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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 3/17/18
There’s a bunch of fun comics this week! From Detective Comics and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl to the launch of the new New Mutants mini-series! I would have done a Strong Guy Watch for the issue, but I figured Guido being part of a regular series again was enough of a watch!
Comic Book of the Week goes to another phenomenal issue of Mister Miracle! A new baby is born, and I’m growing more and more paranoid about how writer Tom King is going to destroy our very souls by the end!
‘Ironbreaker’ is a strong name
What did everybody else think of Jessica Jones? If, like me, you weren’t a fan, I highly recommend The Tick on Amazon Prime! Now that was a fun superhero TV show!
Comic Reviews: All-New Wolverine #32, Detective Comics #976, Marvel Two-in-One #4, Mister Miracle #7, New Mutants: Dead Souls #1 and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #30.
Strong Guy Watch: Wedding Bells
Strong Guy keeps getting invited to X-Men weddings. This is a minor update to my Strong Guy Watch because I saw that he gets a pretty prominent place on X-Men Gold #30, the big issue that will feature the wedding of Colossus and Kitty Pryde. How lucky for him that he gets to be a random background X-Man at such an auspicious occasion!
Superhero costumes are apparently proper wedding attire
I’m glad that someone at Marvel remembered how great a visual Strong Guy is in crowd scenes.
I want somebody to write a day-in-the-life of Strong Guy short story at Marvel. What does this guy get up to? He’s not a member of any of the active X-Men squads, yet he’s always in team shots these days. Is he a teacher at the new school? Does he have a separate life and just gets called in for big X-Men events? It’s fascinating!
This is actually Strong Guy’s second X-Men wedding. He was invited to Scott and Jean’s wedding back in the 1990s, too!
Sometimes tuxes and suits work just fine
Like I said, he keeps getting invited to X-Men weddings. I think it’s neat.
Though he didn’t get invited to Northstar’s wedding. Maybe he wasn’t a very prominent character back then.
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Strong Guy Watch: Through the Looking Glass
Once upon a time, I noticed an odd trend in the pages of Inhumans vs. X-Men, wherein the superhero Strong Guy seemed randomly added to background scenes. As a fourth-tier, supporting X-Men character, Strong Guy has never really mattered much in the larger X-Men scheme of things. He was barely ever acknowledged outside of his home book of X-Factor.
Can’t resurrect your Jean Greys without Strong Guy
But ever since Death of X, Strong Guy has been popping up as a member of the larger X-Men cast. And I found this rather weird. Out of all mutant characters, why was Strong Guy all of a sudden getting background supporting character slots? He was never a member of the X-Men before this, but now he’s clearly involved? Even if only in the background?
At first, my theory was that some editor passed a decree to start adding Strong Guy to X-Men scenes. I don’t know why or how, it just seemed like it had to have been a legitimate plan. There’s no way it was random coincidence. I started the Strong Guy Watch to keep track. But I backed off once it became clear that Strong Guy was definitely a member of the larger X-Men cast, as shown from his recent appearances in Phoenix Resurrection. The dude clearly belonged.
But a new Strong Guy appearance this week has reopened my original theory! What the heck is going on with Strong Guy that he would appear in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl?!
Beardless!
We’re through the looking glass here people.
In the panel in question, Strong Guy is among a wide variety of colorful characters summoned by Loki to help Squirrel Girl fight the Silver Surfer (it’s complicated, I know, but read the issue, because it’s great). The collected characters are immediately dispatched and sent back where they came from. So it was, at most, a two-page gag where artist Erica Henderson got to draw a bunch of wacky Marvel characters. They included Sleepwalker, for crying out loud!
But why use Strong Guy?
Out of all the characters that could have been chosen, why Strong Guy? Yes, he looks weird, and would therefore be perfect for the comic and Henderson’s art style. But she could have picked anybody. Was it even her choice? Did writer Ryan North tell her to include Strong Guy?
Or does my original theory hold: Was there some sort of editorial decision recently that Strong Guy would be used a lot more in the background of comics?!
It’s a mystery I will stay with all night, if I have to! But I will also take no steps to legitimately solve it. Just letting it simmer in my brain is good enough for me!
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Multiple Man Might Be Coming Back, Again!
Multiple Man is my all-time favorite comic book character and superhero. He’s currently dead. But for the second time now, Marvel has teased his possible resurrection. Superheroes, especially mutants, come back from the dead all the time. So I think it’s only a matter of time, and as far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.
A couple months ago, Multiple Man appeared in the Astral Plane in the pages of Astonishing X-Men. He didn’t come back to life and could have been some kind of Shadow King creation.
Well Marvel has done it again in the pages of this week’s Phoenix Resurrection — The Return of Jean Grey. I’ll spoil his appearance after the jump! It’s not definitive, but it’s another promising path!
Strong Guy is Gonna Be a New Mutant!
For reasons that boggle my mind, the title ‘New Mutants’ remains a frequent flyer in the X-Men franchise. It’s a weird name, right? Even when it was first used, to introduce a new, younger team of X-Men, it was still weird. Like, the X-Men knew a lot of other mutants by the time the New Mutants were introduced. Those kids weren’t even the first team of new mutants to join the X-Men.
But whatever. The title keeps getting used for new X-Men comics, and the next one is gonna feature Strong Guy!
I’m telling you all of this because I’m still engaged in the Strong Guy Watch. I’m pretty sure the rule of having Strong Guy randomly appear in the background of X-Men stories has passed, but I loved the character, so I’m calling him out!
The mini-series will be written by Matthew Rosenberg, with art by Adam Gorham. It’s also going to reunite Strong Guy with Wolfsbane, two parts of my favorite comic book friendship trio. I hope Rosenberg does something fun with that.
Yay Strong Guy! Though I’m disappointed that he lost the beard.
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