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.
This week’s “Before Watchmen: Nite Owl” proved that there was literally no reason to read the first one. Sure, quality matters more than the arbitrary value of “importance,” but I defy you to find either in last month’s issue. During another night of patrol, Nite Owl and Rorschach chased a crook into what turned out to be a sex dungeon run by a vigilante — how edgy, JMS! — where our boy Walter Kovacs had an… adverse reaction.
Ugh, this is going to be one of those stories, isn’t it? Ugh, fine. Let’s get this over with: Rorschach and Dan had their little falling out, and Hollis warned his successor about associating with this lady of the evening, subtly called the Twilight Lady, in order to preserve the spotless name of the Nite Owl. After finding a dead hooker and learning that more and more were dying each day, without any attention or care from the police, you can bet that Dan soon found himself back at the ravishing redhead’s door — for crime fighting purposes you dolts.
Yeah, that’s really about it. The rest of the issue consisted of ham-fisted and/or lackluster “character developing moments, like more clips of Dan’s mom being beaten. Writing!
Hot off the heals of his film debut in The Avengers, the new “Hawkeye” ongoing series began this week, with the less than heroic start of Clint Barton leaving a pretty normal New York hospital after fighting some unnamed assailant. On his way home, Clint noticed that one of his neighbors was having trouble with the landlord. And, yes, he does continue to use that one word excessively through the rest of the comic:
Well, bros, our bro Hawkeye decided that wasn’t right for a bro to do to another bro, and so Hawkbro decided to be a cool bro and pay the rent for all of his neighboring bros. On his way to his bro Ivan’s underground casinbro, Clint found himself a new best bro: Twitter sensation #pizzadog!
Are you tired of all the bro-ing yet? Too bad. Broeye entered the bro’s casino, and attempted to pay his other bros’ rent with a big sack of cash. Ivan let him know, though, bro, that it wasn’t about the rent — our bro was trying to force his tenants out so he could sell the property to some other, unidentified bros. Ivan, though, would of course still be fine with taking our bro’s money. For a moment, Broton was on top of the ensuing struggle, but after being tossed out a window he was shot and clipped once, and would have been down for good if Pizza Dog had not come to the rescue! In exchange for his trouble, though, Pizza was rewarded by being hit by a car. Clint managed to use the momentary diversion to bring his new bro to the veterinarian, and soon pulverized Ivan and his bros when they finally caught up with him. After hearing Pizza — real name “Archer” — would be alright, Clint realized he had made a new… Friend.
Yes it was really that excessive.
After “Batman: Odyssey,” you would expect “The First X-Men” to be yet another fine example of the sheer insanity Neal Adams could produce. Unfortunately, though, the new miniseries’ debut issue looks to be nothing more than another “everything you knew about the X-Men was wrong!” scenario. The mini began with Logan witnessing the death of a young boy as his mutant power activated… I think? It was pretty damn vague. Logan was knocked out by the blast the boy made, but was soon back on his feet.
Continued below
God damn it not again. After seeing the boy’s corpse being carried away by a group of mysterious men in black, Logan quickly came to the logical conclusion that someone was hunting for his kind — Canadians mutants. Teaming up with his then-buddy, Sabretooth, the best there is at what he does found a location in Quantico that seemed to be tied up in the business, and, after dispatching some guards with Sabretooth, soon found a list of the names the mysterious organization had collected. There was a bit more uninteresting information that was conveyed, but the important thing that you need to know is at Xavier is now Xavier is now Uncle Charlie, and Logan and Creed thought it would be better to look for a young Magneto instead. Basically, it’s X-Men: First Class, with Chuck and Wolverine switched, and terrible.
Only one “Avengers vs X-Men” book this week (thank the lucky stars!), but it is a big one folks. A doozy, in fact. After last week’s glorified fail-trifecta, this issue sees Jason Aaron return to the book to deliver a series of smashes, clashes and bashes as only Aaron and Kubert can.
