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Tpull's Weekly Marvel Comics Review – Part Two

Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual #1

by Paul Cornell and Mike Collins

Forget the good Captain and the rest of the cast, the first part of this issue is devoted exclusively to Meggan. She has never been a favorite character of mine, and Marvel tends to be comfortable leaving b-grade characters in limbo for years at a time. However, this was a good story. Collins and the creative team give us nice art, with great coloring, and interesting panel compositions during Meggan’s trip through the hellish netherworlds.

Meggan gets some misdirection which causes a freakish change due to her ability to mimic what is around her, and actually starts to make choices about what kind of person she is, and how she wants to be seen herself. She also feels anger for a sustained period of time, and channels that to lead an insurrection of sorts in Hell. Her journey out leads her into the arms of Doctor Doom! Will this tie in to the current Dracula story arc?

The backup feature has art by Adrian Alphona, and it’s not a whole lot to look at, but the focus is on how Brian feels about Meggan. It’s a short and sweet tale, and Brian basically gets his groove back during a game of cricket. It wasn’t bad, but the first story was the real attraction for me, and it’s worth it if you’ve got spare cash.

New Avengers: The Reunion 4

by Jim McCann and David Lopez

Monica Rappaccini, the Scientist Supreme for A.I.M., tries to recruit Bobbi into the ranks right after a big explosion. Mockingbird studies her opponent’s teleportation maneuvers, and adjusts accordingly, planning a stave to hit right where Monica will appear next.

It falls apart a little after that, as Clint links back up with her and they are immediately surrounded by an army of non-descript goons, all with a wide variety of weapons. The pair of them talk calmly all while doing exertions that would make you and I pass out from exhaustion in less than two minutes. As usual, the bad guys who have guns either do not fire them at a distance, or are the worst shots. There are a couple of panels where it looks like they stop fighting in the middle of the battle, which would be weird, since they are the only two that the bad guys are fighting; they just stand there and talk!

They do a deus ex machina kind of thing to defuse the bomb at the end, with moments to spare of course, and then they do the kiss-and-make-up routine, ending up in Bobbi’s new organization, fighting more bad guys. It’s cliché, but it works for this pair. If only they had been more inventive in the middle part. This is sort of like a movie that had an interesting premise, a lot of cliché action bits eating up screen time, and then a predictable if satisfying ending. I give the whole thing a C+.

Ultimate Spider-Man 133

by Brian Bendis and Stuart Immonen

The final issue for this run of Ultimate Spider-Man is here, and Spider-Man isn’t exactly in it. We follow Spider-Woman as she tries to evade the Hulk after a magical explosion that leaves behind nothing but Peter’s mask. It’s an all-pictures story with no words, and Immonen does a good job to convey everything with pictures only.

That said, it sucks as a final issue, and makes me think they have wrapped up too much into the Ultimatum event. The whole universe is falling prey to the company crossover shtick, and it didn’t need to. This was all about choices, and this is the choice Bendis has made. It might have made for an okay regular issue, but the final one? We paid $3.99 and didn’t get to see the main character. It sucks to be us right now.

For those who haven’t heard, they will do a two-issue Requiem series, then restart the series, with changes to the supporting cast. The real reason for this is basically poor coordination. People want to be polite about it, but the truth is, some people put out their Ultimate titles on time, and others were late. They want the Ultimate line to mesh well, so they are re-launching everything to make an attempt to publish all the titles in a timely manner so a reference in one book does not spoil the ending of a story in another title.

Remember when they made a big deal about the Ultimate universe and not having to be aware of any other book to know what’s going on? Yeah, they’ve trashed the heck out of that. They want the universe to be consistent, which is fine, they want the titles to weave together nicely, which is fine. But I never could get into Ultimate X-Men, and I skipped any crossovers that led to that title, and it would be kind of nice to have a shared universe without all the freaking crossovers. That’s what you have the main universe for, remember guys?

Ultimatum 4

by Jeph Loeb and David Finch

We pick up on the Hulk smashing Doctor Strange’s house, making Spider-Man wink out. Is he dead? Most likely not. But Finch’s pages are dramatic and crisp, and the entire creative team is great. Colors, inks, lettering, it’s all awesome. Doc Strange looks dead, but a mysterious figure scoops him up, so maybe we’ll see more of the good doctor when the universe reboots in a couple months.

The next major event is to bring Nick Fury back to the right universe, and thank heaven! The Squadron Supreme as been a mess of a series for a long time now, and it’s just sad that the Fury character was wasted over there for so long. Finally, the remaining living good guys assault Magneto’s fortress. At first it looks like he slices Valkyrie across her throat, but she’s still standing in the next panel, so we won’t find out until next issue. That’s actual poor stage direction, by the way, it should not be that ambiguous. Either she’s bleeding out and about to die, or she has a flesh wound, and there should have been a better depiction of that so the reader could have a clue.

On the final page, that’s a numbering error: Ultimate Spider-Man #123 should be listed as #132. Next issue wraps up the fight with Magneto, but this has all been done before when X-Men got its own non-adjective title in 1991. The pictures are good enough to make anyone want to get this, but there are some flaws, such as I pointed out above. As good as some of these event comics have been the last couple decades, they used to have better editing. It feels like comics have gone the way of the newspapers and fired all of their fact-checkers and detail-oriented people.

War of Kings 4

by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Paul Pelletier

Gladiator has switched sides and is helping Lilandra to stake her rightful claim to the throne. Vulcan has over-extended his forces, but the arrival of Talon may help him out. Crystal bonds (in an emotional but not sexy way) with Ronan, as Crystal takes her role of responsibility seriously for the Kree. Then the Death Commandos enter the picture, attack the Starjammers, and Lilandra gets caught in the crossfire! Is she dead? We don’t know!

The art team of Pelletier with Rick Magyar has been combined with each other for a while now, and Magyar’s inks on Pelletier’s works reminds me of Alan Davis’ style, but in some ways the expressions on faces is not the greatest. Even so, this is still some beautiful stuff in here. The story has a good cliffhanger, because Marvel might let them kill Lilandra, you just never know. Granted, she’s probably alive, but the fact that it actually could turn out either way makes this much more suspenseful than Peter’s mask over in Ultimate Spider-Man.

With everything going on, there isn’t room to show the rest of the Inhumans, so I hope they get a lot of screen time for the final two issues. This is a jam-packed adventure that moves fast, folks. Don’t miss out on it. It’s got great art, more action than Ultimatum, and more ruthlessness than Dark Reign.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

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Posted by Travis on June 7, 2009 7:52 PM
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