Monday, March 25, 2013

Best of the Rest! Week of 3/20/13

Hey all, X here with his final post of the week.  Yes, it's time to take a look at the Best of the Rest!  This time with 100% more JT!  Yes, mi hermano, JT, will be pitching in this week.  Probably to bring the post quality waaaaay down... But at least I'm here to bring some respectability to the proceedings.  Huh, it probably wasn't that smart to insult JT right off the bat since he'll be closing this post out, and as such will get the last word...  If I was smarter I'd delete the insults...  Meh.  So here's how it'll work.  I'll post my thoughts on a few comics, JT will post his thoughts in a different color, and then JT will close things out.  Boom, simple.  Like JT!!!  HA!!!!  *ahem*  Anyway, let's get this bad boy rolling.

Daredevil #24:  This was actually the high-point of this week's BotR post...  Which doesn't bode well as we move forward...  Basically DD is inching closer to finding out who the mystery villain who has been putting the screws to him was.  Foggy learns that he had a rare type of bone tumor, and the doctors weren't sure if it had spread or not.  Yeah, this comic is great, no doubt.  Mark Waid has a little something for everybody here.  Heroes, villains, secret plots, some drama, AND mutated dogs!  What more could one ask for?!  Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.

X-Factor #253: We get some escalation in the Hell on Earth war, as the various devils begin to wage war upon each other on Earth.  Satana tries to kill Tier(because Satana is frigging AWESOME), but Tier chases her away.  Polaris decides the best course of action was to sic Tier on the Hell-Lords, since he can hurt them.  And Madrox is a demon thanks to Mephisto.  Sadly, this comic didn't really do it for me.  I mean it was all right and all, and I LOVE that Peter David showed that other heroes were involved in battling the demons, which you don't often see in a story like this, but the narrative was kind of spread all over the place...  We were in Mephisto's hell.  And on the streets.  And watching demons fight.  And in a hotel room.  It just didn't gel for me, which is very rare for this series.  But hey, I'm sure I'll be heaping praise on the next issue, so one not-so-good issue isn't a big thing.  Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.

Saga #11:  First things first, I LOVE the hell out of this series!!!  With that out of the way, I have to admit, this issue didn't really do it for me.  Basically Marco's father helped the group get away from the space baby, but at the cost of his life.  Marco and his mom naturally don't take the death well.  That's really the extent of the main storyline here.  I've got to admit, Marco's dad dying here was a bit disappointing.  I thought that character had some legs, and figured he'd slowly fade away as the issues progressed.  Instead he popped up a few issues ago and died.  If he would have stuck around a bit, the impact of his death probably would have been greater, but sadly, that's not what we got.  Even though this wasn't my favorite issue of this great series, it still wasn't bad, which shows you the quality of this title.  Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.

Invincible #101: So yeah, Eve is pregnant again.  This time though, she has a doctor who specializes in super-human biology, and learns that she can't use her powers while she's pregnant, which you KNOW will come into play down the road.  Robot hates Mark, Cecil hates Nolan, and Thragg hates everybody.  That about sums this one up.  I hate to sound like a broken record, but again, this issue just didn't hit the mark for me...  I don't know what the problem was, but I just never connected to this comic.  It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great...  Score: 6 out of 10.

Indestructible Hulk #5: Hulk manages to defeat Attuma with some help from Lemurian rebels.  Plus one of the Lemurians makes out with Hulk.  Here we go again, you know the song I'm gonna be playing...  I never connected with this issue...  Yep, again.  There was some good here, namely Attuma, who Mark Waid wrote brilliantly, but I never fell into this story.  It was okay.  But that's all.  Score: 6 out of 10.

Dark Avengers #188: Oh boy, this comic...  Um, the Dark Avengers are still trapped in an alternate Earth.  There's some sort of mystery there concerning AIM(I think...) and the Spider-Man of that world is worshiped as a god by the likes of Shang-Chi and Misty Knight...  But he gets killed by Tigra.  Oh, and Moonstone died, but came back over the course of this comic.  See, now this comic?  This comic was bad.  Not okay, just bad.  I was willing to go along for the ride at first, I've repeatedly stated that I love alternate dimensional tales, but this one simply isn't working for me.  Probably because we have like zero character development going on here. Seriously, I have NO reason to care about ANY of the Dark Avengers.  We REALLY need to get away from the main story here and shine a light on the characters on this team...  Score: 3 out of 10.

