Uncanny Avengers #6

Well, I decided to review this comic instead of Ultron #1.  After reading Age of Ultron #5, my interest in that event is at an all time low, so I figured I'd change gears and go with Uncanny Avengers.  Rick Remender has yet to disappoint with this series, here's hoping he keeps that up.

Uncanny Avengers #6: 

Summary: Woooo, this was a good one!  This issue mainly takes place in 1013 AD(so a thousand years ago), back when Thor was a brash young god.  Thor is celebrating a battle with his worshipers, when he is suddenly attacked by Apocalypse(!).  Apocalypse wipes the floor with Thor, while Thor can do nothing to harm Apocalypse.  Before he is killed by the big A, Thor retreats from battle, promising revenge.  Apocalypse heads back to his ship, where we learn he was told by Rama-Tut(Kang!!) to kill Thor now, since Thor would prove to be a thorn in Apocalypse's side in the future.  Apocalypse complains that somebody as weak as Thor would never prove a threat to him, and demands Rama-Tut give him the name of a true threat.  And so Rama-Tut does just that, sending Apocalypse after an ancestor of Wolverine(!).  As for Thor, he asks Odin to assist him against Apocalypse and his indestructible Celestial armor, but Odin refuses, telling Thor that if he were to defeat Apocalypse now, he would create a far greater catastrophe in the future.  Thor is steamed over that, so Loki comes over to help his brother out.  Loki tells Thor about a special way to enchant his battleaxe(Jarnbjorn), so that it could cut through Apocalypse's armor.  Thor goes off to do that, at which time we learn that Loki was actually a disguised Kang(!!!).  Meanwhile, Apocalypse sends his Four Horsemen to London, where Wolvie's ancestor was a member of the army.  The Horsemen cleave through Wolvie's ancestor's allies, and are preparing to do the same to him, when Thor arrives on the scene.  Thor kills the Horsemen, while an enraged Apocalypse watches from his ship.  Rama-Tut taunts Apocalypse about this before teleporting away, because Kang is awesome.  Thor arrives on the ship to get his revenge for the earlier battle, but Apocalypse again turns Thor aside.  Not fearing Thor, Apocalypse moves in to finish Thor off, but is nearly cleaved in two by Jarnbjorn.  Needless to say, Apocalypse is shocked, and sets the self-destruct on his ship.  Thor escapes, and figuring Apocalypse to be dead, heads back to Asgard to celebrate his victory.  Odin crashes the party and reprimands Thor for his brash actions, telling him he'd regret what he did in the future.  This issue ends in the present with Kang gaining possession of the now forgotten Jarnbjorn.

Thoughts: Absolutely perfect.  That's what this issue was.  I literally don't have a single bad thing to say about it.  It was absolute comic book perfection.  Thor vs Apocalypse?  Kang manipulating BOTH of them in order to gain a weapon of immense power?  Everything here was fantastic.  This is EXACTLY what this series should be!  You have one of the greatest X-Men foes, as well as one of the Avengers greatest threats.  And it's not like this was one of those lame, "Two villains randomly team-up to pester two groups of heroes" stories, the story was great, and the reveal at the end with Jarnbjorn tied everything together so perfectly.  Amazing work by Remender here, this comic is definitely the front-runner for best single issue of the year for 2013.

Score: 10 out of 10.

Awesome!!

Winter Soldier #14... Ed Brubaker's final issue...

So this is it...  This is Ed Brubaker's final issue of Winter Soldier...  After I put this comic down, there will be no more Brubaker writing Captain America or Winter Soldier ..  That's going to hurt...  A lot...  To put in perspective how much I love Brubaker's Captain America run(which brought us the Winter Soldier), I consider Brubaker's Cap run the greatest run, by any comic writer, on any comic series, ever.  And just by taking a gander at the number of reviews I've done here at the blog should tell you that I've read A LOT of comic books written by A LOT of writers...  And Brubaker's Cap run is arguably my favorite.  And this is his swan song...  After this issue, Winter Soldier is being taken over by Jason Latour, who I only know from that abysmal A+X #4(review for that coming Saturday)...  Needless to say, I am going to desperately miss Brubaker's take on Bucky...  Probably more than I'll miss Brubaker's take on Cap himself!  I mean before Brubaker, Bucky was one of the Big Three...  Along with Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy, he was one of the characters I never expected to be brought back to life.  He had served his purpose, he was Cap's sidekick, he died.  What more was there to do with him?  Well, Brubaker showed us there was A LOT more that could be done with Bucky, and crafted one of the greatest comic stories I've ever read with his original Winter Soldier storyarc.  And then, he seamlessly worked Bucky into the mainstream Marvel U, after Bucky had been gone since the 1940's!!  AND turned Bucky into one of my favorite characters to boot!  Amazing...  So yeah, reading this comic is going to be bittersweet for me...  Ah well, I'll always have the back issues.  So without further ado, I should probably open this comic and end this era...

