Category Archives: X-Men
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews
I’ve been wanting to do this style of comic book review for a long time, but I never end up reading all my new comics before the weekend. However, I’ve got some time on Wednesdays now, so I really want to start. My long reviews take awhile to write, and I can’t do one for every comic I read. So from this week forward (hopefully), I’ll be providing some shorter, quicker reviews on the week’s new comics.
I buy a large smattering of comics across both DC and Marvel, and a few Indy titles. If there is any comic you’d like me to review, let me know via e-mail or in the comments.
Let’s begin!
Amazing Spider-Man #696
Amazing Spider-Man #696
Writer: Dan Slott & Christos Gage
Artist: Giuseppe Camuncoli
Phil Urich is one of my all-time favorite comic book characters. His brief series as the good Green Goblin in the 90s was the first comic book series that I ever bought and read with my own money. So of course his transformation into the villainous, perverted Hobgoblin was sad. I preferred him as a down-on-his-luck hero. But with a character as minor and obscure as Phil, I’ve mostly just been grateful that he’s even appearing anywhere. So I’ve been following his career as the new Hobgoblin, and it comes to a head in this issue, as original Hobgoblin, Roderick Kingsley, returns to New York City to crush Phil for good – and, of course, Spider-Man is caught in the middle.
I’ve mostly been enjoying Slott’s Amazing Spider-Man run. He brings a light-hearted feel to the wall-crawler, with brightly colored adventures and really personal stories. This one is no different. Peter Parker has just been outed as the man who builds all of Spider-Man’s gadgets at Horizon Labs, so the Hobgoblin kidnaps Peter for the Kingpin. They want to hold him hostage so that Spider-Man will turn over a special briefcase he’s holding, little knowing that Peter actually is Spider-Man. So it’s up to Peter’s boss, Max Modell, to bring the briefcase in an attempt to free Peter. But just as the exchange is about to go down, Roderick Kingsley attacks, determined to kill Phil.
In the chaos of the Hobgoblin War, Peter and Max escape with the briefcase – which holds a key to Norman Osborn’s entire Goblin arsenal!
Comic rating: 4/5: Good!
This was a fun adventure, and your typical Peter Parker in trouble story. The Hobgoblin War idea is pretty cool, as the characters look absolutely wicked under Camuncoli’s pencils. Seeing them battle is the highlight of the issue. Orange is always a great color for super-villains. I’m hoping Phil puts up a fight, and the idea that Roderick is threatening Phil’s girlfriend might bring some heroism out of Phil. One can hope. The Peter action was fun as he pulled off some web-slinging skill, while simultaneously trying to keep Max from deducing the truth. So yeah, entertaining story, fun characters and the hope that one of my all-time favorite comic book characters gets to shine.
Join me after the jump for more! Including AvX: Consequences, Batman Incorporated, Invincible Iron Man, Talon and Wolverine MAX!
Forgotten Characters: Lacuna
Whatever happened to Lacuna, the mutant talk show host and would-be member of X-Statix?
The green blob Doop has been given new prominence in the popular pages of Wolverine & The X-Men, but he wasn’t the only character to survive the massacre that was Peter Milligan’s X-Statix. I want to know whatever happened to my personal favorite character from that series, the beautiful, the excitable, the orange Lacuna! X-Statix may have been controversial in its day, but the rose-colored glasses of hindsight have proven just how ahead of its time that series really was.
X-Statix was a comic that satirized Jersey Shore several years before Jersey Show was even on the air. X-Statix was making Kim Kardashian jokes before ‘Kardashian’ was even a thing. And there in the wings, doing her part to mock talk show hosts, was Woodstock Schumaker, the sometimes superhero known as Lacuna. She was one of the few characters to survive the end of X-Statix, but she hasn’t been seen since. I want to know why not!
She looks absolutely awesome
Here is a young female character ripe for use in any number of rebooted X-teams. She’s got an awesome look, nifty powers and her own talk show! At the very least, why hasn’t anybody had Lacuna and the Stars playing in the background of any scenes?
Join me after the jump for more!
Just When You Thought Cyclops Couldn’t Get Any More Awesome!
