place is secretly selling all the psyche meds to two rival gangs; the Party Crashers and the Penguin’s crew. And instead he’s having his old friend Psycho Pirate keep everyone sedated for the entire month, so they can get the funds for the wider opening and then fuck off. Huntress has voluntarily checked herself in to deal with the visions she’s now having. But things go haywire when Psycho can’t maintain and the inmates take over with a bunch of hostages inside, and then Scarecrow takes over. The Bat-Family steps up and saves (mostly) everyone, and Batman returns for the big finale. Pretty solid arc. The back up feature was the life of a kid whose parents were killed by Joker, and how he fell thru the cracks and was “abandoned” by Batman over the years, including Knightfall and No Man’s Land.

1059-1061. Mariko finished off her run with a three parter where Riddler is broadcasting a pirate radio station and taunting Batman with a bunch of seemingly innocent people committing crimes. As Batman digs deeper into what connects them, he finds out that nobody is really innocent in Gotham. The back up story featured Gotham Girl.

Tamaki had written a She-Hulk series I enjoyed, and a couple other things, so I was excited to read her Tec run. But then she wrote a shitty One Bad Day oneshot and I got a little worried. Overall, it’s not the greatest Batman stuff, but it was pretty solid. She let the supporting players like Huntress, Batwoman, and the Batgirls have cool moments.

Ram V took over writing the next issue. Debating on continuing with ‘Tec or doing some SW next.

[Diabolical]

I barely remember that run on Detective. Pretty unremarkable, IMO.

[anarky]

I don't mind Riddler being a run of the mill villain.

I don't mind Riddler being a fucking criminal mastermind pulling all the strings.

I don't mind Riddler being a reformed criminal working alongside Batman.

But for fuck's sake, can they just decide?

[jjreason]

Uncanny X-Men 700. Cost me $15 and change for one comic. Of interest, that's more than I spent on my copies of X-Men 137 (death of Jean) and Daredevil 168 (first Elektra) combined.

[Tom Foolery]

Caught up on Detective Comics. Ram V came aboard as writer with issue 1062 and his entire ongoing story arc has been called ‘Gotham Nocturne’. He’s broken it up into ‘Acts’ complete with an ‘intermezzo’. Not gonna bother breaking down the individual mini arcs.

The gist of the story is that an old Euro-somewhere family called the Orghams(their family anglicized the family name to Arkham when they got to Gotham a long time ago) arrives in town and claims the old remains of Arkham Asylum and tear it down. They start buying real estate all over the city(sometimes thru nefarious means, like hyponitizing bankers into selling and then commiting suicide afterwards) with the ‘benevolent’ intent of bettering the city. The family has ties to Ra’s Al Ghul(he used to be one of their henchmen) and they employ werewolves and such, including a guy who can possess others with Arzem demons. The Orghams arzem-ite Two-Face and try to get Mr. Freeze. Eventually they Arzem Batman, and although he’s fighting the demon internally, it’s taking its toll on him.
Then they plant a bunch of bombs around Gotham, and force Batman into choosing to blow up their fancy new Orgham Tower or a bunch of innocents will die. He blows it up, but they have video footage of him doing it, so the city turns against him(with the help of some mass-hypnosis on the TV and internet. They capture Batman and plan to hold a public hanging, but Catwoman gets a heist crew together and rescues him at the last minute, then Talia takes Bruce away where he can recover from the Arzem demon and dig deep within himself to resolve to be a better Dark Knight or whatever.
By the time he gets better, the mass hypnosis has made Gotham forget about Batman, so he’s sort of back to being an urban legend when he returns.
There’s also an ongoing subplot with Commissioner Renee Montoya struggling with a conflict of interest being The Question and also being the Commissioner.

The most current issue is 1085, and I have no idea how much is left in the overall story. While I’ve enjoyed the gothic moodiness of the series, and the Orghams have been a legit threat, it’s been running for almost two years at this point. I feel like if I had been reading this month to month, I would’ve been looking at my watch to see how much longer the movie had.
It also doesn’t help that this arc does not jive with robot-hand Batman and his stupid, ugly, stupid new costume fighting evil-robot Batman over in Zdarsky’s turd fest in the main book. Of the two stories, I definitely prefer this one, but the group editor on the Bat books sucks at his job.

Anyway, now I’m current on both Batman ongoings. I was gonna do some Star Wars, but I just read both SW and Vader are ending with their issue 50s in a few months. I’ll jump on the SW grenade then. So now it’s back to the ‘I’ thru ‘M’ box, starting with the rest of Chris Cantwell’s Iron Man run. I can’t remember what’s happening there at all. Something something Korvac was back? I’ll have to go find my recap from a couple years ago for a refresh.

