So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Tom Foolery]

Hmmm…there was more in the ‘P’ pile than I thought.

Omega Men 3. Facsimile Reprint of the first appearance of Lobo. Rocking an orange and purple leotard, dude barely resembles the look he’s famous for.

Outsiders 1. A new 12 issue series, Luke Fox recruits Batwoman and the Drummer(from Planetary, but now somehow she’s in the main DCU) to lead a group that hunts down the unexplainable mysteries of the world. First issue was meh.

Penguin 1-9. I’ve been reading this Tom King series as it comes out. Awhile back in the main Batman book, Penguin faked his own death and moved to Metropolis, leaving his children in charge of his criminal empire in Gotham. When a foul mouthed Govt agent blackmails him by incarcerating his new special lady friend, he has to recruit a new team, and returns to Gotham to reclaim his throne. Fucking fantastic writing every damn issue.

Phoenix Song:Echo 1-5. Echo became the new Phoenix in the Avengers book. But now she doesn’t know how to control her new powers. So she goes on a spirit quest or whatever. But then The Adversary shows up and starts erasing her ancestors so she will have never existed, so she has to start time jumping to defeat him. Eventually Forge shows up and she looks inward and blah blah blah. Yawn.

Monica Rambeau:Photon 1-4. Monica is also on a journey of self discovery because apparently there’s no trauma in her life and she’s an uninteresting character, but she’s in a movie so we have to do five issues about her and she’s jumping around the multiverse trying to figure out why some macguffin stone is messing with her powers. Ohmigod. This was a five issue series, and I didn’t know I was missing the fifth issue until I read them, but I’m in no rush to find out how it ends because I could care less.

Poison Ivy 1-6, 8, 9. Something happened where Ivy was two different Ivies and Harley and some other people reintegrated the two Ivies and Ivy got mad at them for reintegrating them without her permission or whatever. Anyway, this takes place after that. Ivy is dying from some internal mushroom disease, so she’s traveling across the country poisoning people with Cordyceps before she succumbs. That’s literally the first arc. She meets some people, then kills them and leaves. They aren’t bad people, just like waitresses in diners or a guy walking his dog. She’s trying to cause a mass extinction event. Then she runs across the Floronic Man, Jason Woodrue because that’s literally the only villain she has and every time I read a Poison Ivy series, he shows up and is the bad guy. Ugh. Anyway, in defeating him she decides maybe not to kill humanity and moves to Seattle or whereever. Then in issue 9, Harley shows up and its 22 pages of hot, graphic lesbian sex. I was only buying it because I was getting the Variant covers and my guy stopped ordering them, so I stopped the book. It’s on like 17 or 18 now.

Poison Ivy Uncovered. A oneshot that collects a bunch of different variant covers from the series.

Power Girl Special. Johnny Sorrow has unleashed four different psychotropic villains who are fucking with everyone’s minds on Earth, and only Power Girl and Lilith, her bestie/roomie(also known as Omen, she used to be a Titan or an Outsider or both). For some reason, Power Girl is going by the name Paige now. I thought her secret identity was Karen Starr and I was super confused and had to go look up a wiki to see if I was getting some alt version of her confused. But nope, same Power Girl, just decided to randomly change her name. Anyway, there was an event called Lazarus Planet and there was green rain, and it gave Paige an extra super power where she can punch thru dimensions. She’s also not super tight with the rest of the Super Family on account of her being the Earth-2 version of Supergirl trapped in this world now(None of this is in the book, btw, the editors just assume you buy every single DC book and all this backstory is a given) but short version, she defeats the bad guys and Supergirl lets her have Streaky the Supercat. I got this issue for the Artgerm cover.

Power Girl 1-2. Got the first couple issue of her new ongoing, which is up to issue 8 or 9, but I stopped at 2. Paige is working at the Daily Planet for editor-in-chief Lois Lane as a reporter, but she’s also a scientist raising money for whatever science lab she works at. And there’s an alien arms dealer blah blah blah. Also her new name? Lilith keeps calling her P.G which is shortened to peegee, then to peege/peej. Which Jon turns into Paige. Get it? Oye.

Power Girl Uncovered. A oneshot with a bunch of various covers from over the years. Because of the boob window on her costume.

