Does Whatever A Spider Can: Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 Review

Editor’s Note: Does he spoil? Listen bub: he’s got Jack Daniels infected blood!

If you are a Spider-Man fan, you will find Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 to be about the most satisfying issue of the crossover event so far. It hammers home his philosophy of “With great power comes great responsibility” without actually saying the words for a change, it plays to his strengths as a character, and it allows this street-level hero to have a distinct and concrete impact on a cosmic-level story in a way that is true to the character, and satisfying for people who love him.

It also has a marital collapse. And it sets up the savage beating of one of the biggest douchecanoes in modern superhero comics. So there’s not a lot of downside here.

Body Dysmorphia: The Incredible Hulk #8 Review

In most of the ways that matter, The Incredible Hulk #8 is not a bad comic book at all. It’s a decent opening to a story told from Hulk’s point of view, where Banner makes moves neither Hulk nor we are privy to, with a reasonably effective guest spot by The Punisher, an interesting, if short-lived new villain, and fun violence inflicted in new and exciting ways. There’s a lot here that works.

However, the stuff that does work is somewhat hamstrung by a couple of significant weaknesses, including a general plot that is taken from the annals of Breaking Bad, if Giancarlo Esposito’s mother was actually an Alsatian Wolf Hound, and, well, the artist. In short: Steve Dillon is an excellent artist. An excellent artist who should be tazed in the groin before he even thinks of drawing The Hulk ever again.

This Is About Fights: Versus #1 Review

Versus #1 takes the Avengers Vs. X-Men event, strips out the backstory, the plot contrivances and the other useless crap that is being pounded into this event to make it hang together as a story, and it leaves us with the core idea which is all that almost anyone gives a tin shit about in this event: superheroes kicking the shit out of each other.

Let me offer an analogy: let’s say that Avengers Vs. X-Men is a Grateful Dead show. If that’s the case, then Versus is the smelly guy in the parking lot selling hits of acid for five bucks a whack: in other words, it’s far more entertaining, and if you’re honest with yourself, it’s the real reason you decided to attend the main event in the first place.

This book is fucking fun. It is meant to be fun, and it knows that it’s fun; any comic that opens on its recap page (and interesting choice for a first issue) with…

This book is about AWESOME BRAWLING! You want PLOT? LOOK ELSEWHERE, CHUM. You want a KNOCK-DOWN, DRAG-OUT WHUPPIN’? WE GOT YOU COVERED.

…is a book whose only ambitions vis a vis obtaining an Eisner Award to to snatch one out of Joe Sacco’s hands and use it to beat Grant Morrisson about the head, neck and face.

Bald Hulk Is Not A Euphemism: The Incredible Hulk #7 Review

Editor’s Note: Time for one last review before the comic stores open… one chock full of profanity and spoilers. You are warned.

A couple of months ago, the Fox Movie Channel reran the 1990 TV movie The Death Of The Incredible Hulk, which I grabbed on the TiVo because I was a child in the 1970s / 1980s and therefore grew up with the Bill Bixby / Lou Ferrigno television show and have a sense of nostalgia for it. Plus, I possibly hate myself.

Anyway, at the end of the flick, the Hulk suffers some kind of great fall (and yes, that is as specific as I can get. What, you think I watched that pile of shit sober?) and caused the death of Bixby’s Banner. The intention was never to actually kill Banner / Hulk, but instead to set up a future TV movie where the Hulk had Banner’s brain, which was derailled due to Lou Ferrigno’s commitments to sign autographs at regional comic book conventions for nickels, and due to Bill Bixby’s unexpected opportunity to perform in a second banana role to a prostate tumor.

What’s my point? My point is that even ratings-crazy and cocaine “enthusiast” 80s TV executives never intended to kill Banner permanently. And I guarantee you, neither does The Incredible Hulk #7 writer Jason Aaron.

An Asskicking By Any Other Name: Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 Review

Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 is a big old action movie of a comic book, where the first punch gets thrown by the second page and the hits keep on coming until we’re reminded by the last page that all this hot, sweet superhero-on-superhero action (wait, I think that came out wrong) is in service of a plot related to the Phoenix Force coming to destroy the world before the Avengers movie even has a chance to come out.

