Earth 2: Society #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue suffers from the same problem as its predecessors, with Wilson leaving huge gaps from issue to issue.  But, for the first time, the story in this issue actually makes sense in and of itself.

This issue begins abruptly, with Batman arriving in Nexus, the city that Val has created for himself, and trying to arrest him for killing Terry Sloan.  Flash arrives to defend Val, though we're not told why he just so happened to arrive at the same time as Dick.  Also, Dick's reasons for wanting to arrest Val are entirely circumstantial:  Val hated Sloan so...he killed him.  (Dick didn't seem to have gotten the memo that Val's a pacifist.)  The attempted arrest devolves into squabbling:  despite us seeing Flash last issue building Midwest City pretty much with his bare hands, Dick accuses him of hiding in the wake of Planetfall.  Oddly, Flash doesn't seem to dispute that assertion, instead just accusing Dick of doing the same thing, hiding in the shadows.  These moments, where each issue includes information that seems to directly contradict something that we learned in the previous issue, make it feel like a committee is writing this book and not just one guy.

But, everyone puts aside their issues for story time!  Val reveals why Karen hates him:  he constructed the Fire Pits.  Of course, he didn't know that he was constructing the Fire Pits for Sloan, but Karen hates him nonetheless, since it was the Pits that killed her father.  (Of course, I don't really remember it that way, but let's just keep going.)  It all gets revealed as a result of an attack by the Earth 2 version of Anarky on Neotropolis, where she steals a set of engines part of the original ship.  Sloan uses a stun blast from Overwatch-One to disperse the crowd of civilians that Anarky has assembled, and Kara and Val decide that enough is enough.  They storm Overwatch-One to take down Sloan, and Sloan tells Kara the truth.  Fast-forwarding to the present, Val's story time comes to a close when they learn that Anarky has hacked into Overwatch-One and set it on a collision course with Neotropolis.

I really want to give this issue three stars, but I just can't.  It's starting to feel like work reading this series, and I think Wilson's best course of action is recognizing that throwing us a year into the future was a bad call.  We need to spend a few issues focusing on each character in the wake of Planetfall, instead of getting the information in awkwardly inserted flashback stories that leave us (or, at least, me) more confused than enlightened.  I'll give Wilson to issue #6 (maybe), but then I think that it'll time to reassess.

** (two of five stars)

Batman #44 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Wow.

Throughout this issue, I was wondering why Snyder went with a flashback story here.  As the title of the issue suggests, it's just a "simple case" taking place shortly after Zero Year, with Bruce trying to determine who killed a teenage boy named Peter.  He had been shot four times and his body dumped in the marshes on the edge of Gotham. Bruce figures that it's the Penguin, since he's running guns and supplies to street gangs using airships.

But, it wasn't the Penguin.  Peter had approached Oswald because the bank was trying to foreclose on his family's bodega to take advantage of the redevelopment of the neighborhood; an empty store would've given Penguin's enemies in the area, the Four Fives gang, a base of operations.  Peter proposed a deal:  the Penguin helps him save the bodega, and Peter spies on the Four Fives.  Instead, the Penguin turned over the shop to the Four Fives as a peace offering, since the bodega was located on their turf.   Bruce figures that it's them, then.

But, it isn't the Four Fives either.  Their leader tells Batman that they went to burn down the place as a message, but he was actually impressed with the kid's rage when Peter attacked his men.  But, Peter had fled before he could offer him a spot on the gang.  Then, Jim Gordon calls and tells Bruce that the bullets in Peter's body belonged to a cop.  Bruce pays him a visit, and he admits that he shot Peter as he fled the burning shop.  It doesn't take a CNN commentator to know what happens to young black men running from a burning shop.

But, it also isn't the cop.  Peter didn't die from the shots; Bruce knows he died from the fall.  He goes to visit the boy's father, in a coma since Zero Year, the reason that Peter is responsible for the bodega in the first place.  Peter's cousin is there, and he tells Batman that he told Peter to go to the man behind the bank and the redevelopment:  Bruce Wayne.  But, Wayne didn't hear Peter's pleas as he screamed to him from a crowd.  After everything, he decided that he wanted to push back against the bad guys like Batman.

So, he went to Mr. Bloom.  Honestly, I didn't see it coming until that moment.  Peter went to Bloom, grew wings, and tried to fly from Gotham.  But, his wings disappeared, and he died from the fall.  I'm going to guess that the serum also stopped him from dying from the four gunshot wounds, because Snyder doesn't really explain how he survived that incident so easily.  Jock doesn't even really portray him limping or pained after he's shot.

This story is important in a few ways.  First, it's really one of the first ones that I've read that incorporates the message of "Black Lives Matter" in a comic.  Some people might inevitably roll their eyes, but Snyder knows Batman well enough as a character to know that he should be confronting this issue.  Moreover, Snyder doesn't employ it as a preachy fable, but as part of the ongoing story and Batman's development.  It not only shows that Mr. Bloom has been a growing threat for a while, but it also teaches Bruce the lesson of keeping his ear to the ground.  Early in this issue, he scares away a bunch of teenagers that wanted to talk to him.  After solving the case, he finds them so that he can talk to them.  Snyder makes it clear that Bruce realizes that he could've saved Peter had he been there, on that street corner.  He would've heard that Wayne Enterprises was the reason that his life was going to be ruined, and he could've fixed the problem.  It's the whole point of community policing, and Snyder really shows it as the birth of the idea that the innocent have no reason to fear the Batman.

To add to the brilliance of the issue, it reunites Snyder and Jock.  This issue feels like their run on "Detective Comics" so much that it makes you long for those days, before Snyder got sucked into the "Batman Eternal" and "Night of the Owls" vortex of "Batman."  Something about their work together makes each one of them even better than they normally are.

In other words, it's a beautiful and important story without the connection to Mr. Bloom.  With that connection, it's a chilling foreshadowing to what we're going to see unfold over the next few issues.  It's rare when someone pulls off a story that works on this many levels, but Snyder really does it here, and it's one of the best issues that I've read in a long time.

***** (five of five stars)

Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Despite the fact that the title of this series officially changed to "Miracleman by Gaiman & Buckingham," I'm keeping the "Miracleman" tag.  If I changed tags every time Marvel re-launched a series at issue #1, the Internet probably wouldn't have enough space to save my blog.

This issue is odd, though not necessarily in a bad way.  Gaiman picks up pretty much exactly where Moore ended, with a group of four pilgrims ascending Olympus to seek favors from Miracleman himself.  Gaiman brilliantly uses their days-long ascent to show us just how beyond humanity -- literally and figuratively -- Miracleman now is.  Moore's last few issues dealt mostly with Miracleman's relationship with his own godhood and to other gods; here, Gaiman takes the time to show us humans' relationship to his godhood.  We see the grandeur that Miracleman is capable of producing and, hence, why humanity understandably has come to accept him as "god."

My guess is that the next few issues are going to focus on some humans, somewhere opposing him.  But, for now, our supplicants believe in his divinity, because they really don't have any reason not to believe in it.  The end result of this belief is crushing, with Miracleman granting one woman's wish to become an artist but not the man's wish for him to heal his daughter with brain damage that the Battle of London caused.  (The fact that the remaining supplicant attempted to kill Miracleman before committing suicide goes to this point that not all humans are likely comfortable with his new status.)  Gaiman doesn't give any motivations for Miracleman's decision, leaving us to wonder if he's become a capricious and cruel god.

In fact, Gaiman gives us few hints about the direction of his story, so we're just going to have to walk the walk with everyone else to see who Miracleman really is.  I was initially frustrated with this approach; at the end of the issue, I definitely found myself thinking, "That's it?"  But, Gaiman himself refers to the burden of taking over someone else's story in the epilogue, and, sleeping on it, I realized that it was a necessary transition from the story that Moore was telling.  We needed a different perspective to understand the realities of this world.  With that done, the path is clear to focus on this new Miracleman.  In other words, away we go.

*** (three of five stars)

Thors #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Despite everything that we've learned at this point, we still don't really know anything.