I want to consider my blog a bastion of pro-Cyclops ideology and understanding. Because even though I was, at times, frustrated with his portrayal during Avengers vs. X-Men, Marvel are clearly turning him into the greatest hero ever in the aftermath!
I don’t want to spoil too much right away – I’ll save that for the jump – but suffice to say, from almost everything I’ve seen post-AvX, Marvel seems poised to do some exciting things with Cyclops in the future. More and more, it looks intentional that Marvel and their writers knew exactly what they were doing with Cyclops in Avengers vs. X-Men, and I am absolutely loving it! The character is on this fascinating journey, and not some cliched apologetic quest for redemption.
Cyclops is a total boss! As we can see in a few previews of the upcoming All-New X-Men #1! Join me for more after the jump to view them!
This May Not Mean Much to Most People, but There’s Going to be a New Stilt-Man!
Sometimes I try to be objective when it comes to reporting pop culture news. As in, I try to tell you guys about as much cool stuff coming up as I can. But then sometimes it gets really personal, and I write up an entry like this one that deals almost exclusively with my own personal love.
Stilt-Man being one of them.
They’re also pushing the new Superior Spider-Man, but we should all just ignore him until he goes away
There’s going to be a new Stilt-Man introduced in the pages of Daredevil in January. As I’m sure you remember, I once wrote an article about Lady Stilt-Man, and she’s actually made several more appearances since I wrote that article. Good for her. But now a new Stilt-Man is coming back! We all remember how the original Stilt-Man, Wilbur Day, was killed by the Punisher in the wake of Civil War. So I don’t know who the new Stilt-Man is going to be. Heck, considering this is comics, it could be Wilbur Day back from the dead!
Whoever straps on those big, metal stilts, it appears that they’re going to get a technological upgrade from Doctor Octopus. Because why the hell not? Nobody ever said that super-villains couldn’t share technology. I’ve always thought Doctor Octopus should have added some Shocker gauntlets to the end of his tentacles.
Also in January comic book news, X-Factor is going to start an epic story called the Hell on Earth War. Supposedly, all of the demons in Hell are getting all excited about the birth of the 7th billion human, for some reason. And they’re going to go to war over it. What X-Factor has to do with this, I haven’t the foggiest. But I’m a huge X-Factor fan, so I’m not about to miss this.
I love it when Multiple Man is badass. The duster helps
Also, apparently, writer Peter David started planting the seeds for this storyline back when he wrote Incredible Hulk in the 90s. That he’s now able to go through with the story is a clear indication of why comic books are awesome.
A Couple of Marvel Trailers
First up, the debut trailer of Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United confirms my suspicion that it will be crappy.
Stiff, stilted computer animation looks like it was done by a freshman design student. The dialogue appears to be nothing but cheap one-liners and weak banter. The villains are just a bunch of robots and/or additional Iron Man suits. This is a flimsy, boring work of drivel from a company that produces the best superhero stories and movies in the world. I expect better.
Next up is the latest trailer for Marvel Heroes, the upcoming Marvel-themed Massive Multiplayer Online game. I don’t know why I haven’t written about this game yet, probably due to lack of interest. And I don’t know why I’m not very interested in this game. It looks to be the next evolution of the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, and those were great.
Marvel Heroes wisely forgoes DC Comics’ attempt at an MMO, and instead lets you play as the actual superheroes. DC went with a City of Heroes-style game, where you design your own superhero and then fight alongside the Justice League. Marvel is going with a Diablo-like game, where you get to play as their superheroes in a dungeon-crawler-like environment. They’ve done a good job with that kind of series in the past, like I said, but something about this game has yet to really grab me. I think it’s the generic-ness that I’ve seen from the previews so far.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 was based heavily on Civil War, the comic series that pit hero against hero. It was full of exciting cameos (Multiple Man! Prodigy!), and got really in depth for a video game. Marvel Heroes, so far, seems to be striving to be as generic as possible, probably to bring in as many players as possible. Plus all of the characters they’ve revealed so far are not among my list of favorites. So there’s nothing to get excited about…yet. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.
What do you guys think of movie and this game? Are you looking forward to both? Hating them both? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Henchman-4-Hire 