Laurie, you do realize we have a word for that, right? It’s called “lying.” Let’s try again. Be honest this time!
…this might take a while. Laurie continued to exercise her youthful desire to wander in this week’s “Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre,” shacking up with her beau and a group of kindly hippies in San Francisco. While Greg worked for one of their roommates, Chappy, in his screen printing “studio” — a.k.a. spare room in his house — Laurie began working at a somewhat run-down diner. Of course, when overhearing a bunch of squares talking about taking out a criminal competitor over a cup of coffee, Laurie did the sane thing and got another one of her hippie friends to make her a costume so she could beat said thugs up in the middle of the night. Boy, that sure shows her mom how independent Laurie is! Don’t worry about that opening sequence, though; she survived and would eventually live on to be in the ‘Watchmen’ miniseries. DC isn’t playing that fast and loose with their continuities.
From there on, the comic played out like the best kind of over-the-top 70s-ified dime novel. In a secluded section of a secluded club called Sand Doze, a record exec met with a large batch of musicians to discuss the problem with their fan base: they don’t buy shit, man. To combat the problem, he presented a novel kind of acid, one that made the ingested feel overwhelmed with the urge to buy things. When pitched by a square, it didn’t seem appealing, but when pitched by an ominously groovy black man, well, it was out of sight, man. The next day, while Laurie and Greg were out for lunch, the two ran into Chappy, who was still suffering from a bad trip from the night before — one that suspiciously made him ravenous for coffee. Laurie instantly knew something was up, and tracked it to its source: a man named Gurustein (I cannot make this shit up, people). The head honcho wasn’t at home when Laurie swung by, though, and after tangling with two lady goons who would make any Bond girl jealous, she decided to head home for a big party hosted by Chappy and Greg, MC’d by a certain ominously groovy black man. I guess you can guess his name. Laurie tried to play it cool when she was introduced to Gurustein, but being slipped a contact-based psychedelic that makes you go on a buying frenzy can certainly lessen the odds of that.
Carol Danvers took to the sky once again in the new “Captain Marvel” ongoing series. A female captain? In this day and age? What’ll be next — a black president? The issue opened up with Carol and Steve Rogers mid-battle with the Absorbing Man, who was after some moon rocks because they would give him… Uh…
Right. You know what it means when a news series opens with a superhero/supervillain battle: that villain is going home in a body bag. After giving the Absorbing Man the old one-two, Carol and Steve returned to Avengers Tower, where Steve approached Carol with the prospect of taking up the Captain mantle. It was a heavy decision, so Carol went to the most mature member of the Avengers team to make this important choice.
Afterward, we we’re given a bit of Carol talking about her friend and hero, the elderly pilot Helen Cobb, and, deciding that Helen would tell her to do it… decided to do it. Cue sadness: after making this decision, Carol came home to find that Cobb had just passed away. After a bit of a flashback showing the first time these two met, Carol flew off into the sky in mourning.
Continued below…okay, it doesn’t sound like much from that brief description, but honestly, it was a great debut issue. Really!
As far as the title character could tell, “Daredevil” #15 found Matt right where he was at the end of #14: enclosed in total darkness and silence. Of course, after not at all escaping Latveria last issue, the man without any kind of senses was being held in a Latverian hospital under heavy watch, as the monocled noble from last issue mentioned how they needed to figure out how Matt’s radar sense worked in order to work on some secret project for Doctor Doom. Does anyone else smell another crossover? Deprived of all of his senses, Matt’s body tried to resuscitate the one sense that he had not lost in the accident, due to it being lost much further back: his sight. If this comes as a surprise to you, you need to start following comic creators on Twitter. I take it back, that’s an awful idea. But, somehow, his other senses slowly came back to him, and the daring devil made his escapes, staggering like a drunk (for Daredevil, which of course means still more graceful than me). Under fire, the hero climbed to the top of Doom’s castle, and managed to break the good doctor’s communications scrambled, and was saved in seconds by Tony Stark once his emergency signal went through. Good thing Iron Man just happened to be hovering around Latveria!
It’s Avengers versus X-Men time, kids! And boy, is this a big week for the event that people will assuredly be talking about in ten years!! This week sees three books in soon-to-be staple of comicdom, with “AvX” #8, “Uncanny X-Men” #16 and “Avengers Academy” #33 rocking stands and making history.