Winter Soldier #14: 

Summary: This issue gets underway with Captain America, Bucky, Wolverine and Hawkeye finding the weapon maker that Leo had been using, attempting to leave Washington DC before Leo detonated the bomb the weapon maker had built.  SHIELD gets the weapon maker to dish on what type of bomb it was, as well as it's blast radius, which leaves them with three potential locations for maximum damage.  The heroes split into three groups, with Cap sending Bucky to the least likely spot, since Bucky had been acting irrationally since Leo surfaced.  That spot?  Arlington National Cemetery.  As Bucky heads to the Cemetery, he knows deep down that THIS was the spot Leo and the brainwashed Black Widow would be, and he's proven right when he finds a dead guard at the entrance to the cemetery.   Bucky alerts Cap that Leo and the Widow were there, but disobeys Cap's order to simply watch and wait for back-up, instead confronting Leo and the Widow.  Bucky manages to take the Widow out of the equation and defeats Leo in hand to hand combat, leaving Leo down and in the cross-hairs of Bucky's gun.  However, even after all Leo has done, Bucky finds himself unable to pull the trigger.  At that point, SHIELD and Bucky's allies arrive, but Widow manages to get to Leo and tries to get him to safety.  Realizing that there was no getting out of this mess, but wanting to hurt Bucky as much as possible, Leo grabs Widow by the throat and puts a gun to her head.  Bucky tells Leo to let Widow go if he wanted to walk away, but Leo seems content with dying, and tells Bucky there'd be no deal.  Before Leo can pull the trigger, Hawkeye fires an arrow into Widow's leg, knocking both her and Leo off-balance, at which time Bucky shoots Leo a few times, taking him down...  But not out, as SHIELD manages to save his life.  From there, we learn that SHIELD is able to return almost all of the memories Leo had wiped from the Widow's head...  All except for her memories of Bucky...  Maria Hill and Cap tell Bucky that while they hadn't been able to get Widow her memories of him back yet, there were still other options, including telepathy and magic.  However, Bucky tells the two to just leave it be, since Widow had had her head messed with enough for ten lifetimes and that she was better off not knowing him.  With that, Bucky takes one last look at the love of his life, and leaves.

Thoughts: In it's own way, this was the perfect ending to Brubaker's portion of Bucky's life.  One final heartbreak...  Poor Bucky...  This issue was, pretty much the perfect comic for me.  If I had any gripes, it would be that Leo would leave such a large loose end in the weapon maker, since he knew so much of Leo's plan.  With how cagey Leo had been all storyline long, you'd think he would have killed the weapon maker after the bomb was created, depriving the heroes of the only lead they would have had on him.  Besides that little quibble though, no complaints here.  I actually read the final few pages twice because they were so powerful.  I felt for Bucky.  I really did.  Not only were Brubaker's words magnificent here, Butch Guice's artwork was perfect, especially that one final scene where all you see is Bucky's downcast reflection in the window of the Widow's door.  This was a great issue, written by a great writer, about a great character.  There's nothing left but to give Ed Brubaker a HUGE thank you for all that wonderful stories he's crafted over the past several years.  Marvel is undoubtedly worse off without him.

Score: 10 out of 10.

Poor, poor Bucky......

Young Avengers #1

Now THIS is the series I've been most looking forward to out of ALL the Marvel Now! titles.  Around the same time I got into comic books(the second time around...), the original Young Avengers came out.  And I LOVED it!  It was everything I wanted in a comic book!  Young Avengers, and Morrison's New X-Men run, are probably the two books that had the most to do with me becoming the comic book reading machine I am today.  Now, this Young Avengers series doesn't have the original creative team(Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung), but it does have Kieron Gillen as the writer...  Gillen was really good on Journey Into Mystery(dare I say great?), but I wasn't a fan of his Uncanny X-Men or Generation Hope work(which is no fault of his, I hate Hope and didn't really like any X-books post-House of M).  Now he's getting to write several of my very favorite comic book characters(Hulkling, Wiccan, Hawkeye, Marvel Boy), I am REALLY hoping this series is good.......

