Want to keep up with the ever-advancing continuity porn of the DC and Marvel universes, but simply don’t have the time or money to buy every ongoing? We’re here to help. The Weekend Week In Review aims to give you ((usually) very) brief synopses of what happened in a select few of DC and Marvel’s titles – with a helping of sarcastic commentary – so that when some nasty old writer wants to punish you by heavily referencing a title you didn’t pick up, you won’t be left in the dark. Of course, that means that spoilers are in abundance, but I figure that you could figure that out.
Also, this week’s Weekend Week In Review marks one full year of snark and thinking we are far more clever and funny than we really are. Thanks a bunch to everyone who considers us entertaining enough for this to be one of the site’s most popular columns!
After a traditional Scott Snyder opening reminiscing about the past in a “clever” way that tied into the goings-ons of the story at hand – this one about how all the bats in Wayne Manor were chased out by owls when the Waynes first moved in – ‘Night of the Owls’ resumed with full force in “Batman” #9. Bruce fought off the Talons in the Batcave, as the temperature slowly dropped to a point where their re-animatronics would fail. Though he was fighting for his life, it almost seemed like their undead nature meant Bruce was having the time of his life:
Things got intense, and it seemed that Batman was going to finally bested, until he caught the Talons by surprise and attempted to turn the tables with one of my favorite Bat-tricks:
Seriously, the mechanical attack tyrannosaurus never gets old. The surprise only lasted for so long though, and, once again, it seemed like Bruce was at the end of his rope. Remember that earlier monologue about the owls wiping out the bats, though? That story wasn’t finished. Apparently, the bats only left Wayne Manor for a short while, and then returned “with a vengeance” – and, right on time, a bunch of bats swarmed the cave and disrupted the Talons. Remember, undead killing machines just don’t know how to calmly deal with flying rodents. In the time it took for the Talons to regain their senses, the temperature had dropped low enough for the Talons to be rendered immobile; one almost made it out of the cave, but Bruce won the badass of the week award by ramming him with the Batmobile. After a brief update on what everyone else was doing to save those the Court had targeted, and a caption telling us to read “Detective Comics” – yeah fucking right – Bruce hit the town on the lookout for Lincoln March. You know, that guy from the first few issues? Yeah, I’ve forgotten, too. Batman was too late – March had managed to incapacitate his Talon assassin somehow, but had received a nice knife in the chest as a reward. With his last words, March gave Bruce a sheet of paper containing three names he had traced back to the Court. Time for Bruce to bring the hurt to them.
In the backup, we learned that Court was somehow responsible for what happened to Thomas and Martha Wayne, as a Talon killed Aflred’s father as he tried to escape that night. More importantly, though, we were reminded that Alfred’s father’s name was Jarvis. These people were born to be butlers. And by “these people,” I mean the British.
“Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates” #10 was very much a crawling from the wreckage issue. Nearly the entire cabinet had been killed in Reed’s attack on Washington D.C., leaving the Secretary of Energy as the new President. In Nick Fury’s absence, a certain Mr. Flumm, originally of black ops, had become the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Ultimate version of this Flumm, perhaps?
Despite the many obligations S.H.I.E.L.D. had to deal with after the complete decimation of D.C., Flumm seemed to only have one goal: the capture of the disappeared Nick Fury. Which, you know, is too bad, because the one S.H.I.E.L.D. captain who found him and his Ultimates – Hawkeye, Black Widow, and the Falcon – had enough loyalty to the old guard to let Fury and his retinue go. You can bet the obsessive Flumm loved that.
Continued below
Meanwhile, over in Arlington, Tony Stark and Thor were also on the lam, plotting out a way to strike back at Reed. First, though, Tony had to have a little checkup with a doctor he could trust. Being an international playboy does mean you could easily pick up a few – oh, wait, it wasn’t for anything like that. After learning that his brain tumor had returned from Dr. Sue Storm, Tony accidentally let it slip that the brain behind the D.C. attacks was someone Sue knew very well.
This reaction face is provided without any commentary from the columnist.
Things weren’t going any better for the mutants. In “Ultimate Comics: X-Men” #10, Storm barely escaped the mutant camp with a few mutant children in tow with the help of her previous oppressor, Captain Walker, while the rogue Nimrods rained death and destruction on a large portion of the midwest. Meanwhile, the same not-Obama who would later be fine with launching the entire nuclear arsenal at Reed’s City – remember, this is before he got blown to bits – played nice and told the American people to stand down. In a chilling epilogue, the Nimrods set about to build one massive Sentinel, and… well, that’s it. Damn, not much happened in either of this week’s Ultimate books.
