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.
Spider-Men, Spider-Men, do whatever Spider-Men… do. Which isn’t much, apparently. In the appropriate Brian Michael Bendis style, Marvel’s newest cash grab miniseries, “Spider-Men” #1, kind of pitter-pattered around until finally getting to any kind of point by the last page. We started in the 616, where Peter Parker did what he normally does on his weekends, swinging around town talking on and on about how much he loves New York City. That’s about a fifth of the issue. After that, we had the typical story hook of “Ooo, strange lights! Let’s go follow them,” and Peter found himself in an abandoned room where some kind of device was emitting a purple ray of some kind. Mysterio tried, and failed, to get the drop on Peter, doing the whole “Not you! You don’t understand! You’re ruining everything!” bit that we have heard time and time again — but, for all of that ranting, he seemed relatively okay with everything going on:
Sorry, Pichelli — for what it’s worth, you’re still a great artist. Spidey did his web-thing and tangled up Mysterio, who continued saying gibberish such as “I missed out when you died the first time!” and proceeded to check out the purple machine. This time, though, Mysterio succeeded on getting the drop on Peter, wiggling free to fire some kind of Science! gun at him.
Now, I am all for strange sci-fi weapons, but my suspension of disbelief, and my breakfast, is ruined when a gun makes the noise “FLALUUE.” Naturally, Mysterio did not actually hit Peter, but hit his own machine, zapping Peter to a strange world, a world where As on heads don’t stand for France. After that, things went as you might expect: Pete swung around, confused, stopped a mugging, was told his costume was found in bad taste, and ran into Miles. Alright, now things are getting goo– aww, it’s over.
Earlier the other day, I’m guessing, Spidey had other problems to worry about. “Amazing Spider-Man” #687 had Spider-Man, Black Widow, Silver Sable, and Mysterio faced with Octo-bot-controlled Avengers — never mind how Dr. Octobus was able to mind control, say, Thor and Red Hulk. Considering, though, that this is the last issue of ‘Ends of the Earth,’ it only took a few pages for Mysterio to remember “Oh yeah, I have an electro-magnetic pulse that can disable these things.” Dr. Octopus’s octo-bots: technologically advanced enough to control a god and an almost invulnerable rage monster, but not enough to withstand an electromagnetic pulse. Not willing to be beaten, the good doctor shot a bunch of missiles into space; luckily, the only formerly mind-controlled Avengers who were still conscious were the ones able to go after said missiles and destroy them in orbit, conveniently bringing the group going after Ock himself down to Webhead, Widow, and Sable. It’s like someone plotted this or something! Joyriding one of Otto’s giant octopus transports, the team arrived at the megalomaniac’s mysterious island, faced by a grey-skinned threat.
How long until that phrase finally stops being thrown around? It’s past its time, isn’t it? Rhino contradicted himself, though — rather than taking a front row seat on doomsday, Rhino chose to throw away his own life by holding Sable down as the room slowly filled up with water. Vengeance on the world and on a single person are pretty different, Slott. At Sable’s insistence, Pete left to find and stop Otto. As tends to happen when these two fight, Spidey ended up being trapped by Octavius’s octopus arms, but, for a twist, Otto disconnected himself from his life support in order to activate his machine. What do you think happened? For a second, it looked like Pete wasn’t going to escape, but in the end, he did! What a twist. And, like a real superhero, Spider-Man didn’t leave Octavius behind, but brought the dying old man back to the Horizon Labs team with delicacy and care.
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Oh, and Sable is dead. But probably not.
This week’s “AvX” tie-ins go to the number of three, in the forms of “X-Men Legacy” #268, “AvX Versus” #3 and “Avengers” #27. They’re three wildly different tie-ins, they don’t really inform too much of anything and are all basically their own entities in a form or fashion — but hey, what would a tie-in be if it actually tied in to the book it flew the banner of?