Power Pack:Into the Storm 1-4. Louise Simonson and June Brigman came back to do a retro series that pretty much picks up right after the original series. A renegade Snark princess and the Brood team to go after Kofi and a different Snark princess, and the Pack get involved, including Franklin. Because the Brood are involved, they go to get help from Kitty Pryde and Logan, but Storm shows up to help them instead. And there’s the usual, ‘oh we have to keep our parents from finding out we have powers’ prepubescent angst. There’s one more issue that hasn’t come out yet. If you liked the original series, it’s a nice nostalgic trip back to that era and style of storytelling. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful.

Predator 1-2. Only picked up the first couple issues. A little girl’s family is killed by a Predator and she grows up to become a Predator hunter looking for the specific one that killed them. It was fairly decent actually, but I’m just not that into Predator.

Punchline:The Gotham Game 1-6. After she was acquitted in court, Punchline is sort of a celebrity in Gotham. She uses this to reform the Royal Flush game and make a move on the criminal underworld. After a turf war with Eiko and Catwoman, she takes on Black Mask and his crew. Harper Row’s brother’s ex-boyfriend is one of Punchline’s gang members, so the brother gets kidnapped, and Bluebird and Batman get in the middle of the gang feud. It was an okay series.

I already read and complained about the two Punisher books, so up next is the ‘R’ pile.

[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.

[Tom Foolery]

The ‘R’ pile.

Realm of X 1-4. After the Hellfire Gala massacre, several mutants get shunted to Vanaheim of the Ten Realms when they go thru their Krakoa Gate. Magik gets depowered, so they can’t teleport out, and someone is masking Vanaheim from Sif’s all seeing eyes on Asgard. It turns out Opal Luna Saturnyne is planning an invasion of Vanaheim, and an ancient prophecy names Magik, Marrow, Dani Moonstar, and Typhoid Mary as four warriors who will defend the realm. But Saturnyne’s plan hinges on Curse getting an ancient power source to help Saturnyne’s armies win, and Curse sees thru her bullshit and gives the power to Magik instead. Torunn Grønbekk’s story starts out slow, but builds to a pretty solid conclusion.

Red Goblin 1-10. Normie Osborn, the ten year old grandson of Norman, is given a proto-symbiote named Rascal by his best friend Dylan Brock aka the current Venom. Normie and Rascal aren’t bonded yet, but they come up against the new Goblin King, Phil Urich, when he kidnaps Norman. Red Goblin rescues Norman, who figures out Normie’s secret. Issue 5 was a crossover with Carnage and Miles. Then an arc where Urich kidnaps one of Normie’s classmates, but it goes tits up, so Urich sends Crossbones to clean up the failed kidnapping with no witnesses. Rascal goes feral and Norman’s Gold Goblin and eventually Venom need to step in. This series written by Alex Paknadel was really great and it low sales killed it before it could find an audience. But I look forward to him on other books.

Red Hood:The Hill 0, 1-3. A current mini series where Jason Todd returns to Gotham and gets embroiled in a turf war in The Hill neighborhood. The writer is trying to stuff way too many new characters that are forgettable into this series. A bunch of new vigilantes with names like Junk, Chaff, Soup, Bark, Clock(those aren’t their names, but they’re one syllable names that are equally unmemorable) and a forgettable villain.

Red Sonja Valentine’s Day Special 2022. I only got it for the Sozomaika cover. Also have a FCBD Red Sonja issue from Dynamite that reprints an old Marvel issue.

Reptil 1-4. The dinosaur themed teenage super hero that got his start on the SuperHeroSquad cartoon gets a mini. He moves to LA and he and his cousins have to fight a villain that claims to know what happened to Reptil’s parents. They stop the guy from unleashing dinosaurs from a pocket dimension full of dinosaurs called Dinosaur World. Meh. Wasn’t awful. In the brief recap of his previous adventures, they completely ignored his almost dying on Arcade’s Avengers Arena murder island.

Resistance:Uprising 1-6. J. Michael Straczynski’s follow up to his original AWA mini about a deadly virus that kills millions of people, but leaves thousands of survivors with super powers. In this sequel series, the govt is attempting to coerce and consolidate the powered people into a super army and a group opposing their fascist intimidation tactics. Pretty solid read. I wish I had more funds or I’d be buying a lot more of these AWA titles.