In this week’s “AvX” tie-in selection, we have three books to go through: “New Avengers” #26, “Wolverine and the X-Men” #10 and “X-Men Legacy” #266. Let’s keep track of this timeline some more!
In “New Avengers”, we’re still given a side-story that seemingly has no direct tie-in to “AvX” yet as we learn more of Fongji, the Iron Fist “many years ago.” As it turns out, Leonardo Da Vinci (the comic book version from Jonathan Hickman’s “SHIELD”) was brought in by Chan Kong-Sang of K’un Lun to help the Immortal City deal with this pesky Phoenix problem they think they’re going to have. Granted, that’s why they’re training Fongji, to be the dragon that defeats the fire bird, but hey, doesn’t hurt to get the man truly behind the world’s most powerful and influential secret organization, right? The dude’s brought down Celestials, and those are for all intents and purposes mad gods. What’s a bird of fire to a man like that!
So Leonardo comes to K’un Lun and builds a giant gun/telescope. Or rather, I assume it is a gun because it looks like a gun, and I will also assume that this giant gun is to be used by an Ed McGuinness-esque monk character who is the K’un Lun Cable equivalent. Of course, Leonardo doesn’t believe that the Phoenix is evil. He thinks that it is rather the beginning of a cosmic awakening. But hey, if that’s all it was, people wouldn’t be going to war over it. Come on, Leonardo! Step up your game, man!
Meanwhile, Fongji unlocks her secret fire power in the middle of some heavy training, similar to how Hope “does it”, which frightens the crap out of everyone. Master Yu Ti takes her to the Scrying Vessel of Bo-ling to look into her future, which consists of the Phoenix fighting the dragon Shao Lao, and Yu Ti determines that it is time for Fongji to face the dragon herself, which is the ritual of the Iron Fist. After 2 days, she emerges from the cave of Shao Lao as the new Iron Fist, finally able to speak and saying “thank you.” Hey, if its her first words, at least she’s polite, right?
Meanwhile, Leonardo looks through his giant gunoscope and says — are you ready? — “It’s coming.” (Ooohhh, just like in the other book! When everyone keeps saying “it’s coming” over and over and over!)
The nice thing about “New Avengers” is that since this is some kind of ancillary story with unseen connecting elements to the main story, it doesn’t mess up the timeline of “AvX”. Well, not ostensibly anyway. This can not be said for the other two tie-ins this week, though, which contradict themselves and the main storyline. Let’s figure this out:
In “Wolverine and the X-Men,” Wolverine returns to the Jean Grey for a drink after the fight at Utopia. A simple enough task, but given the previously established timeline of “AvX”, we have to ask when. After all, as far as we knew after the fight Logan goes to drop off the Utopia kids at Avengers Academy. By the end of the issue, we see Wolverine called toAvengers Tower where he goes on a mission with Captain America where Captain America kicks him out of the Quinjet somewhere around the Savage Land. So when does he have time to come home and have a drink when he’s supposed to go to Avengers Academy?
Continued belowRegardless of that, the issue finds Scott, Emma and Magik making an appearance at the school to try and talk Logan one last time to join the side of the mutants (which makes me think this happens before Captain America kicks Wolverine out of a moving plane). Cyclops attempts to appeal to Wolverine’s mutant pride, and the two argue about the “right” and “wrong” of the current Avengers/X-Men debate, eventually coming to a stalemate with Cyclops leaving. Cyclops reiterates the point that this conflict won’t end well and that Wolverine needs to pick a side, but as we saw in “AvX” #3 Wolverine is clearly on his own, so … whatever to that! There is a war on, people! We don’t have time for drinks and chatting!
As Cyclops leaves, Ice Man, Rachel Summers and Angel all leave to join with the X-Men, which doesn’t add up because Rachel is supposed to be Cyclops’ mole in the Jean Grey institution while Wolverine is off with Captain America, as also seen in “AvX” #3. What! Keep this in mind as we talk about “X-Men Legacy.”
