Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Battle Scars #4

It's Tuesday, and I am scraping the bottom of my new comic pile. Two final reviews for the week on tap tonight, with the first one being the forth issue of the, thus far, pretty good Battle Scars mini-series.

Battle Scars #4(of 6):

Summary: We get started with the old man we've had glimpses of in the past dying. The doctors manage to resuscitate him, at which time he hops out of bed and begins demanding Sgt. Johnson's blood... And so the plot thickens... From there we head to Johnson, who is trying to fight off the Serpent Squad. He lasts all of 15 seconds before they have him down and defeated... You know, I'll hit on this in the “Thoughts” section, but I REALLY liked this scene... Anyway, before the Serpents can kill/capture Johnson and collect the bounty on his head, Deadpool comes into the room guns blazing since he still wasn't sure if Johnson was a bad guy or not. Seeing a chance to get some information, Johnson drags Taskmaster(who was taken down last issue) into a back room and demands some answers. After some coercing, Taskmaster drops the name Orion. Before Johnson can learn more, somebody wearing the Scorpio costume enters the room, knocks Taskmaster out and warns Johnson to leave the country and start a new life for his own good. Scorpio then puts Johnson's lights out and disappears. By now, SHIELD has arrived on the scene, which causes the Serpents and Deadpool to scatter. Johnson is dragged to safety by his friend, Cheese. Later on, Cheese tells Johnson to drop his investigation and go to SHIELD or the Avengers since things were obviously spinning out of control. Realizing Cheese was right about how dangerous everything had become, Johnson knocks Cheese out and leaves him behind for his own good. While Johnson is driving away from the motel, we see that Scorpio was spying on him, and seeing Johnson leave, Scorpio heads to his hidden base... Where he is sneak attacked by Johnson, who obviously knew Scorpio was watching him. With that, Johnson beats the hell out of Scorpio and demands answers, pulling off Scorpio's mask to reveal Nick Fury(!!!). This issue ends with Nick telling Johnson that he(Johnson) was a Fury(!?!)!

Thoughts: This was a VERY good read. Before I go too much further, let me address that scene I mentioned earlier, Johnson vs the Serpents... As I was reading this comic, and Johnson was battling the Serpent Society, I have to admit, I was ready to get a bit pissed... You see, the Serpents have been a team for a long time now, and while they're always defeated by the likes of Captain America, they ARE a team and ARE super-powered. They SHOULD have easily dispatched Johnson, and they did, so kudos to Chris Yost, Cullen Bunn and Matt Fraction for writing that scene perfectly. The Deadpool/Serpent battle was awesome, and some of Deadpool's lines were laugh out loud funny. For that I'll give the props to Yost since he scripted this issue. And the reveal/cliffhanger at the end? Awesome stuff. I can't wait to hear the explanation as to how Johnson is a Fury... The next two issues should be great.

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.
battle scars #4
Deadpool's dialogue here is SO Marvel vs Capcom 3!

9 comments:

  1. And so Marvel's game is up with this series! Johnson is going to lose an eye and become Samuel L. Jackson aka ultimate Nick Fury just in time for the Avengers to drop. Soooo lame of you Marvel! Way to dilute Nick Fury in both 616 and Ultimate Marvel.

    Your quip at the end reminds me, have you been playing Ultimate MvC3 lately? I've kind of dropped off, which is sad since I finally settled on a team back in December.

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  2. You know when this series first started i suspected Nick Fury might be involved but it didn't make any sense to me so i dropped the theory, I mean since when does Fury hook-up with school teachers and she didn't appear to be the backstory kind of person.
    But since we know that Fury IS involved i also realize who that Orion guy is now, he was really important in the Secret Warriors series and what hes doing is going to make alot more sense if you read that series.

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  3. HA!! I love that theory, TRobb! It makes perfect sense! I mean, whenever movie fans pick up a Marvel book and see Nick Fury, you KNOW they're confused. This must be Marvel's way to fix that! In all seriousness though, I hope that's not true... I actually stopped playing UMvC3 about two weeks ago when I picked up Soul Calibur 5... I've been a fan of that series since it's Soul Blade days, so that was a first day pick up for me. I figure when I play the hell out of SC5, I'll probably switch back to UMvC3... I STILL haven't gotten that Watcher card, and that's REALLY pissing me off! :D

    I still haven't read Secret Warriors, Anon... Would you mind filling me in on your Orion theory?

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  4. Well basically Orion was the nick fury of the russian equivalent of shield during the cold war, but sometime during the 60-70s him all the top shield guys all the main hydra hand and then some other independant super spies were all teamed up by leonardo da vinci (hes from another shield series and none of the guys here know hes leonardo da vinci), anyway they go on a bunch of super spy adventures finding a bunch of super tech, eventually they put all their toys together and make a machine that gives you immortality and captain america powers to boot, but it only works like that if its powered by a magical alien rock thingy.
    So at this point the spies are feeling very good about themselves but we all know this wouldnt be a very good spy story without some double crossing and thats exactly what happens multiple times in the span of 2 pages, ultimately orion is on top and he walks into the immortality chamber, but suddenly fury (or the baron guy of hydra i cant remember) reveals he snatched the power rock ,but its to late for orion to know that, so he ends up as a dessicated immortal corpse in stasis.
    Fast forward to the present orions partner finds a way to get his boss back to 150% by replacing the rock with the lives of 10000 Russian soldiers, so Orion is now super powered and has 10000 lifes in him, so like if you stab him or he has a heart attack or anything that'll just be 1 other life and he survives fine. There's a bunch of other stuff that happens but i figure you might wana save that for yourself.

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  5. Oh and all this stuff happens in just one issue.

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  6. That's cool X, let me know if you get back into Ultimate Marvel and want to play online sometime. I'm at the point where to get better, I'd have to learn some advanced combos, and my motivation is ebbing, so it'd be good to get some matches.

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  7. I remember that issue Anon. It was like anything that had to remotely to do with Shield coming together in one crazy ass story. I didn't remember Orion but when I heard the name my first thought was that crazy Shield group with zodiac symbols (they were zodiac symbols, right?).

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  8. yah that was the super spy team i was talking about.

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  9. Cool, thanks a ton for that write-up, Anon. That will really help me out going forward with this mini. I REALLY need to get my hands on that Secret Warriors series eventually...

    Will do, TRobb. I figure I'll probably be happily immersed in SC5 for a few more weeks. Then it'll either be a return to UMvC3, or maybe I'll see if I can pick up a game like Skyrim relatively cheap.

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