Putting a focus on good ol’ Peter Parker (now the second time Aaron and Kubert have teamed up to work on his tragic form of heroism), the opening of “AvX” #9 operates mostly as a place-setting tool and a continuity cleanser. For starters, the events of last week’s “Avengers” are clarified as Rulk is dragged in post-assassination attempt to K’un Lun, and all of the stuff Bendis did in his initial “New Avengers” tie-in (featuring an Iron Fist/Phoenix mash-up) is beginning to pay-off as Spider-Man and Hope work on our kung fu. Numerous Avengers, such as Captain Britain, Giant-Man and Mockingbird are shown in recovery from the events of their respective tie-ins, Iron Man is shown researching ways to fix his massive screw-up from “AvX” #5 and — are you ready for the big one? — Thor is defeated by Colossus and Magik and thrown into her limbo volcano, as seen in “X-Men Legacy.”
Meanwhile, Emma Frost is shown as teetering on the edge of madness as the ramped up Phoenix powers push her psychic abilities over the edge and cause her to travel to some random dude’s house to kill him for something he did in 1987. This simply goes to fuel the fire that Emma is going to end up dead at the end of this story as the eventual Big Bad/poster-child for corruption, and the mirroring of her inability to handle the power against Jean Grey’s is actually quite ironic (and not just Alanis Morisette ironic).
The other big emotional of the story is that Black Panther and Storm get a divorce. Or, more specifically, Black Panther decides that Storm isn’t his wife, and he can do that because:
To be king!
Oh, sure, there are a few minor inconsistencies in who is appearing where (Spider-Woman appears in limbo, for example, when she’s actually in Danger-created prison over in Utopia), but hey, we can move beyond that.
So, let’s get to the plot (now 13 pages into the issue): the Avengers — or, more specifically, Cap, She-Hulk, Black Panther, Wolverine, Iron Fist, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and what looks to be Daredevil in one panel (though he is never again seen) — are led into Limbo by turn-coat Soam and Charles Xavier, whose great threat against Cyclops last issue turns out to be not much more than “I’m going to get other people to do my work for me. Again.” Of course, Colossus and Magik are there waiting for them, and a massive brawl ensues. This is “Avengers vs X-Men” after all!
Because he’s so noble and awesome and the best character ever, Spider-Man decides to distract Colossus and Magik as a callback tribute to his heroism, allowing the rest of the Avengers to save those captured and escape. Spider-Man is then punched and punched and punched and punched and punched and punched by powers way outside of his average rogue gallery, and although he should be dead he does manage to trick Colossus and Magik into kicking each others ass with a classic Yojimbo mind-game.
Continued belowWhile this does save his bacon and allow the Avengers to save him, it does distribute the Phoenix force to two players — the mentally unstable Emma Frost, who spent this issue asking Scott to kill her and then murdering some dude, and Scott himself, who now has the ability to tear through the dimensional walls to enter K’un Lun and say what every child dreads hearing a parent say:
Awww, but daaad, the party was just getting staaarrtteedddd!
(On the plus side, nice man-kini there, Cyclops. Looking good, buddy!)
Over in “Avenging Spider-Man” #10, or as I call it, “The Book Where Captain Marvel Actually Does Stuff While Hanging Out With Spider-Man,” the government had our heroes Carol and Peter surrounded, along with their new friend “Robyn Hood.” It seems Robyn was part of the Occupy Movement, and you saw how those things go over in most towns. Boston just happens to be the most Anti-99% by siccing a bunch of dudes in Iron Man armor.
One of these Iron Dudes was actually kind of a jerk to Captain Marvel, which doesn’t seem so smart if you think about it. Sure you’re a guy in a suit of armor, but she doesn’t NEED armor. Peter tries to get everyone’s attention as Robyn Hood; a 50 foot bank robber just tries to quietly…fly away.
