Not-Even-Remotely New Comics: The December 4 Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Annihilation - Scourge:  Nova #1:  Given this blog's focus on Nova, I was obviously excited about this issue.  I wasn't disappointed exactly, but it's definitely a mixed bag.

Rosenberg has always done a great job with down-on-their-luck characters; his Nova reminds me a lot of Havok from his "Astonishing X-Men" run, and I consider that a good thing.  I'm actually surprised Marvel doesn't more often tell this type of story, of a hero succumbing to the unrelenting tragedies that he's experienced.

Nova isn't just an alcoholic here, though Rosenberg underlines the fact that he is one when Rich experiences tremors after too much time without a drink.  Perhaps more significantly, Nova abandons the battlefield after encountering the Revengers.  Although his panic at the possibility of becoming infected again is certainly understandable, he doesn't give a second thought to abandoning Annihilus and the refugees that they were protecting.  This abandonment is particularly noteworthy since Nova had just stopped Annihilus from killing a crying child to silence it; as a result, the Revengers find them, as Annihilus feared.  Rich fleeing without thinking of the refugees' safety under Annihilus' care makes it clear that he's not thinking straight; his panicked flight is proof that he's broken.

The only downside of this issue is that Rosenberg has Annihilus and Nova engage in too much banter.  I love banter, don't get me wrong.  But, he almost writes this issue as a buddy-cop romp.  It not only doesn't fit the seriousness of Rich's predicament, but it definitely doesn't fit Annihilus' personality or their relationship.  It's almost like Rosenberg wanted to write a Nova and Star-Lord adventure, so he just did so anyway.  Thankfully, it doesn't totally overshadow my joy at seeing Rich in action, so I'm still looking forward to seeing where we go from here.

Annihilation - Scourge:  Fantastic Four #1:  I'm not really sure who the target audience for this issue is.  Any "Annihilation" story is a pretty deep cut when it comes to comics, so it's presumably aimed at a pretty serious reader.  But, Gage writes this story at an almost elementary-school level.

The moral of the issue is that Johnny learns that people can change.  On the face of it, it's an innovative reading of the Cancerverse denizens' psyches:  since they can't evolve past where they were when they were consumed, they aren't really alive.  In other words, we're not alive if we can't grow.  Johnny defeats the Fhtagn Four by using Reed's memory-projection device to show them the lives that "our" Fantastic Four have lived.  The Fhtagn Four thus understand the evolution as people that they didn't get to experience.  It inspires Ben and Sue to rebel against Reed's control, though ultimately Johnny incinerates them all to keep them a family.

The problem isn't this read on the Cancerverse, but Gage's script, which feels like it's pulled from an after-school special.  Sue has to explain to Johnny that he can be the annoying little brother and the Negative Zone's general, and you have to wonder how imbecilic Johnny is if he couldn't figure out that part on his own.  He's not a teenager anymore.  It's almost like a Women in Refrigerators situation, where the Negative Zone's civilizations are almost obliterated so Johnny can learn a valuable lesson about himself.  [Sigh.]

Die #10:  This issue is surprisingly straightforward, though it doesn't make this issue any less compelling.  

Ash tells Izzy that she's accepted the premise that they need to treat this world like it matters; as such, Ash is playing to win.  She, Izzy, and Zamorna begin the issue by invading Angria's military leader's house.  Izzy convinces the gods not to focus on the house so that the leader's holy symbols don't prevent Zamorna from entering.  Zamorna then smuggles in Ash, who uses her powers to compel the leader to tell them his worst secret.  It's apparently a doozy, and she uses it to blackmail him so that the military will allow her to enter the chamber where the Chainmaster enslaves Dictators to patrons.  (It's how Angria controls Dictators.)  She has the Chainmaster give her control of all of Angria's Dictators and thus Angria.

After telling Izzy that she trusts her, she then binds Zamorna to her because she doesn't trust him.  (She's still mad at him for using her to break Izzy's heart back in the day, though Zamorna pretty convincingly argues that a seventeen-year-old girl created him to be exactly that guy.)  She then has Zamorna marry her, installing herself as Angria's queen.  With Angria in her grasp, she says that they can go about establishing "order," which doesn't sound ominous at all.  Izzy warns Ash that the evil queen doesn't win, prompting Ash to respond, "Watch me."  Hans is splenderific on this page, imbuing Ash with beauty and menace to a terrific extent.

