Stuff I Read This Week 4/18/14

Thor, God of Thunder #21: Jason Aaron has Thor down almost to a science. So far, the God of Thunder series has been as suitably epic in scale as a series about a god could ever hope to deliver. It traverses time and space with the ease of your apartment building's elevator. The "Last Days of Midgard" story is one that has proven to be a perfect display of such scale.

This issue picks up where the last left off with Present Time Thor at odds with an evil conglomerate so intent on mining the Earth's resources until it dies, you would almost think Aaron had borrowed a villain directly from Captain Planet. This alone makes for interesting conflict, reminding our hero that not every villain is one that he can defeat with a swing of his hammer. It also gives us more of Thor's newfound (kinda) girlfriend, SHIELD agent Roz Solomon, who serves as a nice sidekick to teach the God of Thunder something about dealing with earthly ways like lawyers. It's funny as all hell, too. Then, there's my favorite part where, in the far future, Old Thor, ruler of Asgard gets into a fistfight....let me reiterate....a knockdown, drag-out street fight with GALACTUS!!!! It's pretty difficult to get more epic than that. I can practically hear the nerds five years from now in their "who would win" fights citing that time when Thor got into it with Galactus and lived (we think so far). Of course, none of this would leap off of the page the way it does if it weren't for Esad Ribic. With his sweeping sense of scope and his taste for detailed landscapes adds to the flavor of Aaron's tale of legends. In fact, each page has the kind of style one would think you might find in a sacred tome telling the myths of the Asgardian prince.

Bottom Line: Jason Aaron is telling some of the best stories in Thor's history. This issue is no different. 9 out of 10

Batman #30: Scott Snyder's run on Batman in the New 52 era has had some pretty impressive successes. The Zero Year saga in particular has been his best work on the series. We've seen a fun, swashbuckling take on the Bat-mythos that puts a fun spin on an endlessly retreaded origin. We see a wild-eyed Batman who shoots from the hip, curses and smiles from time to time. But the most notable highlight of this entire series has been the Riddler. 

The evolution of Edward Nygma is one that can only be seen to believed. Over the years, he's been a Woody Allen-esque sidekick to Catwoman, a world class thief and even a detective. Here in the latest issue going into the "Savage City" story, we see a maniacal mastermind who has been one step ahead of the Dark Knight Detective with Gotham completely under his thumb. This story thus far highlights three particularly interesting things. First, this is probably the MOST diabolical we've ever seen the Riddler, capitalizing on opportunities left behind by the various goings-on in the city. The second notable is that Snyder has become adept at making Jim Gordon almost a superhero in his own right and appropriately so. The point of Batman (most especially in the Dark Knight era of the character) is that he brings criminals down a peg so that the law can work for itself. In that context, there is pretty much no greater champion of good in Gotham than Gordon. He's the city's rock. Zero Year has been great at shining a spotlight on his heroics. And finally, the BEST thing is that in the era in which Batman is seen as an unfallible ubermensch of sorts, we see him dealing with failure. This is what it's like when The World's Greatest Detective isn't always in control, who doesn't go into battle with the upper hand on his foe. It's actually a very nice change of pace. At this point going into the perfection that Greg Capullo's artwork is almost an exercise in redundancy. His detailed layouts are great at depicting a defeated wasteland of a city.

Bottom Line: This is easily one the best books DC has to offer. If you're not reading it at this point, I don't know what else you're doing. 9 out of 10.

Stuff I Read This Week Episode 20 or If Only Troy Davis Had A Friend Like Captain America....

Hunger #1: It's unanimous (more or less) that Marvel's Age of Ultron story arc ended in surprisingly (though it shouldn't be) unforgivable manner. Seriously, reading that miniseries was the equivalent of getting halfway through Blade Runner only to have someone come in and put on Transformers 3. Anyway, what's done is done and the best we're left to hope for is that we can get some decent titles from the smoldering wreckage. One interesting thing we were left with was the introduction of 616-Galactus into the Ultimate Universe. This book is a jumpstart to exactly the kind of shake up I've been waiting for in the Ultimate books since, with the exception of Ultimate Spider-Man, the existing books have fallen sort of flat. Joshua Hale Fialkov sees you continuity fiends ready to pounce and wants you to know he hasn't forgotten about Warren Ellis' Ultimate Galactus trilogy from a while back.