Young Avengers #1

Summary: This issue gets started with Kate Bishop(or Hawkeye, if you prefer), waking up in some guy's bed...  Huh.  While Kate tries to figure out what she was doing there and what she should do next, the guy in question strolls in the room.  And that guy?  Marvel Boy!  Marvel Boy seems more... hippy, than last we saw him, and starts dancing like Mary Jane Watson circa 1970 to some oldies music(?!?).  Kate and Noh-Varr(that would be Marvel Boy's real name, fyi) talk a bit before Skrulls attack his spaceship, because that's what Skrulls do.  From there we head to the streets of New York where some punks are mugging a woman.  Spider-Man appears on the scene to stop them, but ends up getting shot, much to the punks' surprise.  However, "Spidey" hops up and attacks the two with shape-changing abilities before vacating the premises.   It turns out that "Spidey" was indeed Hulkling, who had been secretly going out to do the superhero thing since his boyfriend(that would be Wiccan), had basically forbidden the two of them from being superheroes after the events of Avengers: Children's Crusade.  Hulkling climbs in the window of Wiccan's parent's house(which is where he was living after the death of his mother), where he finds an angry Wiccan waiting for him in his bedroom.  Wiccan rants about how "they" promised not to be heroes anymore because of all the deaths they had seen.  Hulkling tells Wiccan that he was through living a lie and was a hero, and that he fell in love with a hero, not whatever Wiccan had become.  With that, Wiccan realizes how selfish he had been, and promises Hulkling that he would support him with his super-heroics   From there, Wiccan heads to his own bedroom and begins searching through other dimensions...  Next we head to (the maybe evil, maybe not evil) Kid Loki, who senses that Wiccan was using his powers, and as such he had to do something about that...  Kid Loki teleports to the roof of Wiccan's apartment and prepares to unleash a magic spell against the unaware Wiccan.  Before he can though, he is confronted by Miss America, who warns Loki against doing anything to Wiccan.  That leads to the two having a bit of a skirmish.  Hulkling hears the disturbance upstairs and heads to the roof, just in time to see Kid Loki teleport away, while Miss America flies off, not telling Hulkling what that was all about.  From there, we head back to Wiccan, who finds what he was looking for and manages to transport Hulkling's mother from an alternate dimension to his room.  Hulkling heads back downstairs and is shocked to see his formerly dead mother standing in the hallway.  The two embrace and eventually Hulkling heads back to sleep.  Later on, Hulkling's mother tells Wiccan's parents that she didn't approve of Hulkling wasting his time on Wiccan, and proceeds to smother the Kaplans(not "Caplans", Kaplans!!).

Thoughts: Well, you know what?  I really enjoyed this comic!  Gillen did a really good job with characterizations(Although Wiccan and Hulkling could turn down the drama just a bit) and I have to say, I was thoroughly impressed!  I'll admit, when I first opened this comic and saw that Kate was having a random fling with Noh-Varr, I was a bit... let's say taken aback.  But the more I thought about it, the more it worked...  I mean, why not?  The hero she looks most up to is Clint Barton!  Or Hawkeye, for those of you not in the know...  Hawkeye is... well, he IS rather promiscuous   On top of that, Kate is comfortably over 18, as is Noh-Varr, so why not?  If anything, I hope this isn't going to end up a one night stand, because Kate and Noh-Varr actually work for me.  Two of my favorite characters hooking up?  Yeah, I can deal with that.  Wiccan and Hulkling were also written very well, as you had Wiccan still acting up due to Stature's death at the end of Children's Crusade, while Hulkling was trying to keep the peace with Wiccan by sneaking around to help people, because that's who Hulkling is, a hero.  And it was Hulkling who reminded Wiccan that he too was a hero.  I mean Gillen wrapped up the whole, "Wiccan's self-loathing" storyline in a few panels.  And he did it in a way that made sense to all the characters involved.  The ending was also great, because while Wiccan may have though he was bringing back Hulkling's "mother"(actually a random Skrull who raised him), he was bringing over an alternate version of that woman, and alternate versions don't always equal identical version...  I mean, this comic was great!  Now the question is, is it perfect...  And after literally sitting here for several minutes after typing that last sentence, for me personally, as a fan of these characters?  Yes, it was perfect for me.

Score: 10 out of 10.

Those wacky dancing Krees...