In the interrogation room, Loki tells Lief that he put the bodies of Jane Foster and Donald Blake where Lief could find them so that he'd stumble upon the truth.  Said "truth" appears to be the realization that Doom has upstaged the Asgardians' godhood, since Loki complains that his status as Prince of Lies was stolen from him.  He tells Lief that someone moved all the bodies after they discovered what he'd done, and he sends Lief to the Badlands to find them.  Confronting the skeletons, Lief admits to himself something that he denied when Loki pressed him on it, that he feels a surge of emotion every time that he hears Jane's name.  However, before he can reflect on that, "Runey," one of the other Thors, arrives with his partner, the Destroyer Thor, and reveals that he's the guilty party.  He beats Lief to a pulp and leaves him to the zombies, only for Odinson to arrive and save him.

Again, despite everything we know, we're still far from the truth.  We have no idea why Runey is killing Jane Fosters and Donald Blakes or how Loki thought that Lief discovering the truth would somehow lead to him regaining his powers.  But, I certainly trust Aaron to get us there, given how solid of a police procedural he's writing here.  As I said in previous reviews, I would really love him to continue writing some sort of Thor Corps meets "C.S.I." series in the new Marvel Universe.

*** (three of five stars)

Star-Lord & Kitty Pryde #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Despite the brief moment of seriousness last issue, Humphries finishes out this series focused on the yuks.  Peter sings Kitty's favorite song ("Once upon a Dream") to Widget to convince her to free him and Kitty, and, just when it looks like Gambit's Longshot blades are going to finish them, Drax appears dressed as Doom to fool Gambit and save the day.  In the end, the anomaly that Gambit had was Rocket's tail, and Kitty allows Peter to keep it since she knows what it's like to miss home.  They also share a kiss before she leaves, and Drax and Peter walk into the sunset with hopes of cloning Rocket from his tail.  It may not be the most serious of the "Secret Wars" series, but I can't deny that it put a smile on my face.

*** (three of five stars)

Squadron Sinister #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Guggenheim fills in some of the details of the various plots and counter-plots in this issue, though, as I said in my review of last issue, I'm not entirely sure that the story is actually all that interesting.

It turns out Nightwing paid Sandman to steal the argonite gun, explicitly so that he could blame Whizzer for the crime.  He tortures Paste-Post Pete into confessing to Hyperion that it was Whizzer that did it.  Whizzer realizes too late that Nightwing has betrayed him, and Hyperion kills him on the spot.  (Nightwing also kills Pete for good measure.)  And then there were four.

Nightwing later reveals to Dr. Spectrum that Warrior Woman is working with the Nutopians.  He also tells him that she was the one that killed the Thor and that she plans on framing him for it, since he's the most powerful member of the Squadron after Hyperion and it'll hurt their image in Doom's eyes.  (Nightwing doesn't explain how she managed to do so in a way that mimicked Spectrum's power signature.  I'm assuming that it was Nightwing with the argonite gun.)  Spectrum subsequently bolts to avoid a fate like Whizzer's. And then there were three.

At this point, the Starbrand-ed Nutopians attack.  Spitfire manages to hurt Hyperion, but the remaining Squadron members make pretty short work of them.  Warrior Woman convinces the remaining forces to retreat, and we learn that she goaded them into attacking in the first place as part of a deal with Nightwing.  She'll flee Utopia, but I'm still not sure what she gains in return.  It seems a pretty one-sided deal.  At any rate, it leaves Nightwing with Hyperion, and the last panel reveals that he has Dr. Spectrum's power prism.  Dun-dun-DUN!

Again, we get a lot of answers here, but we don't get all of them.  For example, I don't see what Nightwing stood to gain, vis-à-vis Hyperion, with the failed invasion, though I suspect that we'll learn next issue.  It still seems too easy of a story to me, basically just showing the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into a coup.  Guggenheim does little to show the characters as anything other than evil; Nightwing in particular isn't given any real reason for revolting against Hyperion than power.  It makes them all feel like puppets putting on a show.  We'll see if something more interesting happens next issue.

** (two of five stars)

Spider-Island #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Gage improves on the story that he's been telling over the last two issues, mostly by delivering the sort of characterization that some of the weaker tie-in series, like "Age of Apocalypse," have failed to muster.

The team escapes the Queen's headquarters, and, later, Flash and Peter marvel at the revelation of each other's secret identities.  Peter refuses to take the mantle of leadership from Flash, telling him that he's already failed at saving them so Flash is the quarterback to get them over the finish line.  Showing why Peter has faith in him, Flash does a great job rallying the troops, with a Goblinified Tony and Stegron working on the "Retro-Generation Ray" and Peter whipping up as many batches of the Lizard's formula that he can.  However, the Queen sucker punches them by sending spiderified Betty Brant, Sharon Carter, Carlie Cooper, and Mary Jane Watson after them.  Rather than using the Lizard formula on superheroes (the smart play that Flash originally advocates), an emotional Peter and a paranoid Tony convince him to rescue the ladies.  They do, injecting them with the Lizard's formula, but they also wind up leading the Queen's forces to their HQ.  (After all these years using Spider-Tracers, Peter never thinks to check the ladies for tracking devices?)  Tony sacrifices himself to buy time, deciding to die before the Goblin Formula fully takes hold of his mind and hoping that it redeems him for his years as a war profiteer.  The team escapes, and Flash feels confident that they can save New York.

Gage might not be telling the most enthralling story of the tie-in series, but it is a solid one, full of emotion and uncertainty.  As Flash himself says here, the return of Peter is the first time that hope seems to come to this corner of Battleworld.  Since it is "Secret Wars," we're going to have to wait and see if it really means that they can defeat the Queen.  But, this issue goes a long way to making me care about the outcome, raising this series in my estimation.

*** (three of five stars)

House of M #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue is fun mainly because Hopeless and Bunn just let everything go from bad to worse to ridiculous.  Hawkeye and company invade Castle Magnus with an army of Deathloks, using them as a distraction while they get into Magneto's study and deploy a device that Deathlok devised to negate his powers.  But, they also inadvertently release Fin Fang Foom, who Magneto was for some reason keeping prisoner.  Just as it all comes to a head, Namor and Pietro invade.  It's essentially Magneto's horrible no-good very bad day.  To make matters worse for him, he doesn't even know that his grandsons have gone all human sympathizers on him and that it may push Wanda over the (increasingly close) edge.  The good news is that he apparently wanted more enemies to stem his boredom, so he should consider his prayers answered!  Although I can't say that it's the most complicated of stories or wittiest of dialogue, I did enjoy the issue, so three stars it gets.

*** (three of five stars)

Hail Hydra #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Remender really covers an amazing amount of ground here.  He also really embraces the idea that anything can, and does, happen in "Secret Wars."

Before I get to the details, I just want to highlight that Remender does an amazing job of keeping Ian's voice in Leopold, his doppelgänger.  Extreme haughtiness is exactly what you'd expect from an evil version of Ian, and Leopold has it in spades.  It's a great example of how well Remender has fleshed out Ian in the few issues that he's appeared, since you can even recognize alternate versions of him.  Separately, I also thought that his commitment to returning to his parents was a great reminder of the love that he has for them.  In fact, Leopold is essentially the logical extreme of Ian if he never had this love, so this softer side of Ian, one that we rarely see, reminds us why he is who he is.  Now, onto the show!

After Leopold hands him his ass, Ian escapes into the sewers where he stumbles upon the Avengers' secret base.  The team is understandably skeptical of his story, since he looks just like "Captain Hydra" (Leopold).  However, Ian knows too much about Steve for him to be Leopold, and Steve decides to trust him.  He explains that he was the original Captain Hydra, but Zola proved too evil, so he escaped with a entire cache of munitions.  (I'll admit that I didn't fully follow Steve's story about the Revolutionary War.  If we're talking about the one that happened in 1776, it seems like Hydra was the one that revolted against the British, but the revolution turned dark, possibly under Zola's leadership.  Steve explains it all so quickly that I didn't really grasp it.  Suffice it to say, Steve left the revolution.)  We learn that the Avengers' main problem in defeating Zola is that he jumps from body to body.  Steve sees an opening with Ian's arrival:  they can use the munitions to create a distraction while Ian impersonates Leopold and gets close enough to Zola to use a device that Tony created to keep him in his body.