[anarky]

Sounds like No Man's Land, but confined only to one book. (Tonally, not details.) I'm with how you sound--I like this sort of tale, but it is a mess when there are multiple ongoings that are way the hell off base with one another. Batman appearing in Justice League the same month as he's trapped on Mars is one thing. Mass hypnotism of Gotham for two years while everything's fine in the other titles is another.

Kinda like why Spider-Man never tried to stop Galactus when he crushed New York every other week. Doesn't matter that he can't. He's there, so he'd try. But he doesn't even seem to notice it happened.

[Tom Foolery]

Chris Cantwell’s Iron Man run. When last we saw them, Michael Korvac had been ressurected in an android body somehow and immediately came up with a plan to steal the power cosmic from Galactus’ Taa II worldship so he could…blah blah world domination or whatever. He and a small group of villains headed into space, with Tony and a bunch of heroes like Hellcat, War Machine, Gargoyle, Ben Reilly, and Frog-Man went after them.

Iron Man 8. Tony is mysteriously teleported off the space ship. Moondragon telepathically contacts Patsy Walker and helps her unlock some obscure latent telepathic abilities she had from some old Defenders storyline in the 70s. So Hellcat can read minds now.

9. Korvac finds Jim Hammond living in seclusion on a random moon out in space. He offers to repair Jim’s body(after the events of a recent Invaders ongoing where Jim’s body was replaced with an inferior crappy Stark designed mechanical body) in exchange for being his top lieutenant. Jim gets his original body back, but rejects Korvacs plan to remake the universe, so they brainwash him into being their muscle.

10-12. Tony was teleported to an unknown planet where refugees have been arriving from all over the universe, including Stilt-Man. They’ve built a small colony for survival over the years to defend against the naturally occuring Ultimos that occasionally attack them. Tony is starting to suffer from a morphine addiction from a neck injury he received earlier in the series. Eventually Tony realizes Stilt-Man is sending the Ultimos to justify his leadership of the colony. Then the Living Tribunal shows up an conveniently teleports Iron Man to Taa II to stop Korvac.

13-15. Tony’s allies arrive just as Korvac’s team shows up. There’s a big battle, but Korvac manages to access the power cosmic and becomes all powerful. Iron Man has no choice but to also access the cosmic energies and becomes Iron God. He and Korvac battle across the galaxy before Iron God subdues him, and Infinity and the other concepts of the universe take Korvac into custody.

16-18. Upon returning to Earth, the cosmically imbued Tony comes up with a typically bad Tony idea and “shares” his intelligence with every citizen of NYC. The disruption of the world suddenly having 8 million geniuses wreaks havoc. Hellcat, seeing the danger, reluctantly recruits Dr Doom to convince Tony to surrender the cosmic abilities. Her and the rest of the team have an intervention, but Iron Man quickly kills everyone off until only Patsy is left. She alone makes Tony look at what he’s done, so he revives everyone and then lets the power dissipate.

19. A powerless Tony, suffering from morphine addiction is confronted by Korvac, who escaped from Infinity. Seeing his new arch enemy completely helpless, Korvac brings Tony to a hospital, and then commits suicide.

20. Tony goes to rehab. And then proposes to Patsy. She declines.

22-24. Cantwell finished off his series by doing two longstanding supporting characters dirty. First, he killed off Vic Martinelli. Then he had Force, aka Clay Wilson unstuck from time, then makes him a stooge for Spymaster, who is running a secret underground arms auction called Source. Tony naively spends every last cent he owns to buy all the illegal weapons from Source because it’s easier than punching the problem. So now the bad guys are several billion dollars richer. Fucking stupid. Eh, there’s a double cross and Spymaster and Force get sucked into the darkforce dimension, but still…funding illegal arms trade does not make the illegal arms trade go away.

25. Cantwell finished the series in the larger sized final issue that was also Legacy #650. The mayor calls for an Iron Man day, but Tony misses the parade because he’s trying to save the life of a guy he finds in the subway(unsuccessfully) while wondering if he even deserves a holiday. But all his friends back at Avengers mansion show up to show they do in fact appreciate him.

Iron Man Annual 1. Part of the Infinite Destinies sub-event that ran thru all the annuals that summer. Iron Man crosses paths with Quantum and the Assessor that gave Miles Morales such a herd time in his ongoing a few years ago. I have the Rob Liefeld variant cover.

Iron Man and Hellcat Annual 1. Iron Man’s on the mast head, but it’s mostly a Hellcat issue, where Blackheart is trying to manipulate Patsy by holding her dead relatives “hostage” in hell as some sort of powerplay. I have the regular and Artgerm variant covers.

