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 after the cut, but I figure that you could figure that out.
Couldn’t find a copy of Marvel’s Point One? I find that hard to believe. Didn’t want to pay six bucks for what was essentially a preview book? Now that I understand. Here’s what you missed:
- The Phoenix is coming back. And it’s blue now. And it destroyed both Terrax and his home planet. The mature response from the Nova Corps member that was unable to stop this was, of course, to remark on the “epic fail” on their part. Looks like Jeph Loeb is aiming for another Eisner, guys!
- In the Age of Apocalypse universe, the mutant named Krakken – do you know who that is, because I don’t – told his son about the role that he played in giving homo sapiens the finger. Shortly after putting said son to bed, he came downstairs to find his wife murdered by the mysterious Red Prophet, and was murdered as well. You might recognize this Prophet by another name: William Stryker. You might also recognize the era of comics Age of Apocalypse is from by the name of his anti-mutant brigade: The X-Terminated. Yuck.
- As we saw at the end of “Spider-Island,” the less icky than before Kaine is now doing his own thing as the Scarlet Spider. And by doing his own thing, I mean doing the whole Spider-Man thing in a different location. After diffusing a hostage situation, Kaine had one of those moments where he has to make the big decision: kill the baddies, or leave ’em for the cops. And… he chose the latter. And here I was hoping for tons of violence from Yost. Maybe he’ll kill a bus full of kids next issue.
- Fred Van Lente’s story introduced twins Zaoxing and Wanxia, the former a controller of fire, and the latter of ice, who were raised in a test facility unaware of the other’s presence. At least, they weren’t supposed to be, but have you ever seen a Mary Kate & Ashley movie? Twins might as well be magic, as far as I’m concerned. One day, after their respective curiosities were finally at their peak, they busted out and found each other, destroying their containment facility in the process. Flash-forward a few months, and they’re already upstaging the Avengers. No, really, that’s how it ends.
- The Dr. Strange and Avengers stories? I’m not exactly sure what happened. Something about Strange saving some possessed guy and seeing something terrible in the process, and something about Ultron controlling the world, respectively, but we’ll learn more eventually in upcoming stories from Fraction and Bendis. Unless you felt burned by their recent work, which… well, I can’t blame you for.
Over in the Ultimate Universe, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man caught up with the death of Peter Parker. After finding out about the fight with Osborn and the other rogues, Miles snuck out of school and made it to the battleground just in time to see his predecessor fall. And, like Spider-Men tend to do, he blamed himself. Miles was one of the many to attend Pete’s funeral, where he asked Gwen why Peter did what he did.
Yeah, that about sums it up. Later, Miles attempted to design his own costume, but got lazy and instead used his best friend’s old halloween costume. Can you guess who found Miles swinging around in Peter’s costume disrespectful? Well, if you said “everyone,” you’d be right, but in particular Jessica Drew, a.k.a. Peterette.
I’m the only one that calls her that? Okay, moving on.
The only DC titles I was particularly interested in this week were Frankenstein and Superboy. The former being too ridiculously awesome to summarize, enjoy hearing about the latter. After blowing up the facility from last issue, Kon sunk into the crust of the earth, burning his hand on a rock while trying to paw his way out of lava. “But wouldn’t he worry more about the, you know, lava than he would a single rock?” We’ll get to that. Busting out of the ground, Superboy ended up disrupting a teenage couple that were about to… uh… special hug, and got a tire iron to the back of the head as a result. Thus, the revelation: Superboy’s invulnerability only extends to things he’s aware of. Of course, that didn’t take Kon out, and after scaring her boyfriend away, the test tube baby offered to take the girl home. And, for whatever reason, she said sure. On arriving in town, though, Superboy was attacked by one of the denizens of the facility from last issue, who revealed that Kon is a veritable cocktail of different species before some unknown force fried her brains. Understandably distraught, Kon confronted Caitlin Fairchild, but found out the hard way that he wouldn’t like her when she was angry Oh, and the issue opened with some evil couple that fried everyone in a gas station, but we only got three pages of them. Next issue, I suppose!
Fear Itself #7.goddamnIhatethisnumberingsystem (a.k.a. 7.2) had Thor’s funeral, and the passing of the crown of Asgard from Odin to Gaea, Freyja and Iduun. One of these things is not like the other, one of those things does not belong. During the ceremony, though, a new thunder god was born! Tanarus! And what do I mean born, Tanarus has always been around! Tanarus is eternal! Confused? So is Loki. But that wasn’t the focus of Journey Into Mystery #631, centering instead on the repercussions of Loki’s actions in Fear Itself. Despite Loki’s promises otherwise, the Disir are still under Mephisto’s rule, but at least Hela finally has her own piece of underworld real estate – and she left Leah behind to be Loki’s new B.F.F. (Loki’s term, not mine). And, like all B.F.F.s do to their fellow B.F.F., Loki gave her a lovely cave to live in. Ah, young love. There was also some reference to Walt Simonson’s run, but who cares about old comics?
I don’t actually know what the context of the first picture is, but it’s from Magneto: Not a Hero. Which… I didn’t read. But really, what more do you need?
Anything that we didn’t get to that you’re interested in? Well… you can email me as usual, but I’m being drowned in school work at the moment. But I’ll try my best to help!
