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!