As “AvX” #8 opens, Namor has brought the sea to Wakanda in the form of a devastating tsunami, leveling the city and causing mayhem everywhere. So much for Wakanda’s UN representative saying that they wanted no part in the Avengers/X-Men war, huh? That’s what you get for harboring fugitives and accepting their prisoners, ya goof! War, man. Makes people do crazy things.
As Namor Fs S up outside, Cap rallies the troops so that Iron Man and Lei Kung can go to K’un Lun (the “magical city of kung fu”) and shut the mystical portal before the Phoenix Five can get through. It’s a fairly fierce battle, with all kinds of punches being thrown against the omnipotent sea prince: Cap hits him in the head with his shield, Iron fist fists him, Black Panther tries to shoot him with a gun and then all of the available Avengers (Beast, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Rulk, Vision, Thor, Falcon, Thing, Doc Strange, Valkyrie and Quiksilver) whack, crack, fathom and wham on him for a while.
Namor’s response?
Ow. I guess that’s why he doesn’t have a book in October.
So the tides turn, Namor Phoenixes out a bit, and in turn the Avengers call in Wanda to do her little magic dance against Namor. Whatever it is she does (it’s largely undefined, because magic) defeats Namor and causes the Phoenix Force to leave him — but at that exact moment, the other Phoenix members show up and absorb the energy evenly between them, thus making them that much more powerful. Luckily for the Avengers, Tony Stark opens a portal to Kung Fu Land because science and they escape.
Cue Professor Xavier and the weakest threat ever given to anyone ever via a psychic connection for no other reason than because, I guess. The full scene basically reads like this:
Prof X: Hey, you better stop!
Cyclops: No.
Prof X: I mean it!
Cyclops: No.
Prof X: I’m gonna get real mad!
Cyclops: No.
Prof X: Come on, don’t be a dick about this!
Cyclops: No.
So now the Avengers are in K’un Lun, preparing for a final battle of sorts, and the X-Men are down a man but that much stronger for it. As Spider-Man puts it,
Outside of Namor being taken off the table, the plot is moved forward just a smudge with little else to it, but that’s ok because punching is cool and stuff.
Continued below“Uncanny X-Men” #16 is a bit more simple. The Phoenix Five wage war on Sinister London, an underground city controlled by Mr Sinister created beneath Alaska as a big middle finger to Cyclops and a massive headgame. Sinister unleashes thousands upon thousands of monstrosities on the Five, including twisted X-Clones and variations on Scott’s wife Madelyne Pryor while his castle attacks from atop a krakoa.
Seriously. In the history of Gillen written fracases, this is the fracasiost. (Or something.)
Scott has the magnificent idea to split the X-Men up, with an overpowered Colossus matching wits with the Krakoa, Emma razing the countryside, Magik confining the city with magic and Namor destroying soldiers. However, between an army of clone kamikaze Gambits, evil cows and other such Sinister monstrosities, Sinister reigns victorious in a battle that was rigged from the start. Mostly thanks to evil cows.
At which point Magneto, Psylocke, Storm and Danger show up to save the day, only to find the city in ruins and the entire Phoenix Five laying in defeat. It’s not a great save, all things considered.
Finally, in “Avengers Academy” #33, we return to our story about the boy and his sentinel, and the evil lady who would see it destroyed because the machine is notorious for hunting down her species and murdering them at every possible opportunity. It’s like the Iron Giant, except in this story the Giant is incredibly racist and his death is 100% justified.
As our story begins, Juston has a brief memory in which he notes that he will never abandon his sentinel, defending to his father that it’s a “he” and not an “it.” This of course immediately segues to Emma Frost battling children in an attempt to destroy the machine, which should be easy because she’s an omnipotent being possessed by a firebird from space and yet somehow isn’t over in two pages. Alas, it does not, and the battle rages on via heavy exposition towards an obvious message before the Sentinel attempts to sacrifice its life to save Juston and BAM! Emma destroys the Sentinel and its parts rain down on the students. And the Iron Giant comparison continues.
Of course, that’s not the real point of the issue. No, not at all! “Avengers Academy” and “X-Men Legacy” have both somewhat turned into After School Specials as of late (is that an outdated joke?), and this story is about what makes a “monster.” Is it who we are born as, or who we choose to be? Is the sentinel evil because he was programmed to kill all mutants, or is he good because an additional program has pushed that objective down a few notches in his programming?
