Category Archives: Comics
They Did It, They Killed Him – X-Factor #227
Who dies in X-Factor #227?
It's definitely one of the characters on this cover
The answer will shock and sadden you! It’s definitely saddened me. Longtime readers of this blog will know who I feared it would be, and who I didn’t want it to be…well, they did it anyway. My favorite comic book character is dead!
Cue world’s smallest violin.
But all hope is not lost. Because even though the character dies in today’s brand new issue, the issue actually ends with a rather curious and hopeful epilogue. We all know that comic book characters don’t stay dead. Even Bucky came back from the dead, and the story was great! So there is a lot of hope for this character’s return. In fact, based on solicitations for the X-Factor issues in December, January and February, there’s a lot of promise over the next several months that this death isn’t final.
Still, this sucks. My favorite comic book character, nay, my favorite fictional character ever, and he’s dispatched on the page! Dead and gone. His friends will mourn. I will mourn. But I won’t spoil who it is in this opening.
You’re going to have to hit the jump to find out who was killed in X-Factor #227!
I Must Have the Evil Touch – Goodbye X-23
No more team-ups with vampire Jubilee
No sooner do I announce on my blog that I’m going to be buying my first ever issue of the comic book X-23, than Marvel announces that they’re cancelling the title! ComicBookResources has the scoop. It seems that January’s issue #20 is going to be the last one. How is that fair at all? What if I really like the book? What if X-23 becomes a new favorite character of mine? Why announce the cancellation today of all days?
What the hell, Marvel!? Don’t punish the world for my hubris!
This is like that time I panned the new Green Arrow, only for the writer to almost immediately announce he was leaving the title.
So I’m sorry, X-23 writer Marjorie Liu. I must have done something somewhere to someone to warrant such violent reaction to my blog posts from both Marvel and DC. This doesn’t bode well for my eventually working for one of them someday. I’m still going to buy the super adorable X-23 issue tomorrow, even if the book is on its way to cancel-ville. It’ll be my way to stick it to the man.
Fans of Liu should know that Marvel said she’ll be moving on to other projects. And X-23 will become a reoccurring character in the Avengers Academy series, which I think is a neat place for her. Much cooler teen school setting for her to join over Wolverine and the X-Men’s teen school setting.
I Am a Sucker for Adorableness
I have zero interest in the character X-23. She’s a young, female clone of Wolverine that skirts around the edges of the X-Men franchise. I just don’t care about her at all. She’s a silly idea that has somehow gained enough traction to warrant her own series. I guess she’s got fans somewhere…(says the guy who loves Multiple Man and the Mimic).
But despite my disinterest in X-23, I’ll definitely be buying her new issue Wednesday because she’s going to be baby-sitting Franklin and Valeria Richards, the children of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four!
The preview pages for this issue, written by Marjorie Liu and drawn by Sana Takeda, are too adorable for me to pass up.
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The Rise of Lady Stilt-Man
There is no dorkier character in all of comicdom than Stilt-Man. Here is a super-villain whose only real ‘power’ is that he invented a robotic suit with giant, telescoping legs. The legs let him raise up to the top floors of skyscrapers, bypassing all security by just breaking into a super high window. Now that’s creative thievery. And he’s been around for decades, returning again and again to battle all manner of superheroes in pursuit of riches.
Unfortunately, he’s dead.
Stilt-Man is gone to that great super-villain volcano lair in the sky. Brutally killed by the Punisher with a rocket launcher. Stilt-Man has been around since the 1960s! He was one of Daredevil’s earliest foes, debuting in Daredevil #8! In fact, I have a copy of that very issue framed on my wall. My brother got it for me for my birthday. Kudos to him. But one of the great things about Marvel Comics and their writers is that they are in on the joke. They know just how awesome Stilt-Man was. So rather than just let him die and fade away, they threw a wake! All of Stilt-Man’s low-level super-villain friends threw him a wake at the Bar-With-No-Name – which the Punisher crashed and tried to poison everyone.
Then in a recent anniversary issue of Iron Man, he and Spider-Man teamed up to take on a group of technological cultists who had taken to worshiping the late, great Stilt-Man! Marvel has done so much with Stilt-Man’s legacy, but the greatest of all is the new queen of dorky super-villains: Lady Stilt-Man!
She's going to squash that menace Spider-Man like a bug!
Review: Calling All Robins
For my 200th post at Henchman-4-Hire, I want ALL the Robins! But 200 posts, that’s a pretty big achievement, right? I hope so, and I hope to write 200 more. I’m really enjoying blogging, and we’ve definitely increased our readership since the site opened. I take that as a good sign. Though I wish we saw more comments. C’mon everybody! Fire off a comment or two after some of my posts. Tell me what you think. Tell me what else you want to read!
Calling ALL the Robins!
At any rate, to celebrate the 200th post I’ve picked a very special comic book to review: Batman: The Brave and the Bold #13. It’s a comic book based on a now cancelled TV show, but it’s special because it’s the very first time, in all of comicdom, that all of the Robins team up in one adventure in order to help Batman!
Calling all Robins…Batman Dies at Dawn!
How nifty is that?
Comic rating: 3/5: Alright.
Not very nifty as a story, but wonderfully nifty as a concept. Longtime readers of this blog will know that I’m a HUGE Robin fan. I love the character even more than Batman. So any Robin-focused story is cool by me. So I figured it would be a fun idea to spend my 200th post talking about a comic book that revels in ultimate Robin goodness. The story is flimsy, the characterizations are sparse, but dammit if this isn’t a comic where Dick, Jason, Tim, Stephanie, Damian and even Carrie Kelly team up in order to save the Batman!
That’s good comic books, people.
Henchman-4-Hire 