Not-Very-New Comics: The November 21 Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Astonishing X-Men #17:  This issue is a mess.  But, I appreciated what Rosenberg was trying to do here, as he explained it in his concluding letter.  He wanted to tell a story about the heroes who don’t always get it right.  It's a good goal, the type of story we don't see told enough.  I'd say that he largely accomplished that goal, messy though the road to that goal was.  After all, the characterization was...dodgy.  Alex seemed like a combination of Bobby Drake with the bad jokes, Quentin Quire with his easy disillusionment, and Tony Stark with the weary drinking.  Allison made weird comments about the Beast’s weight.  But, Rosenberg was getting Alex to a place where I liked him.  It was a more interesting iteration of him.  I mean, it's been a while since we had a consistent characterization of him, so I was really just happy for Rosenberg to have a specific vision of him.  But, the progress Rosenberg was making ends here with the advent of “Uncanny X-Men.”  After all, I’m still not really sure what the Reavers were doing or planning, but I guess it doesn’t matter at this point.  Unfortunately, this series appears to be part of the trend over the last few years of all the X-books being disposable.  Just when the authors seem to get somewhere interesting, the series is canceled due to yet another line-wide “relaunch” and the team is disassembled.  [Sigh.]  It’s bad when you’re pining for a series you didn’t even like all that much, just because you want some stability.

Batman #59:  This story would be great if it weren’t a “Batman” story.  I’m fine believing Bane is only pretending to be semi-comatose while actually running Arkham and, by extension, Gotham.  (I mean, that connection is kind of a stretch, but whatever.)  I’m also fine with Penguin confessing this information to Batman as part of his revenge against Bane for killing his Penny.  King has Penguin make it clear the strikes against Bruce — Dick, Alfred, etc. — came from Bane.  But, I don’t buy Bruce’s actions.  King seems to subscribe to Snyder’s belief that Bruce is incompetent.  After all, Bruce doesn’t really figure out anything here.  Sure, he realizes Penguin was the one actually to kill the women who Freeze allegedly killed, but it also seems like Penguin wasn’t really hiding his tracks all that well.  But, King goes ones step further as Bruce isn’t just incompetent but also psychotic.  Rather than tricking Bane into revealing the truth, he just simply beats him to a pulp, as if Bane — the man whose “powers” come essentially from surviving Santa Prisca — would crack under the torment.  Gordon tries to get him to stop and he punches Gordon.  Gordon dismisses him, saying he’s sick of him, and I couldn’t agree with him more.  A Red Hood story?  That makes sense.  A Batman story?  Nope.

Infinity Wars:  Sleepwalker #3:  I mean, this issue and series are just the effing worst.  Nothing makes sense.  Like, I couldn’t even pretend to tell you what story Bowers and Sims are actually trying to tell here.  I can’t believe I got suckered into buying it because Darkhawk was in it.

Mr. and Mrs. X #5:  Honestly, y'all, I just fucking love this series so much.  It's romantic, it's suspenseful, it's funny.  Thompson gets these characters in an intuitive way, and it shows in every panel.  Also, Bazaldua and D'Armata are an excellent team.  "Astonishing X-Men" and "Uncanny X-Men" suffered from such consistently disappointing art, the great art here just really underscores what a wonderful book this series is.  Also, cats!

The New World #5:  Kot ends this series by leaning into the idea of the wall as a metaphor.  Thanks to Stella’s A.I. successfully hacking into border security’s systems, Kirby and Stella reveal to the country that the wall is merely a hologram, a prison of their own making due to their faith in, and fear of, their institutions.  Kot could’ve left it there and scored a point against our Trumpian reality.  But, he goes one step further.  Kirby knows the revelation will result in chaos, so he wants to stay and make the United States a better place.  But, Stella has done enough, and they part.  By adding this exchange, Kot exposes the sort of disagreements many people opposed to any agenda have in this era.  Stella is exhausted and just wants living her life with her love serving as the best revenge, whereas Kirby wants a more direct approach to right the wrongs he sees.  They’re both valid options, and they may not be as incompatible as they seem in this moment.  To that point, as Stella summons up her courage to take that step through the wall, Kirby is there with her.  Kot leaves us there:  we don’t know what they ultimately do; we just know they’re in love, hand in hand, for right now.  It’s a great ending to this trippy series, a reminder how much Kot and Moore really accomplished with just five issues.

Spider-geddon #4:  Gage does a solid job of keeping all the plates spinning at this point.  This series has had some problems with tie-in coordination, like we see here with Jessica Drew arriving after the events of the so-far unpublished "Spider-Force" #3.  But, it's not too much of an issue.  Gage cleverly ups the stakes by having the Web-Warriors expel an unhelpful Norma Osborn.  As revenge, he destroys the Web of Life and Destiny, severing the Web-Warriors' ability to travel between dimensions and thus stranding everyone else on Earth-616 with the Inheritors.  I'd say that sets up the final conflict pretty nicely.  This series lacks the overarching brilliance of "Spider-Verse," but as a sequel to a previous event it's doing really well.

Uncanny X-Men #2:  This issue is marginally better than the first one, in that at least it makes sense on the face of it.  Storm leads a team to Kansas when a veritable horde of Madri suddenly appears and Jean decides (for reasons that remain unclear) that Storm is best suited to handle it.  Meanwhile, Jean leads a team to Montana to stop a group of rampaging dinosaurs, part of a worldwide phenomenon of long extinct animals suddenly coming to life.  Hank posits all these events — including the mysterious development of a lake in Africa that he and Storm investigated last issue as well as the disappearances of Senator Ashton and Kitty — are all connected.  But, instead of doing more research on that connection, he goes to recover the mutant “vaccine” from the pharmaceutical factory the X-Men destroyed when they accidentally crashed a Blackbird into it last issue.  Just when I had hope it was going to start getting better, Legion appears on the last page to “save the day,” which means it’s all going to get worse.

Also Read:  Nightwing #53; Spider-Force #2; Star Wars #57; West Coast Avengers #4