Meanwhile, Chuck gets so drunk that he can be sufficiently stupid to maximize his luck, using it to free Angela and Matt.  (They leave Sol chained.)  Ash sends Zamorna after them, though, as Chuck mentions, it seems unlikely Queen Ash wants to go home now that she has all the power.  As such, we'll see where we go from here, with the Boggle cube of alliances having been slammed onto the table.

Marauders #3:  Duggan gets Shaw exactly right here.  The entire issue revolves around his plans for a resurrected Shinobi, though we're mostly only given clues and hints about what they are.  We're also treated to Shaw's own spin on recent events, such as claiming that Emma used her powers to convince Charles and Magneto to make her the Hellfire Trading Company's CEO.

The first half of the issue takes place before Emma makes Shadowcat the Red Queen and shows Shaw's belief that he'll be able to install Shinobi in that position.  

The second half of the issue takes place after Emma has disabused Shaw of that notion.  Shaw instead makes Shinobi his Black Bishop, providing him with an invisible ship that clearly puts him in opposition to Shadowcat and the Marauders.  Shaw's plans become clearer here, as he mentions that the world's aging one-percenters own 90 percent of the world's wealth.  Since L extends human lives for five years, Shaw sees himself as having a five-year window to bleed them dry.  Shaw tells Shinobi that he wants him to serve as Krakoa's Coast Guard, and Shinobi and Kate are clearly going to have differing views on how to protect Krakoa and distribute the drugs (as we saw last issue).  

Duggan is leaning fully into Hickman's reboot here, using this dispute to highlight the larger philosophical divide amongst the Krakoa mutants.  So far, the more an author leans into the reboot, the more exciting the series is.  This series continues to be the best of the lot, to my mind.

Also Read:  Amazing Spider-Man #35; Ghost Rider 2099 #1; Venom 2099 #1; X-Men #3

Not-Even-Remotely New Comics: The November 27 Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Detective Comics #1,016: Tomasi does something rare in this arc, organically replacing Norah for Victor as Mr. (now Mrs.) Freeze.  Marvel got a lot of heat when it rolled out gender changes  too quickly, shoehorning in diversity in some cases at the sacrifice of the story.  Tomasi does the opposite here.

First, he reveals that Lex Luthor gave Victor the B-Zero Serum from "Forever Evil" that created Bizarro.  We also learn that the Serum is toxic to the amygdala, the brain's emotional-processing center.  Victor admits to Batman that he thought that he could successfully limit the toxicity where Luthor failed but now realizes that he was wrong.  He agrees to work with Batman to try to heal Norah, but Norah doesn't want him to heal her.  She accuses him of not wanting to "save" her because he loves her but because he needs her "frozen in more ways than one to give [his] life meaning."  (Um, fair.)  She injects him with one of his "special syringes," which accelerates his internal temperature.  Batman is forced to put him in frozen stasis in Arkham as Norah plots in the backwoods of Canada to freeze the world.  

Rather than forcing a change in identity, Tomasi builds the story step by step here, to the point where you wonder if Batman wasn't in a better place with Victor as Mr. Freeze, given how capable Norah is throughout this issue.

The Last God #2:  Given the scope of the story that Johnson is telling, this issue is pretty to the point.

Thirty years in the past, Tyr and his brother Torma are part of a reaver party poised to raid a village.  Before they begin, Tyr realizes that it's all too quiet.  As they move through the village, Tyr and Torma discover a man and girl hiding in a barn cellar.  Tyr initially believes that they're hiding from the reavers, but the father tells Tyr that the girl's mother is still lurking around the village.  Yup, it's the thorn monsters.  (Do we have a name for them yet?)  Tyr escorts Torma, the man, and his daughter in flight through the marshes, but one of the monsters grabs Torma.  Tyr follows it underwater, but Torma speaks to Tyr telepathically as his eyes turn black, telling him to let him go because the Void is so beautiful.  Later, the girl badgers Tyr with questions, noting that Torma didn't seem like a reaver.  She earns a slap from her father and departs in a huff.  Tyr tells the father that she was right:  Torma wasn't a reaver; he just went where Tyr led him.  The father reveals that the girl is Cyanthe and tells us that she has Teymsong, an art that "folk" think is lost.  Tyr then notices the cut on the father's arm as Cyanthe encounters a young Veikko on the river banks;  Veikko warns Cyanthe to take care.