Except for the last arc where he fucks over Clay Wilson(seriously, he was a villain for like three issues, and has been a good guy for the past thirty years. I call bullshit) the run was decent. Gerry Duggan took over for the next ongoing, which is currently on issue 20 or so. That series is next, but first I’m gonna catch up on the current reading again. Oye, there’s already 30+ issues in the ‘current’ pile.

[Tom Foolery]

The ever-expanding current pile.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight 6. Blood Hunt tie-in. The Midnight Mission continues to protect the people of the night, with its two own personal vampires, Reese and Soldier, as well as 8-Ball, fighting against vampire hordes and ushering civilians to the safety of the Mission.

Nightwing 115. Fallen Grayson part 2. As the Pennyworth Foundation burns and the Bat-family in their civilian identities help evacuate the building, Heartless, in his civilian identity of Pharma CEO douchebag, gets the drop on Dick and knocks him out. When he wakes up, he’s on the roof of a building standing over a dead body and surrounded by cops. He realizes he’s wearing the Heartless costume and the cops overwhelm him and unmask him! Dick Grayson is the serial killer Heartless!

Penguin 11. Batman ends his “arrangement” with Penguin and steals all of Oswald’s hidden gold bullion reserves. The criminal underworld suspects Penguin’s weakness and send goons to take him out, setting up the violent shootout with the FBI we saw a few issues ago in “flashforward”. As I read this series, I remember the very first issue started with Bruce and Oswald, both mortally wounded and locked inside a sinking batplane in the middle of the ocean. It’s ironic the best Batman book right now isn’t a Bat book, it’s Penguin.

Red Hood:The Hill 5. The penultimate issue has the villains pulling a misdirect as they pull off a couple of heists during the gala opening of the bad guy’s new shoe store in downtown Gotham. ‘What? Shoe stores?’ This sounds like an exciting book to read!’ you might say to yourself. Well, you’d be wrong!

Boy Wonder 2. Juni Ba continues her stylized retelling of Damian joining the Bat-family as the newest Robin. This issue he teams up with black sheep Robin, The Red Hood to fight a demon kidnapper. That’s a demon who’s kidnapping people. Not a guy who’s kidnapping demons.

Scarlet Witch 1. Steve Orlando begins his next volume of Wanda’s adventures. The new big bad is Griever. I think she was the bad guy in an arc of Fantastic Four, but I’d have to check. Anyway, she blows Wanda up at the end of the issue.

Sensational She-Hulk 9. Jen and Jack return from their mini-vacation. Carol shows up and offers Jen an Avengers position. Next month is the final issue of Rainbow Rowell’s run. I got the regular cover and also the Adam Hughes variant.

Spider-Boy 8. Spider-Man and some other smart guys reverse all the animal hybrid people from Madame Menageries, but they can’t undo Bailey’s transformation because his human DNA was siphoned off to make Boy-Spider. Also, Bailey’s mom still doesn’t remember him, so he goes to find a photo of them together hoping that will spark her memory. Along the way, he runs afoul of one of his rogue’s gallery, Puzzle Man, who inadvertantly destroys the photo.

Spider-Gwen:Ghost Spider 2. The other Spiders are wondering why Gwen is on Earth 616 now, but she’s can’t tell them. Then she gets attacked by the villain from last month posing as Kraven. It’s the Chameleon!

Miles Morales 21. Blood Hunt tie-in. After Miles and Dracula track down Brielle, Miles heads back to Brooklyn to find his family and gets sidetracked by his speedster frenemy Hightail who needs his help to stop their mutual adversary, the ancient vampire R’ym’r, from being re-resurrected.

Up next, a dissertation on mid-17th century irrigation techniques as they related to agricultural advances and the impending industrial expansion.
Naw, I’m just joking. It’s more comics!

[Tom Foolery]

Superior Spider-Man 8. Spider-Man is battling an entire city of Doc Ocks who are regular citizens possessed by spiders being controlled by Spider-Boy who is under the influence of Otto’s brainwave swappy machine. But when Otto finds out his crush Anna Maria has also been ‘possessed’(she’s faking it) he shuts off the machine and purges himself from everyone, accidentally taking some of his memory with it(like the time he was Spider-Man and also Spidey’s secret identity). Ummm…this may have been the final issue?

Spectacular Spider-Men 4. Both Peter and Miles begin to suspect their ‘perfect’ lives are just dream scenarios and fight back against the programming. When they break free, Arcade and Mentallo send robots of each of them to fight the other one. They each defeat their robot, but when they actually find each other, they each assume the other is ANOTHER robot, so its Spidey vs Spidey! And the secret villain bankrolling Arcade and Mentallo is revealed to be Hammerhead.

