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.
The mid-way issue of “Before Watchmen: The Minutemen” was mostly just a close-up on the events of Under the Hood: the aftermath of the Comedian’s attempt to rape Sally Jupiter, Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis being outed, the Minutemen’s avoidance of service, and all that. The second half, though, followed the Silhouette as she attempted to bust a child pornography ring. Sorry, guys, but the rest is going to be joke-less; not even a heartless monster like myself can crack jokes about child pornography. Ursula was able to escape the pornographers with the little girl they had taken, but not flawlessly: Ursula got shot up pretty badly, and one bullet passed through her flesh to kill the poor little girl. Luckily, she had Hollis’s on-patrol contact information, and he was able to get to her before he bled out.
…I’ll try to be funnier next time “Minutemen” comes around, I promise. Cooke just didn’t make it easy with this one.
It looks like DC is getting rid of all that new reader good will they earned with the New 52 by introducing these new readers to annuals, the bane of reading series in singles. To sweeten the deal, DC even made a few the annuals essential reading for their series! Take, for example, the “Green Lantern” Annual: after a little intro reinforcing that the Guardians are now sociopaths with unlimited power, we pick up almost directly where “Green Lantern” #12 left out, only with and Hal and Sinestro buried in makeshift graves, rather than unconscious at Black Hand’s feet. Hal eventually dug himself out with pretty much no power, despite being without a powered ring, because even without the ring, he’s just as good as Batman, right? “Batman: R.I.P.” anyone? No? Okay, moving on. Across the universe, the Guardians babbled about some “Chamber of Shadows” and the “First Lantern” that they mentioned a few times in previous issues, and arrived at said Chamber, a vault containing ragged members of the same race as the Guardians — if they aren’t just called Guardians. Alright, take bets everyone: this being a Geoff Johns comic, how many pages until a highly stylized fight scene? If you guessed two, you’re right on the money!
Back on Earth, Hal was being subjected to some head games by good ol’ William Hand, until Sinestro popped out of the grave and popped Hand one with a shovel in the back of the head. He’s going for style points, guys. Using the combined residual energy of their rings, Hal and Sinestro summoned Sinestro’s lantern in order to recharge, just in time for — yep — another perspective change! The Guardian-on-Guardian violence ended well in the favor of the Guardian Guardians, who then awoke this mysterious First Lantern, a shadowy, obscured guy imprisoned in a crystaline lantern structure. Permanently shadowed until just the right moment faces: the most under-appreciated super power. This wall of text is hurting my eyes, so I’ll up the speed a bit here: the Guardians left with this lantern, resealing their brethren in the Shadow Chamber, but took the time to come to Earth and add their power to Black Hand’s so he might kill Hal and Sinestro. Which he did. Totally. Not a fake-out at all. As the combined Hal/Sinestro ring flew off to find a replacement, the Guardians used the First Lantern’s power to create the first member of this so called “Third Army,” an emotionless, formless creature whose touch transformed an innocent bystander into a similarly emotionless, formless creature. So… a kind of space zombie. Something that has never been in Johns’s “Green Lantern” before.
Continued belowMan, it took me five times longer to write that than it did to read the actual issue. And people make fun of Bendis for writing issues that are quick to read.