However, before Steve can finish sketching out this plan, Venom and the Vipers attack, since they followed Ian to the base.  Here, Boschi really lets loose.  Venom gruesomely kills the Avengers, putting his hand through Tony's chest and ripping the Wasp in half.  Later, after they're all dead, he begins devouring them.  Ian manages to escape with Steve and Sharon's daughter Ellie, but Venom lets Steve (the sole survivor) know that they've infected Ellie with a symbiote and she, too, will soon become a Viper.  He also seems prepared to turn Steve into a Venom as the issue ends.

The use of the symbiotes as a Zola-inspired device is really a brilliant twist, given their similarity to Zola's own mutates.  Given how quickly they decimate the Avengers here, it's hard to see how Ian could possibly win, particularly if he loses Ellie as a companion.  But, Remender reminds us several times here that he's the son of Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter, so he should really be fine with the one-man-against-all-odds fight.  Make Dad and Mom proud, Ian!

*** (three of five stars)

Age of Apocalypse #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Nicieza takes us on a sharp detour here, revealing that Apocalypse allowed someone to create the mutant-killing bomb as an extreme realization of his "survival of the fittest" motto.  But, it's about the only thing made clear in this issue.

First, we'll apparently learn next issue the identity of the person who made the bomb and why s/he provided it to the humans.  Sabretooth comments here that Dark Beast and Essex are the only people capable of making it, though I'd put my money on Dr. Nemesis at this point.  We learn in this issue that he's been running his own lab within Dark Beast's lab and that he has a grudge against the Four Horsemen for not giving him more support for his work.  In other words, he had the capability and the motive.

In terms of this issue, though, it feels like we're mostly spinning our wheels.  Nicieza uses the age-old cheat of delivering plot points through telepathy:  Nemesis does something to Jean Grey (it's not clear what he does), and she unleashes a psychic blast that somehow connects her to Emma telepathically.  It conveniently allows the X-Men to become aware of the bomb's existence just as the Horsemen learn of it from torturing Carol Danvers.  It sets off the scramble to recover it that we see at the end, with Apocalypse finally detonating the bomb.

I'll admit that I'm intrigued to see who survives the blast, showing that I don't really have too many problems with the plot of this series.  But, as a I mentioned last issue, the delivery still leaves me wanting for more information about the characters, their motivations, and their relationships with each other.  Right now, it still feels like a jumble, and we don't have a lot of time left for the pieces to fall nicely into place.

** (two of five stars)

Detective Comics #44 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Buccellato really wraps up this arc nicely.  In fact, each arc just keeps getting tighter and tighter.  It already makes me excited about the next one.

In the end, this arc was really about re-establishing the Bullock/Montoya partnership.  Renée tells Harvey that she had to leave Gother (and him) to learn what she did in Blüdhaven, and he gets over his anger at her for leaving.  But, he can't have two partners, and it means that Yip has to go.  In truth, Buccellato gives her a better send-off than she deserved.  He had me going for a few pages that Harvey really did kill her, but eventually I figured that he simply rescued her from the burning car and let her slink into the night.  Instead, we learn that she went into the witness-protection program, turning on Stefano Falcone.  He had hired her to provide the seating chart for the circus not because he wanted to kill the VIPs (as everyone thought), but because he wanted to kill the cops attending the rehearsal that had refused to work with him.  It's a solid motive, one made all the clearer when he lets Yip live after he gives her the money, since he wants people that do work with him to know that they'll be rewarded.

I don't really have a problem with his motivation, but I still don't understand Yip's.  She tells Stefano that she worked with him since she realized that all the other cops in Gotham were in his pocket, so she might as well be.  I totally get that, but we don't learn why she immediately called Harvey after she takes the money.  I would buy her feeling enough guilt after a period of time to call, hurriedly confessing to the crime in time for Harvey to save everyone.  Instead, Buccellato essentially lets her have her cake and eat it, too:  she gets the blood money and a clean conscience.  But, if she had qualms about helping Stefano kill a bunch of cops, then why take the money in the first place?  Conversely, if her motivation came from the fact that she didn't care about the GCPD given how corrupt it was, then why feel guilt over a getting a bunch of cops killed?    Buccellato has her on a fine line here, as if she essentially only felt bad that clean cops would get killed so she makes the play to make everyone happy.  I'd rather the type of clear (and dark) motivation that we saw from Captain Watanabe in "Amazing Spider-Man: Spiral."

Motivations aside, her departure clears the deck for Bullock and Montoya to reunite, so good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.  Along the way, Jim is forced to take down Joker's Daughter's Jokerbot, a reminder that sometimes Batman has a lot of competing priorities that we has to tackle.  Jim ends the issue sharing a beer with Harvey on the rooftop, so all's well that ends well.  Just like Layman's run on this title giving us a better set of Batman-focused stories than the main title did, I feel like Buccellato is following the same path, stripping away the mythos that often plagues "Batman" and just telling a good story.  Hopefully he keeps up the good work.

*** (three of five stars)

E is for Extinction #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Given how meandering the plot of this series has been, it's sort of surprising that we find ourselves in a place that makes sense, even if it's an entirely different place from where the first two issues implied we'd be.

It turns out the army of Beasts is under the sway of Sublime.  Magneto had realized that he was resident in the Phoenix Egg and tried to control him, but he was able to spread himself to the four corners of Battleworld and infect the Beasts.  (We're not told why he chose the Beast in particular as a host, though it seems to be for his intellect.)  Sublime arrives to take control of the Egg, but a revived Professor X has taken control of Quentin's dead body and saves the day.  (Again, we're not told how Xavier survived death.)  Jean finally hatches, only for Xavier to reveal that she's under the control of Cassandra Nova.

Again, this series has been erratic at best.  Xavier and Nova were dismissed in the first issue as characters that merely set the stage for the drama between Magneto and the "classic" X-Men.  It's not necessarily an unwelcome development for them to rear their heads here, but it's one that feels as random as most of Morrison's original version of this story felt.  I guess Burnham is doing a solid job, by that measure.

*** (there of five stars)

Civil War #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Of all the tie-in series, this one is definitely telling the darkest story.  To underline that point, Soule reveals in this issue that Kingpin once ripped the arms from Doc Ock and attached them to his body, but the arms killed him instead with 20,000 volts of electricity to the brain.  Not that dark, you think?  Could be darker, you scoff?  It doesn't end there.  The arms kept Kingpin's dead body as a host and got a job building tech for Iron Man.  Seriously, when I say "dark," I mean dark.

The best part of this issue is Soule exploring Peter's fractured psyche.  After Elektra is killed on their mission to retrieve supplies to implement Project Bellcurve, Peter tells the Beast that he felt nothing.  He's seen so much death that he may remember how he used to feel when someone died, but he can't connect with that feeling anymore.  From Logan, you'd probably just nod at this comment, but Soule reminds you how awful this reality is to force Peter Parker to such a place.

Meanwhile, Jennifer tracks down Bullseye, only to get captured by, of all people, T'Challa.  We learn that he survived the explosion in the Negative Zone, but we don't know how he survived, why he stayed in hiding, or why he's working with Bullseye.  But, given that he blames Stark for the explosion, I'm guessing that Jennifer isn't really going to get that warm of a welcome.

*** (three of five stars)

Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This series isn't exactly the most enthralling of the "Secret Wars" tie-in series, but the authors manage to inject something like a shot in the arm here.  (Sorta.)

First, this issue opens up some questions that I've had for a while about the physics of Battleworld, if you will.  In "Secret Wars" #5, we learned that only Dr. Strange had an energy signature unique to him; all other energy on Battleworld is the same energy that Doom produces.  However, last issue, we learned that Carol isn't "from Doom."  I mention it here because it goes to the fact that I'm still not entirely sure what we're going to learn when/if Carol and the Banshees make it into the sky.  It seems like they can't discover that Carol is from beyond Battleworld, because everyone other than Dr. Strange if from Battleworld.  Sure, they were pulled from other realities, but the Foundation made it extremely clear in "Secret Wars" #5 that they all somehow became "of Doom" in the process.  If Carol isn't "of Doom," then isn't no one "of Doom?"