Symbiote Spider-Man 2099 4. As a sym infused Miguel and Venom 2099 continue to wreak havoc around town, Dr Strange attempts to convince Mig he’s not acting normally. Doom 2099 asks Gabriel O’Hara to stop his brother’s rampage. But when he confronts Miguel, Venom kills Gabriel right in front of SymSpidey, setting up the final showdown next month.

Spider-Man:Shadow of the Green Goblin 3. The retcon series of Spidey’s verrry early adventures a few weeks into his superhero career. The Proto-Goblin has kidnapped Harry, and when he returns to kill Norman, Spidey is swinging by and they fight.

Spider-Woman 8. Jessica is suspicious of the new teenage hero team, The Assembly, when they pick a fight with Angar the Screamer who is protecting homeless people in a park that has been scheduled to be turned into a new building for Echidna, the new corporate front for Hydra.

Thanos Annual 1. First part of this year’s summer annuals event; The Infinity Watch. Thanos has turned Death into a new infinity stone. But he needs the other stones to keep his death stone powered and in check(it turns out Death doesn’t like being a stone). But the rest of the Infinity Stones are now in people, and they aren’t too keen on Thanos killing them and taking their stones. Also, Phil Coulsen gets resurrected in the back up story(if I remember correctly, Phil was killed by Deadpool because DP was bamboozled by the fake Hydra Cap America during Secret Empire into thinking that Coulsen was a bad guy.)

Immortal Thor 12. Thor and his siblings need to get an ancient rune from their great-grandfather, Tiwaz, so they can free their other sibling, Tyr, who is under the influence of Oblivion.

Transformers 9. Dreck. Amassing a body count of beloved characters as disposable cannon fodder is not storytelling.

Ultimate Black Panther 5. After T’Challa and Shuri figure out the green stuff is sort of a biological anti-vibranium and they can’t let it fall into Konshu’s hands. Then T’Challa goes to the secret wakandan priestess coven and they tell him the stuff can’t fall into Konshu’s hands. Then Konshu sends a powered up saboteur into Shuri’s lab and he steals the green stuff.

Ultimate Spider-Man 6. Spidey and Green Goblin get their asses handed to them by the Kingpin. Peter comes clean to the rest of his family about being a super-hero. And MJ gives him a proper super-hero name.

One more batch, and I’ll be caught up again, and then it’s back to Iron Man.

[Tom Foolery]

Ultimate X-Men 4. I’m not really digging this series. I guess Peach Momoko is not my cup. Uhmmm…Armor uses her powers and a bunch of people take pictures of her.

Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime oneshot. An evil Scrooge travels the multiverse stealing the One Dime from a bunch of different Scrooges, and our hero Scrooge gathers together a bunch of other Scrooges to stop him. Leave it to Jason Aaron to come up with most uninspiring, cliche basic bitch scenario for Marvel’s first Disney comic.

Venomverse Reborn 1. Prelude to the Venom War. Eddie is asking his future self five questions. The answers are told thru anthology stories. One is the Gamerverse Venom(aka Harry Osborn) confronting Knull during the King in Black event. The second story is a symbiote infecting the Avengers starting with Cap, and killing them one at a time from within.

Venom:Separation Anxiety 2. The Purple Man infected with part of Venom’s symbiote is trying to break into Four Freedoms Tower to steal some of his DNA that Dr Doom used in a graphic novel from the 80s. He uses his power on The Thing, and when Eddie shows up to stop Purple, it’s Thing vs Venom. Then Sunturion, a semi obscure Iron Man villain, steals the DNA out from under everyone.

Void Rivals 10. Scoozle and Plurseberg get invited down into Springer’s gigantic underground base that he built from spare parts that’s like the size of great mall of america. And he tells them the gems on their foreheads are actually power outlets for Energon and that their whole planet is actually a giant TF that ditched Cybertron near the start of the war. I hate recapping this shit. I’m gonna get more vague as the series progresses.

Wonder Woman 10. When torture and hypnosis didn’t work, the bad guys drop Diana onto an island solely inhabited by Cheetah, expecting them to kill each other. But what they don’t realize is that Diana and Barbara’s relationship is a complicated sapphic hate/love platonic frenemy relationship, and they work things out. Then the WW crew of Donna, Cassie, and Yara show up in the Invisible Jet to rescue them.