Oh, and there’s a whole bit where Angel tries to prove he’s an actual angel by trying to fly to Heaven, which he fails to do. Kid Apocalypse — er, I mean, Genesis saves him, and Angel looks at him and sees a dark future, then lies about it. Oh, and then the Death Commandos show up on a mission from the Shi’ar. Dark issue, man, yeesh.
Meanwhile, in “X-Men Legacy”, Rogue calls a staff meeting to discuss what’s going on with the current war announced on television. During this scene, Iceman and Rachel announce they are leaving to join the X-Men’s side of the war — even though in “Wolverine and the X-Men” #10 out on the same day and written by one of the event architects, we saw a completely different version of this scene. OH SHI– THE TIMELINE DOESN’T ADD UP! CODE RED, EVERYONE, CODE RED! WE HAVE A CONTINUITY MALFUNCTION!!!
What I guess happened is that somewhere down the line when “X-Men Legacy” was decided as an “AvX” timeline, a memo was passed on to Christos Gage saying “Hey, these characters are gone” by X-Men editorial, so he wrote them out the best he could. Best not to dwell on this too much, unless you’re into that nit-picky stuff.
The rest of the issue deals with Falcon, She-Hulk and Moon Knight, three Avengers not seen in “AvX” so far, who are sent to watch the Jean Grey school to make sure the mutants don’t get feisty or violent. Because, you know, the Avengers aren’t turning into a weird fascist anti-mutant regime or anything. Things don’t go well and a sitcom-esque literal line in the sand is drawn, and it all goes to hell when Frenzy tricks Moon Knight into crossing the line. Because the whole issue isn’t metaphoric enough about the issue of race and the mutant’s role in that metaphor, we get this:
When the students come out to fight as well, everything gets chaotic, culminating in Iron Man showing up to punch Rogue in the face, which makes no real sense since Iron Man is supposedly in a lab somewhere trying to figure out how to stop the Phoenix. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that seems a lot more important than punching Rogue in the face, no?
Over in “Uncanny X-Force,” the only X-book, along with New Mutants, who doesn’t seem to be taking part in the AvX fiasco phenomenon celebrated its 25th anniversary issue this week, which means two things. First, it means that Marvel can charge $5 for a regular book; and second, Marvel can justify that price by publishing a book with a bunch of reprints and call it a day!
Yay, capitalism!
In all seriousness though, quite a bit happened in this issue. We started with a look back at all that happened over the past 24 issues, like Genesis, the now good-natured clone of Apocalypse over at the Jean Grey School For Higher Learning, as well as the former herald of Apocalypse, Warren Worthington III, another student at the same school. You gotta feel for that guy. He was one of the original five X-Men, and he has to go to school AGAIN. To be fair, though, he can’t remember anything, not even the proper way to throw a football.
Continued below
There was also a time jump of sorts, pushing its continuity closer in line with that of Daniel Way’s “Deadpool” title. Do you know what that means? DEADPOOL IS HOT NOW! No more scars for good ol’ Wade Wilson in the pages of UXF, that’s what that means. Poor Wade, though, went on a mission for Wolverine in Paris; tailing a guy who was checking into a secret compound that was sitting under the Eiffel Tower. What’s waiting for him there? A TRAP OF COURSE! Someone is breeding clones of Omega Red with innate hatred of our heroes in the X-Men Black Ops Squad.
Good ol’ Wadey’s having a rough day. Not as rough as Wolverine though, who lost two of his members when Psylocke totally hit it and then quit it with Fantomex, breaking his little French heart. Wait, is he French? I was never clear on that. She then announced she was leaving the team because of the profound negative effect it was having on her life. Can you blame her? She lost her boyfriend to the most evil force they’ve ever encountered and then was forced to kill him, and on top of THAT she had to kill her own brother because he was a future genocidal maniac! Life hasn’t been easy for ol’ Betsy. But now, because Psylocke is gone, Fantomex just quit the team. Rough.
AoA Nightcrawler is sticking around, however, and even affirmed his newfound fondness for Logan right when they were leaving, and I think Wolvie appreciated it. At least SOMEONE loves him.
LOOK AT ALL THAT EMOTION.
Over in “Journey into Mystery”#637, the new Mutants gang regrouped after Sigurd made all the Asgardians disappear and forget who they were. While Dani, the Valkyrie leader of the Hipster X-Men, tried to make sense of it all, Doug saw fit to correct her vocabulary.