In the present, Monster-Tyr tells Cyanthe that she's hurting him with her arrows, and she tells Monster-Tyr that if he were really Tyr then he'd know that his pain would please her.  Veikko beseeches Cyanthe to run, but she refuses to abandon her kingdom.  Still, they're forced to retreat as the onslaught is too much.  Veikko cuts off a guildsman's bracelet -- clearly a magical item -- of some sort and throws it at Monster-Tyr, flagging it for Cyanthe.  Cyanthe utters a magic word and fires her arrow at it, causing Monster-Tyr to explode.  (Clearly, the Teymsong amplified her arrow, though we don't yet know that; the father doesn't reveal her powers until later in the issue.  As such, it's a great surprise.)  Meanwhile, Eyvindr continues to fight his way through the hordes of thorn monsters, and two of them allude to the Last God knowing who he was before he was born.  (One of them calls him "His Grace.")  

Preparing to depart Cyulí, Veikko orders Valko to take all the Aelvans to Tchakatla Tuo, and we learn that Veikko (I thought that she was a he last issue) is Valko's mother.  Valko is furious that his mother intends to go to the Black Stair, spitting "Ferryman King" in disgust after she uses it to justify her orders.  Eyvindr gets Cyanthe on a horse, as she's clearly weakened, and they escape the burning city.  Cyanthe insists on returning, but Veikko tells her that the city is lost and that she knows where her path leads.  Tears in her eyes, Cyanthe recites a poem about the fall of the gleaming city of Cyulí.

Eyvindr now rides with Veikko and asks her what she meant by her earlier comment that it was all a lie.  He comments that he's killed Hakkon the Shamed a thousand times on the play-yard, and he'd be lost if he learned that Tyr failed to kill Mol Uhltep.  Veikko dodges the question, telling him that they'll gather the old allies, starting with Skol and the Guild Eldritch.  When Eyvindr presses her, Veikko simply says that they did something terrible to kill Mol Uhltep because they thought that they must.  Veikko also seems to guess correctly that Cyanthe is becoming a creature of the Void, as she has a daydream where she encounters a crying Tyr along the riverbank where they met.  He ominously tells her that Mol Uhltep isn't done with them yet.

Again, Johnson does a good job of not tripping over his world building, though he does come close to it a few times.  Either way, this series is one of the most exciting new titles in recent years from me, an excellent use of DC's Black Label.  I'm in it for the long haul on this one.

New Mutants #2:  OK, this issue, this issue, I love.  The banter sounds like the appropriate banter, unlike the first issue.  Most importantly, I'm warming to the way that Hickman writes Roberto as a pampered, pompous asshole who you just can't help loving.

Hickman spends the first three pages giving us Bobby's (perhaps skewed) version of recent events, which mostly focuses on how handsome and smart he is.  He tells us that his Earth lawyers are good because they're expensive; the fact that he just signed everything they put in front of him to safeguard X-Corp while he's in space maybe calls into question the "smart" part.  After all, as the interstitial page mentions, the space lawyer that his Earth lawyers got sucked.)

Thankfully, Hickman also makes it clear that only Bobby thinks that he's going to convince Sam to leave his "space wife" and "space child" to come home; everyone else is there to see Sam and because Bobby promised to let them use his second-best house in Rio for Carnival.  (Totally understandable.)  After they're convicted and remanded into Sam and Smasher's custody, Bobby complains that Sam doesn't look a mess, winning him a punch from Smasher.  ("To say noting of the fact that we left the kid at home with someone who is not our regular babysitter to come babysit you."  I seriously feel you, Smasher.)

Beyond Smasher later telling Illyana to form a line for punching Bobby, I think my favorite moment was Sam expressing clear pride over Doug creating Krakoan and getting a seat on the Council, particularly given his sheer delight over how annoyed Bobby is that they didn't ask him.  This entire interaction is great, as they laugh over banter that clearly only the two of them find hilarious.  It makes my heart glad.  I hope we stay in space forever.

Punisher 2099 #1:  This issue is hard to follow, mostly because Nadler and Thompson really swing for the fences.  This review is longer than I expected, but this issue really breaks down the dynamics of this new 2099 timeline, particularly how a person's social score dictates the contours of his life.