DC Universe Presents: Starfire #18: Basically we see Starfire as a slave, then free, then allowing herself to get caught so she can free more people. The former top dog that wanted to free everyone was jealous, so he attacked her and she sliced his hands off with his sword. Upon gaining the chance to free everyone, the slaves were so afraid of Starfire they just wanted her to go, which she did. So... useless story sadly, nothing really happened, if only it showed that Star's a tough S.O.B. and scares people. Sad thing is, Joe Keatinge's last issue that starred Roy Harper was pretty good. Score: 2/10

Captain Marvel #11: Captain Marvel's been diagnosed with a lesion on her brain that expands every time she flies, it's not fatal but if she continues to fly it'll wipe away her memories, so now she's using a hover-bike, which she hates. We find out that she has some mysterious man stalking her, and he's been sending a new Deathbird, dubbed Newbird by Carol to her apartment building. Carol heads off to find Newbird and engages her in a fight in the sky, with her hover-bike of course. This was a pretty good issue, Carol continues to be written likable and fun, and the story of her not being able to fly, after putting so much emphasis on her love of flying throughout the series has been great. Score: 7/10

Justice League #18: The League is looking for new members because a few of them are busy with their cities or ruling Atlantis. Possible recruits are Black Canary (She's on the BoP...), Black Lighting, Blue Demon, Element Woman, Firestorm, Goldrush, Nightwing, Vixen, Zatanna and Platinum of the Metal Men. Platinum goes crazy, predictably, and the League and candidates take her down, with the help of The Atom. By the way, Atom is a Hispanic woman now. The League ends up picking Atom, Firestorm and Element Woman over Vixen, Zatanna and Canary because they're stupid, and Nightwing isn't interested in joining. The issue ends with them finding out their recruitment files have been hacked, so someone has info on all these heroes now. Oops! I was flabbergasted that they didn't pick at least one of the three women I named... but whatever. That aside, this issue was kind of predictable, especially with Platinum's heel turn. Score: 5/10

New Avengers #4: With time running out until Earth crashes into another Earth, the Illuminati decide to go to the other planet and try to use their Infinity Gems to blow it up, since the Illuminati's Gems broke in the last issue. Once they arrive, they see on this planet the Statue of Liberty is replaced by a statue of the Master of Magnet himself, Magneto. They also see Galactus is already about to eat this planet, but instead of counting this as a win, they decide to fight his Thanos-like herald, because why not? This issue was fine and dandy until the weird ending where they decided to fight a villain on a planet that's dying... the same planet they came to destroy. Also, I was expecting more with the fallout of them mind-wiping Captain America but not too much came of that. Score: 6/10

Red Hood and the Outlaws #18: This is Lobdell's last issue of RHATO, and after surprisingly enjoying issue 19, I was looking forward to this issue. Jason came to the realization that the reason he has lashed out at Bruce and the rest of the family is because he was trying to escape his past, but he needs to embrace it instead of run away from it. We also find out his face is going to be fine in the future thanks to Alfred's handiwork. We end things with Jason finally waking up and he's about to apologize but Bruce cuts him off and hugs him as the issue ends. I really enjoyed this issue, Jason finally being welcomed back to the fold is something I've wanted for a while as a Jason Todd fan, so this issue was a huge plus for me. Plus it really made sense for Bruce, after losing Jason once, then losing Damian, I doubt he wants to risk being distant with Jason any longer. The only thing I really had a problem with was this being billed as "Requiem" issue and Damian was never mentioned once. Score: 9/10

And THAT'S how you do a best of the rest post! Not like that farce X did last week. Anyway, I can see this being a weekly thing if mi hermano is up for it, so we can knock out even more books, considering sometimes people want info on books we read but don't review. So, look forward to me guiding X like the giant idiotic man-child he is through these posts on a regular basis. So that's it for me, until my final review of the week tomorrow. So til then, for myself and X, this is JT, signing off!

17 comments:

  1. I just want to say about XFactor...
    WHAT THE HELL! Seriously! Shatterstar gets his arm broken and they want him to carry Monet? Not to mention push his teleportation ability. When did that shorten down to an hour? Wasn't it like four the last time he used it?

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  2. OK, I'm going to try to comment on these as I read them, so sorry for the multiple posts. WTF with "New Avengers" though? So, we're here to destroy a planet so that our Universe doesn't get destroyed, but that seems like a bad guy thing to do, so we're going to try to save this planet...and destroy our universe? I mean, I get that the ethics of destroying universes is a little complicated, but saving your universe at the expense of another one seems like a pretty clear win for me. Also, why did Dr. Strange have his gem? Aren't they all destroyed? As usual with this series, a lot of confusion and a lack of fun. Why are we reading it again?