Putting aside my anal-retentive inquiry into Battleworld physics, we at least get some action here.  Helen's decision to try to make a break for it last issue results in the entire Squadron having to flee Hala lest someone confiscate their souped-up jets.  The Baroness is forced to call in Doom as Carol and company (including Rhodey) take up refuge on a small island somewhere within the domain.  However, you can't hide from the Thors and they appear here to address the situation.

As I've said with other tie-in series, the most exciting part about "Secret Wars" so far is that the authors have a license not to tell a happy ending.  It's entirely possible that the Thors could wipe out Carol and the squadron and we'll never learn about her powers.  Wouldn't that be a helluva ending?

** (two of five stars)

Justice League of America #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Hitch isn't exactly covering new ground with this first arc, but it doesn't mean that he isn't telling an interesting story.

In a way, it's a familiar Superman story.  After all, Rao is really just an extreme version of Superman.  He stokes all the same fears in the establishment that Superman did when he first appeared on the scene.  In fact, the story that Hitch is telling here isn't dissimilar from the one that Straczynski is telling in his Earth One volumes.  After Rao topples the corrupt dictators of Africa, other countries at the United Nations worry what he'll do when he decides that their human-rights records are unacceptable.  Rao appears and basically validates their fears by saying that more force may be necessary.

Meanwhile, Batman is...skeptical.  In a way, he postulates the problem through the prism of Newton's Third Law of Motion:  every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  If Rao is terraforming the desert in Africa and healing the sick around the world, then some cost must be paid.  Superman essentially believes that Rao is above such a law, but Batman remains unconvinced.  He invites Superman to follow with him one of Rao's first acolytes, an allegedly "reformed" convict, to see who's right.  Elsewhere, we learn that the Speed Force interacting with the wormhole sent Green Lantern into Krypton's past; some soldiers escort him to meet Rao at the end of the issue.  Also, Diana is trapped in Olympus by some mystical force that appeared after the Greek gods fled.

Again, it's a familiar story, but still an intriguing one.  Hitch has managed to play his cards close to his chest.  Rao becomes slightly more aggressive, if you will, in this issue, but we still can't point to him doing anything evil, per se.  Unless DC comics is going to close up shop and declare its universe happy with Rao, I'm guessing that Batman is going to find something.  But, Hitch keeps us guessing about what that something will be.  All in all, it's good stuff.

*** (three of five stars)

Grayson #11 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

To be totally honest, I'm not really sure what's going on here.

Let's start with the good.  Dick's fight with himself (or, at least, his doppelgänger) is hilarious at the start.  He begins by taking a good look at his ass and, noting that he's never previously seen himself from that angle, comments that he isn't really what "all the fuss is about."  (Amazing.)  He then fights the doppelgänger while delivering a commentary on how he's expecting that he's Clayface but, just once, he'd like it to be Killer Croc behind the mask.  He delivers the seeming coup de grâce -- a headbutt to the nose while leaning toward the doppelgänger to kiss him -- and remarks that it's a metaphor for every time he's had a crush on a girl.

Then, Seeley gets serious.  Recovering from the blow, the doppelgänger comments that it might've gone that way with Barbara, but Koriand'r would argue that she head-butted him first.  King does a great job here of portraying the shock on Dick's face; you can essentially see his blood run cold.  The doppelgänger then cuts to the quick as he attacks again.  He tells Dick that he's always seen the fighting as entertainment and asks what one-liners he used when Damian and Jason died or when Barbara was paralyzed.  He asks what joke comes to mind when he thinks about his loved ones crying at his fake funeral.  He asks whether he used a hilarious story to tell Agent 1 about Agent 8's death.  With each comment, Dick insists that he stops, forcing him to get seriouser and seriouser.  In the end, an enraged Dick charges him, but the doppelgänger then activates his hypnos to stop him.

It's here where it gets weird.  It's clear that the doppelgänger works for Spyral, giving the control that he possess over Dick through the hypnos.  He tells him that "they" learned everything about him and then came after him because he was weak.  He then utters a word that knocks Dick unconscious.  Meanwhile, Agent 1 awakens as the hypnos implants bleed from his eyes; seeing clearly, he discovers that the doppelgänger was Agent 8.  However, he later tells Helena that it was Maxwell Lord, the head of Checkmate, framing Dick.  Disgusted at the spy game, Dick leaves and radios to Batman that he's coming home.  The issue ends with Agent 8 walking down a street with Dr. Netz, telling her that Agent 1 will tell the story about Lord and "they'll" never know all that they did to drive away Agent 37.

I have a lot of questions.  First, I was confused why Dick was surprised that Agent 8 (as we'll now call her) knew who he was.  Doesn't everyone know who he is?  But, then I remembered that we still pretend that the world only knows that he was Nightwing and doesn't know that he was also Robin.  [Eye roll.]  More to the plot at hand, I'm not really sure what Agent 8's goals were here.  Dr. Netz refers to Dick's arrival on the scene as an "interruption" and congratulates Agent 8 for capitalizing on it.  As such, it doesn't seem that getting him to leave Spyral was the point of her impersonating him.  Initially, we found her poised to kill Agent 1.  Again, it seems unlikely then that she always intended to leave Agent 1 alive so that he would provide the cover story about Lord to Helena.  Otherwise, she would've deactivated his hypnos earlier.  If her plan was to kill him, then you have to ask where the killing was going to stop?  Was her plan to kill all of Spyral's agents as Dick?  If so, why did they chose Dick as the doppelgänger?  Even if so, what was the goal of killing all the agents?  Was it just to get Spyral to go to war with Lord and his Checkmate organization?  Instead of leaving Agent 1 alive, was she going to kill him and leave some telltale clue at his body pointing Helena to Lord?  If she was, then why risk keeping Agent 1 alive after the "interruption?"  Netz implies that the game that Agent 8 was playing here is part of Netz's competition with her sister, Agent Zero, but we haven't really seen Kathy in ages so it's hard to tell.  If it is, how did setting Helena after Checkmate help Netz in the game?  Also, at some point, someone has to explain how Agent 8 is still alive.  In other words, as I said, I have a lot of questions.

Finally, I'll say that I had a "digital-comic moment" here, where the hypnotic splash-page didn't work because I couldn't remember how to lock the screen on my iPad.  Given how crucial that scene is to the plot, it was frustrating to say the least.

I was inclined to give this issue two stars, given just the remarkable number of questions that the denouement raises.  But, Agent 8's taunting of Dick is such amazing character work -- using Dick's pathological need to keep the fighting that he does "entertaining" against him -- that I gave it a three.  But, we really, really need some clarity on what we just saw here, and we need it soon.

*** (three of five stars)

Batgirl #43 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue starts a new arc for Babs, but it also feels like old-home week.  Alysia and Jeremy make appearances, though it's not exactly good news.

Someone is letting tigers loose at night in tech offices in Burnside, leaving behind dead techies working the night shift.  Random, yes?  The first victim is at Luke Fox's new firm, Foxtek, and Babs heads there to offer a hand.  A scan of the biometric device reveals that Qadir is the one that let in the tiger, but Qadir is eavesdropping and denies it.  (He also hears Batgirl flirt with Luke, something that upsets him.)  Babs returns to school, where she runs into a grumpy Jeremy.  Nadimah tells her that it's because his awful ex-girlfriend is in town, but we don't learn more because reports hit the wires that a second victim has been found at Vitasoft.  Babs goes there, only to discover Frankie already on the scene.  Frankie lets Babs know that another former Burnside College student opened the door, just like Qadir.  Babs again tells her that it's not safe for her to be in the "field," and they part on not great terms.  That night, Babs ditches Alysia as she's trying on wedding dresses after an algorithm that she designed suggests the next victim.  Babs is able to stop the tiger and save the woman.  Later, Frankie tells Babs that Jeremy is the only person with connections to all three victims and would-be victims, but a disbelieving Babs refuses to hear more.  Frankie takes action in her own hands, steals Babs' cowl, and meets Qadir in a dark alley dressed entirely in black leather.  She convinces Qadir that she works with Batgirl and asks him to design a specific device to help ID the real culprits.  Meanwhile, Alysia's fiancée Jo goes to a location where she's been hiding the tigers; she and their activist group liberated them before they got sold to a private zoo.  However, Jo is panicked when she realizes that someone is using the tigers for the attacks.  Before she can move them, she's attacked by a woman dressed like a tiger.