World’s Finest 28. The Doom-Mite continues his assault on Earth. Robin gets Mxylpltlk to give Jimmy Olsen his 5th dimension powers to fight him. Meanwhile Batmite, Batman and Superman are stuck in the 6th dimension, and travel back, but miss the 3rd dimension and end up in the first dimension. While Robin stalls for time, Jimmy recruits all the heroic imps from the 5th dimension, and rally’s the fight against Doom-Mite, but he smishes Batman. Mark Waid is having tons of fun with this arc, and the crestive team on this book(Waid and Dan Mora) is the only reason I’m remotely interested in DC’s summer event Absolute Power.

X-Men ‘97 4. The final issue of the prequel comic. Jean and the X-Men are at her parents’ house celebrating the news of her pregnancy. The Marauders attack. Meh.

X-Men:Heir of Apocalypse 1-2. Apoc has decided to leave Earth for Arrako(Mars) and he handpicks twelve candidates to be his successor on Earth. Armageddon Girl, Cable, Cypher, Emma Frost, Exodus, Forge, Gorgon, Sinister, Mirage, Penance, Rictor, and Laura all accept the challenge for different reasons. Then Genocide shows up, and attacks the twelve. Meanwhile, Apoc had offered the position to both Angel and Sunfire, them both having been his Horsemen. They turned him down, but when Angel finds out about the contest, he Archangel’s up and attacks Apoc on Mars.

Zatanna:Bring Down the House 1. A new five issue mini from Mariko Tamaki and Javier Rodriguez. Zatanna is doing a show at a rinky dink casino in Vegas. A mysterious woman keeps showing up in her audience. When Z confronts her, she brings up Z’s dead father. There was an Artgerm variant cover, but my guy didn’t order it, so I just got the regular cover.

And now back to Iron Man…

[Tom Foolery]

The current run of Invincible Iron Man by Gerry Duggan and (mostly)artist Juan Frigeri pretty much is one big long X-Men tie-in, as Duggan was writing both this series and the X-Men title during the back half of the Krakoan saga.

Iron Man 1-4. Having divested himself of all his stock and control in Stark Unlimited in the previous IM series so he could buy a bunch of world dominating illegal weapons of mass destruction, a nearly pauper like Tony is living in a brownstone and working out of a derelict cab company’s garage. Someone begins a targeted attack on Tony and his reputation. They blow up his townhouse, killing a neighbor, and making it look like Stark’s fault. They slip him something in the coffee at an AA meeting and make it look like he relapsed, then make sure its on the front page and the news when he wakes up in an alley. Then they stage a hostile takeover of his company, killing a few key board members along the way. Finally, the culprit is revealed as Feilong, the X-Men’s new Orchis nemesis, who now owns all of Stark’s patents and technically the Iron Man armor(s).

5-7. Tony goes to the X-Men, specifically Emma Frost who he had a run in with in the past told in a flashback issue 6, to help with their mutual proplem. Feilong is taking the resources of Stark Unlimited and making new Sentinels using IM technology. Tony has a new stealth armor(codenamed the Mark Nil) and he and War Machine head to Texas to investigate the new sentinels, but also sabotage the production facility. Rhodey is captured during the fracas, and framed for the murder of the foreman, who was killed by Nimrod after the fact.

8-10. After the events of the Hellfire massacre, Emma Frost is on the run. Tony manages to save her from a Sentinel by sending his armor away with her in it and surrendering to Feilong. After, Tony finds Emma in the Morlock tunnels where she’s discovered the extent of the massacre(including the possible deaths of her daughters, and he has kind of a breakdown as he’s lost everything. But together they begin to hatch a plan and go to Wilson Fisk, the new White King of the Hellfire club(and mutant ally, since his wife is/was a mutant) for protection and a new base of operations while Tony designs an even newer set of armor. They also fake a marriage as Emma dons a disguise as Tony’s new assistant Hazel Kendal, and trick Feilong into ‘crashing’ their Vegas wedding so Emma can read his mind for the sentinel schematicsd and a new element Howard Stark discovered and left for Tony to find but Feilong found first.

