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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 5/28/22
If you’re reading this post when it goes up on Saturday morning, I am already on my way to sunny California! Should be a fun vacation. Thankfully, I was able to read and review a couple of this week’s pretty good comics before heading to the airport.
Comic Book of the Week goes to Legion of X #1. I was definitely looking forward to this comic and it mostly did not disappoint.
Meanwhile, the third season of Love, Death, Robots turned out to be pretty darn good on Netflix. Definitely worth a watch. While Mike Meyers’ big return, The Pentaverate, was so bad that I stopped watching halfway through. It was only six half-hour episodes, but I still couldn’t bring myself to keep watching.
Comic Reviews: Amazing Spider-Man #2, Godzilla vs. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #3, Legion of X #1 and Saga #59.
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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 8/21/21
We’re two weeks away from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Feels good to be super excited about another Marvel movie! Good thing we have plenty of interesting comics to get us through this, like Power Rangers, Nightwing and the start of the Trial of Magneto!
Comic Book of the Week goes to a truly epic Way of X #5. I already loved this book for the philosophy, and then this issue goes and delivers some truly out-of-this-world action!
Meanwhile, I had a pretty busy week and wasn’t able to get around to all of my normal comic reviews. After two weeks of nearly bare pull lists, this week had a ton of comics! I had to skip out on Marauders, Iron Man and Supergirl this week, but I hope to get caught up and review their next issues.
Comic Reviews: Nightwing #83, Power Rangers #10, Superman and the Authority #2, Way of X #5, X-Corp #4 and X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #1.
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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 7/17/21
What a time to be a comic book fan! Black Widow came out a week ago! Loki just ended a wonderful season, with a promise of more. And we’ve got Multiple Man making awesome multiple moves in a regular comic again! Life is good.
Comic Book of the Week goes to Mighty Morphin #9 for just another consistently wonderful comic book about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Meanwhile, things are going to be a little different around here…sort of. I’ve decided that I give too many details away in my synopsis. So I’m gonna try to dial that back. I still want to be a review place where I can talk about spoilers and stuff…but I also want you readers to buy the comics and enjoy them yourselves. Don’t read me just to avoid buying comics! I love buying and reading comics!
Comic Reviews: Champions #8, Iron Man #10, Mighty Morphin #9, Thor #15, Way of X #4 and X-Corp #3.
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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 6/26/21
Pretty average week for me, all things considered. Thankfully, we’ve got some good, solid, enjoyable comics! Mostly. The Hellfire Gala has some strong chapters, and that’s mostly about it.
Comic Book of the Week goes to S.W.O.R.D. #6 for the powerful, character-based, emotional Hellfire Gala issue I’ve been waiting for! This one finally shows what all the big moves have been about!
Meanwhile, at long last, several years in the waiting, I am finally playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. My favorite types of video games are the big, open world sandbox adventures, and this is supposedly the best of the all. But I didn’t own a Nintendo Switch. Now I do and the game is great. I might be playing this all summer!
Also, Heroes Reborn ended in a fun way. It all led to a big fight, as these things usually do. But this was definitely one of my favorite of the recent Big Events. I don’t read them all, but this one had some real charm and, as I’ve been saying all along, it had that sweet Amalgam Comics vibe that I love so much!
Comic Reviews: Detective Comics #1038, Power Rangers #8, Robin #3, Wolverine #13, S.W.O.R.D. #6 and Way of X #3.
Read the rest of this entryI’m Disappointed We Didn’t Get to See Stacy X’s Crucible
Stacy X has finally returned to X-Men comics! She’s a favorite character of mine because she debuted just as I was finally starting to read and collect X-Men comics on an ongoing basis. But for a variety of reasons, she was dropped from the team after a short while. I’ve kept up with her in whatever weird little appearances she’s made over the past 20 years, and I’m very pleased to say that she’s on Krakoa and she’s got her powers back!
Stacy X showed up in this week’s Way of X #3. I hope she becomes a reoccurring character!
While it’s great to have her back, I’m a little disappointed that we did not get to see her Crucible. I was very much looking forward to that. And it would have been a pretty big moment for her character, considering her loss of powers has been her defining character trait over the past 20ish years.
Allow me to explain, because I love talking about favorite obscure mutants of mine!
So Stacy X is a mutant with both snakeskin and the power to control the pheromones and other chemicals in a person’s body. The X-Men met her while she was working at a mutant brothel, where she used her powers to give customers some truly mind-melting sexual experiences. This backstory and general attitude did not sit well with some of the X-Men (and perhaps Marvel?) and she was dropped shortly thereafter.
Then Stacy was one of the more high profile mutants to lose their powers on M-Day. She was an X-Man, after all, and most of the team kept their powers. In their M-Day aftermath comic, Generation M, Marvel really twisted the knife by turning Stacy into a real hooker living and working the streets.
Stacy did eventually clean up her act and joined a random incarnation of the New Warriors a few years later. This version of the New Warriors was made up of ex-mutants using technology to become superheroes again. Stacy was known as Ripcord and she ended up getting killed. Such a thing happens a lot to New Mutants.
Stacy made a random and minor appearance in the comic Vengeance, which I think was supposed to be some kind of statement comic by Marvel? It didn’t go anywhere. Her rebirth was never explained.
Then she showed up in an issue of the recent Domino comic, attending a Mutants Anonymous meeting put together by Domino and Nightcrawler for mutants struggling to live with powers that make them look abnormal.
So as you can see, after a brief membership in the X-Men, Stacy X has been defined by the loss of her powers for nearly the past 20 years. It was a bigger deal for her character than pretty much anyone else in the X-Men franchise (if we don’t count Jubilee’s weird couple of years as a vampire).
When Marvel introduced the idea of the Crucible on Krakoa — depowered mutants fighting in an arena in order to earn their death/resurrection/repowering — I had hoped to see Stacy X go through it. I think it would have been a great way to cap off her major story arc.
But alas, it apparently happened off-panel. I’m just going to have to be happy with the fact that Stacy X is back, she’s got her powers and she’s doing good on Krakoa. I should be able to make my peace with that.
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