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    1. No prob JW, I'm sure X doesn't mind, and I know I don't. And right?! That was absurd to me! You literally win, you don't have to pull the trigger, you don't have to blow up the planet, the problem takes care of itself, and they wanna try to save it?! It literally made no sense. And I believe all but one of the gems were destroyed, one just disappeared... so maybe that's the one he had? I'm still waiting to see what happens now that Cap has been Zatanna'd.

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    2. Post away, JW! JT tried explaining this one to me, and I had the SAME reaction... Why would you save this planet when the problem was taken care of? Weird...

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    3. I read somewhere someone hypothesizing that they all suddenly realized that Cap had a point, that they should be spending their time trying to save both worlds rather than destroying just one. Of course, I'm not entirely sure Cap was making that point, but it's a nice story!

      JT, Cap getting "Zatanna'd" cracked my shit up. Well played.

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  3. I was glad to see them show that Deathbird wasn't actually Deathbird. I mean, it's somehow more random that it's not Deathbird and instead some sort of alternate version of Deathbird being manipulated by a mysterious stranger, but at least they're owning the randomness. Also, I totally agree on the not-flying storyline. I feel like you can just enjoy it because they're not pretending that it's some permanent thing, only to leave us all rolling our eyes when she's miraculously healed in three issues. They're making it pretty clear that she's going to get cured at some point, so we can just sort of enjoy the ride. Good stuff.

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    1. Totally agreed. I wasn't fond of the idea of Deathbird being bossed around by somebody, I like her more as the character DOING the bossing around. I was okay with Deathbird as a horseman of Apocalypse though... Go figure.

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  4. I sort of dug "Justice League," if only because it was more fun that it usually is. Flash actually got in some good lines and, frankly, Element Woman and Firestorm will at least inject some energy into the series. I honestly hadn't realized how stuffy it was until this issue. I did love the Shazam story. $&^#'s goin' down!

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    1. That's pretty much been the one constant in this series for me. Some issues of Justice League are hit or miss, but I usually always enjoy the SHAZAM stories, so hopefully him in the League will keep me interested. I still think Vixen should've joined the team though.

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  5. OMG, they hugged it out! I got my wish! JT, I can't believe that Lobdell actually gave us the story that we've wanted all along, of Jason being brought back into the fold. I totally agree on the score. I thought he really did an excellent job of using Alfred, Ducra, and finally Bruce to get Jason where he needed to be to let down his walls and just ask to come home. But, to have Bruce cut him off and just invite him home was all the better. Excellent stuff. I feel like with Damian dying and Dick apparently leaving, Bruce really needs Jason right now and I hope he's a real presence in the Bat-family books now. Fingers crossed.

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    1. JT and I spent SO much time debating this comic, JW! Jason being welcomed back into the family is gonna take some getting used to for me... I love the renegade character, the one who just did whatever he wanted. I don't know if I want to see him turned into Dick-lite. But then, on the other hand, this could lead to Jason popping up in the other Bat-books more frequently, and that's not a bad thing. I'm sure I'll accept it eventually(Hell, if I can stick with this series since the first issue, I'll stick with Jason through anything!), but it's gonna take me some time to digest Jason in Dick's role.

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    2. Agreed. I mean, I still want him to be Jason. I don't want him to be, like, I don't know, crying all the time or hugging Bruce. I'd prefer more that he just runs the Outsiders from Gotham, with a certain "don't ask about the people I'm killing and I won't tell you" arrangement with the Bats. Then, he gets to pop into the Bat-books when he's needed but he's still got his own thing. If Tynion makes that work, I'll be a very happy camper.

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    3. I agree with everything you said 100%, JW. I'm worried that we'll lose the Jason I became a fan of and get Dick-lite. I mean, I like Dick, but I don't want to see Jason turn into him. If Tynion can walk that line of keeping Jason as Jason and having him be a member of the Bat-family? I'd be overjoyed. Here's hoping...

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    4. Like you guys said, I don't think anyone wants Jason to become "The Good Son" like Dick, at the same time, he deserves to be in more things, used more, and get a bit more exposure outside of his own book. I'm happy he's being used, and not just as a villain or a foil but as a family member. Who doesn't want to see him with Alfred, Drake, Bruce, Babs for like the first time in 25 years, and Dick. I'd pay so much money for a mini series with Jason and Dick teaming up. Just keep him snarky and sarcastic, let him use his guns and knives, doesn't even have to be lethal, but keep Jason...Jason, is the best way to phrase it.

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    5. OMG, yes! A Dick/Jason buddy-flick/road-comedy would be the best thing EVER.

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