In the first issue, we are reintroduced to the Rick Jones (Ultimate Nova), who has been away exploring space to get comfortable with his powers. His back-and-forth with the Watcher serves as a well written vehicle to keep us going through the story not unlike Richard Rider Nova's relationship with the Worldmind computer. Jones comes across every bit as relateable as his current 616 counterpart, Sam Alexander, reluctant at all the wrong moments and impulsive at all the right ones. Leonard Kirk's artwork is the icing on the cake here, laying out an amazing space battle seems to never get boring to look at. I'm convinced that if any other team were working on this, it would suck. That's probably the main reason this is a win in my book. That and the WTF ending. That's all I'm going to say.

Bottom Line: A well done starting point to springboard into the upcoming Cataclysm event. 8.5 out of 10.




Superior Spider Man Team-Up #1: As we trudge on closer to the end of "Superior Spider Sucks Month," Marvel shut a door and opened a window. We had to say goodbye to Christopher Yost's brilliantly written Avenging Spider Man to...well, I'm not going to lie to you, actually. We didn't have to say goodbye to anything. This is essentially the same book. They basically dropped "Avenging" from the title and replaced it with "Superior."

The main difference is that, instead of existing slightly outside of current Spider canon, this issue is up to date with the events of the most recent issue of Superior Spider Man where Doctor Spiderpus is enjoying quite a few victories in winning over the city's hearts. However, the Avengers still aren't terribly happy with the contents of papa's brand new bag and are back for another intervention. Opening up with Webhead's run-ins with the street level status quo in New York was awesome and sort of hilarious to read. Yost knows how to build tension while still keeping it light for a fun read. The fundamental problem with this particular story is that it uses Captain America's bottomless well of clemency. There's no way the Avengers could possibly so stupid as to seriously believe that there's NOTHING amiss about this hard charging, less jovial, know-it-all Sheldon Cooper version of Spider-Man. I mean, for fuck's sake....

"Sure, he's being uncharacteristically dick-ish, but he's probably just going through a rough patch, so leave him be. I mean, Wolverine's a stone cold killer and Spider-Man hasn't done anything nearly that...wait...he DID kill someone? Oh, I'm sure it's fine."

 Also, David Lopez's artwork wasn't really bad, but it was sort of a hit or miss scenario. The first half of the book is beautiful, but it's the second half that's a little off-putting because his style is a little too plain and straightforward and the Avengers should be more exciting to look at. This isn't a perfect way to transition from Avenging, but I was entertained enough to pick up another copy.

Bottom Line: If you liked Avenging Spider Man, you might not be as impressed. If you didn't like Avenging Spider Man, you might find something to like here. Either way, it's the little things that make and/or break this book. 7.5 out of 10.


Justice League Dark #22: DC is has officially entered the halfway point of their obligatory "Holy Shit Something's Happening That We Should All Do Something About" event, Trinity War. Geoff Johns has handed the baton off to Jeff Lemire in a fairly seamless fashion which might not be the biggest plus for this story. Why, you ask? Because it's halftime and I still have no earthly idea what's actually happening.

The best thing I can tell you is that Pandora's Box is out in the open and some people seem to be worried about it....for some reason. It's starting to suffer from one of the primary problems that Avengers vs. X-Men did except there are actually characters here that seems to know what this is all building to and just don't seem to feel like talking about it. It's one thing to build suspense and keep the readers in the dark, but you would think one of these mysterious good guys would make a better effort to try to get all of the other good guys on the same page. Instead, they seem to be completely fine with the various Justice Leagues beating the shit out of each other. The standout moment to look out for here is the awesome exchange between Wonder Woman and John Constantine which helps to showcase Lemire's characterization skills. Mikel Janin's pencils certainly deserve a round of applause as well. All of the action looks clean and deliberate, facial expressions look distinctive on purpose and, with such an enormous cast of characters, it's amazing that there was never a feeling claustrophobia in this issue. This isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I'd just like it a lot more if someone could explain it to me.

Bottom Line: This issue makes all three Justice League entertaining enough to watch fighting. I just wish I knew why they were fighting. So far it's less of a superhero comic and more of an old Kaiju monster movie. 7 out of 10.