Robin 1-2, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17. A sporadic collection of Damian’s first ongoing solo title. He heads to a secret island for a fighting tournament against other assassin’s where the prize is immortality. It ends up being run by his ancient great grandmother, the mother of Ras Al Ghul. He teams up with his mom and grandfather to defeat her. Then there’s a crossover with the Batman and Deathstroke books for Shadow War, before he tells both his parents he’s not living with either of them and heads back and starts a secret base on the Lazarus Island.

Tim Drake:Robin 1-3, 7. The book only lasted ten issues. After coming out as bi, Tim needs to “find himself”(because the 200 issues of his own ongoing that lasted a decade and a half were insufficient for him to reconcile any character flaws or self doubts he may have had). And moves onto a houseboat in Gotham Harbor. When a new villain starts taunting him with serial murders, rather than asking the Bat family for help, he keeps bungling thru the investigation on his own despite being the main suspect( the writer Meghan Fitzmartin doesn’t seem to know that’s its been established over the last 30 years of continuity that Tim is the best detective in the Bat Family) and the art by Riley Rossmo is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Everybody has giant pumpkin heads and stringbean bodies that would make Prince look like Capt America. Also, Tim’s new “identity” seems to exclusively be that he’s in a relationship with a dude. Tim is done dirty for this series. Wretched.

Rogue&Gambit 1-5. Destiny comes to Rogue to ask her to find Eden Fesi, aka Manifold for reasons she can’t divulge. When Rogue and Remy go to find Manifold, they come across a plot by the new Power Broker(last seen in Ant-Man a few years ago) who is brainwashing heroes and villians like Electro and Juggernaut and selling them to the highest bidders. When Rogue gets nabbed, Gambit has to get thru to his wife to stop the Power Broker.

Rook:Exodus 1. A new Image book by Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok. I only bought it to round up my buy pile to get a free book.

Rorschach 7-12. I previously read this follow up to Watchmen written by Tom King as it was coming out. Highest recommendations.

Runaways 36-38. The end of Rainbow Rowell’s recent ongoing. There’s still plenty of issues I’m missing from this run, but I’ve really enjoyed the ones I have found. Rowell’s next project was She-Hulk so I’m looking forward to that.

Up next, the ‘S’s. Sabretooth, Saga, Scarlet Witch, Shang-Chi, etc etc. I’d say about 75% of the box is finished.

[jjreason]

Nice quality control on the DD book. What a mess.

[Tom Foolery]

Here’s the next batch of ‘S’ books. Saga was/is after Sabretooth, but I skipped reading it because I want to give each issue time to absorb, so I didn’t plow thru it like everything else on this read thru. To be honest, there’s a lot of mediocrity from Marvel, and I didn’t want Saga tainted by it. I’m not saying the rest of this stuff is rubbish, but I think we can all agree Saga is different and deserves the distinction.

Sabretooth 1-5. Victor Creed was the first mutant subjected to Krakoa’s new laws, and the first to be put into the ‘Pit’ for it. As it’s soul occupant, he constructed whatever fantasies he wanted. Wanton repeated killing of his enemies became boring, so he branched out and created epic cosmic space adventures for himself. These also became boring, so he gradually recreated the reality of the Pit to suit himself. When other mutants were convicted and sent down(all of their crimes were complete bullshit by the way, even Creed’s when you think about it; he was sent on a black ops mission BY the Quiet Council and killed some humans on the way out. When he got back to Krakoa, they were like y’know what? We’ve decided killing humans is against the law, which you’ve retroactively broken…) Anyway, Madison Jeffries, Nekra, Oya, Melter and Third Eye are all subjugated to Creed’s new reality. He’s figured out how to manipulate the Pit, which is an extension of Krakoa, into manifesting versions of the prisoners on the surface. They, in turn, begin provoking the disenfranchised population (aka anyone who’s not the A-list ‘cool kids’) into a rebellion. Doug Ramsay/Krakoa relaizes what Victor is up to and offers to free him if he’ll kindly fuck off and leave Krakoa. Then Doug frees the rest of the prisoners, which have added Toad(for killing Wanda) and Nanny and the Orphan Maker with one caveat. They have to track down the newly freed Victor and make sure he never returns…permanently. Doug gives this newly formed Exiles team a deathseed to give to Creed when they find him.

