Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Drew and Patrick discuss Avengers Assemble 23.INH, Thor: God of Thunder 18, Aquaman 27, Fables 127, Black Science 3, All-Star Western 27, and Green Lantern Corps Annual 2.

Drew: There are lots of decent marketing reasons for saddling an adult hero with a kid sidekick — it gives the hero someone to talk to, and younger readers someone to relate to — but few comics manage to justify that decision narratively. When Kelly Sue DeConnick and Warren Ellis decided to task the Avengers with wrangling the not-ready-for-prime-time Spider-Girl, they tapped into one of the most relatable reasons a hero would keep an eye on a teenager while Avenging: somebody has to. They add a bullet to that begrudging sense of duty in Avengers Assemble 23.INH by making that put-upon Avenger the surly old man Wolverine — the perfect foil for teenage enthusiasm. It’s hard not to read a bit of Ellis and DeConnick into these characters — he’s the time-tested sage, she’s the young hot-shot — but whatever the reason, the chemistry on the page is electric. That goes a long way to covering this issue’s shortcomings (in spite of several cool scenes, nothing much seems to happen here), but I’m such a softie when it comes to stories where kid heroes are schooled by their elders, I’m willing to give the whole thing a pass.

Hey, speaking of young heroes, Thor: God of Thunder 18 catches up with Thor Odinson — the youngest Thor from the first arc. It’s a bit of a cautionary tale about carousing too hard — one that ultimately pits Thor against his dragon drinking buddy — which may get a little too after-school special-y for me. This is Thor, after all, it’s not like he’d give up drinking (even if this story didn’t take place in the past). I don’t know, Patrick, am I being too hard on this issue? I think we’ve both been in the bad guy position when friends have gone off the deep end partying (though, to their credit, I don’t think any of them accidentally bit off anyone’s head). Did that help this ring truer for you at all?

Patrick: Eh, for every time that either you or I acted as the adult while our friends got shitfaced, there are a bunch of times that we have been the drunken fools babbling incoherently and dancing to Prince in our rain boots. I appreciated this issue of Thor for its palette-cleansing nature — something I badly needed after that mostly-nonsense conclusion to the Malekith arc. Plus, drinking is a fundamental part of who Thor is, and I don’t know that I’ve read a story that addresses the consequences of that behavior. Of course Thor needs to have his ol’ drinking bro be a dragon — of course! And Das Pastoras does a pretty good job of depicting an epic hangover in one panel.

Oddly, this week’s Aquaman 28 also featured the titular hero and his relationship with a gigantic creature. Arthur determines pretty quickly that he can’t use his Vuuvuuvuuuvuu power to control the enormous Karaqan monster attacking Reykjavik, and it’s sort of invigorating to see the dude throw off whatever the shackles of mercy and diplomacy and kick ass for few pages. Artist Paul Pelletier resists drawing the creature in its entirety, emphasizing the idea that it’s just too fucking big to even fit on the page. But good ol’ Aquaman its still able to take him down — it might be your run-of-the-mill be strong, hit hard, move fast kind of heroics, but that’s exactly the kind of straightforward action I need from Aquaman right now. The little mysteries are growing on fringes of the book — why is Dr. Shin working for these guys? what’s up with the Karaqan’s memories? — but the heart of this series has returned to meat ‘n’ potatoes adventuring.

Meanwhile, the intrigue of Fables 137 is anything but meat ‘n’ potatoes. This issue mainly follows Winter Wolf as she embraces her dual roles as heir to the title of North Wind (which she got from her grandfather) and as a supporter of her mother, and by extension, an enemy of Rose Red. She’s essentially an omnipotent and omnipresent being, so while she appears to be a child, she can command the likes of Santa Claus and the White Queen. This serves to give physical form to the nebulous threat that Red’s Camelot will have to conquer in order to survive. Hilariously, that’s not the only obstacle to the kingdom’s success: they’ve found their Guenevere and it’s the cleaned-up Lancelot. (My favorite moment in the whole issue is Lancelot realizing that he’s stumbled ass-backward into the role of too-be-scorned lover.) The rest of Rose Red’s round table has also fallen into place as of this issue. I recognize that this makes issue 137 something of an administrative necessity — something I tend to decry in mainstream superhero comics — but the particulars of this universe are just so enchanting that I can’t hold a grudge against it. I mean, come on: one of Rose Red’s knights is a plush cat named Sir Wellstuffed.

