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.
Action Comics #1 featured the debut of Socialist Man! If you haven’t heard already, Grant Morrison is taking the character back to his leftist roots, which has some people’s panties in a bunch. People will get upset about anything. In this issue he was on the run from the cops after threatening a exploitive business man and saving tenants of a building from being crushed in its destruction. What an asshole. Lex Luthor was hired to stop the alien menace by General Lane, and he did so – by hitting him with a train. Genius!
The new volume of OMAC was pretty much Keith Giffen regaling us with a retelling of his Kirby-inspired wet dreams. There was punching. Lots and lots of punching. And tearing. And general destruction. And it was awesome. I’m still not 100% sure what is going on in the comic – something about Brother Eye controlling a man who could be turned into a crazy fighting machine, I think – but who cares?
Turns out that these days Buddy Baker has become a hipster icon – the DCU’s Radiohead, if you will – but being liked by guys that wear deep v-necks doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get paid for being counter-cultural. So begins the Baker family’s problems in Animal Man #1. And how does Buddy relieve his stress? By punching out a criminal, of course. After returning home, Buddy had a freaky dream – not a David Bowie in your living room kind of freaky, but a your daughter killing everyone and you being reduced to your nervous system kind of freaky – and woke up to find his daughter reanimating cute and cuddly… dead things.
There was a lot of talking about what was going on in the first issue of Stormwatch, but not a lot of actual… goings-on. Basically, Stormwatch has been around for a while, doing things behind the scenes. Their latest challenge? They need to kick the moon’s ass. Alright, no biggie. So they try to recruit the reclusive Apollo, only to be turned down. He works alone, you see. But then, as the team is trying to “coerce” him, Midnighter shows up and kicks their asses, and then asks Apollo to help him kill bad guys. He works alone, you see… with exceptions for cuties in leather (or whatever the hell Midnighter is wearing these days).
Sterling Gates and Rob Liefeld’s Hawk & Dove #1 had lots of gritted teeth. Aside from that, Hank and Dawn barely avoided destroying the Washington Monument while crashing a plane with NYAR zombies on it. After coming out alive, the pair was approached by a Washi Watanabe, who 1) wore some rad sunglasses and 2) informed them that this was the first strike of a radical separatist named Alexander Quirk, and that the duo was probably going to be on his shit list from here on out. Foreshadowing! …I guess. For the rest of the book, Hawk and Dove talked about their respective pasts, and we got one more “NYAR” before a Hawk lookalike showed up. Overall, I give it four NYARs out of five, though I’m not sure what that means.
I didn’t actually read Detective Comics, but here’s how it ends:
Look, kids! Comics!
Wait, Marvel released some comics this week, too? Eh, who cares.
Anything that 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.