Sabretooth and the Exiles 1-5. Follow up mini. Victor immediately gets nabbed by Orchis scientist Dr. Barrington, working for a mysterious General Contractor, who had several Orchis sites where they are experimenting on mutants. The Exiles rescue Victor from the first site and reluctantly team up with him to track down Barrington and destroy the remaining sites. They end up rescuing thousands of mutants and forming a new exiled society of unwanted mutants called the Maroons(it’s an historical reference to escaped slaves living in the swamps of the southern United States. Look it up.) Meanwhile, the General Contractor turns out to be Creed’s son Graydon, whom he rescued from Hell when he was briefly “good” from the AXIS event awhile back. Graydon ended up becoming a interdimensional Sabretooth killer and Creed is rescued by some alt universe versions of himself, setting up the current Sabretooth War going on over in Wolverine’s book. Whew. Both minis were pretty decent, pointing out the obvious fact that Professor Douchemayor and his Quiet Council were hyprocritical dickwads from the get go and Krakoa was always destined to rot from the inside.

Scar 1. Dynamite has the Disney license and was doing mini series based of several animated villains. I started buying the first issues of some of them, but didn’t follow thru.

Scarlet Witch 1-10. There was a mini event called Darkhold where Wanda absorbed the elder god Cthon and the evil book Darkhold into her soul for safekeekping or whatever. So writer Steve Orlando begins a new chapter in Wanda’s life where she has opened an occult shop in some rinky dink New York town. In this shop, she and her new assistant Darcy Lewis(they brought the Kat Dennings character over from the MCU) sell mundane potions amd whatnot, but Wanda has also built the Last Door, which people in need can walk thru when they have nowhere else to go and Wanda will help them. Not an entirely uncool premise, but also it’s such a deus ex machina because the writer can just come up with whatever excuse he needs for Wanda to go on whatever adventure he wants her to because the catalyst ‘came thru the door’. Also, the first several excuses to walk thru the door happen to be part of Wanda’s complicated extended family. Like Viv Vision, her ex husband’s synth daughter who’s dead mother happens to be made from Wanda’s mind engrams. Or a space amazon, who’s cult was wiped out by skrulls or kree(I can’t remember) and guess who is the current Emperor of the Kree/Skrull empire? Hulkling, the husband of Wanda’s son Billy. And then there’s Joseph, the clone of her used-to-be father Magneto, who was brought back to life to be used as a pawn by a a new villain, Hexfinder intent on killing all witches. Also, in addition to the convenient door plot, Wanda’s power set is magic, which is whatever the writer needs it to be to get her out of any jam. It’s not a bad series perse, but the convenience of it all is very obvious. The book took a brief hiatus after ten issues for the current Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver mini. See below.

Scarlet Witch Annual 1. The Contest of Chaos story that ran thru a bunch of the annuals last summer, where heroes are fighting each other, kicked off in this prologue where a younger Agatha Harkness is recently resurrected and looking to stir up trouble.

Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver 1-3. The Wizard, who has been power upgraded by a mysterious ancient entity, is trying to capture or kill, or steal their powers or something and Wanda and Pietro, while bickering and having their usual family drama are teaming up to stop him and figure out who the mystery person is. Once the mini is over, a new ongoing Scarlet Witch series relaunches later this summer.

Scorched 1, 3, 5. A Spawn team book featuring She-Spawn, Gunslinger Spawn, Medieval Spawn, and Redeemer. I got the first issue in a blind box, and the other two were variant covers homaging the orgininal Jim Lee X-Men #1 covers, but I couldn’t even track all those down. Didn’t even read these.

Secret Invasion 1-5. Ryan North(man I loved his Squirrel Girl run and I’m looking forward to his current FF ongoing) had Maria Hill embroiled in a new skrull invasion storyline. I’m assuming this coincided with the D+ series, but this was way more interesting. Lots of twists and second guesses about what’s true and what’s not.

Sentry 1-4. After Knull ripped Sentry in half during King in Black(and after a Dr Strange story arc where some magic dudes tried resurrecting him) the Sentry’s powers get divided up amongst several regular people. While Jessica Jones and Misty Knight investigate who got affected, one of the people begins killing the rest to absorb their powers. The last person, a woman with cerebral palsy, manages to beat that guy and christens herself Solarus with the intent of learning how to control her new powers and become a hero. Meh.