Oh my god, let’s give him a hug!

Drew: Rick Remender’s Black Science 3 continues in the format of the previous issue, ping-ponging between the team’s now-just-trying-to-stay-alive mission and the events immediately leading up to it. We now understand that the seemingly random mix of people on this trip (including an underdressed stiff from corporate and a couple of kids) are here entirely by accident. I’m happy to get those bits of backstory, but I’m also getting excited for the next jump — as interesting as the “reverse manifest destiny” of their current bizarro World War I world, it doesn’t really hold a candle to the sheer inventiveness of the “fish-men vs. frog-people, all on the back of giant turtles” world of the first issue. This series may have some out-there sci-fi concepts, but the real what-the-fuckerry comes from the fantasy lands it can come up with.

Speaking of fantasy crashing into sci-fi, the cover of All-Star Western 27 promises to introduce the “Man of Yesterday” to “The Man of Tomorrow.” Hex’s conversation with Superman is ultimately a dead-end, and largely less interesting than most of his recent pairings — for me, the fun of Hex in the modern day is seeing him interact with real-world, mundane stuff, not insane, difficult to believe when you really think about it comic book stuff. His reaction to Superman and his abilities is probably closer to what any real person’s would be — we’ve just become desensitized to it.

The rest of the issue appeals to me a bit more, as Jonah is forced to confront his own mythology. Much of the moralizing only strikes glancing blows, but Hex is thoroughly icked out when presented with his own corpse. Again, his reaction is probably more universal than specific to him, but I am curious about exactly what’s bothering him. Is it the prospect of seeing his own corpse, or is it the thought that, even in death, his body will know no peace? This issue doesn’t quite dig into this subject, but I suspect the series might get around to it sooner rather than later.

Patrick: I saw that as Hex being okay with the thought of his legacy in the abstract. Like, it’s interesting to him to see all of the things he holds dear held in the same esteem that he does. The problem comes with seeing himself as a hero — or whatever kind of idolatry they’ve got going on there. Drew, you’re right that the issue doesn’t quite give us enough information to determine what drives his freak out, but the whole episode does make you think about what Jonah values. He seems like such a lone-gun type – maybe it’s because he doesn’t like inflicting himself on others, and this exhibit is a weird, postmortem expression of that.

We’ll wrap things up with the Green Lantern Corps Annual 2, which brings the three-way conflict between the GLC, the Durlans and the Sciencell prisoners to a head. This series has something of a problem with introductions – Venditti and Jensen love introducing more characters into the GL stew. It’s fun to see how the GLs can turn the tide on the Durlans by getting the criminals to switch sides, but the flashbacks to color in each of these characters gets exhausting fast. This one was a tribal warrior! This one met superman! This one was wrongfully imprisoned! The whole thing turns into an exercise in Origin Story Pointalism, but rather than drawing attention to what’s unique and interesting about each dot, they all wash together in a sea of meaninglessness.

If there is one tastey little mythology nugget, it comes at the end of the issue: Von Daggle — a Durlan Green Lantern that’s been slingin’ since the days of yore — is still out there. I usually groan and roll my eyes at the idea of the super-elite Green Lantern Corps (like, what the fuck does that even mean?), but I had forgotten that their leader was Durlan. We know that Jensen has been clued in to the history of GL mythology, what with all the cameos in the title so far, but it’s cool to see him drawing less obvious connections, and expanding the mythos.

The conversation doesn’t stop there, because you certainly read something that we didn’t. What do you wanna talk about from this week?