You Don’t Get Much Without Giving – Review Of Wolverine #309

A couple of weeks ago, I sat through a handful of Marvel panels at SDCC and learned…not very much. Well, at least not a lot about anything related to the assorted members of the Avengers or X-Men – which was weird, what with the whole panel dedicated to them and their “summer blockbuster” event (yes, those were the, somewhat paraphrased, words of Marvel EIC Axel Alonso). At the AVX panel, much of the time was dedicated to cheerleading, with only modest time devoted to characters and titles. Most of those titles discussed ended up being related to books that will be released post AVX (Marvel NOW!). If Alonso sees the culmination of each year’s storylines as leading into a big summer time event, you’d think he might take a cue from the the actual “blockbusters” (hint – they’re often in Hall H or Ballroom 20 and you have to line up for them the day before…not waltz into them 10 minutes before they start.). Maybe have a panel that is balanced with more writers and artists on it than editorial. Talk about some of the individual books, both team and solo, of characters involved in your “summer blockbuster” in the here and now, rather than in, ahem, Marvel NOW. I’m sure it wouldn’t have killed Arune Singh to maybe take some time out from saying “How many of you love {insert event or movie}?” and get one of the architects on speaker phone, the way he did for the Amazing Spider-Man And Other Stuff That Was Marginally Related To Spider-Man panel we attended the next day. But, who knows? Rumor has it the entire staff of Marvel has to share a single bathroom in their building. Maybe they make him pay for his own long distance?

But what does this actually have to do with Wolverine #309? You’ll find out, with spoilers.

Starting Block: X-Factor #240 Review

There are many comics fans who just don’t get into Marvel’s X-Titles, and I am one of them. Which is a strange thing for a 35-year inveterate superhero comic geek to admit, but the team, and its 927 spinoff teams, generally just never grabbed me. You’ve got a bunch of heroes with no origin story beyond, “born funny,” a huge and nearly impenetrable backstory, and two of its lead characters – Professor X and Cyclops – are simply unlikable cocks. And considering the applause poll conducted at Marvel’s SDCC Avengers Vs. X-Men panel that fell squarely on the Avengers side, a lot of people of there agree with me. Not an issue of that book goes by without my deeply wishing that we eventually see Spider-Man yank Cyclops’s eyes out with some well-placed webbing, turning the prick into a normal person, qualified only to be the biggest douche selling pencils out of a tin cup.

With that said, I am a huge fan of Peter David’s X-Factor. I don’t know whether it’s because the team is smaller and easier to keep track of, or because the characters spend more time in small scale, street-level action than in preventing apocalypses (Seen Madrox taking on Ms. Marvel in Avengers Vs. X-Men recently?), or because the characters feel relatable and human than, say, a dude whose father is a Starjammer and whose girlfriend, depending on decade, either reads minds and turns into diamond or destroys entire planets… although I should be able to relate, because think I dated the second one. But I digress.

And X-Factor #240 is a perfect place to get your feet wet in the title. It’s a one-and-done, focusing on Layla Miller (who is one of the most interesting characters in the book), and examining her power – she “knows stuff” about the future – in a way that would be perfect for explaining Dr. Manhattan’s point of view if Alan Moore’s characterization allowed Manhattan to have free will. Free will and a nice rack, but you get my point.

…And His Amazing Friends: Amazing Spider-Man SDCC 2012 Panel

There was one minor, eensy, tiny problem with Marvel Comics’s Amazing Spider-Man panel Sunday. The panel wasn’t really about Spider-Man.

Oh sure, the panel opened with news about the Amazing Spider-Man and Avenging Spider-Man comic books, but those updates took about seven or ten minutes of an hour long panel. After that, we got updates on Carnage, Venom and Scarlet Spider, which are at least Spider-Man related… but we also got status reports on Captain Marvel, Punisher War Zone, Space Punisher, and last but not least, Daredevil, whose status report was, in effect, “Yeah, we have no idea what’s going on with that triple-Eisner Award winning book! But Eisner Awards are cool! And Daredevil won three of them! So who doesn’t love Daredevil?”

Which actually brings to mind another minor problem with the Spider-Man panel, and with every other Marvel panel we went to: Moderator Arune Singh, who is Director of Communications for Marvel Comics and possibly the most irritating and repetitive public speaker on the planet. Here are some of my notes from the panel, verbatim from my notebook:

• If I hear Arune Singh say, “How many of you are loving X” again, I will shit.
• At least 4 “How many of you love…” so far. Fuck.
• Fifth. Fucking. “How many of you LOVE…”
• SIXTH. SINGH WILL DIE BY MY HAND.