Shang-Chi 1-6. Following his 2020 mini, Shang is trying to rule his father’s criminal empire with his newfound siblings and use its worldwide reputation for good. The first arc in this ongoing is just an excuse to guest star Spider-Man, Wolverine, Cap, the FF, Iron Man, amd Thor as his father’s organization has a reputation for being the bad guys, and none of his allies trust him. Also, his brother stole a cosmic cube, so that doesn’t help. Also, someone is secretly gathering a group of Shang’s adversaries together.
7-8. The secret someone is Shang’s grandfather, the leader of the secret realm of Ta-Lo(from the movie) and he attacks Shang and his siblings and kidnaps Shang’s mother, who they recently discovered wasn’t dead all this time, but trapped in the Negative Zone all these years.
9-12. Shang and his siblings break into Ta-Lo to rescue his mother and confront his grandfather. The ghost of Shang’s father leads him to the ancient Ten Rings(again, the movies) and he uses them to defeat his grandfather. The Jade Emperor(basically the Odin of Chinese mythology) allows Shang to keep the Rings. Which leads into…

Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings 1-3. Shang doesn’t feel comfortable using the rings because he’s afraid they’ll corrupt him. When AIM or Hydra try to break into the vault where he keeps them, he moves them to a different secreter vault. Then his former allies from MI6 show up and ask him to go on an adventure, but really, they’re secretly double crossing him and stealing the rings from the super secret new vault.
4-6. These ancient dudes show up and take the rings and announce there’s going to be a tournament and whoever wins get the rings. A bunch of villains from Shang’s old ongoing from the 70s-80s show up and compete for the rings, but Shang wins and with the victory he feels confindent he can wield them and not keep them in a vault.

Shang-Chi:Master of the Ten Rings oneshot. Writer Gene Luen Yang finished off his run with this oneshot. Some former members loyal to his father are trying to resurrect his dad. The ritual opens up a time portal to the 1800s where Shang has to team up with his not yet corrupted and evil father and uncle to stop some corrupt govt officials and british importers. Shang inadvertantly gives his father the idea to seach for the rings in the first place, but makes peace with his dad before returning to the present. Yang had the unenviable task of updating this character from what even he admits were the rascist stereotypes of the character’s inception and it’s problematic connection’s to the Fu Manchu book series it was handcuffed to. Given all that, I guess he did a fairly admirable job over the course of 24 issues of keeping the history intact, but creating a new mythology and integrating the MCU lore into the comics. I remember I was eyerolling at the first mini he did, but then I realized I’ve never read any of his original series, and none of the subsequent books I read starring Shang were very memorable, so who gives a shit if he shredded all that to come up with something new.

Up next, the last of the box has She-Hulk, Silk, Silver Surfer. Then I’ll either do the next round of catch up reading(which is now Nightwing all the way to the X-books. It’s a fairly big pile that accumulated quickly) or I’ll take time to read Saga. Or I’ll do those, but the other way around.

[Tom Foolery]

The end of the box.

She-Hulk 1-15. Rainbow Rowell relaunched Jen’s book yet again. I haven’t read any of Jason Aaron’s recent Avengers stuff, but she was like dumb, overstrong Hulk in that book, and she’s back to “normal” in this series. Jen moves back to NYC and reluctantly takes a job with her old nemesis Mallory Book. Book says ‘cape’ clients are off limits, but their lawfirm amusingly begins attracting both heroes and villains. Jen also gets into a fight with Titania right off the bat, but they both realize they are just looking for an outlet, so they start a fight club that Volcana, Ben Grimm, and Mayor Cage eventually join. The biggest arc of the series is the return of the long thought dead Jack of Hearts, who crashes thru Jen’s window in a state of confusion. In comics terms, Jack’s been dead since before Bendis’ Disassembled arc way back in 2004, where he infamously showed up all zombified and blew up the mansion, killing Scott Lang. As Jen and Jack slowly piece together where he’s been and how he’s alive, they grow closer and start seeing each other. We find out Jack was being used as a battery by a couple trying to recreate the gamma accident that turned Banner into the Hulk so they can also be Hulks. In the second half of the series, there’s a subplot where Jen begins flirting with a master thief calling himself Scoundrel, who’s stealing parts from the FF and others. When She-Hulk finds out the parts are for a bomb and Scoundrel’s client is an alien warlord who wants to blow up Manhattan, she and her fight club friends stop the attack, and Jack absorbs the bomb blast in central park. The series took a brief break and returned as…

Sensational She-Hulk 1-7. Jen is dealing with the Hulk couple and gets an unflattering picture of her “raging” published on the website Threats&Menaces, then she and Jack take a trip to an alien resort and they meet a woman from Jack’s past; Ganymede. This turns out to be the same chick from the Scarlet Witch series I read last week, and I had to look her up. She’s actually from the Silver Surfer book from the 90s and then had several appearances in the Cosmic Powers book from that era. She has barely appeared in a dozen issues, so she’s a fairly obscure character. It’s weird that after twenty years she would pop up in two different books I had read within days of each other.

