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.
In the previous issue of Amazing Spider-Man, Pete’s think tank co-worker, Grady, created a door that could take whoever walked through it a day ahead in the future. But when Pete stepped through it, he found himself in a destroyed New York, and picked up a broken watch stuck at 3:10, the time of the accident. With Grady’s help, Peter Spider-Man used a newspaper from a better, disaster-free New York to make sure he did everything he had to in order to save the day, but by the time 3:10 struck, the picture on the other side of the door still had not changed. Spider-Man had finally let everyone down…
Or, at least, he would have, if it weren’t for the fact that two scientists from the a think tank of some of the brightest young minds on the planet – so, in the Marvel Universe, in New York – hadn’t stopped to think “Oh, well, maybe it could be 3:10 AM, rather than 3:10 PM – as they did in this issue, #679. With his new twelve hours, Peter saved Silver Sable from an assassination attempt by Flag Smasher, saved a guy with the Heimlich maneuver, caught a tiger that had escaped from the zoo, and stopped a carjacking – all of which could totally result in the destruction New York – while Slott wasn’t at all subtle about what inspired this issue.
Still, time ticked down and nothing seemed to change. In what I can only assume was some last minute bid to get laid before everything ended, Pete stopped patrolling, and grabbed a bite to eat with MJ. Nothing wrong with being a defeatist and just letting your inevitable death happen, I guess. But hark! MJ mentioned something about Peter, not Spidey, always doing what needed to be done, causing him to realize that whatever he was supposed to do to save the day was to be done by his civilian identity. In another burst of scientific knowhow, he realized that maybe a door that tampers with space and time might end in disastrous results, and by turning off the door, the day was saved, and everybody went out to celebrate.
Wow, people dressed up as Tom Baker out in public look just as ridiculous in comics as they do in real life. And here I thought comics were about escapism.
Swamp Thing #6 opened with Alec being overwhelmed by the loss of the Parliament of Trees, and William coming down from the tree Alec had put him in and enveloping his sister in some fleshy cocoon. Siblings show affection in the weirdest ways. After giving a Scott Snyder signature anecdote about his childhood – seriously, even the kids do it? – William revealed that he wasn’t the one the Rot wanted to lead its forces, but that it was Abigail instead. Before fully succumbing to the powers of the Rot, Abby used her newfound control over its forces to hold them off, allowing Alec to escape.
She’s so pretty when she’s angry. Alec used this opportunity to find a swampy pool and apologize to the Parliament of Trees, asking them to make him Swamp Thing again. Did it work?
Guess not.
Madrox’s cross-dimensional escapades continued in X-Factor #231, where he found himself confronted by two giant Iron Men, filling the roles of Sentinels. Detecting that he was not from their world – because they had already killed their universe’s Madrox – the two shellheads brought Jamie to an aged Tony Stark, a Stark with no problems when it comes to hitting the bottle. Apparently in this world, Wanda said the words “No more humans,” rather than the now infamous “No more mutants.” Stark and fellow gadget-based superheroes were fine, but other, altered humans were further altered until they were no longer quite human. This world’s Tony wanted to use Madrox to escape his reality, rationalizing that any other universe must be better than his. Poor guy doesn’t know that over half of alternate Marvel universes are complete shitholes. His plotting, however was interrupted by this world’s Tryp and his muscle, Deathlok, a.k.a. Steve Rogers. Why would Tony want to leave this reality? Tony and Steve tussled, knocking Madrox out the window to his doom. Waking up in a different world, Madrox found himself to be a disciple of…
Wait a minute…
This is too good to be true. So it probably isn’t.
Marvel’s newest ongoing, Winter Soldier, began this week, picking up the loose threads of Captain America‘s “Gulag” arc. Bucky and Natasha infiltrated a secret Russian base in order to find and take out a brainwashed sleeper agent like Bucky used to be, but found out that he had already been woken up and had escaped. After regrouping and getting some more intelligence, the pair interrogated a KGB agent in hiding, finding the location of yet another base to infiltrate. As you can imagine, this series is very gritty and not at all sill–
Okay, never mind. The final scene revealed that the sleeper agent Natasha and Bucky were looking for was woken up to take out Dr. Doom, and if we’re to believe the cliffhanger, that’s exactly what happened. Dr. Doom, the man who delayed berserk Celestials in the recent FF, has a weakness to guns. Who would have thought it?
And I don’t read Detective Comics, and have no intention to ever do so, but everybody who still hasn’t seen this needs to:
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.