Unchained Doggerel: Marvel’s Avengers Vs. X-Men Panel and Quentin Tarantino’s SDCC 2012 Announcement

We’ve seen a lot of cool things at San Diego Comic-Con over the past couple of days, but the Marvel Comic Avengers Vs. X-Men panel held this afternoon wasn’t one of them. Iron Man’s new armor from the upcoming Iron Man 3 movie was, so here it is. Get a good look? Good. Now let’s get back to the bad news.

Avengers Vs. X-Men is Marvel’s marquee summer event for 2012, and we are at about the midpoint of the story, and shit is heating up. We’ve got five X-Men possessed by the Phoenix Force, Hope is being trained by Iron Fist’s sensei to learn to repel the Phoenix, Tony Stark is working with Black Panther to find a way to defeat the Phoenix Force with a combination of science and magic, and Spider-Man is getting at least one of the best moments in a comic set in the 616 universe he’s had in years. So while the event isn’t perfect, there’s a lot of fan excitement around the event and what it has in store for us for the rest of the summer.

So it was with a palpable sense of excitement that we filled the third-biggest room at the San Diego Convention Center at 2:45 this afternoon to discover some tidbits about what the Marvel House of Ideas might have coming up for the fans.

Turns out? It’s hats.

Marvelous Hype: Friday Marvel SDCC 2012 News

One thing I’ve learned over several years of attending the San Diego Comic-Con is that DC Comics panels are more entertaining than Marvel panels. That’s a harsh reality but for me, a true one.

Panels from each company are jam-loaded with hype, and each does its damndest to try and whip the crowd into a screeching nerd frenzy, which is fine; Comic-Con panels aren’t press conferences, they’re public relations exercises that happen to include some pieces of legitimate comics news. And often that news is exciting – Neil Gaiman back on Sandman, anyone? – so I don’t blame either editorial staff for trying to whip the crowd into a slavering geek frenzy. But for me, the difference is that Marvel is just so self-congratulatory about things.

Here’s an example: last year, DC Comics blew up their entire universe and ran a real risk of alienating a huge chunk of their core audience. Instead, the move allowed DC to overtake Marvel in sales for he first time in recent memory, and their sales have reportedly stayed damn solid since then. We have attended no less than five DC panels so far at SDCC, and the biggest pat on the back DC gave themselves was when Bob Wayne opened the New 52 panel yesterday by asking the crowd how many people spent SDCC last year thinking that DC was insane for making the move… and followed up by asking why more people didn’t think that at the time.

Compare that to Marvel, who last year introduced a black / Hispanic Spider-Man. In the Ultimate Universe, which thanks to the recent 616 universe crossover in Spider-Men, is the equivalent of DC’s Earth 2 – a sandbox where Marvel can mess around with characters without it affecting the valuable core titles from which they make movies. Was is a bold move? Sure it was… but compared to blowing up your entire continuity, it’s about the same as comparing dropping a washer slug into a Coke machine to sticking up the Federal Reserve with a dynamite belt: one’s a little easier to walk back if the plan goes sideways.

However, if you listened to the panelists at yesterday’s Marvel Ultimate Universe panel, you’d think they cured the common cold. “This was a big risk,” said Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso, “It was harder for us to kill [Peter Parker] than it was for you guys.” Alonso also said that the new Ultimate Spider-Man was the best work of Brian Michael Bendis’s career, and make no mistake: it’s a pretty good story, albeit utterly decompressed. But the hype was, personally, a little hard to take. My notes from the panel read, “Lot of ‘We’re so awesome and brave’ shit on the panel for killing Peter and having an Afr.-Am. kid as SM. There’s no news here, just fucking hype.”

And then Alonso announced that Ultimate Spider-Man artist David Marquez just signed an exclusive deal with Marvel. And my notes read, “There’s your news, writer prick.”

Answers To Questions You Never Cared About – Review Of Wolverine #310

Ok, show of hands: how many of you got excited and had a “No Fucking Way!” moment when Sabretooth was reintroduced to Marvel continuity by Jason Aaron back in issue #300?

Did you even realize he’d been gone? Yeah, me either. Much as it may impugn my comics expert cred, I’m going to go out on a limb here and fess up that I didn’t really remember he’d been killed off back in 2007 as the culmination of a story arc by writer Jeph Loeb called Wolverine: Evolution. I mean, I’m sure I read those issues. I’m sure if I look around through the 23 or so long boxes we have stored here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, they’re probably sitting in their bags and boards. The story apparently just didn’t stick to my brain.

And, why should it have? It was around this time we were also getting bombarded with the whack-a-doodle Wolverine: Origins series, that got its start through the less than satisfying Wolverine: Origins and Endings by Daniel Way the year before. Comics were in full Wolverine/Sabretooth saturation mode, and that’s before the Wolverine: Origins movie from 2009 that put the idea of Sabretooth back in popular consciousness. Victor Creed, Sabretooth, was like cockroaches or the Kardashians – he never really seems to go away.