The other “big” annual was the finale of “Justice League International,” the book beloved by… wait, was it beloved at all? Well, for those of you who haven’t been keeping up, this team is one devoted to tackling real-world issues, such as warlords and terrorists. A wholly original idea not at all like, say, Wildstorm-era Stormwatch or The Authority. After a mission well done, despite Guy Gardner leaving the team due to differences with Booster Gold, Booster let everyone know that the U.N. had approved expanding the team to include The Olympian (Everyone: “Who?”) and the best Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes. Ted fans, go cry in your blue and gold corner like you have been for the past seven years. Feeling incredibly peachy, Booster then proclaimed probably the worst thing he could think of:
Gold, buddy, have you been paying attention to your sales? The rest of the book was essentially Dan DiDio declaring “IF I’M GOING DOWN, I’M TAKING THEM WITH ME!” OMAC, who seemingly had gotten over his whole Eye problem, went berserk and began beating the snot out of everyone. August General in Iron was taken down first, followed by the Olympian (some addition to the team!), while Jaime was teleported across the universe to The Reach. While buying time for Godiva to get August to safety — note, no one cared about the Olympian — Booster was able to upload Skeets to OMAC’s interface. Skeets, you ask? But he isn’t part of the New 52, is he? Well apparently he is, though now he is a super-powerful anti-virus agent (read: plot device). Sounds like a downgrade, to me, and begs the question: why didn’t they use it earlier? Because they wanted to use Kevin as a big bone-smashing brute? Some heroes. As the OMAC virus left Kevin’s body, time stopped for all but Booster, who was greeted by a future version of… himself? Clearly distressed, future Booster had a message of dire importance. The future, Booster’s future would be lost if he was unable to stop:
Man, apparently fanboy rage destroys the future of DC. I don’t believe that for a second; the DCU would be long gone by now were that the case. As you can see, though, it was too late, and both past future Booster and future future Booster faded away to nothingness. In an epilogue, Batman checked up on the still unconscious, no longer OMAC-tivated Kevin, and was confronted by the mysterious Brother Eye for a teaser of what’s to come in Justice League: “Infinite Crisis 2: OMAC Boogaloo!”
Over in “Justice League” #12, nothing really important happened. They beat the bad guy who was then hired by Amanda Waller to write a book about how to beat The Justice League.
Nothing like asking the guy who just got his butt handed to him by the Justice League to write about about how to beat the Justice League. But that’s government for ya! At least “The Villain’s Journey” is catchier than “How to Destroy the Justice League.”
Beyond that, Aquaman claimed his desire to lead the League, Batman said “nope”, Hal Jordan just outright quit “YOLO” style, Flash and Cyborg were little more than wallpaper, Wonder Woman gave Steve Trevor the “it’s not you it’s me” speech, and then this happened:
And the internet went crazy. I don’t understand what the big deal is with Lois Lane dressing up as Wonder Woman though.
This week in Avengers fighting X-Men, we’ve got two installments: the “AvX: Vs” series with it’s fifth installment, and a new “Wolverine and the X-Men.” We’ll start with the easy to pick apart one first, obviously.
This week in “AvX: Vs” gives us two tales of battle, starting with a bout between Hawkeye and Angel. What’s amusing about this is that the writer of the story, Matt Fraction, has actually written a story in which Hawkeye fights Angel back in the finale of “Utopia.” However, the catch to that is that back then, Hawkeye was Bullseye and Angel was Archangel — oh, yeah, and you never actually saw it. It was a page of grand standing before we moved on! So you have to imagine that, at least in some form or fashion, this is him “making up” for that. And if not, it’s a pretty hilarious coincidence regardless.
Continued below
So Hawkeye, a long time Avenger who has recently discovered a fashion sense, and Angel, a mentally stunted recovering mutant, go at it in true battle-style. It’s actually pretty much exactly what you’d expect: Hawkeye fires some arrows, Angel fires some feathers (which, realistically, he probably shouldn’t know how to do given his whole mental condition), and Psylocke watches from afar. Angel has the upper hand here, quite literally, because he can fly above Hawkeye, but thanks to some cocky behavior Angel comes down to his level, at which point Hawkeye puts three arrows in each hand like Wolverine claws and starts beating him. It might be cool if Angel weren’t — again — currently mentally stunted, but since he is the whole scene just comes off as if Hawkeye was a dick. And the ending does little to change that, as Hawkeye spots Psylocke and threatens to shoot an arrow in her head, which of course Angel falls for — so Hawkeye shoots Angel in the gut and runs away.
Now, in defense of Hawkeye, he’s had a pretty rough time in “AvX,” having been burned alive in issue #7, also written by Fraction. However, with the end of the story seeing Emma Frost say “to be continued,” one would imagine that this comes before her attack on him, which really just means that Hawkeye is a bit of a bastard. But, hey, what else would you expect from a former villain, right?
Meanwhile, a second story finds Black Panther and Storm having an epic battle of power and mind. It starts with Storm fighting dirty and electrocuting her husband, but of course Panther is smart enough to have insulated himself against such an attack, to the point that he can actually discharge it back at her. This leaves Storm no other option than to come to the ground so she and her husband can punch each other in the face for a while. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s the definition of a marriage on the rocks, wouldn’t you?