11-13. The new element is Mysterium, which just happens to be the new metal only X-Men can make because it only exist in the White Hot Room. Tony has to sneak back onto Krakoa to get some from Emma’s house and makes a cane to test its properties. Then he enlists Riri’s help to head to space to have Eitri and the dwarves build a fleet of Mysterium space ships for the mutants to head back to Earth on. Tony and Emma, along with Starfox, head to Gameworld to get all of the X-Men’s Mysterium reserves out of a vault. He keeps just enough to build his new Mark 72 armor, and sends the rest to Riri for the invasion fleet.
14. Riri meets Forge in space and they confront a Malkuan dragon who warns Riri the Mandarin Rings she’s wearing are corrupting her soul(Riri has had the rings since the end of the previous IM series. They were one of the weapons Tony used all his money to buy, and she kept them to research). After she and Forge build the fleet, she releases the Rings into space to find new hosts. Also, Tony and Emma’s fake marriage crosses a line when they bone for real.
15-18. After Orchis sends a re-animated Logan corpse to assassinate Tony, he manages to survive and breaks out his new Mysterium Armor. As the big final battle(see all the X-books for more details) commences, Orchis is tricked by double agent Firestar into thinking the mutant space fleet is landing in Australia so they send all the Sentinels there. But the fleet wasn’t really a fleet, it was body parts for a gigantic jaeger Sentinel Buster armor! The 200 ft Iron Man is trashing hundreds of 30 ft tall Sentinels. Feilong personally attacks in a War Machine sentinel armor and smashes the Sentinel Buster. Tony is about to be smushed, when Magneto shows up(see Ressurrection of Magneto) and saves him. Then Feilong fealizes Nimrod and the AI have betrayed Orchis, so he and Tony have to repair the Sentinel Buster using Magneto as a power source and they go defeat (one of) Nimrods at the final Sentinel factory.
19. There was an ongoing sublot with Rhodey in prison, continually being attacked, and She Hulk trying to get him out. Fisk had sent Living Laser and Sandman in to protect him. Tony had sent him a miniaturized WM armor in a pendant, shrunk with Pym Particles. In this issue, Rhodey uses the WM armor to break out, then he and the other two head to the Bar with No Name to recruit a bunch of super villains to use Tony’s hidden cache of super weapons that he spent his entire fortune getting out of circulation in the fight against the AI uprising. Afterwards, Rhodey pitches Tony a new super team of reformed villains(Tony jokingly calls them the ‘Work Release Avengers?’) that I’m assuming is setting up a new ongoing. It also implies that Tony buried Feilong alive in a coffin somewhere. Yikes!

There is one more issue I think. It looks like 20 is wrapping up this run next month.

Annual 1. Part of the Contest of Chaos. This issue Iron Man and Storm are hearing voices and descend on an abandoned mine in New Mexico that has a bunch of the crystals that make people angry at each other. They fight. Storm wins.

So, that was the current Iron Man series. It had some cool moments, but mostly it just made Tony a supporting player in all the X-Men drama for two years.

Up next, some IM minis and ‘J’ stuff starting with Jackpot & Black Cat and Joker.

[Tom Foolery]

I Am Iron Man 1-5. A mini by Murewa Ayodele and Dotun Akande. Commissioned for IM’s 60th anniversary. Less of a strait narrative and more of a series of stories that emphasize the traits that make Tony and Iron Man heroic. It was different, but not bad.

Jackpot: Gang War oneshot. MJ uses her new powers to help Spidey and the other heroes fight the villains fighting over NYCs underworld. Meh.

Jackpot & Black Cat 1-4. A mysterious new villain named Obscura is blackmailing victims via text into committing crimes, including Felicia. MJ sticks her nose into it and gets targeted. It turns out the villain is Felicia’s new girlfriend Amelia and she and Cat were trying to do a double cross on The Owl. But when Amelia sends some d-list villains to attack MJ, Cat switches sides to save her new bestie. MJ as a super hero is dumb.

Jean Grey 1-4. When Jean is killed during the Hellfire massacre, she psychically travels along her own past timeline, seeing if the major choices in her life would alter the present. These including me the time displaced teen X-Men not wiping their own minds when they returned to the past, or Jean having Logan pilot the doomed space shuttle instead of sacrificing herself, or stopping Madelyn Pryor’s corruption during Inferno. But ultimately she realizes nothing would’ve turned out better and comes to an understanding with the Phoenix Force, thus setting up her resurrection at the end of the Krakoa saga. Louise Simonson returned to write this series.

It’s Jeff! and It’s Jeff!:The Jeff-verse oneshots. Floppies of the digital only series featuring Jeff the Land Shark, the cutest, most adorable little character in the Marvel Universe.

Next up, Joker. He had a couple ongoings, and a mini series.

[Tom Foolery]

I’ll get back to our regularly scheduled recapping soon enough, but today I bought issue 8 of Daredevil, which was also Legacy issue 670. The main cover was a mediocre JRJr cover(which I bought) but they also had variants by J Scott Campbell and one by Frank Miller. It was $10 because it’s the 60th anniversary of Daredevil.
But the reason I’m bringing it up is because inside they had one of those cover montages that take up several pages of every single DD cover so far. EXCEPT…they screwed up. It only went up to issue 120/500 of the Brubaker run which ended in 2009. Which means, neither of Mark Waid’s runs, none of Soule’s run, neither of Zdarsky’s runs, and none of the current run. It’s missing 170 covers. Ouch. I’m gonna keep an eye on the message boards to see who else noticed.