So, how does that bode for what Marvel refers to as “The long-awaited sequel to EVOLUTION. How did Sabretooth survive his beheading all those years ago?”

Marvel gives it a parental advisory. I give it an “M”. For “meh.”

I’d say there were tantalizing glimmers of answers to the beheading question after the jump, but mostly it’s just spoilers. Follow me there anyway.

Trojan Lizard – Review Of “The Amazing Spider-Man” #689

Well, True Believers, The Amazing Spider-Man debuted in theaters this week, and took an astounding $35 million in U.S. and Canadian box offices. In the movie, a young Peter Parker goes through his origin rigamarole to become Spider-Man and, in the process, fights a villain called The Lizard. Coincidentally, this week no, not really a coincidence, I’m sure The Amazing Spider-Man #689 hit comic book stores. In this issue, an older, more world weary Peter Parker fights a “living vampire” named Morbius, while ignoring the larger, more devious threat from a villain called…The Lizard. Frankly, I don’t care if it was planned purposefully or not, but I think the outward similarity is a good thing. Based on the movie’s success this week, I agree with Rob that it’s probably a good idea for a comic book to resemble the movie property during the time of a recent release. If viewers liked the movie, they’ll probably latch onto the book more easily if they see characters they recognize. Apparently, not all fans agreed with me if this tweet from Dan Slott (@DanSlott) yesterday is any indication:

Some fans think I sold out having the Lizard in this arc. Others think I missed an opportunity to bring Gwen back. ‪#CantPleaseEverybody‬ ;-D

The fans that are moaning about wanting Gwen back probably were also the first ones to get their panties in a bunch about Gwen sleeping with Norman Osborn and her freakish look alike clones children running around, ninja style trying to kill Peter under J. Michael Straczynski’s Sins Past arc. Let her lie, people. There’s no good way to bring her back that isn’t going to anger as many people as it pleases. Meanwhile, let’s talk about how Dr. Curt Connors has been brought back to life in this issue by penciller Giuseppe Camuncoli as Too Much Coffee Man. Seriously. That is the bug-eye of a 3 pot a day man. But, I digress.

Beyond surface similarities, why should new readers follow this book, and other questions answered in spoiler-y fashion, after the jump!

Fan Film Friday: “Deadpool: A Typical Tuesday”

If you, like me, are counting the scant days until the opening of The Amazing Spider-Man and can barely contain yourself, here’s a little something to hold you over until July 3. Allow me introduce you to Deadpool: A Typical Tuesday and its Facebook page.

Put together by BeanDIProductions, this movie has the humor that those of us following Daniel Way’s current run will appreciate and, some audio issues aside, a lot of heart. Oh – and, in keeping with Marvel fashion, fan film or otherwise, stick around for a bonus scene after the credits!

…And The Omega: Spider-Man Gets A Sidekick

When Brian Michael Bendis had Spider-Man join The New Avengers a few years ago, I remember hearing grumblings amongst the regulars at my local comic store, where the know me by name and ask to remember that “that’s not a web shooter, and please don’t wave it at the paying customers while shouting ‘thwip!'” that having Spider-Man join a team would take away the whole outcast loner vibe that was part of what made the character unique.

That was 2005. It is now 2012, and after having had Spider-Man join not only The New Avengers, but also the Avengers proper and The Fantastic Four, Marvel has made it clear that they haven’t forgotten Spidey’s long and storied history as a loner, and that they intend to celebrate that history by giving him a teenaged sidekick!

Wait, what?

Killing In The Name: Avengers Academy #32 Review

Editor’s Note: This Sentinel’s Prime Directive: Ruin or spoil all stories about mutants.

Being a cynical and ironic child of the late 1980s / early 90s, there isn’t a reason on Earth why I should like Avengers Academy #32. It is naked and blatant in its attempts to manipulate the reader’s emotions by placing children and their pets in mortal danger from a cold and callous external threat. It blatantly pulls the old E.T. trick of making kids the emotionally satisfying voice of emotional trueness in the face of cold and calculating adult logic and compromise, and it even alludes to the old Old Yeller tearjerker moment when it isn’t obviously humping the corpse of Short Circuit. Truly, a book like this should have me sneering disdainfully while listening to Nirvana on my way to a Richard Linkater film and slacking. Or something like that.

With all that said, it’s now 2012, and the other day I almost got weepy when the Boston Red Sox traded Kevin Youkilis. So I don’t know if I’m losing my edge or what, but rather than being turned off by the obvious emotional manipulation going on in this comic book, I found it to be one of the best of the week. So either writer Christos Gage is damn good at what he’s doing, or I am turning into a colossal pussy. Regardless: I liked this book.