So they punch, and they punch, and they punch, and they punch. They punch some more, and punch some more, and then they even punch some more. Of course, timed with all of this is an inner monologue from both character, thinking about the decisions that they have made and how they used to love one another, but are so glad that they didn’t have any children. (Seriously!) And it all comes to a head when, while charging for a running jump kick or something, Storm leaps into the Panthers arms for a smooch, before punching him in the face and being extracted by fellow X-Men. She then removes her wedding band and tosses it in the ground, because in this fight there are no winners.
It is worth reminding you that Black Panther and Storm have decided to get a divorce in the wake of Namor’s attack on Wakanda back in “AvX” #9, but this issue seems to contradict that in a big way, having their marriage dissolve at the end of their bout. Then again, “AvX: Vs” opens with the note that it is a completely worthless throwaway title where the only reason to pick it up is if you like the writer and/or artist, so hey, who gives a damn, right?
Now let’s discuss the book whose continuity is supposed to “matter:” “Wolverine and the X-Men” #15.
Taking place immediately after “AvX” #10, Wolverine and Hope are in a graveyard/memorial site at the Jean Grey school. Hope tells Logan that she should’ve come with him at the end of “Schism,” to which Logan responds “duh-doy.” He also casually alludes to the story of Jean Grey, the previous host of the Phoenix, specifically to assumedly foreshadow her involvement in the finale, before we move away from these two and discover that now a fraction of the X-Men and the Avengers are working together against Scott and Emma.
So what do we have with the new team-up? Well, Agent Brand, Beast, Iron Man, Iron Fist and Broo are all working together in Beast’s lab to figure out a way to defeat the Phoenix Two, and of course Broo is the one to figure out a plausible solution. Beast and Iron Man only have doctorates, not anything important that would qualify them as solve the situation.
Continued below
Meanwhile, Kitty Pryde, fresh off her hot/terrible date with Colossus, sits with Iceman and muses about when their next potential date is, while their conversation slowly reveals what X-Men have now come over to the school in the wake of Cyclops’ epic fuck-up. The Cuckoos (much to the enjoyment of all teenage boys at the school) and the other members of Generation Hope have arrived, as well as others like Dust, Pixie and Martha Johnson, who apparently finds young Kid Apocalypse — er, I mean, Genesis quite fetching. It seems that as Year Two of the Wolverine School rolls along, we’re looking at a lot of teenage romance! Finally, a mainstream comic for the MTV generation!
Additionally, Professor X (dead man walking) and Rachel Summers, despite their epic battle just two weeks ago in “Avengers,” are now pals again and walking through the schools speaking telepathically to try and figure out a solution to their problem, only to run into Quentin Quire who is eaves dropping. In but a page, Xavier smack talks Quire and then “messes” with him by announcing that Quentin will be running for student council president, which is such a good zinger! Man, never underestimate modern comics ability to take a character who was an incredibly viable threat to a massive extent when first introduced and then dumb him down into the butt of every potential joke. (Er, uh, no offense, Aaron. Morrison did invite you to his massive party, after all.)
It also turns out that Husk and Toad are dating, and having secret disgusting rendezvous underneath the school in a bunch of caves. ‘Nuff said.
As the issue begins to close out, we get a few changes. Kid Gladiator is forced to leave with his father, but Warbird is left behind, which is convenient since she’s co-starring in “Astonishing X-Men.” Angel — again, despite being mentally stunted — gets to graduate and become a Graduate Assistant, which is a glorified title that means very, very little. Iceman and Wolverine resolve their differences, Idie and Hope reconnect after being apart for so long, and as it all closes out, Beast, Wolverine, Rachel, Iceman, Xavier and Angel march on to battle with Cyclops and Emma.
So, long story short, it’s pretty much the most interesting issue of the series we’ve had since “AvX” started and this book got mixed up in tie-ins and whatnot. As “AvX” closes out, expect a lot more interesting things to happen from this book in the future.
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Before Watchmen: Minutemen” #3, “Green Lantern” Annual #1, “Justice League International” Annual #1
Gil – “Justice League” #12
Matthew – “AvX: Vs” #5, “Wolverine and the X-Men” #15
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.