Wow.  Just writing that summary made me realize what a layered story Fletcher and Stewart are telling.  For me, the most interesting part is Frankie's fascination with helping Babs in the field.  The authors are playing it close to their chest whether Babs is trying to protect Frankie because of her disability or for some other reason; it would certainly seem hypocritical if it were the former.  But, that said, Babs also had years of training as Batgirl under her belt before she had to adapt to fighting in a wheelchair, so she's not exactly wrong to be worried that Frankie might get herself hurt.  It certainly doesn't bode well for Frankie (or their friendship) if she insists on putting herself out there.  Moreover, we also have the Jeremy problem.  Hopefully, it's his ex-girlfriend behind the attacks, but you never know.  Fletcher and Stewart would really up the realism if he were actually to become a bad guy.  After all, simply because Babs was interested in him doesn't mean that he doesn't have a dark side.  She also has Luke now, so Jeremy's totally disposable.  (Too soon?)

*** (three of five stars)

Star Wars #8 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

The fact that you can hear Harrison Ford screaming "She's not my wife!" throughout this issue again shows how amazingly Aaron has captured the characters' voices.

We don't get any more information about Han and Sana's relationship here, other than the fact that they seem to have very different interpretations of the past than each other.  Han says that Sana isn't his wife; she says that she is.  Sana says that Han often plays a con where he rescues a princess and refuses the reward (waiting for a "bigger" prize); Han says that it's not true.  They seem to be more like business partners than anything else, but, if Aaron makes anything clear here, it's that their relationship is "complicated."  For her part, Leia isn't all that interested in getting to the bottom of the story.  When Sana announces that she and Han should sell Leia to the Empire, Leia grabs Han's gun and holds the two of them hostage.  Unfortunately, she's a little late, since Sana's already called in the troops.

Again, both Aaron and Immonen do a great job of bringing these scenes to life.  Aaron's script crackles with energy.  You not only hear Harrison Ford's voice pleading with Leia to believe him, but you hear Carrie Fisher sigh when Leia realizes that she's had enough.  Moreover, Immonen is a marvel at facial expressions.  The scene where Leia is walking away from the two of them, rolling her eyes, should be taught at art school for all the information that just this look conveys to the reader.  (The script is again great here.  "You know what?  This...this is none of my business.  I'm just gonna...go.  And you two can...yeah."  Indeed.)

But, Han and Leia are not, natch, the only ones getting in trouble.  Luke, in a typically Luke way, decides to go into the meanest bar on a "world of pirates and outlaws" and ask someone to smuggle him into Coruscant.  To be fair, it's a solid plan:  after realizing that Obi-Wan's diary is nothing but stories, he decides to go to the Jedi's home world to see if he can learn more about actually being a Jedi.  Unfortunately, he'll still a farm boy from Tatooine; as the pirates and outlaws try to attack him, he pulls out his lightsaber.  It obviously gets everyone's attention, but not the way Luke hoped.  They want it for it, not because they fear Luke.  But, Luke refuses to trade it for a ride (even though he doesn't have any actual credits to offer for one).  The pirates and outlaws then precede to attack again.  Earlier, we had seen someone radio to someone else saying that he was going to get "it" for his boss, and we end Luke's story with this someone grabbing the saber and making a break for it.  Immonen is again on fire here, not just with the fight scenes themselves, where you feel like you're watching a moving picture, but also the hilarious last panel of the story where Luke leads the outlaws and pirates after the thief.

Again, it's all just great.  The characters say and do things like they should say and do.  I don't know how Aaron does it, but I'm glad that he does.

***** (five of five stars) 

X-Tinction Agenda #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue is pretty standard fare.  Rogue and Triage are set to work trying to cure the Extinction Plague, the Genegineer uses the remains of Warlock's body to animate an adamantium skeleton that he built for Cameron Hodge, and the X-Men arrive to free their people.  In the end, the Genegineer is successful, and the two teams of mutants are going to have to pull together to stop him.  Guggenheim tries to infuse it with some emotion, but I'll admit that I'm finding it hard to engage with the story that he's telling.  He seems to want me to see both sides, but it's hard to side with the X-Men, since their position is pretty much that the Genoshans should just die quietly and not bother them.  Maybe they'll see the light next issue.

** (two of five stars)

Spider-Verse #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OK, now we're getting somewhere.

We ended last issue with Gwen running into Peter Parker, despite the fact that he has a gravestone next to hers in the cemetery.  It turns out Peter lost his powers (it's apparently a long story, shockingly), but he's come out of hiding to warn her that Norman really is a villain.  As if Gwen needs more proof, Venom bounds at them from the shrubs:  Norman sent him to tail her, but his hatred of Peter got the better of him.  Gwen and Peter manage to flee to a music store where Gwen uses an amped up guitar to knock Venom unconscious.  Meanwhile, the scientifically minded members of the Web Warriors work with Norman and his staff to get to the bottom of the Web that connects them, while Ham brings Anya to the buffet.  There, he reveals that Norman occasionally sits on his "Caesars Palace chair" and rants about killing Doom.  Anya gets Ham to show it to her, while Gwen and Peter step up their game:  Peter Snapchats a photo of him on the Brooklyn Bridge to Pavitr, inviting Norman to come "talk."  They know that it will force Norman to go crazy (as Venom did), and they're right:  Norman gathers up the Six and heads to the bridge.  Meanwhile, Anya grabs the rest of the team to show them the chair.  It turns out that it's a Siege Perilous, but, before they can learn more, a Thor arrives to claim possession of it.

Honestly, I wasn't feeling this series, but I'm totally on board here.  Costa uses Ham's personality to explain why he seems so ambivalent about Norman.  I was expecting Costa to go with mind control to explain why Ham went with Gwen in issue #2 but seemed completely unperturbed by Norman's crazy in issue #3.  Instead, he does me one better:  Ham is resigned to humans doing ridiculous $^!*.  He just goes and gets some waffles whenever they do it.  Honestly, it's great.  It totally makes sense in the context of character that is, after all, a talking pig.  Plus, it's not like it only works in Norman's favor.  It's this disinterest in human motivations that leads Ham to show Anya the chair, since it's not like he's loyal to Norman or thought through the implications of it.  (More waffles anyone?)

Beyond Ham, the issue is interesting because it's another villain trying to take on Doom.  As the cracks in Doom's facade appear in the main title, they're appearing in the tie-in issues.  Regent in "Amazing Spider-Man:  Renew Your Vows" is also hoping to take down Doom, and I feel like Korvac in the "Korvac Saga" is also a candidate if he keeps his cosmic powers.  Costa does a great job of using this development to further the overall plot of the event, reminding us that Doom's control has never been as great as it may have appeared.

All in all, it's definitely an improvement over the previous issue or two, and I'm excited to see how it all ends.  (It better at least involve everyone apologizing to Gwen for being wrong about Norman.)

*** (three of five stars)

Loki: Agent of Asgard #17 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OMG, this issue is AMAZING.  It really defies recapping.  I'll give it my best, but you should really read it yourself.

I think the best way to describe this issue is that Ewing uses all the tricks that writing about a Trickster God allows him.  When the older Gods demand tribute in the form of the stories that Loki holds of the younger Gods, Loki refuses.  He tells them that Gods are really just the product of stories that are so amazing that they take form.  If the younger Gods are the product of the stories that humans told, the older Gods are the product of stories that the younger Gods told.  As such, Loki uses his power as the last younger God to dismiss them.  It's a beautiful contemplation on the importance and power of myth.  Hopefully some professors uses it one day in class.