In addition to the 3 pages of missing cover gallery, the issue is missing like 8 or 9 story pages. Haven’t heard if Marvel is printing replacement copies.

Finally got my replacement copy today. Had to e-mail Marvel directly(their response was a polite ‘not my circus, not my monkey’) and they directed me towards Penguin Random House. From there I had to give them my LCS’ info, and wait. I’d ask him every week if he’d heard about the replacement copies and he’d say ‘not yet’ but I’m wondering if he just wasn’t bothering, hoping I’d drop it after three months.
But he got two copies in. One for me, and one for another customer. I was also wondering if he was gonna charge me for it, despite it supposedly being free. But he didn’t.

Anyway, one less thing…

[Tom Foolery]

Joker stuff.

Joker 2-15, plus an Annual. Joker’s name is on the cover, but this was basically a Commissioner Gordon series. But that isn’t as sexy on the comic racks as Joker is, soo…. After the events of A-Day(where Arkham was blown up and hundreds of inmates died, including Bane) the Joker is on the run. A mysterious woman( we later find out she’s working for the Court of Owls) hires Jim Gordon to track down the Joker in Belize. There’s a Network of international billionaires who fund safehouses for supervillains around the globe; their thinking being that supervillains’ ostentatious public criminal exploits take the spotlight away from the Networks ongoing more mundane illegal exploits. So Gordon chases Joker from Belize to Paris to Majorca to Texas, and slowly uncovers the existence of this criminal Network. The Network has also secretly been gathering DNA from supervillains that stay in the safehouses to make controllable clones of said villains, answerable to them. One of these is a female Bane clone called Vengeance who has been tasked with killing Joker. There’s also a family of billionaire cannibal oil tycoons(think Texas Chainsaw meets Beverly Hillbillies) who had a son that died in Arkham and are also hunting Joker. The twist is that the mysterious woman was trying to destroy the Court of Owls from the inside because they disgraced her father, and she teamed up with Bane(who didn’t really die) to set off A-Day and frame Joker for it. Most of the cannibal billionaires get killed by Joker, Bane meets his “daughter” and they leave, and the mystery woman is mortally wounded, but she tasks Gordon with finishing what they started by outing and dismantling the Network.

Joker:Puzzlebox 1-7. Matt Rosenberg writes this murder mystery midi-series. When a majority of Batman’s rogues are captured in a warehouse, Gordon and the GCPD have to solve the Riddler’s murder by interrogating all the villains, starting with Joker. The series is mostly told thru flashback with varying unreliable accounts in the interrogation rooms. We find out Riddler had hired several fellow rogues to gather pieces of a Master Engine together that lets the user control reality, and Catwoman gathered a team to swipe them from Riddler’s team. I won’t give away the ending, but this was a fun showcase of almost every Batman villain, and Batman is barely in it.

Joker:The Man Who Stopped Laughing 1-12. When Joker returns to Gotham, he finds the other crimelords(Black Mask, Two-Face, etc) aren’t interested in sharing anymore, so he leaves for Los Angeles, but not before killing a bunch of mid-level crime bosses. One of them survives getting shot in the head, and escapes getting buried by Joker’s thugs. The survivor pulls the bag off his head to reveal…the Joker! While one Joker is wreaking havoc in LA, the other one is avoiding the Red Hood in Gotham and planning to get revenge on the impostor who tried killing him. Then the LA one realizes there’s an impostor in Gotham and returns to finish him off. Eventually you find out the Gotham version was a former henchman of Joker’s that he turned into another Joker. They have a final showdown and fall into the river. One emerges from the water with the severed head of the other, but they leave it ambiguous as to who was victorious. As both of them were acting typically Joker-ish throughout the series, it was a good showcase for his(their) homicidal mania. Pretty good series.

Next up, Judgment Day. The Marvel event that pitted the Avengers, X-Men, and Eternals against each other. Technically it’s called A.X.E. Judgment Day and should be in the ‘A’ box, but I do what I want. There were a few tie-in minis and oneshots, but less than usual for a Marvel event.

[Tom Foolery]

The A.X.E. Event, which should technically be in the ‘A’s. However, the main mini series had ‘Avengers, X-Men, Eternals in tiny lettering across the top of the title banner, and Judgment Day in huge letters below it, so one would assume the series was called Judgment Day. And once it was put in the ‘J’ box, all the subsequent tie-in oneshots went in behind it, and here we are. Besides, the ‘A’ box is already pretty stuffed, and there aren’t too many ‘J’ titles. Also, in hindsight, this is primarily an Eternals spin off event, as Kieron Gillen was writing both the main Eternals book and this event. But EXA or EAX don’t look as cool as AXE, but why should the Avengers get an extra event series based solely on their arbitrary placement in the title of an event equally split between three super teams? So, ‘J’ is the Geneva where…y’know what? It’s in the J box. Fucking deal with it. Or don’t.

