The Week In Geek 1/21/15

So, this week Marvel broke the internet by announcing that the "end of the Marvel Universe as we know it." It turns out the end of Jonathan Hickman's run is the prologue to Secret War, which will put the 616 Marvel U and the Ultimate Universe in "Battleworld." The outcome will be "All New Marvel." People should really calm down. It's highly doubtful Marvel will do a full reboot and risk sucking like DC's New 52 did for the first year or two. At best, this is just going to fold a few Ultimate characters into the 616 and by "a few Ultimate characters," I'm really talking about Miles Morales Spider-Man. After all, the Ultimate line spent so much time killing their characters, there's not a whole lot of them left to throw into 616 continuity. Marvel's gotten pretty good at "soft" reboots, so I say it's not going to be that big a deal.

My reviews for the week are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. As always, feel free to like, share, comment and share again at your leisure. This week, I took a look at...

Batman Eternal: As much as I LOVE this book, this week's "thing" is The Whole Thing with this series. The writing has mainly been consistently good and running according to Scott Snyder's master plan. Now, it's great that DC is letting some different talent get their feet wet on a medium to high profile series and all, but getting experimental with the artwork is always going to be the thing that makes or breaks this book. Putting three different people with prevailing weaknesses in their styles on the same issue just turned out to be a profoundly bad idea.

All New X-Men: It's nice that Bendis' story arc has picked up speed again, but I can't help but feel like Marvel kinda took the wind out of this plot's sails by announcing that they're about to phase out the Ultimate line completely (I mean, let's face it....Ultimate Spider Man's the only book that isn't absolute trash anyway, so...). The crossovers aren't as exciting when you know they're going to meet again soon anyhow. And Young Jean's transformation from "a hair's breath away from losing her shit, going Phoenix and ending mankind" to "Damn, I have to do absolutely everything around here" is a little bizarre. I do like that Bendis has taken this opportunity to give agency to a character that, historically speaking, hasn't had a whole lot in the past. On the other hand, it's kinda diminished some really strong characters that have to stand next to her (Professor Kitty, for one).