But, we have one last bridge to cross until the end.  Loki strips away the mask (literally) that King Loki wore, revealing the self that he could've been had said self not traveled into the past to bring about his future self sooner.  Our Loki tells him that he might've screwed up the implementation, but the plan was sound.  The ego-death that our Loki suffered let him put behind the anger that King Loki felt, and he's able to walk his own path.  If King Loki was driven mad by everyone's failure to let him be a new him, our Loki doesn't carry that same baggage.  King Loki cries with relief, and our Loki sends him to his happy ending (a.k.a. the crystal in our Loki's staff).  Then, he invites Verity to go with him through a door into the future when "Secret Wars" has concluded.

Seriously, it's just an amazing, amazing end to our Loki's story.  As cheesy as it sounds, I really feel weirdly privileged to be here for it.  It's just a testament to Ewing's story-telling abilities that he was able to tell such a tightly crafted tale for so long.  Man, I'll miss this series.

***** (five of five stars)

Inferno #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

The "next issue" box at the end of this issue tells us that everything gets worse...much worse.  Honestly, it could've well been the tag line for this issue as well.  (It makes you wonder just how bad things are going to get.)

Illyana has so thoroughly taken over the Outer Boroughs that Dr. Strange arrives and offers her the Baronship of Inferno.  (This guest appearance may confirm that the events of this series all happen before "Secret Wars" #1, where we saw Madelyne in charge of Inferno.  It's clearly not happening simultaneously with the main title, since Dr. Strange has been dead for a full issue at this point.)  Meanwhile, in his search for Illyana, Colossus and his team stumble upon the X-Men as they're battling N'astirh and his forces.  They manage to defeat them, but it doesn't exactly improve their situation:  no one has any idea how to defeat Illyana.  Enter Mr. Sinister, revealed to be the person that saved Tabitha and sent her to track down Colossus and his team in the first place.  Sinister has a plan, and it's pretty clear that the X-Men are going to have to work with him if they want to have a hope of defeating Illyana.

Hopeless really does a great job of playing against the usual "in our darkest hour" tropes here.  First, Jean is committed to trying to get Scott to lead the X-Men in escaping New York, and she seems the only reasonable person of the lot.  Instead, Scott tries to rally the troops to take the fight to Illyana, but N'astirh interrupts his monologue.  Plus, when Colossus apologizes to Scott for not listening to him, Scott doesn't accept it; he places the blame squarely on Colossus and confirms that he was right.  

As I've said in other reviews, the best part of "Secret Wars" is the authors' ability to tell stories that don't have happy endings.  This series continues to be a great example of that.  If everything gets worse next issue, "happy" isn't likely going to describe the ending.

*** (three of five stars)

House of M #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Hopeless does a solid job of getting us where we need to be quickly and organically.  (In other words, we're not subjected to Bennettesque expository sequences to understand the status quo.)  The master of his domain (literally), Magneto chafes under peace, but he's going to get his secret wish for some action given that Quicksilver is colluding with Namor to overthrow him.  Luke Cage leads the Human Resistance Movement, but Magneto's Red Guard launches a surprise attack that decimates it; Black Cat, Hawkeye, and Misty Knight are the only ones to escape, thanks to the intervention of Death Locket.  Wanda is reduced to playing the role of suburban housewife, cleaning up messes that Speed and Wiccan leave in their wake.  I can't say that it's all that exciting, but it does have potential, particularly if Hopeless explores the hypocrisy of Magneto persecuting humans to nearly the point of extinction.

** (two of five stars)

Guardians of Knowhere #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Um...OK?  Bendis tacks sharply in this issue, with Angela and Drax dispatching Yotat in the issue's first few pages and the focus almost immediately shifting to Angela's confrontation with Gamora over her lack of faith.  Given that Yotat got his own origin issue in this series, I thought that he was going to be the overarching villain throughout it.  As such, it's weird to see him dismissed by the sixth page.  Is he going to return at the end?  It seems doubtful, since Bendis seems to be doubling-down on Angela's fight with Gamora.  But, then, why introduce him in the first place?  It feels vaguely like old Bendis, where plots get changed willy-nilly.  The good news is that the conversation between Angela and Gamora is really well done, with Bendis and Deodato beautifully conveying Gamora's sense of isolation over her belief that Doom isn't god.  For that, it earns three stars.

*** (three of five stars)

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Slott gets right to work here, and I have to say that I'm really impressed by how much ground he covers without it feeling forced.

We learn right off the bat that it was S.H.I.E.L.D., not Regent, that grabbed MJ and Annie at the end of last issue.  Moreover, we learn that Sandman is a double agent; he tries to convince Peter to follow him to safety, but Peter (not really all that surprisingly) refuses.  So, while MJ and Annie find themselves safe and sound in one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s safe houses, Regent arrives on the scene and takes Peter and Flint captive.

At the safe house, we get a lot of information quickly.  The Avengers have been using the Spot's abilities for the type of mission that they just launched to save MJ and Annie, but it's slowly killing him.  Ben Urich tells MJ that he has been covering for the Parkers at the "Bugle" for years to help Peter's identity stay hidden, but MJ reveals that Peter's inhibitor chips were really why they had successfully avoided detection.  Hawkeye immediately realizes that the inhibitor chips could help them win the war, since all they would need to do was get some of Regent's blood to inhibit his powers.  (You have to wonder if Peter thought of that.  If he did, then it's all the more guilt that he's been shouldering.)

Meanwhile, at Regent's HQ, we learn something very important:  Regent only has so many "goes" of each power that he steals before he loses access to it.  He uses one of his "dead telepaths' abilities" to learn Peter's identity and, from Flint, the location of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base.  While he sends his minions to take out S.H.I.E.L.D., he monologues to Peter that he's really a good guy:  all he wants to do is defeat Doom.  The interesting part of this revelation is that Regent refers to Doom as a "mad god."  It makes you wonder what he knows exactly.  (Presumably, we'll learn next issue.)

At the safe house, almost all Regent's enforcers arrive to do battle.  Jarvis leads the Power children through one of Spot's portals, but Annie defies her mother and stays to fight.  The heroes hold their own, buying enough time for Flint to open one of Spot's portals that he had hidden inside of him, providing a back door into Regent's HQ.  Clint leads Dagger, Mockingbird, and Prowler through the portal to collect some of Regent's DNA, and Annie and MJ follow them to save Peter.

Next issue is clearly going to be epic.  Of most interest to me is why exactly Regent thinks that Doom is a mad god.  This series might prove to tie into the main event a lot more than I thought that it would.  Moreover, Regent puts Peter into his farm of superheroes here, announcing that he's dead like the rest of them.  But, since he appears on the cover for next issue, it seems possible that all the heroes are actually alive but in some sort of suspended animation.  Talk about a battle royale if they all awaken!

*** (three of five stars)

Book of Death #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Interesting.

It seems that the conflict that we're seeing here is one imported from the future.  Darque, the "Corrupted One," has followed Tama, the Geomancer, into the past to destroy her.  It seems that Darque is likely the future version of David that we saw lay waste to the world last issue, but Venditti hasn't yet revealed how he became "corrupted."  In "The Valiant," the Immortal Enemy referred to a Dark Age whenever he successfully killed a Geomancer.  Is it possible that these Dark Ages are brought to fruition by corrupted Geomancers, as Darque seems to be?  If so, it'll be interesting to see how David eventually transforms into Darque.

In the meantime, Gilad schools Unity, using Ninjak's Batmanesque preparation to combat any member of Unity against X-O Manowar in the form of Ninjak's specially designed swords.  Moreover, since he engages them in the desert, Livewire's technopathic abilities are rendered useless.  However, the battle (and Gilad's certainty that Tama isn't behind the recent ecological phenomenon) give pause to Unity's masters, leaving them to wonder if maybe Gilad is telling the truth that she's not the guilty party.  I guess we'll all see, won't we?

*** (three of five stars)

Justice League #43 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Wow.  Johns and Fabok are off the charts here.  I gasped three times in this issue; it's a lot of gasping for just 22 pages.  They both build to these moments slowly but surely; when they come, it's like launching a slingshot that you've primed as much as you can.