In “X-Men Legacy” (which airs precisely when you arrive home from elementary school and plop your keester in front of the TV), we’re given the story of Frenzy in a post-Phoenix Five world. Apparently now that the Phoenix has taken on five mutant hosts, it now believes itself to be the Authority circa-Mark Millar and Frank Quitely’s run, and the mutants are going out to make the world a better place for the people who fear and hate them by force! Frenzy is sent out to Narobia to take care of the one thing Cyclops didn’t while he disarmed rebel warlords and militias (spoilers for “AvX” #6?): the people of the country. For a Godlike entity, you’d think he’d do a bit better than just blasting people with Phoenix-y optic blasts and calling it a day, no?
So Frenzy air-drops (literally) into Narobia and proceeds to enter a small town in which a man beats his wife for the sole reason that she is his wife and he can. After saving the woman, the two travel to another nearby village full of guns so that Frenzy can disarm them (both in the generally understood definition of disarm, as in to take away weapons, and disarm as in take away arms). During this trip, Frenzy spends the entire time waxing nostalgic about when she was a young girl and punched through her father for being an ass. The nice thing is, though, that most mutants who manifested their powers ended up killing someone at the time, so you’re not alone, Frenzy! It gets better!
After saving the girl and saving the village, the Cuckoo’s arrive in town to mind wipe all the people who lived there in order to make them happier, because if there is one thing in comics that has proven to make people happy, it’s having their memories (good and bad) taken from them by choice. That’s definitely not the sign of a wayward sense of benevolence from any particular group. Frenzy talks them down and insists that the villagers get a choice in the matter, at which point the Cuckoos shrug and leave, leaving everyone in Narobia miserable and without weapons to defend themselves.
It looks like the one thing that the Phoenix Force can’t help… is us.
This after-school special was brought to you by Christos Gage and David Baldeon, in association with Marvel Comics.
This week’s “AvX: Versus” is subtitled ‘The Embarrassing Issue’, because it’s completely embarrassing. Here’s the breakdown:
In the fist battle, the Thing vs Colossus, the Red Hulk and Juggernaut punch each other for a while before Rulk punches Colossus so hard he ends up by the Thing. Then the Thing and Colossus punch each other for a while resulting in a Kirby tribute, a grand pose with the American flag in the background (which, for the record, makes no sense since the mutants ceded from America to form their own union and Colossus is Russian) and Colossus stands the victor.
When the opening recap page mentions no interest in plot, they weren’t kidding.
In the second battle, Black Widow vs Magik — you know what? I’m not even going to bother explaining this one. You get it. They fight! What’s really silly about the issue is this:
In an attempt to boost the AR output of Marvel’s AR app, part of the story is done in Russian dialogue, since Magik and Black Widow both speak Russian. Let’s ignore the fact that these characters have notoriously spoken strictly English for the past who knows how many years, even to other Russians, and point out the fact that nobody of any foreign language speaking origin will randomly insert a Russian sentence in the middle of an English dialogue. That just doesn’t happen. Heck, I grew up in a Russian speaking home: you either spoke Russian or you spoke English. There is literally one exception to that rule, and that is if you’re going to curse.
Continued belowSo yay for having an excuse to use the AR app, but what a tedious way to try and incorporate it outside of behind-the-scenes looks at things.
I would explain if this all syncs up with what we know of the bigger battle from “AvX” #5, but you know what? I just don’t think it matters at this point.
This week’s “Avengers” book seems to cap off the Protector/Noh-Var story, and it does so pretty simply. In fact, the book can easily be broken down like this:
The Space Avengers wake-up in their broken down ship, which Good Guy Noh-Var has sent hurling into a sun. Thor wakes up and saves the day, because any excuse to make Walt Simonson draw big epic Thor sequences is one you take. Like this:
Noh-Var brings the stolen Phoenix capturing device and brings it to the Kree Supremor, who reveals that the Kree don’t care about Earth or protecting it. That is basically the biggest shock ever because Noh-Var, who just betrayed his friends and sent them off to die by flying into the sun, thought that all he was doing would save his friends and the Earth. Geez, Noh-Var! Get a clue, will ya? So Noh-Var betrays the Kree and runs outside only to find the Avengers, pissed off and totally unwilling to hangout, despite his attempts at an Arrested Development quote.