FCBD. The Avengers are living in a dead celestial at the North Pole. The X-Men have figured out how to be immortal thru resurrection, and the world has just found this out thanks to Ben Urich. Druig has become Prime Eternal and thinks mutants might qualify as deviants and should be ‘corrected’. The board is set…

Eve of Judgment oneshot. Druig asks Domo to create an anti-matter bomb to drop on Krakoa, which he gets to work on. The Priest subset of Eternals(including Makkari and Ajak) have asked Phastos if its possible to create a new Celestial who will clarify their Eternal principles into aiding humanity. Phastos thinks its a bad idea, but concedes it’s possible, so they kidnap Mr Sinister from Krakoa. Ikaris and Sersi are having a moral crisis at the revelation that every time an Eternal dies, a random human is killed to bring the Eternal back to life, and this has been happening for millennia. Domo realizes the anti-matter bomb won’t work, because Krakoa is the prototype for the Eternal’s world machine, and the destruction of Krakoa would chain react into destroying the entire world. So Druig decides the alternative plan is to release Uranos and the ancient Hex instead.

Judgment Day 1-6. The main event series. Druis releases Uranos on Arrako(Mars) and the behemoth Hex Eternals on Krakoa to destroy the ‘excessive deviation’ that is immortal mutantdom. While Krakoa and Arrako fight back, The Avengers intercede, and Tony Stark helps the Eternal Priest caste with Sinister’s help, to bring a new Celestial God to life. Success! Except the new Celestial decides to judge all of humanity, and gives everyone on Earth 24 hours to be judged; thumbs up or thumbs down. If, collectively, the downs outweigh the ups, he will destroy Earth. Sersi and Jack of Knives break Starfox out of the Eternals Excluded prison, to have him use his love powers to tip the scales. Starfox says that’s cheating and it won’t work that way, but the Eternal worldmind has a vote and makes Starfox Prime Eternal and fires Druig. The three super teams send a small strike force of Iron Man, Sinister, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Makarri, Phastos, and Ajak into the Celestial to try and cut off it’s power source, but it fails. Ultimately, they try a philosophical argument against it, whether it’s qualified to judge humanity. After Sersi sacrifices herself by revealing to humanity that Eternals have been killing people since the beginning of time, the Celestial recants, brings everyone back to life, and merges with Ajak into a new supreme being.

Death to the Mutants 1-3. Tie-in mini that expands on the Krakoan battle with the giant Hex Eternals, and generally fills in blanks only briefly touched on in the main series.

Avengers oneshot, X-Men oneshot, Eternals oneshot. These three formed a triptych cover. Tony Stark, Jean Grey, and Ajak each got judged while they were inside the Celestial on their way to destroy it. The Celestial would take moments from each of their lives to see if they had learned anything from past mistakes.

Starfox oneshot. After he’s freed, Starfox has to confront Zuras, the former Prime Eternal. Eros’ father Mentor and Zuras were brothers, who had a falling out which led to the first Eternal civil war. Mentor would eventually leave Earth, go to Titan and have sons. One being Thanos. So Zuras is skeptical of Starfox’s judgment at being Prime Eternal.

Iron Fist oneshot. The new Iron Fist, Lie Lin, is judged. Marvel was trying to make fetch happen with this new Iron Fist at the time.

Judgment Day:Omega oneshot. The loose ends from the event, and from what I can tell, the Eternals ongoing, were all wrapped up here.

Eh. As far as Marvel events go, this was pretty average. There were some cool moments. Capt America got killed defying the Celestial, and the X-Men broke protocol, making him the first non-mutant to ever get resurrected. I haven’t read the Eternals book yet, and I hadn’t gotten this far in Jason Aaron’s Avengers run yet, but overall in the X-Men Krakoan saga, this was barely a speed bump. The biggest thing was Uranos fucking up Mars, and I think Magneto died defeating him. But even Magneto came back, soo…it was a diverting series, but ‘things were pretty much the same’ afterwards. Imagine a giant ass alien robot god gave everyone on Earth pause to maybe try and be better people, and then the next day, they all went back to being bigoted anti-mutant pieces of shit.

Next up, the end of Bendis’ Justice League run, and the death of the League!(which lasted hmmm..maybe two months.)