This book is filled with satisfying, balls-to-the-wall action… but it is also filled with overblown, florid and somewhat pretentious captions that read like a sixteen-year-old either trying to use his comics addiction for an easy C in Intro to Poetry, or to charm the Drama Club skank into turning a backrub into a front rub. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

If you’re looking for any kind of story advancement in this issue, you’re not gonna find much. The issue opens with the X-Men and The Avengers beating the unholy shit out of each other, and pretty much ends the same, with only the minor plot points of, “Yup, Phoenix Force… still coming,” and “Yeah, Hope… still getting jacked up on the Phoenix Force,” being advanced. If this was a modern Grandmasters’ chess game, this issue would be the equivalent of Bobby Fischer darkly muttering about Jews while some scabrous geek flips on the opposing IBM supercomputer.

Quick Hits – Wolverine And The X-Men #3, Green Lantern Corps #4, And Ghost Rider #7

Call this post “The Good, The Bad, and WTF”. Here are some books we’ve talked about before. Let’s check in to see how they’re doing now.

The Good

Wolverine And The X-Men written by Jason Aaron with pencils by Chris Bachalo, Duncan Rouleau and Matteo Scalera wraps up the opening story arc of Wolverine’s first day trying to run a school for young mutants. I enjoyed the first issue. Aaron continues to bring humor to this tale, now up to issue #3. He pens an engaging story that reminds the reader that your typical teen can be an obnoxious handful who believes deeply that they are the hero of not only their own story but everyone else’s. Still, all the kids want to do is fit in somehow, in his or her own way.

More goodness, badness and wtf-ness after the jump…and spoilers.

Shaolin Ninja: Geof Darrow’s Wolverine #300 Cover

If you’re not an old school comics fan going back to the 80’s or into more indie stuff, you might not know who Geof Darrow is, since he’s done most of his work for the movies and TV. He started out in animation doing character designs for the Pac-Man Saturday morning cartoon, so you know he must smoke pot. Then he did the concept art for Neo’s biopod in The Matrix, so you know he must smoke laced pot.

Comics-wise, he wrote and drew Shaolin Cowboy, which has been out of print for years.  He drew The Big Guy and Rusty The Robot and Hard Boiled, both written by Frank Miller. And at the 2009 Boston ComicCon, he grabbed my 1990 first print copy of Hard Boiled #2 and used it to give some kid who he was talking to when I shuffled up an impromptu art lesson without my having to ask or buy something or shoot his loved ones in the face.

Five Guys On One: Marvel Announces Avengers Vs. X-Men

Yesterday Marvel announced that their big crossover event for 2012 will be: Civil War! Wait – I mean: Avengers Vs. X-Men!

In a streaming press conference with Editor-In-Chief Axel Alonso, SVP of Publishing Tom Brevoort, Senior Editor Nick Lowe, and Marvel’s Architect writers Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker and Jonathan Hickman, they gave the gist of what we’re in store for: about 300 clams to read the whole story! Wait, that’s not right…

…the seeds for this story have been growing for a while. When [the 2007 X-Men event] “Messiah CompleX” introduced the so-called “Mutant Messiah,” a little girl with green eyes and red hair named Hope, it raised the obvious question, “Who is she?” and, of course, the specter of the Phoenix.

So if I had to hazard a guess, the Phoenix Force is returning to Earth, probably to infect the little girl who looks just like Jean Grey, if Jean Grey were redrawn by commission for loathsome perverts. The X-Men will want to protect their messiah, The Avengers will want to stop a potential extinction-level threat to Earth, stuff will explode, and dudes will get kicked.

It’s All In The Reflexes – Review Of Wolverine #18

There was a time when a man could be kingpin of the Chinese criminal underground in San Francisco in relative quiet and safe anonymity. Just be left to while the days away, occasionally kicking some uppity newbie Triad ass, collecting whatever protection money you had coming to you. Leave the city for weeks, months at a time on Avengers or X-Men business and come back, pick up where you left off.

Wait, what?

Yeah, Wolverine has lots of secrets.

Spoilers, a large sweaty man in a diaper and dragon chow after the jump.

Trick Or Treat – The Further Adventures Of Team Logan: Review Of Wolverine And The X-Men #1

Wolverine And The X-Men #1 by Jason Aaaron, with art by Chris Bachalo, brings us the first day of classes at the newly formed Jean Grey School For Higher Learning. Headmaster Logan and Headmistress Pryde have their work cut out for them as they try to balance first day jitters with a visit from the New York Board Of Education. But, they’ve fought the likes of Magneto and Apocalypse in the past, so this new challenge should be a piece of cake, right?

Not so much.

Turns out Wolverine and company might have been better off putting up with Cyclops and staying on Utopia after all.

Spoilers and teenage angst after the jump!