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.
“Before Watchmen: Comedian” continued into its second issue this week, following the trend Forrest Gump set of putting fictional characters into the background of iconic historical events, with Blake meeting Robert Kennedy at the landmark boxing match where Ali claimed “I shook up the world!” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to put down the comics and go learn about life for a bit, man. I’m sure you could guess what they were talking about: Bobby was planning on running for congress, while Eddie was about to be sent to Vietnam to rally the troops. Man, I don’t know which sounds more dangerous. The rest was a whole lot of nothing — Eddie killed some VC, the soldiers talked about how the U.S. was funding the war through drug money. Oh, and how could I forget…
…more clever acknowledgments of Eddie’s superhero name. Once again all that can be said about this week’s Before Watchmen issue is “let’s see what happens next month.” Good thing we aren’t already halfway through thi– heywaitaminute!
The first relaunched “National Comics” brought the return of the one character everyone was clamoring for: Kid Eternity! What, you don’t care? Too bad, it was this or write about “X-Treme X-Men,” and fuck if I’m doing that. Christopher Freeman started off his tale by letting us know that he died once, in a mysterious drive-by shooting that was intended solely for his star detective dad. Unlike his dad, though, Chris came back, and with the extraordinary ability to bring back the disembodied consciousness of and commune with the recently deceased for a few brief hours, as well as the inability to speak to the cute black chick at his work. And where does he work, you ask? At a police station. You can see where this is going. That’s right: Chris is a coroner, and works with murder victims to solve their own murders, though he keeps that on the down low. You can bet that works out well for him.
Big and ugly there is Chris’s most recent project, and antique store owner who was found shot in the chest and with bruising on his knuckles — and who, strangely enough, was almost held back by a mysterious bald man when Chris plucked him from the underworld. As any good cop would, Chris went to the scene of the crime, the victim’s shop, and began looking for clues, such as the tell-all lack of one of the victim’s antique guns. Hello, murder weapon. Chris also left the store with a suspect: the upstairs tenant and her friends supposedly treated the victim poorly, but the sexist and objectifying remarks that the victim made while Chris made his search aroused Chris’s suspicion. After being informed that this tenant was performing in a rock show that night, Chris sped his way to the venue, and made a poor choice in saying he was with the police (only not really). Threatened, the poor girl pulled a gun from her bag — the murder weapon! — but in his excitement the ghostly victim revealed that he had tried to rape her and she had only killed him in self defense — conveniently just in time for his hours to run out and for him to fade back to the land of the dead. Case closed.
In the epilogue, Chris was approached by that aforementioned mysterious bald guy, who claimed that by bringing back bad men such as Mr. Rapist, Chris was breaking “the rules.”
Continued below
You dick. After tall, dark and overly mysterious left, Chris’s life was returned to normal… until, at least, the black girl head been pining over was the next person to show up on his autopsy table. You know what that means: The end… For now!
It goes to show how lacking in substance most of our ongoings are when it takes as much space to summarize a one-shot as it does to summarize a whole story arc. Moving on.
Sam Humphries’ run on “Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates” began in earnest with issue #13, in a United States divided due to the revelation that the U.S created mutants. Think “DMZ” but with superpowers, and maybe without any redeeming qualities. Rogue Sentinels controlled a large portion of the Midwest, while Texas had seceded and gotten control of a handful of nuclear weapons. You know what America needs in a time like this? A captain. Luckily, he just so happened to appear in the news while the new president was freaking out, busting up fear mongering punks like you would expect a man whose A doesn’t stand for France to do. All it takes a glimpse at a television screen, a simple phone call, and what do you know…
…the band’s back together. With new duds! New… blocky duds. Whatever, dude is from the 40s, he isn’t going to have the best design sense. Beating up a bunch of anarcho-punks is one thing; what can these three do against a nation of Texans who have The Bomb? Bet they regret throwing away their only Hulk.
This week in “AvX” almost didn’t get written because holy crud was this a dull week for “AvX” stuff. I mean, fine, maybe every “AvX” week is a boring week, but when the coolest thing to happen in “AvX” is someone on the internet realizes that the combined names of the Phoenix Five can be an acronym for PENIS, I think that tells you something in terms of the event.
So, whatever, what happened?
Well, in “Avengers”, the Red Hulk tries to assassinate Cyclops.
He fails.
In “Wolverine and the X-Men,” Colossus tries to take Kitty out on a date.
He fails.
In “X-Men Legacy,” Rogue tries to rescue Ms. Marvel from Magik’s twisted limbo prison.
She fails.
Wasn’t that exciting? Wasn’t it riveting? Congrats, “AvX!” You’re full of fail!
Oh, fine, I’m being a bit sassy. But in all reality, there really isn’t anything worthwhile to report. None of the stories have any major nuance and all end with the same basic point: the Phoenix Five are insane. This was something you could’ve understood from one panel in the main “AvX” title, but for whatever reason we got sixty pages reiterating the point this week in a bunch of one-off stories that don’t do anything to remove the stigma that tie-ins are inherently useless.
But hey, the Olympics Opening Ceremony was pretty fun, right? Did you see the part where Danny Boyle ripped off Alan Moore? Ha ha!
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Before Watchmen: Comedian” #2, “National Comics: Eternity” #1, “Ultimate Comics: The Ultimates” #13
Matt – “Avengers” #28, “Wolverine and the X-Men” #14, “X-Men Legacy” #270
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.