The Shield 1. Rob Liefeld rebooted the Archie Comics super hero line with this oneshot. That is, until the publisher did a second printing cover that ruined the “surprise” twist in the first issue and Liefeld got pissed, so this was the only issue. Hah.

Silk 1-5. Cindy has been promoted to cub reporter at JJonah Jameson’s online magazine. A young tech mogul, who turns out to be the daughter of Silvermane, has teamed up with a cat-demon to take down rival crime gangs in Queens. But when the cat woman ends up having ulterior motives to resurrect some ancient demon, Silk and the tech CEO have to team up to stop her.

Silk 1-5. A second mini has an ancient Korean witch who would steal life energy from priests back in the 1200s Korea, finds herself in present day NYC as part of a museum exhibit. She begins draining life energy from media influencers and aging them. Silk gets aged before she destroys the witch’s amulet, releasing all the ‘youth’ and then defeats her.

Silk 1-5. A third mini(if the Legacy numbering wasn’t on all these issues, god help anyone trying to figure out which back issues they need because none of them had mini subtitle for each arc. They were all just Silk.) where the tech mogul is back and she’s got Cindy strapped to a machine that makes her think she’s dreaming different movie scenarios, like film noir, westerns, pirate films etc. Cindy’s brother gets Wong’s help to free Silk so they can stop the tech mogul after she turned herself into some dream-demon hybrid. They are really trying to set this chick up as Cindy’s arch nemesis.

Silver Surfer:Rebirth 1-5. Ron Marz and Ron Lim return for a retro series set sometime after the Infinity Trilogy. Someone has stolen the Reality Gem from Thanos’ safekeeping as part of Adam Warlock’s Infinity Watch, and he enlists Surfer’s help to find out who took it. It turns out to be Tyrant. Fun throwback series. Marz writes a solid 90s era story, and I’m always down for Ron Lim Silver Surfer. There’s a great part where Norrin meets up with alternate versions of himself(because of the Reality Gem) and it’s Kirby’s, Buscema’s, Moebius’, and Allred’s versions of the Surfer, all drawn by Lim. Fun!

Silver Surfer:Rebirth:Legacy 1-5. A sequel to the Warlock:Rebirth mini that was a sequel to the SS:Rebirth mini. Marz and Lim are back again. This time Surfer convinces Genis-Vell to ‘borrow’ the Time Gem to go visit his dad in the past before he died. Twist! The Surfer is actually Mephisto in disguise and the entire thing is a plot to get Surfer to erase himself from having ever existed. Which fails. Another fun series, and we get to see Frankie Raye’s Nova again briefly.

Silver Surfer:Ghost Light 1-5. So, they took this character who had ONE appearance in a Silver Surfer book back in the 60s and then died, and they give him this entire back story, supporting cast, and bring him back and give him super powers. Surfer is basically a guest star in his own book.

Sinister Sons 1. Zod and Sinestro have two petulant bratty little shits. They meet and team up. Bleh. Only got the first issue.

Sins of Sinister. This was an 11 issue story arc that begins in a oneshot, then follows thru three different minis; Immoral X-Men, Storm and the Brotherhood, and Nightcrawlers, then finishes in a final oneshot called Dominion. Each issue of the three minis takes place ten years, 100 years, and 1000 years in the future. The premise is that Mr Sinister is using Moira clones to test run alternate futures using her mutant power, then killing the clone and coming back to the “main” timeline with the results. In this particular timeline, the clone(s) get stolen, so he’s stuck there and we watch the natural progression of his Sinister-tainted Quiet Council slowly take over the Earth, then the galaxy, and Storm’s small band of resistance standing in their way. The four Sinister clones; Orbis Steallaris, Dr Stasis, Mother Righteous, and Sinister plotting to become the Dominion. The end result is that Sinister figures out somebody already ascended to the Dominion, and since the Dominion exists in all times equally, it has always been and he realizes it’s not him. Before they kill the Moira clone, Sinister uploads all the data and Mother Righteous sends a single mutant hybrid back with the results so that Rasputin IV is reconstituted on Krakoa in the ‘main’ timeline and then she lets the Quiet Council know they are all compromised with Sinister’s DNA, so Xavier, Emma, Exodus, and Hope voluntarily imprison themselves in the Pit. This was a huge chunk of the narrative I was missing in reading the X-Books. In hindsight, I should’ve read this at the appropriate time. I kinda connected the dots without it, but this would’ve made everything a lot clearer.