Thankfully, Spider-Man and Captain Marvel’s knowledge of SCIENCE proved she wasn’t going to get far away because of some mumbo jumbo called the square cubed law. However, once Robyn landed, Peter realized something distressing.
Why is she going to explode? Because she’s actually a robot in disguise! Optimus Prime never looked this good though. The banks created her to be a mole within the Occupy Movement as a way to subvert it from within. Her programming eventually started to overwrite itself, however, and she grew a jetpack!
But you know, there’s that exploding problem…
Crap.
If you read the last issue of “Daredevil,” you’d know that Matt found his way out of the fire after falling out of the frying pan, so to speak. Iron Man and the Avengers rescued him from the clutches of Doctor Doom’s Secretary of the Treasury (Doom must have been busy shooting the Baxter Building into space), it was up to the Avengers to rid Matt Murdock of the nanobytes that robbed him of his senses, including the cool ones, like you know, smell.
They managed to do this by using Hank Pym’s ability to shrink down to really small size and had him blast all these metal ant lookin’ things, and look at him without his helmet!
While Hank was in Matt’s head, some of their wires crossed and they shared each other’s memories which just confused both guy and might have caused a bunch of funny feelings in pants area, especially when Matt imagined Hank’s memory of Janet Van Dyne in a bikini.
When things are at their darkest for Hank (literally) he taps into Matt’s radar sense and finds his way back to his cool liitle EMP gun and eventually finished off the nanobytes and saved the day! Matt was rescued…and got to listen to Tony talk about how awesome he is.
At least Matt is nice about it.
It turns out Matt was gone for a week and a half, which prompted him to run back to hisoffice! Foggy had gone this entire time without him and would be happy to see his partner, right?
No, he was not. He was furious. He was furious because he found Matt’s father’s remains in Matt’s desk! Matt was as confused as you probably are because when this happened he was in Latveria. God, Foggy, you’re such a dick. Who says this new Daredevil doesn’t have huge crushing personal issues?
Finally, over in “Action Comics,” where Grant Morrison will finally make something good and then rip your heart out by leaving it after merely sixteen issues, also decided to ruin everyone’s lives by hinting at a possible future re-marriage for the first couple in comics: Lois Lane and Clark Kent.
You know what? @#$% Morrison and @#$% this Neo-Sapien guy who planted the idea in Clark’s head just to fool around with him. Also @#$% the Metropolis citizens who allowed themselves to be co-opted just to beat up a dazed Clark. But I supposed that last part wouldn’t do much anyway. Can I say @#$% enough?
Continued belowSo Clark and this little girl tried to do their best to save Lois, who was leaking raspberry jam out of her stomach, but this Neo-Sapien guy started throwing CARS at Clark with his mind. IT wouldn’t hurt Clark so much, but the mindless city folk? I’d imagine it’d hurt them at least a little.
Anyway, Clark eventually overcomes the Neo-Sapien, who also happened to be the Blake Farm Ghost that the hunter guy assumed was Clark all this time. He had a rough childhood with the crashing from space and raised by a kindly couple who eventually died, it all sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it? Then the little girl, Lois’ niece, blasted a thought bomb or something in the guy’s head and he was stopped. Unfortunately, Lois still had to be saved from that sucking stomach wound, so Superman did what any normal guy would do, he read every single medical textbook there was in the known universe and fixed her himself!
Man, there is nothing this guy can’t do!
Later, Batman showed up and convinced Superman to become Clark Kent again, which rendered the second secret identity moot. Finally, he went home and talked to his land lady, who just happened to be from the 5th Dimension, just like some guy who needs to buy a vowel. But Mxy is dead and was replaced by this guy:
Who, let’s face it, really needs to take a seat.
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Before Watchmen: Nite Owl” #2, “Hawkeye” #1, “The First X-Men” #1
Matt – “Avengers versus X-Men” #9
Gil – “Avenging Spider-Man” #10, “Daredevil” #16, “Action Comics” #12
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.
