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The Weekend Week In Review (3/28/2012)

By | March 31st, 2012
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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.

“FF” #16 served as an epilogue to the previous issue of “Fantastic Four,” wherein future Franklin came and saved the day from crazy celestials with Galactus as his herald. You can be sure that present-day Franklin reacted to this with humility.

After the celebrating their victory – which I think is acceptable when one has saved the entire universe from destruction – the Foundation and the Avengers did the mature, grown-up, and boring thing to do after such a crisis, and helped clean up the nearly entirely leveled city of New York. Again. With the click of a button, Mr. Fantastic restored the Baxter Building, complete with a new floor plan, once again prompting the question of the ages: why the hell can’t that asshole share his technology with the rest of New York City? It’s almost criminal. After giving the rest of the Future Foundation their own numbers to remind them how inferior they are, Reed took everyone up into space to check out his newest invention, the space station Foundation. Seriously, where did he get the time to build this? If you haven’t been reading “Amazing Spider-Man,” we also learned that, repeated death and rebirth or no, Johnny was still the same as we remembered him: annoying.

After showing everyone around the place, Sue and the rest of the Fantastic Four – Five, including Spider-Man – scolded Valeria for lying and keeping secrets from them, but admitted that it was for a good purpose. Valeria understood, and promised that she would never keep any more secrets.

Except, you know, Doom being alive and having one of the alternate Reeds’ Infinity Gauntlet. But that’s a minor matter.

Ultimate Reed Richards, on the other hand, had his own problems in “Ultimate Comics: Ultimates” #8 – and a big, destructive, gray one, at that. Having been dropped from the sky into The City, Hulk tore through Richards’s Children of Tomorrow like paper, proving that brains do not always triumph over brawn. Richards called back his children, and went out to meet Banner himself.

What the hell do you think he’s doing, Reed? He’s smashing! That advanced brain must result in a loss of common sense. Across the globe, Xorn mourned the loss of the Oracle that Richards killed mentally in the previous issue, while Zorn and his Eternals posed as a team (’cause shit just got real) on their way to snuff out The Children. It would be helpful if Fury let his own people know that this was going to happen, because back in the United States, the President finally had enough; enacting marshall law, he had his agents incapacitate Jessica Drew and Captain Britain, attempt to do the same to Tony Stark and Thor, and fired some nukes straight into the middle of The City and at an already talked-down Hulk. How many, you ask? Oh, just every single one. Complain as much as you want about Barack Obama, but at least he isn’t this guy – or, at least, this iteration of him.

Continued below

“Avengers vs X-Men” kicked off this week from Marvel with a #0 issue co-written by Brian Bendis and Jason Aaron, with art throughout by Frank Cho. The book revolved around Hope and Scarlet Witch in two vignettes, assumedly because they will be important to the story of Avengers fighting X-Men.

In Bendis’ Witch half, the Scarlet Witch is off on her own fighting crime when Ms. Marvel and Spider-Woman show up to lend a hand. Noting that she’d been gone for quite some time, they basically force Wanda to come with them to the Avengers Mansion to hang out and do… whatever it is that super gals do when they have a day off, I guess? Gossip? Talk about how handsome Hawkeye is? Unfortunately, when they get back to the mansion, they’re created by an angry Vision and an incredibly awkward situation:

Because of course robots make everything awkward. I saw Short Circuit. I know how it is.

The Vision chastises Wanda for abusing him with her powers and she is flown off by Ms. Marvel in tears. The Vision too turns around in tears, because crying is infectious. I can only imagine that at this point “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. was playing in the background.

And they say robots don’t have feelings! Apparently Bendis really liked A.I. 

(Those folks over at Mindless Ones have a pretty nice and snarky write-up of this sequence as well.)

Over in Aaron’s Hope-centric portion of the book, Hope gave Cyclops the “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!” speech before flying away in a jetpack to stop a robbery at the Isotope Bank and Trust, located at 326 Fell Street in San Francisco — I’ve been there before, and it doesn’t look like much of a bank. Turns out the bank is being robbed by the Serpent Society (who, by the way, are also found, beaten and arrested in “Avenging Spider-Man” #4 and 5), and she does it all by herself! Turns out all that time being trained by Cable in a post-apocalyptic environment sliding through time until the end of the world does make you a capable adult! I just don’t understand why Cyclops doesn’t get that.

Oh, and then Hope stares up at the sky and waits for the Phoenix to arrive. It’s as if they want us to think Hope and the Phoenix are connected or something.

Two books by Rob Williams, “Ghost Rider” and “Daken”, both ended this week with rather dark finales. One might assume that the reason for this is because both books were cancelled, leaving Williams to just bring the story to a close as fast as possible — which is understandable, but unfortunate. Basically, what happened is this:

Daken, de-powered due to an overdose of the Heat drug from the previous arc, killed himself by blowing himself and Wolverine up in Times Square,

and Johnny Blaze became Ghost Rider again, leaving Alejandra a burn victim and a brand new Marvel Universe villain.

Funny how these things turn out in the end.

Walt mentioned to me that we don’t cover DC enough in this column when we co-write it, mainly because neither of us really read DC anymore. So here is what happened this week over at DC: nothing noteworthy.

(Yeesh. We need more fair and balanced coverage or something.)

This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “FF” #16, “Ultimate Comics: Ultimates” #8
Matthew – “Avengers vs X-Men” #0, “Ghost Rider” #9, “Daken: Dark Wolverine” #22, all of DC

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.


//TAGS | The Weekend Week in Review

Walt Richardson

Walt is a former editor for Multiversity Comics and current podcaster/ne'er-do-well. Follow him on Twitter @goodbyetoashoe... if you dare!

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