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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 1/18/14
Holy cow, you guys, the Blob is back! The Blob! Not the Age of Apocalypse Blob, or skinny Blob, or powerless Blob, but the real, regular, normal, 616 Blob is back in all his glory in this week’s issue of Uncanny X-Men! With no explanation whatsoever, Brian Michael Bendis just brings back one of my all-time favorite comic book super-villains! And he’s great! Oh man, I hope Bendis has some fun plans for the character!
But the return of the Blob does not win Uncanny X-Men Comic Book of the Week on its own. No sir. Uncanny X-Men wins that title for an absolutely amazing Magneto story, which catapults him to maybe the most badass mutant on the planet these days. If his upcoming solo series is anywhere near as good as this issue, then we’re all in for a treat.
Fortunately, we’ve also got good issues of Thor: God of Thunder, Superior Spider-Man and some other titles this week. I even picked up Skyman #1 by Dark Horse!
But man, I’m so excited for the Blob!
I love the Hawaiian shirt, the sunglasses and the goatee; I love’em!
Comic Reviews: Amazing X-Men #3, Green Lantern Corps #27, Skyman #1, Superior Spider-Man #25, Superman/Wonder Woman #4, Thor: God of Thunder #17 and Uncanny X-Men #16.
And Magneto Gets a Comic!
Marvel is apparently still announcing new comics for their All-New Marvel NOW! promotion. Next up is a Magneto solo series by Cullen Bunn and Gabriel Hernandez Walta.
Loving the barbed wire helmet imagery
Announced in USA Today, the series is going to feature Magneto in a ‘noir’ setting. He’s heading to the street level, where he will use his broken powers to help mutants and punish the sorts of people he wants to punish. I’ve been enjoying Magneto a lot in Brian Michael Bendis’ Uncanny X-Men, so a solo series sounds pretty cool. I just hope Bunn knows what he’s doing. I fear for the longevity of a lot of these new solo series that Marvel is putting out. New comics don’t last very long. Will Magneto have the right kind of magic to make it in this world?
Bunn had this to say:
“Magneto in this story is very much a detective, seeking out and investigating threats to mutants before cutting loose with all the fury of a supervillain — or superhero, depending on your point of view. We can sympathize with him even though he has been responsible for terrible crimes against humanity,” Bunn explains. “He walks such a fine line. He’s standing up for his people — the mutants. He refuses to let them suffer as he has seen others suffer. But he’s taken steps to protect mutants that can only be seen as evil. His ideals are often ‘good’ while his methods are not.”
The series will launch sometime next year, and I know I’ll be picking up a few issues.
Also, this is probably as good a time as any to talk about the fact that director Bryan Singer has announced X-Men: Apocalypse the movie for 2016. He pretty much just dropped the title on Twitter yesterday, and we can easily assume who the villain is going to be. I don’t really have any thoughts about it at this point. I’ve never been a big Apocalypse fan, and I always assumed they’d get around to him eventually in the movies. A lot of sites on the web seem to think they’ll do an Age of Apocalypse storyline, possibly because that’s the only Apocalypse story that is in any way memorable.
But I highly doubt the movie-makers could pull off a full Age of Apocalypse movie. It would be insane. I still don’t necessarily think the moviegoing audience is going to be able to handle all the time travel and weirdness in Days of Future Past. But we’ll see.
Review: X-Factor #243
Now we’ve come to the Polaris issue! I think every character who is leaving X-Factor is getting their own issue in this ‘Breaking Points’ storyline, and now we’ve arrived at the Polaris one. It’s a good issue, revealing new facts in Polaris’ already twisted backstory while providing some nice supporting work by the other characters. But it kind of comes out of nowhere. Was anybody really eager to hear some new convoluted twist to Polaris’ life? And other than hardcore Polaris fans, was anybody really interested in seeing a whole issue dedicated to her problems?
X-Factor #243
Polaris, and to an extent Havok, have been non-characters for so long. It’s nice of writer Peter David to try and make something of them, but I think it’s too little too late, especially considering where they’re going.
Comic rating: 4/5: Good.
This is a solid issue of X-Factor. It’s got some good humor, some great character work and tells a complete story. It also builds on a few ongoing storylines and teases the next issue, which looks to focus on Banshee, though I hope she’s staying in the book. My problem is with Polaris, and I’ll explain more after the jump. She’s such a messed up, blank slate character at this point. How does it help her for PAD to add some crazy new wrinkles to her backstory…unless he thinks he’s smoothing them out. Her character has been through Hell, both mentally and physically, over the past few years. She’s due for a smoothing out. But I don’t know if that is accomplished in this issue.
Still, like I said, it’s a pretty fun issue of X-Factor. The team acts like a group of friends/frenemies just trying to help each other get by. And that’s the real strength of this series.
Perry Bible Fellowship Does Galactus
Marvel Comics teaming up with The Perry Bible Fellowship may be one of my favorite pop culture team-ups of the modern age.
For those of you who don’t know, The Perry Bible Fellowship is this amazing, hilarious comic strip by a guy named Nicholas Gurewitch. There’s no single plot to the strip, simply joke after joke after joke. And for those of you who are already fans, I have some added, personal trivia for you! The Perry Bible Fellowship got its start in the comic section of The Daily Orange, the student-run newspaper at Syracuse University.
And what other comic strip ran in The Daily Orange right alongside The Perry Bible Fellowship? Why, my very own Falmouth University, of course! Granted, Gurewitch’s comic was much better, and he’s had a ton more success than me. But I still like being able to say that my meager little comic ran alongside one of the greats in its original run!
And then Gurewitch went on to actually draw comic strips for Marvel Comics! Brilliant stuff.
I like to tell myself that if I ever met him again, he’d totally remember my comic and tell me he was a fan. I can dream, can’t I?
Henchman-4-Hire 