Up next, catching up on all the current books again!

[Diabolical]

She-Hulk/Sensational She-Hulk have been really fun, lighter reads.

[Tom Foolery]

She-Hulk/Sensational She-Hulk have been really fun, lighter reads.

I agree. The Doombot trial had me giggling. “My client was in an In-n-Out Burger while Dr Doom was taking over the world.” and he’s yelling “I am Doom!” off panel. That shit is hilarious.
I also forgot to mention they held off breaking the 4th wall until the perfect moment in issue 9 or 10. I’m glad Rowell realizes that’s part of her “power set” or whatever.

[Tom Foolery]

This commences the next batch of staying on top of the current stuff.

Nightwing 84. Part of my FCBD purchases, but it’s going in the current box. Dick has just announced to the world his plan to reinvigorate Bludhaven with Alfred’s money. So naturally, he heads back to Gotham to participate in the Fear State crossover. Not realizing Babs’ comms are compromised, he heads to a rendezvous that is really an ambush. Batman also shows up and he and NW bond over a little facist ass kicking.

Nightwing Annual 2024. The secret origin of Bea Bennet, the bartender Dick was giving the business when he was an amnesiac ‘Ric’ the cab driver after KGBeast shot him in the head. They gave her this elaborate backstory where her mother was killed and she was raised by Pirates, then she got recruited by Spyral to spy on Checkmate, and she was assigned to look after Dick Grayson when he lost his memory. After the Leviathan event where ALL the spy agencies died in one afternoon, she just kept her head down and kept pretending to be Dick’s gf. Then she finds out her mother was a double agent for Checkmate spying on Spyral and that her handler for her entire career was the one who ordered her mother killed. After that, she decided to embrace her Pirate Princess legacy. There can’t be just normal people in comics anymore.

Power Pack:Into the Storm 5. The conclusion of Simonson and Brigman’s retro series. The kids have to find a way to break Franklin free from a rogue Snark princess trying to siphon his powers, and then get back home before their parents wake up.

Photon 5. FCBD purchase. Monica teams up with Starfox(or maybe an alt timeline Starfox) to try and figure out what’s missing from her life. And after five pointless issues, she comes to the conclusion that she doesn’t need to know what’s missing from her life. GAAAAAAHHHHH! Eve L. Ewing is now on my shitlist for shitty writers.

Robin 14, 16, 17. 14 was the penultimate issue of Shadow War where Geo-Force is revealed as the bad guy. 16 was the first part of a story where Lord Death Man sneaks back onto Damian’s new island lair so he can hook up with Damian’s grandmother. 17 was the final issue, I just got the Variant cover.

The Boy Wonder 1. A new Black Label mini series by Juni Ba. It’s sort of a compressed retelling of Damian’s evolution into the role of Robin by way of his interactions with all the previous Robins. The first issue had Nightwing and Batgirl shadowing Damian on one of his first solo outings as Robin, and he witnesses Dick being decent to the victims they save. Juni Ba has a unique art style.

Scorched 6. FCBD purchase. Didn’t bother reading it. It’s just the third of the four X-Men #1 homage covers I was looking for.

Spider-Boy 6. Bailey and his friend Connie have been captured by Madame Monstrosity. MM turns Connie into a Pigeon-girl. Then demands Bailey to explain why she can’t remember him. She then reveals her cat-lady maid is actually Bailey’s mom, who also can’t remember him. To save his mom, Bailey surrenders.

Miles Morales 19. The final showdown with Rabble. While his allies are fighting the Rabble-controlled task force cape killers of Agent Gao, Miles is getting his ass beat by Rabble, until he manages to use one of her own power dampening collars on her, cutting her off from her empathic connection to the machines. Then he brings his clone-brother Shift home to meet his parents.

