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.
In true comic-set-in-the-sixties fashion, “Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre” started with a good ol’ acid trip sequence, where Laurie decided that maybe Gurustein — you know, the bad guy — wasn’t so bad at all. Back in LA, though, Sally Jupiter was not at all happy with Hollis’s idea of just letting the girl live her life, and threatened to get a real man to find Laurie and bring her home if Hollis wouldn’t. When Laurie woke up the following morning, her squeeze Greg, and many other guests at their party, had been so affected by the drugs that he needed to be hospitalized, causing Laurie to quickly rethink her Gurustein = okay policy. Not long after she left her boyfriend’s side, though, Greg found himself in a bad spot — being mildly tortured by the Comedian and given the choice to either go off to Nam or die, so long as he never saw Laurie again. Come on, you know you want to say it!
Aww, come on, you’ve been saying the opposite in almost every other Before Watchmen comic! Laurie herself found her way to Gurustein easy enough, and knocked him flat in front of a room full of naked hippies — Gurustein included. Before Watchmen aims to be faithful to the original miniseries in every way, from symetrical layouts, to the three-by-three grid, to full-frontal male nudity. Now that’s dedication. Returning to her home after telling off Gurustein’s boss, Laurie fell asleep soon enough for her real father to slip in and leave behind a forced not from Greg assumedly saying something bad. What a jok–oh god it’s contagious.
It’s a month of #0s at DC, which means lots and lots of origin stories. Thankfully, the one told in “Green Lantern” #0 is actually something new, rather than a story we’ve heard again and again with only minor variations. In this issue we saw the debut Earth’s newest Green Lantern, Simon Baz, a Arab-American who grew up being persecuted for his race due to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. After a rough life, Baz had found himself living as a car thief, and one day stole one car he should have stayed away from: a van loaded with a time bomb. Taken into custody after the bomb safely exploded, Baz was harshly questioned in an attempt to make him take the blame for a variety of things he didn’t know, when his handy new Green Lantern ring came and saved him.
There is, however, something much more important at stake here than another case of affirmative action hurting our old school characters (and if you seriously care about that, please leave — Hal has all the personality of a cardboard cutout). If you can turn back the clock to 2011, you might remember that DC editorial declared that 9/11 never happened in the DC Universe after a particularly harsh case of bad timing, when an issue of the ‘Our Worlds at War’ crossover came out featuring the ruined Luthor Towers the day after the terrorist attack. Now, the gaffe here is not that Johns forgot this little detail; after all, in the DCnU, superheroes weren’t around until around 2006, and thus were not there to stop the attack, as was the explanation pre-reboot. That just means that the reboot changed this bit of continuity…
…which means that, in the context of the DC Universe, Barry Allen caused 9/11. In-story continuity changes: never a good idea.
Remember how one of the Phantom Stranger’s coolest traits is that he truly is a stranger, with an origin that will never be fully known? Don’t you just love that? Then you probably won’t want to read this week’s “Phantom Stranger” #0. In fact, you should probably skip this whole paragraph and the one after. We meet the Stranger right before he gained his powers, shortly after his own death. Put on trial by a court with oddly SHAZAM-like insignias, the not-yet Stranger was deemed as one of the greatest sinners the world had ever known, for betraying his dearest friend for thirty pieces of silver. I don’t know about you, but this is ringing a bell. His sentence passed, Judas the Stranger found himself in “The Field of Blood” where he had hanged himself in life, with a necklace of his pieces of silver strung around his neck. Apparently, the fact that they don’t mention him by name makes this “subtle.” As ordered, the Stranger wandered around the globe for almost two thousand years before the mysterious voice that had commanded him made itself known.
Okay, sure, God works in mysterious ways, but those are probably the most unhelpful directions ever. After two thousand years of silence, though, I guess it’s something. This man apparently ended up being detective James Corrigan — or, at least, was Corrigan until he stripped off his badge when told he couldn’t participate in the case to find his kidnapped wife. Despite God’s terrible instructions, though, the Stranger was able to find Corrigan and aid him in his efforts, using his vague and undefinied powers to see where Corrigan’s wife Gwen was. Or, at least, so he thought; when the two arrived at the warehouse where Gwen was seen, it ended up actually being filled with gangsters, who shot Corrigan there. You know what happens next. In payment for creating the Spectre, one of the Stranger’s silver coins was removed, leaving us only with the moral of the story: God is a dick.