Noh-Var is banned from Earth (which is the crime you pay for misquoting Arrested Development) and has his powers stripped of him by the Kree, who take even less kindly to betrayal than the Avengers did. He escapes from the rampaging Accusers and sneakily commandeers a ship, flying off into the unknown, while back on Earth, his girlfriend is a bit sad because she now has cancer.
Just kidding!
Since you all want to know exactly what’s going on in the “Before Watchmen” series, “Silk Spectre” #1 came out this week. What this book was turned out to be backstory on the tumultuous relationship between the two Silk Spectres when Laurie was I her formative years. It was just the two of them for much of Laurie’s childhood.
That’s actually a real bummer.
Flash forward about a decade and Laurie is a teenager. She’s even a star on the track team. However, because she Polish, people hate her. You know, because she deserves it (Polish people, I’m kidding). But one day after she pole vaults over something because of “athleticism” or something, she meets a boy and falls in love instantly. She imagines their wedding day even! Because that’s totally sane. Unfortunately, her mom is actually quite domineering, and makes her take all the track and field classes to train her to follow in her mom’s footsteps. Sally Jupiter even attacks her daughter when she least suspects it!
Parents, am I right?
Anyway, Laurie was P.I.S.S.E.D. and snuck out to go see that boy. They raced on the track, just to show how awesomely athletic she is. They then showed each other their bruises and somehow bonded over the fact they’re both survivors of child abuse. He is being forced into the Marines as soon as he turns 18, and she’s a superhero in training! Wow!
After they saw each other’s life sucked, they decided to run away and become hippies or something I guess! Isn’t that what kids these days are doing?
Over in “Green Lantern” #9, the Indigo Main Power Battery broke, which forced all the Indigo tribe to go back to their shady ways. What’s the first thing they do? They try to kill Hal and Sinestro, of course! I mean, if you’re on a strange planet and you see two dudes dressed in luminous green energy suits that aren’t really there, they’re the FIRST people you attack, right?
In the middle of the fray, Black Hand, who had been a member of the Indigo Tribe since “Blackest Night,” ran off, mortified he was wearing a ring other than his black ring of death. He quickly tossed the Indigo ring as far as he could and decided that, instead of killing Hal and Sinestro, he should just try to get the hell out of there. At LAST, a smart character in this book!
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Meanwhile, Hal and Sinestro decided the best option was to try and re-form the Indigo Tribe so as not to…well, die, so Hal went to go find that little Yoda lookin’ dude Natromo to convince him that the Lantern is not a lost cause, and neither is the…well, universe. Sinestro decided that fear was the best way to convince the little guy to help them, but Hal told him he was wrong. So wrong in fact, that Sinestro actually admitted it! There’s a first time for everything.
Sinestro left Hal and Natromo to go reignite the battery by distracting the former tribe. While Sinestro took on the Tribe (rather well, I might add) Iroque, the former Indigo-1, slipped away, following Hal and Natromo to the Core. As it turns out, Natromo was discouraged because of the fact there wasn’t an Indigo Spark to actually fix the damned thing. This is where Indigo-1/Iroque came in. She actually felt regret for her actions without the aid of the ring, which caused the Lantern to reform and brought all of the Indigos online, including Sinestro. Hal wanted him back, but was seemingly stymied when they asked him if he would be a hero without the Indigo Ring. He WANTS to believe it though.
The issue closes with William Hand on the run from his Indigo Ring. He was SO afraid of the thing, he jumped to his death! But since he’s The Black Hand, we all know what that means…
Over in “Batman #10, Bruce flew around for a little while, thinking about his clues. I guess if you hang out with Kryptonians enough their abilities rub off on you.
Right.
We also found out that that Talon is Thomas Wayne Jr. Bruce’s brother.
That’s it.
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Spider-Men’ #1, “Amazing Spider-Man” #687
Matthew – “X-Men Legacy” #268, “AvX: Vs” #3, “Avengers” #27
Gil – “Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre” #1, “Green Lantern” #10, “Batman” #10
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.