Superior Spider-Man 6. Spidey and Doc Ock manage to contain Supernova in a special cell. But then Ock double crosses Spidey and takes off with his new ‘power source’. Peter and Ana Maria are left to try and diffuse the special gauntlets Ock made before they blow up an entire nearby town. Meanwhile, Bailey has been compromised by the hyper intelligent swarm of Man-Spiders that Peter had in his lab, turning Bailey into the (evil and dickish)Superior Spider-Boy. And when Peter and Ana Maria get back to Manhattan, they find out everybody in NYC is now under the influence of the altered spiders. Yikes!

Spectacular Spider-Men 2. There’s an insidious VR program fulfilling people’s wishes and fantasies. But Miles and Peter are down in the sewers dealing with Vermin clones. Not much happened this issue, but the banter between Peter and Miles is pretty fun.

Spider-Man:Shadow of the Green Goblin 2. Set very early in Spidey’s career. The Proto-Goblin kidnaps Harry to return him to his long thought dead mother in exchange for her curing the Goblin so he can return to his family. Gwen and Captain Stacy are dealing with Gwen’s mom losing her battle with cancer. And Spidey fights Sandman at a bank robbery, until they are both so exhausted, they call a time out and go hang out on a rooftop and chat.

[Tom Foolery]

Spider-Punk:Arms Race 3. I leafed thru this. I am not feeling this series at all.

Spider-Woman 7. Jess has relocated to San Francisco. She meets up with her former boyfriend/landlord. The. She decided to break into a new corporate HQ for a company that’s secretly a front for Hydra. She ends up fighting Zzaxx, the electric monster dude, but then a mysterious new team of teenage(ish) superheroes shows up called The Assembly and defeats him/it.

Thor 8. Thor confronts his mother Gaea about having released the Utgard-Loki and she confirms it was her. But she said really it was humanity’s fault since they’re treating the Earth like a dumpster and if Thor was really Earth’s protector, he’d do something about it. So Thor heads to Roxxon, since he’s been wanting to beat the shit out of Darrio Aggar for awhile.

Thor 9-10. While confronting Aggar, the Minotaur, Thor is feeling sluggish. Because Roxxon has secretly bought the publishing rights to Thor’s comics and the Enchantress is slowly rewriting his history with magic. They show him a comic starring Chad Hammer as Roxxon’s Thor, then he gets into a fight with the impostor Thor in front of a bunch of people. Then Enchantress and Executioner secretly back stab Aggar and kill him with Thor’s axe. When Thor calls his axe back to him after killing the fake Thor in front of everyone, its dripping blood, so now Thor is implicated in TWO deaths!

Roxxon Presents:Thor 1. The comic they showed Thor, starring Chad Hammer. I couldn’t even get thru the first page without dying of laughter. Go find this issue and read a satirical ode to corporate branding.

Thunderbolts 4. The series concludes with Bucky and his team invading Latveria to finish off the Red Skull, by tricking Dr Doom into delivering the final blow. Eh. It won’t stick.

Thundercats 2-3. This series wasn’t as interesting as I thought it could be. Dropped.

Energon Universe oneshot. Are you fucking kidding me?? This is just the FCBD I got on Saturday for FREE, but with a different cover and a $4 price tag. Fuck you very much, Kirkman, you greedy no talent shitclog.

Ultimate Black Panther 1-3. The secret society of criminals running the world have Ra and Khonshu, collectively called Moon Knight, assigned to Africa. They are perturbed Wakanda hasn’t fallen, so they are employing a traitor within T’Challa’s inner circle and engaged a suicide bomber to kill T’Challa’s father. Meanwhile, Killmonger and Ororo have found a secret underground cavern with an ancient energy sphere and invite T’challa to consider there is something sinister happening. The first issue had an allotment problem and my guy never received his copies. By the time they got it sorted, the book had skyrocketed and they were only offering second prints.

Ultimate Spider-Man 1-4. Peter didn’t get his powers until he was an adult married to MJ with two kids. Peter’s daughter finds out his secret identity and then helps him design his classic red and blue costume. He meets the heroic Green Goblin and they unmask. Then Peter and MJ go out to dinner with Harry Osborn and his wife, Gwen Stacy. Gwen offers to finance Uncle Ben and Jonah’s new newspaper venture. It’s fun watching Hickman totally circumvent expectations with this series.

Ultimate X-Men 1-2. Uhmmmm….somebody slapped X-Men on a manga.

[Diabolical]

Dammit. Stupid Spiders and #4s.
I missed Ultimate Spider-Man #4.
And I recently realized I missed Spider-Boy #4.