We begin with Steppenwolf summoning Kalibak to go to Earth to take on Grail.  Johns makes it clear how unpredictable that battle with be, portraying Kalibak as basically one step above feral.  We then immediately move to Batman on the Chair, and Johns again shows us why we should be worried.  Bruce is even more arrogant than he normally is, since he's pretty much positive at this point that he has all the answers.  Cyborg, Diana, and Hal all take different tacks to try to get him off the chair, fearing for his mental stability, but he insists that he can handle it.  Meanwhile, Luthor and Superman are trapped on Apokolips and encounter the slaves that Darkseid has set on them.

It's here where we get Gasp #1:  after the slaves attack, Luthor and we are shocked to see Superman bleeding.  Fabok sells this moment beautifully:  we not only see the shock on Luthor's face, but we observe something close to fear in Superman's eyes when he realizes that he's weak in front of Luthor.  Meanwhile, Scot Free appears before the Justice League and apprises them of the situation:  they've got to convince the Anti-Monitor to leave Earth as soon as possible, before Darkseid arrives.  Batman decides to head into space to get more information on the Anti-Monitor in case he refuses to leave; Hal essentially forces him to take him with him.  The rest of the team (Cyborg, Diana, Flash, Power Ring, Shazam, and Steve) go with Scot to find Grail.  (She herself has been casting a spell to summon Darkseid.)  Meanwhile, Clark and Luthor are trying to flee the hordes, and Clark is forced to accept Luthor's hand to fly; they realize that his problem is that Apokolips has no sun.  (This epiphany results in the amazing exchange where Clark laments that he's becoming human, and Luthor responds:  "You'll be powerless.  You'll never be human."  Awesome.)

On Earth, everything goes from bad to worse.  Darkseid and Kalibak arrive, and we get Gasp #2 in the next scene.  It's possibly the best splash page that I've ever seen, with the Anti-Monitor, Grail, and their troops charging at Darkseid, Kalibak, and their troops.  Fabok gives us this image from a perspective behind Diana and Scot, as Diana relates the story of Odysseus trying to decide between Charybdis and Scylla.  I've rarely seen art and words combine to convey a message (how powerless Diana feels as a leader to chose between two bad options) as they do here.  It's an amazing sign of teamwork between Johns and Fabok.  In the end, Diana leads the Justice League into an uncertain battle as Luthor is forced to hurl Clark into a firepit in the hope that the solar energy will recharge him.  It does, but we get Gasp #3:  Clark emerges as a corrupted form of himself and threatens to kill Luthor (something that he says he should've done years earlier).

Throughout the issue, Diana narrates about her distrust of the gods.  With the issue ending with Anti-Monitor and Darkseid coming to blows just as a dark Superman emerges from (literally) the pits of Hell, you can see her point.

***** (five of five stars)

Amazing Spider-Man #20.1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Man, Conway has really told a great classic Spider-Man story here.  I could rave about it in a lot of detail, but I think that it's all probably best experienced as a reader.

I want to talk about two parts in particularly, though.  First, I loved how well Conway really "gets" Peter.  Peter realizes that he's turned a blind eye to Felicia and Yuri's descent into darkness because he had too much faith that they would eventually correct their course.  One of my main complaints about authors writing Spider-Man is that they portray him as excessively naive.  After spending the better part of his life as a costumed hero, he has to understand how the world works, even if he tries to see the good in everyone.  Conway essentially operationalizes that here.  He's more excessively optimistic, if you will, and he's aware that it's a problem.  Naive people generally are incapable of seeing the darker side.  Peter does, even if he doesn't like it.  It's a great insight into him as a character, and it takes someone like Conway to realize tease out that part of him.

Second, Conway also lets characters change.  Felicia and Yuri at this point are full-time villains.  Whereas Slott played with the idea that they could be redeemed, Conway functionally moves them beyond redemption here.  It's rare to see in comics.  The best recent example of it is the years-long process of Cyclops becoming a villain in the X-Men, and this evolution has been so well received because of the effort that Marvel put into making sure each step of that process made sense.  We haven't quite gotten that with Felicia, since her fury at Peter still strikes me as something that Slott manufactured.  But, Conway manages to right the ship, making it clear that Felicia is doing what she wants to do, as is Yuri.  The evolution of both characters feels totally organic, and Peter's rogues' gallery just got a lot more dangerous.

In other words, I'm a fan.  I miss this sort of story, where Peter actually reflects on his role as a costumed hero, and I hope that its reappearance inspires similar ones in the future.  The entire series is a solid read, even if (actually, particularly if) you're a casual fan.

**** (four of five stars)

Years of Future Past #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OMG, this series just goes from bad to worse to terrible.  At one point, all action stops so that Storm can explain the plot, and, at two separate points, all actions stops again so that Cameron can deliver monologues.  Bennett even tries ol' pet peeve #3, with Chrissie commenting on Cameron inheriting Colossus' penchant for monologue (likely responding to criticism from issue #1).  But, as I've always said, it doesn't really help the reader when you use your characters to acknowledge bad writing:  it'd be better to avoid it entirely.

Moreover, the plot is as tired as they come.  Cameron finds a magic iPad (I wish I were kidding) that proves that Magneto intended on him and Chrissie dying in their attempt to save Kelly.  Apparently, he didn't want humans to see mutants as saviors; he wanted mutants to see Cameron and Chrissie as martyrs and rise against the humans.  We're not really told why Magneto went this direction.  I think that we're just supposed to believe that he's e-v-i-l.  Maybe?  Bennett doesn't really seem to concerned about motivations at this point, so I guess I shouldn't be either.

Next issue:  brother vs. sister!  (Yawn.)

* (one of five stars)

Star-Lord & Kitty Pryde #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

The Cannonball robot reverting to its original programming and muttering "Ah'm near invulnerable when ah'm blastin'" as it "dies" made me literally LOL.  The good news is that pretty much everything else in this issue is equally awesome.

I admit that I totally squealed when I saw the New Mutants (a.k.a. the New "Mutdroids").  The fact that they're robotic "friends" that Doug Ramsey created makes it all the creepier.  (Of all the takes that we've seen on familiar characters in "Secret Was," this one is probably the most unexpected.)  Kitty and Peter make pretty short work of them, allowing Kitty to shake down Doug for Gambit's location.  (Doug apparently works for Gambit, a fact that Kitty learned by shaking down someone else.)  Doug tells her that Gambit is looking to make a score at a museum but then, unfortunately for him, recognizes her as Kitty Pryde.  The issue kicks into high gear at this point, because she proceeds to kill him in cold blood.

Humphries and Firmansyah wisely play their cards close to their chests in the following panels, because it initially seems like Kitty may actually be a remorseless killer.  (She is from the Age of Apocalypse, after all.)  Instead, we learn that she was a spy for Apocalypse that Valeria recruited essentially at the end of a gun, threatening to kill her loved ones if she didn't join the Foundation.  Kitty agreed, and she now hunts down anomalies for Valeria without Doom's knowledge.  It explains why she's absent in "Secret Wars" #5 when Valeria assembles the Foundation for exactly this sort of task.  It also explains why she had to kill Doug, because no one can know what she's doing.  (That said, you'd think that she'd take maybe a little more precaution in hiding her identity.)  Peter offers to help her retrieve the artifact that Gambit is trying to steal (since, after all, she would've gotten it from him in the first issue if Peter hadn't intervened).  But, of course, it's a trap.  Even better, it's a trap involving Widget!  Gambit fed Doug the information about the museum.  Since Widget is a version of Kitty, its presence near her cancels out their powers (a fun new fact about "Battleworld").  As such, Gambit is able to trap the two of them because he wants Kitty...for his collection.  (Again, creepy.)

I am very intrigued where we go from here.  The first issue was more or less a cute romp that I didn't expect to get serious.  But, Humphries and Firmansyah do an excellent job of moving us through the tumult of emotions that both Peter and Kitty feel in this issue (particularly Peter, as he deals with the reality that his Kitty is lost and this Kitty might be a homicidal maniac).  It's this sort of heart that Humphries often got so right about Peter, and I'm glad to see it here.  When you consider the fact that we've also got such a strong plot and hilarious winks like the Cannonball line, this series is really hitting above its weight.