The issues begins with Lt. Hector Tago and other Public Eye officers confronting a Thorite mob.  When a Thorite wielding two hammers comes close to braining a helmetless Public Eye officer, Tago opens fire, killing the Thorite.  This scene unfolds as Tago reviews his "Iris," a drone that accompanies him at all times and records everything that he sees, smells, tastes, and feels.  The Iris then uploads these memories to the Vision, creating an enormous Public Eye archive.  We learn that Tago has become a hero as a result of his actions.

Jake Gallows discovers Tago hacking into the Vision and is impressed, wondering why Tago didn't become part of Sector 14, the Public Eye's "proactionary cybercrime prevention" unit.  Tago tells Gallows that he's reviewing the Iris' files because the moment the Iris recorded doesn't match his memory of the encounter.  Gallows tells Tago that he understands; he used to review his feed constantly (particularly after Thorites murdered his family) before "they" outlawed doing so because it drags one's attention from the present.  Gallows tells Tago that his family's murder also didn't match his memory when he reviewed the footage; Gallows ascribes this discrepancy to the fact that rage no longer clouded his memory.  Perhaps most importantly, Tago reveals that his grandfather became a Thorite after his "social score," which we see displayed occasionally next to a character, tanked.

Later, Tago encounters a street-cleaning robot gone rogue, spouting anti-corporation rhetoric, particularly about how the social-scoring system is ruining everyone's lives.  Tago connects to the bot to shut down its processor, and he's stunned to discover that it possesses a human's consciousness.  The consciousness belongs to a man named Kenji Walker, a former Alchemax "UX designer" arrested for insider trading who joined the Thorites.  After Tago has disabled him, Gallows alleges the Thorites helped Walker upload his consciousness into the bot.  Tago isn't buying that, though, since the Thorites aren't tech-savvy.

As Tago tries to fix his broken Iris, Gallows later tells him that they found the guy who helped Walker:  Davis Dunn, a "high-ranking A.I. specialist" who also worked for Alchemax.  Tago expresses surprise that he'd be a Thorite, and Gallows says that a lifetime of Syn-C doses will cure that.  (We learn that Syn-C allows a "criminal" to continue working but limits his brain capacity.)  At home, Tago finally manages to download the raw footage of the initial encounter and discovers that the Thorite definitely wasn't holding two hammers; Tago shot an unarmed man trying to get the other Thorite to drop his hammer.

Tago visits his destitute grandfather in his attempt to confirm whether or not the Thorite was armed, but his grandfather notes that it wouldn't make a difference, because they carry hammers as an expression of their faith.  Tago then enters the Vision again and discovers all sorts of footage of Gallows mowing down Thorites.  Tago's social score begins to drop for his incursions into the archives.  He visits Dunn, who reveals that the Public Eye, not the Thorites, had him install Walker's consciousness into the bot, which we learn Walker only wanted so he could see his boyfriend again after getting banished to the slums (presumably for the insider trading).  In exchange, the Public Eye would up Dunn's social score and get him a new apartment.  But, the Public Eye reneged on the deal, and now he's "a workhorse by prescription."  (I don't get here why the Public Eye would want Walker to upload his consciousness into the bot or why Walker would go on a rant instead of using his new abilities to get to his boyfriend.  Dunn seems to imply someone other than the Public Eye caught him, but who else would review the security tapes to discover that he was working with Walker?)

In Brooklyn, the Thorites have created a Yggdrasil from human sacrifices, and the Public Eye arrives to save the citizens, with orders to prioritize ones with scores above 50,000.  Tago arrives as the Punisher to take on Gallows, who argues that the Vision is only "altruistically" tampering the feeds to make them more productive in saving people's lives.  ("When everything's so transitory, all we've got is efficiency.")  Tago then snaps Gallows neck, completing his transformation.  He publicly releases the unedited footage of him killing the Thorite and then visits his grandfather, explaining that Hector is dead, that he "got what he deserved."

I'm not really sure how I feel about this issue.  It isn't terrible, but Nadler and Thompson don't use the flashback scenes well, making it confusing to tell where we are in the story at times.  Also, I'm not really sure they convince us why Tago would sacrifice everything to become the Punisher.  For example, the Thorites murdered Gallows' family; his anger, we understand.  Tago just had his memories edited, which, for someone living in 2099, doesn't seem that bad by comparison.  Without a better explanation of Tago's motives, it just feels like he became the Punisher because he had to do so.  Oh, well.  You can't win them all.

Also Read:  Conan 2099 #1