I know that’s his power, but he needs to learn about right place, right time. ANYWAY, as they were figuring things out, their mechanic knocked on the door and it turned out to be, well wouldn’t you know it! It was Thor! As a mechanic! With no memory of whom he was! FanTAStic. That magic worked wonders. The magic in question was procured by Sigurd from one Loki, before he was Kid Loki, mind you. Sigurd was hiding from the D-I-S-I-R and when they found him, he put the whammy on them as well as, Thor and company. Even Loki, who gave him the ability in the first place was affected by it. He didn’t know who he was, and even thought he was human.
A creepy, creepy, human child. But while they were just figuring out what was going on, the various Asgardians popped up all over San Francisco. Thor was that mechanic, Fandral was the owner of a local bar, Sif looked to be a nun of sorts, Volstagg was a donut shop owner (natch) and Hogun was a homeless man. No wonder he’s so grim all the time. They weren’t the only once living lives they shouldn’t. The D-I-S-I-R also happened to be around San Francisco as well, and they weren’t so innocent themselves.
Anyone who references a Nicolas Cage movie is evil and should be put down. Bad things are clearly going to come from them. Just look:
She ate a CAT, guys. That makes her persona non grata amongst us here at Multiversity, let me tell you.
Switching gears to Defunct Continuity, “Green Lantern” #9 continued its tale of the Indigo Tribe and exactly what they are. Turns out: the compassionate Lanterns are terrible people! That actually explains why, during Blackest Night, Ray Palmer was the Indigo Deputy when simultaneously, over in JLA: Cry for Justice he was torturing folks! Ray Palmer is a terrible person, and Indigo Rings look for terrible PEOPLE. Sinestro just happens to be one of these terrible people, so naturally the Indigos were glad to count him among their ranks. Hal was worried, too!
It was kind of sweet, really, but I digress. Hal, determined to find an off switch for Sinestro’s new form of crazy, searched for the central power battery for the Indigo Tribe. And he got there in the fastest way he could think of: a race car.
Continued below
He finally reached his destination, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a tiny wrinkled old guy who looked “nothing at all” like Yoda from Star Wars. He had some choice words for Hal, namely, that he was a Green Lantern, and:
Same to you, buddy. While he was finding out about the nonsense he decided to find out EXACTLY what the hell “nok” means. And here it is, for everyone to enjoy.
Aren’t you glad you asked? I bet you are. After that little lesson was given to Hal, the Guacamole Lantern, Natromo explained how the Indigo Tribe was created. There’s a mineral in the core of the planet Nok that reacts with people’s emotions by giving them remorse for any actions they might have caused while…evil. Think of it this way: you know those moments of regret you feel when you’re alone, at night, and can’t sleep? These people live that all the time, and THAT makes them a better person. Man, Abin Sur was kind of a dick.
As it turns out, Indigo-1 was an old enemy of Abin Sur and she killed his daughter. Instead of simply killing her in return, Abin trapped her on Nok and then forced an Indigo Ring upon her. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all?
Natromo, the lone “Guardian” of the Indigo Tribe, seemed to know about the Blackest Night, despite not hearing about it from anyone, including his on corps. He was really worried about this, and sought to make more Compassion Rings to take on the true threat to everything in the universe: those damned Guardians. Well, WE already knew this, but Hal didn’t, so he can’t be called dumb for this. Yet.
Sadly, Natromo didn’t know anything about what’s been going on in the universe, and didn’t even know Abin Sur had died. When he found out, he decided that this was a good time to just shut down the Indigo Central Core, close up shop and take his ball and go home. Since they have no chance to stop those dickish guardians without Abin, might as well spend what little time he has left with his family! The good news: the fact he shut down the core means that Sinestro was freed! The bad news:
Crap.
Also: Munk and Thanos, separated at birth?
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Batman” #9, “Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates” #10, “Ultimate Comics: X-Men” #11
Matt – “New Avengers” #26, “Wolverine and the X-Men” #10 and “X-Men Legacy” #266
Gil – “Uncanny X-Force” #25, “Journey into Mystery” #637, and “Green Lantern” #9
Anything we didn’t get to that you’re interested in? Email me at the link below! This also applies for if you read something that we didn’t and want to share it with others, as I, too, have only so much money and time to spend on comics. Don’t worry, I’ll give you credit.
