Amazing Spider-Man #44 (July 15): Man, this issue is fucking intense. Kindred uses his ability to control Peter's dreams to show Sin-Eater tracking down Overdrive and the Inner Demons. It's a lot, like, "I want to hug my kids" a lot. Sin-Eater appears as a demon chasing Overdrive wherever he tries to run, and it seems pretty clear that he kills him in the end. But, Peter "awakens" to a new dream where he calls MJ and tells her that he feels like Spider-Man is swallowing him whole. He acknowledges that Jonah had a point in issue #39 that Peter pushes away everyone. Peter plays with the engagement ring that he bought MJ as he finishes telling her that he wants to ask her something when she returns. But, it isn't hopeful. Spencer does an amazing job showing how he does really seems broken and completely isolated from everyone he loves. It feels like he's asking MJ to marry him more because he needs someone to love him. But, maybe it's just Kindred's spin: at the end of the issue, Kindred makes it sound like MJ was having this dream, not Peter. Peter wanting to marry MJ solely to feel grounded is certainly her nightmare.
Incoming! #1 (December 26, 2019): Oof. This issue is rough. It entails authors handing off their character-specific vignettes to one another to solve a locked-room murder. Instead of focusing on laying the groundwork for the Empyre cross-over, though, Marvel tries to update us on virtually every character's current status quo. The only real development is Hulkling becoming the Kree-Skrull emperor and taking on a Cotati threat that a Kree agent and his Skrull partner discovered on Earth.
Empyre #1 (July 15): This issue is as solid as a first issue of a cross-over event can be. Tony Stark is confident that his side - the Celestial Messiah known as Quoi and his Cotati followers - is right and the other side - the Kree/Skrull Alliance - is wrong. He's condescending to Hulkling and doesn't even bother trying to listen to him. When Hulkling orders a non-lethal attack on the Avengers, Tony has Thor use Mjolnir to deliver a virus into the Alliance's ships, disabling them. With the Alliance incapacitated, Quoi then reveals his hand: he and the Cotati transform into more war-like versions of themselves, take out the Avengers, and set their sights on Earth. Well played as always, Tony.
Empyre #2 (July 22): It's hard to believe that Marvel thought this plot could sustain as sprawling of a cross-over event as they originally planned. It's just hard to take the Cotati seriously. Can't Iceman just freeze them? At any rate, this issue moves along the narrative at a brisk enough pace. While the Avengers (particularly Tony) are left reeling at Quoi's betrayal, Carol uses her powers to amplify Hulkling's sword's ability to disrupt the Cotati, saving the remains of the Kree/Skrull Alliance's armada. (Her argument to Captain Glory and the Super-Skrull that they've made mistakes, too, so the Avengers' mistake is fine is so very Avengers logic that they should probably make her Chairwoman.) Now, we're heading to Earth where I wonder if the good guys are going to win...
New Mutants #11 (July 22): Due to Magik's last-minute save, the New Mutants are able to escape Carnelia before its prime minister can have its forces fire on them. As Boomer notes in her journal, it's yet another situation that could've gone better. The team seems focused on getting to the bottom of whoever is running the Dox website, which seems like a solid use of their time. But, it's probably time to winnow down the roster if they plan on not constantly bumping into each other.
X-Men/Fantastic Four #4 (July 22): Oof. I was going to write how heart-warming this issue is. After Franklin ends the experiment to prevent Doom's Latviathans from killing everyone, both the Fantastic Four and X-Men promptly tell Doom to go fuck himself.
Like an adult, Sue then apologizes to Charles for treating him as a threat, noting that he's dedicated his life to teaching young mutants like her son how to use their powers. Also like an adult (I know, shocker), Charles apologizes to Sue for seeming to ignore her concerns about Krakoa isolating itself from humanity, stressing that they also share them.
Later, Valeria tells Doom that she knows that he tried to siphon off some power and sending a microprobe through the conduit that he opened to repower Franklin. Doom acknowledges that he's trying to find a way to get humanity to evolve its intelligence in response to mutantkind. Valeria tells Doom that he needs to move to the acceptance phase of his grief over humanity's end. On Krakoa, Beast is unable to pinpoint why Franklin's powers are failing but notes that Franklin's powers are less drained when he uses them on Krakoa. Then Franklin goes home for dinner. All's well that end's well, right?
Wrong. Charles and Erik accompany Franklin to Yancy St. to speak with Reed. It turns out his device to cloak the mutant gene can also turn off the gene. Bam, smack to the face. On one hand, it raises the question whether he really is behind fucking with Franklin's powers. On the other hand, it's also a man essentially willing to commit genocide. Charles erases Reed's ability to reconstruct it and notes that, in the past, he'd erase Reed's memory of him doing so. Instead, Charles tells Reed that he wants Reed to remember. To quote Charles, "This is not a game. This is our right to survive." Erik then destroys the device and tells Reed that he can't do whatever he wants anymore.
As I said, oof. Needless to say, Reed doesn't come off well here. He's surprised when Charles and Erik confront him, because he's so used to keeping secrets and he's so clearly rarely called on it. The entire sequence definitely leaves me firmly in Team X-Men here, even if I think Charles and Erik fucked up the entire situation.
Amazing Spider-Man #45 (July 29): Holy shit. This issue is intense. After so many issues of Spencer hinting at plots to come, he finally throws himself into one here.
After Mary Jane canceled her trip home at the last minute, Peter mopily goes through the motions of the date where he'd planned to propose. Along the way, he stumbles upon a manic Overdrive and realizes that his dream - where Overdrive has driven for three straight days to run from Sin-Eater - was true. The confrontation goes how you expect, as conflicting feelings overwhelm Peter as he tries to save Overdrive. Sin-Eater appears on the scene and opens fire on Overdrive, but Spidey jumps in front of the bullet. It goes through Spidey without wounding him but kills Overdrive instead.
At last, it seemed like it did. When Carlie Cooper examines the body later, she realizes that the wound has disappeared, and Overdrive suddenly awakens!
Going forward, the big challenge for Peter is that he seems unable to shake off the presumably Kindred-induced fog and realize that someone (i.e., Kindred) is behind his recent troubles. Sin-Eater even tells him that someone returned him to Earth to cause Peter pain, and Peter can't put two and two together. It doesn't bode well.
X-Men #10 (July 29): Hickman uses this "Empyre" cross-over issue to give us a little more background on Vulcan. That said, he doesn't totally answer all my questions.
At some point after Black Bolt and Vulcan went boom in "War of Kings," a triad of nefarious entities examined Vulcan. They decided that he had a flaw - an inherent goodness - that complicated their plans for him. For reasons that don't necessarily make sense to me if a "good" Vulcan was the problem, they decide to resurrect him with a "false" good persona on the outside and his "real" broken self on the inside. Shouldn't that be the other way? Shouldn't his good persona be "real" and his broken persona be "false?"
This revelation comes when Vulcan takes a walk on the Moon and encounters the Cotati. For reasons that are also unclear, the Cotati don't immediately kill him. They use a seed to bring his secrets to the fore, which results in him exploding, presumably as they peeled off his false outer shell. Afterwards, Petra and Sway come to collect him, and he tells them that he doesn't want to be this way anymore.
In other words, it's a very Hickman issue, where we get more questions than answers and even some of the questions don't make sense.
Also Read: New Mutants #10 (June 10); Free Comic Book Day: X-Men (2020) #1 (July 15); Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1 (July 15); Guardians of the Galaxy #4 (July 15); Amazing Spider-Man: Sins Rising - Prelude #1 (July 22); Empyre #3 (July 29)