In the second issue of Matt Fraction and David Aja’s sexy stylized “Hawkeye” series, things get even more sexy and more stylized as David Aja rocks your little world with some sexy and stylized pages and panels. In fact, it’s so sexy and so stylized that one might have a hard time keeping up with the content of the issue due to eyes being blinded by sexy stylized sexiness. Oh, and did we mention that it was stylized? Fuck, just buy the damn book.
Here’s what you missed, though: Hawkeye and Hawkeye (er, that is, Clint Barton and Kate Bishop) attend the Cirque du Nuit performance at the world’s first six-star hotel, which they have learned will have something bad happen due to drawings by hobos. And who says that that Batman is the master detective? As they attend they find out that the performance is full of criminals like the Owl, Madame Mask, Tombstone and the Kingpin, and that the man who runs the show — one Maynard Tiboldt — is a career criminal who doesn’t really speak any French:
Then again, most don’t.
So Tiboldt tries to rob the audience, but Hawkeye and Hawkeye infiltrate the performance, with Hawkeye fighting a barrage of circus performers and Hawkeye beating up and posing as Tiboldt’s main helper in a keen double-cross. As Hawkeye is captured and set for execution, Hawkeye arrives to free Hawkeye, shooting an arrow through Hawkeye’s cuffs while Hawkeye grabs Hawkeye and goes on the run so Hawkeye can continue to fire off arrows. It’s all very basic superheroics, folks… but sexy and stylized.
Hawkeye and Hawkeye defeat the evil circus, but incur the wrath of the Kingpin after they make off with the loot, which is good because the book needed a central villain. If it was just Hawkeye and Hawkeye being all Hawkeye all the time, that’d just be a bit formulaic, wouldn’t it? And now that Hawkeye has Hawkeye to help Hawkeye be Hawkeye, Hawkeye plans to do this kind of thing more often as long as Hawkeye is around.
I hope I made that as confusing as possible so that you’ll just go buy the damn issue.
Over in “Mighty Thor,” one of the other four comic books Fraction wrote this week, things get heated over in ‘Everything Burns,’ albeit with no fire involved. The townspeople are riled after learning that everything is Loki’s fault, but Loki runs off as Thor fights all his friends for the older little brother that has betrayed him so many times. Apparently in Asgard, the phrase is “fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, RIOT!” However, the party is brought to a halt as notorious partypooper Heimdall arrives to remind everyone — oh yeah, we’re under attack by a giant fire demon who wants to destroy us all! It’s up to Thor to now battle people with words instead of his hammer, and for Volstagg to really convince people that a fight is what they want.
So an epic battle rages across the nine realms, the All-Mother are “arrested” (i.e. willingly go into a cage) and Thor and friends march off to war. But two things occur during this time: Loki absconds to Niffleheim with the hope of getting to Hel and beseeching Hela to join the cause. Unfortunately Hel says “no,” because fuck it, more servants for me!” While this is happening, Sif approaches the All-Mother to find out what caused all of this and they reveal their terrible secret. It seems that in his younger and more venerable years, Odin of the Aesir approached Freyr of the Vanir for a pact to end their year long war, in which Odin took Freyr’s daughter for his bride as a peace offering (not that Odin gave any other option), and it is through this that Surtur is causing a rift between the Aesir and Vanir. The All-Mother makes note that a trueborn heir is out there, but no one knows who he is. Any guesses as to who this king might be in a book called “The Mighty Thor?” Anyone?
Continued belowOh, and to wrap it off, we learn who Surtur’s servant is. It turns out that Hela’s hand Leah, who was previously turned into a Hand, was somehow able to remain alive — albeit a bit older and with weird patch marks on her face, and she wants revenge on Loki. I have no idea why, unfortunately. Last we heard, they were BFF. BFF means you don’t summon a fire demon to wipe out your friend’s life and the lives of his people, Leah! You’d think after all that time on tumblr she’d learn a thing or two…
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre” #3, “Green Lantern” #0, “Phantom Stranger” #0
Matt – “Hawkeye” #2, “The Mighty Thor” #19
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.