It’s also full of some heavy handed dialogue, like this:
I really like “Avengers Academy,” and I like comics that try and push positive messages about acceptance and tolerance, peace and understanding. All things considered, that’s a bit too on the nose, isn’t it? Not even a hint of subtlety here! More The Iron Giant, less The More You Know! please!
Alls well that ends well, however, as it is revealed that in the blink of an eye Quicksilver saved the Sentinel’s CPU before Emma could destroy it. 10 minutes later, the Sentinel is rebuilt, and Quicksilver runs off in the coolest running position ever:
YEAH!
Oh, and then Tigra announces that Avengers Academy is closing. Aw, shucks.
In “Justice League” #11 Geoff Johns continued to make macabre Batman jokes that no one who is actually a fan of Batman would get, who FOUGHT PAST THE TRAUMA OF SEEING HIS PARENTS DIE to save everyone else in the League from the nasty bad memory clouds.
After everyone recovered, they all found out where Graves went (foreshadowing~)! And that was to the Steve Trevor’s sister’s house! Oh no, why would he go there? Oh, to torture some random woman and make Wonder Woman feel guilty for having feelings.
So Wonder Woman decides to go off and rescue Steve Trevor on her own, but the Justice League tried to let her listen to reason, beginning with a stunningly level-headed Hal Jordan. She begins to tear him apart like a cheap plaything you get from Burger King and then called into question his manhood. And then when Superman tried to stop her from pummeling Hal into a green puddle, she drop kicked him into next week! The moral of the story here is that nothing motivates Wonder Woman more than a man.
Continued below
But Cyborg, being their twitter trend watching and constant facebook status updater, knew that their little spat was being broadcast all over the world. He immediately boom tubed them to Graves’ secret cabin/apartment where they squashed that beef. Aquaman made sure of it by shoving his trident in Hal’s face and his finger in Diana’s. He’s a go-getter. While they did their thing, Batman did his thing and cried in a corner looked around for clues as to what Graves is up to.
Graves’ family was in Metropolis during the Darkseid attack and they all fell ill due to whatever happened. They died, and he got sick too, but he didn’t die, he because a White Martian apparently. It also brought him to the VALLEY OF THE SOULS, the place where the dead can see, like, Shangri-La or something. I don’t even know, I stopped paying attention after a while. Only Cyborg could see it, and that’s because he…is dead? It’s unclear. You know who else seems to be dead though?
Steve Trevor is the one who’s dead. Or is it Scott? One can never tell these days.
In “Wonder Woman” #11, we spent quite a lot of time spent on Mount Olympus, where Hera and Strife talked about how awesome Diana is for screwing with Hades in…Hades (don’t you hate it when people name their place after themselves? It’s so “Kanye West”) and Hera hinted at her plans to mess with Diana some more.
It really sucks to be Diana this week. Either douchebags are fighting with you or your step mom is trying to kill you.
On Earth, however, we saw a short interlude between the goddess Demeter (whose daughter was pimped out to Hades too, gotta love the gods and their incest.) spoke with Artemis, who sported some impressed stag horns, despite being female. One would think she’s not a reindeer, but what do I know about divine antler growth? I’m just a silly mortal.
They had some girl talk about how the world without a ruler will go into some sort of chaos, like these things always do, and we cut over to our heroes, Team Wondy! Today they have the tough task of waiting for Zola to have her pre-natal doctor visit and not break anything. Of course with gods around this is a pipe dream. While Diana and her posse were discussing the idea that the baby might look like, well, a god…
Apollo and Artemis show up, as evidenced by an eclipse-that’s-really-not-an-eclipse, and beat the snot out of Hermes, Diana, and Lennox before kidnapping Zola AGAIN. This girl has a terrible track record for this stuff, I swear.
In exchange for kidnapping Zola (again) Hera gave the throne of Olympus to Apollo. Strife was appalled at the notion of Apollo the sun god in charge of things, but a deal’s a deal, right? Not if Diana and Hermes have anything to say about it though. FIGHT BACK ON!
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre” #2, “Captain Marvel” #1, “Daredevil” #15
Matt – “Avengers vs X-Men” #8, “Uncanny X-Men” #16, “Avengers Academy” #33
Gil – “Justice League” #11, “Wonder Woman” #11
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, we’ll give you credit.