**** (four of five stars)

Secret Wars 2099 #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I honestly don't have too much to say about this issue, because David pretty efficiently moves us from Point A to Point B.

Captain America rebels against Miguel's attempt to imprison the Defenders and recruits Hercules in her effort to help them escape.  (Unfortunately, David doesn't make it clear exactly why Roberta knew that Hercules would side with her or, conversely, why she felt like the Black Widow and Hercules wouldn't.  Did she just figure that Herc would like a good fight?)  Miguel's attempts to get her to revert to her Roberta persona fail, so he calls in her "husband" Henry to initiate a special override sequence.  At that moment, Strange appears to pull Cap through a portal to her sanctum, only to discover a panicked Roberta wondering where she is and why she's dressed like Captain America.  Meanwhile, Herc manages to escape with Hulk, Namor, and the Surfer.  Shenanigans will definitely ensue.

If we were dealing with the usual Marvel Universe, I'd put money on the outcome of this series being Roberta finally unifying her personalities and joining the Defenders to fight Alchemax (much as Miguel originally did).  But, part of the excitement of "Secret Wars" is the sense that all bets are off.  It could be just as likely that Alchemax manages to re-assert control over her.  Maybe they just kill her and get a new stooge.  I guess we'll see!

*** (three of five stars)

Korvac Saga #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Man, this series just keeps reminding me how much I really miss Abnett.

An open question during the first two issues of this series was where Michael's powers were.  Everyone else had the same power that they had in the original Marvel Universe, but Korvac was presented as a normal human.  I didn't particularly take note of it before this issue, but Abnett highlights it here when Michael is forced to use his cosmic powers to save Starhawk.  In the process, he reveals just how powerful he truly is, since he essentially reassembled Starhawk's soul to resurrect him.  Simon encourages Korvac to use his powers to purge The City of the Madness, but Korvac reminds him that he swore an oath to Doom to "curb" his powers to become baron.  (He made an exception in Starhawk's case due to their friendship.)  The issue is forced when the Madness swiftly overtakes Mar-Vell.  Vance urges the Avengers and the Guardians not to kill him, due to their friendship, but Mar-Vell pushes them to their limits as he becomes an Abomination.  Korvac decides to help, regardless of his oath to Doom, because it's his domain.  But, in the process, he learns what Starhawk had learned on the Astral Plane:  he is the Madness, a side effect of his repressed power.

Obviously, the developments here spell trouble for everyone, including Doom.  It's pretty clear that Doom wanted Korvac to curb his powers because, at least in the original Marvel Universe, they would be somewhere on par with Doom's.  Simon tell us that Korvac used to use his powers more freely (for example, during the "Ultron Wars"), but Abnett doesn't clarify whether he was using the full range of his powers at that time.  If he was, it raises the question why he didn't make a move against Doom back then (and would agree to curb their use).  If he wasn't, it's unclear why he would've imposed self-limited his powers even before he was offered a domain of his own.  Either way, the fact that he's now fully in control of his powers doesn't sound like something that Doom is going to take lying down.

*** (three of five stars)

A-Force #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

"A-Force" has been one of the series more attuned to the developments in the main "Secret Wars" title.  The fact that everything falls apart on Arcadia in this issue seems to portend that Doom is in fact slowly but surely losing control of Battleworld.

Jennifer follows the portal that opened last issue to the "Age of Apocalypse" (or maybe "Years of Future Past") Manhattan.  Before she can even beat down some Sentinels, three female Thors appear to arrest her for crossing boundaries.  Jennifer escapes by jumping through the portal and somehow (it's unclear how) realizes that said portal came from inside Arcadia.  As a result, she realizes that Arcadia has a traitor in her midst and that this person is trying to pin the portals on Nico's friend (named, so far, ??).  Before Jennifer can do anything with that information, the Thors appear to send her to the Shield.  Medusa sacrifices her life to buy Jennifer and the rest of A-Force time to escape, and they ultimately hide in the body of ??.

As much as I want to like this story, I can't say that I do.  Too much happens that doesn't flow logically from previous events to feel like I'm really connected to the story.  For example, Jennifer seems shocked (shocked!) when it appears that Medusa is the traitor, despite everything about her character over the last two issues screaming that she would do anything to be the Baroness.  But, of course, we see that Medusa was just faking out the Thors when she used her hair to entrap the rest of A-Force; she instead sacrifices herself to save Arcadia.  Moreover, Jennifer also appears to be mystically attuned now since she was somehow able to ascertain that the portal came from inside Arcadia.  I could continue, but trust me when I say that this series just has too many random moments like these.  It's like the authors are hellbent on telling the story that they want to tell despite the action on the ground not matching that story.  It's as if they forgot that they control the narrative and the action.

** (two of five stars)

Secret Wars #5 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Hickman really lays it all on the table here, giving us the secret history of the "Secret Wars."  Since I didn't read his run on "Avengers" or "New Avengers," I'm not sure how much of the material that Hickman covers here is new.  At the very least, it's new (and exciting) to me.

We (or maybe just I) learn in this issue that the Beyonders had grown tired of experimenting with life, so they moved onto death.  They created Owen Reese as a bomb; his analogue in each reality was meant to destroy all reality when they each exploded simultaneously.  However, the Beyonders underestimated the fact that Reese's humanity gave him the power of free choice.  He wound up choosing to support Doom when he approached him with the truth behind the Beyonders' plan.  Together, they began setting off the alternate versions of himself early to diminish the final explosion's power, creating the "incursions" that the Illuminati discovered in "New Avengers."  Ultimately, they realized that they couldn't stop the Beyonders' plan, so they worked with Dr. Strange to steal their power.  With that stolen power, Doom was able to save some parts of reality and created Battleworld from them.

It is honestly a solid story.  If it's the first time that Hickman has revealed it since he started work on it with "Avengers" and "New Avengers," then the long-time readers of those series had to have their minds effing blown in reading it.

With the truth revealed, Hickman can now focus on the matter at hand:  where we go from here.  First, Doom is clearly worried (as Reese assures him that he should be) that his grip on power is loosening.  Hickman hints in the conversation between Doom and Reese (who is hiding from the rest of Battleworld in a "room" located beneath the statue of him at Castle Doom) that they jointly maintain Battleworld and that their grip on it may not be as strong as Doom has led others to believe.  Second, it's definitely true that Doom's hold on the truth is fracturing.  Over the years, Valeria and her team have studied the energy of Battleworld and identified that Dr. Strange's power existed as almost anti-matter to Doom's power (the "god particles" that comprise all other energy on Battleworld).  Although we don't learn why it would be the case (they themselves don't know), their ability to track the energy means that they know that it was Dr. Strange that dispersed the "strangers."  (I'm assuming they'll learn that the strangers' powers use energy also different from Doom's.)  Her suspicions heightened (since Doom tells the world a different story of Strange's fate), Valeria commits to finding the truth.  When you add into the mix Thanos wandering the world on his own, you begin to realize why Doom's worried.

The exciting part of this series at this point is that Hickman still doesn't hint how it's all going to be resolved.  Sure, Doom may have been a villain on Earth-616, but Hickman has made it clear that he is really the hero here.  You can't dispute that he saved as much of reality as he could.  Yes, he put himself on the throne, but you also understand why he had to do so:  it appears that keeping the domains separate is important to keeping the peace (and perhaps the integrity) of Battleworld.  Reed may well despise him for the reality that he's created, but it's not like Reed succeeded in saving the old one.  In fact, Hickman is turning on its head the usual event trope where the heroes save the day just in the nick of time.  What are they going to do here?  Undo Doom's work and destroy Battleworld?  If "saving the day" means "destroying all reality," are you really a hero?  Hickman keeps this question at the center of this event, and it's why it's one of the best ones that I've really ever read.  Usually, we're starting to fade at this point in an event, as some sort of logical fallacy overwhelms the story.  (I'm looking at you, "Age of Ultron.")  But, Hickman is not only going strong, but getting stronger.  I can't wait to see where we go.

***** (five of five stars)