Marvel Round-Up: Comics Released 10/5/16

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We try to stay up on what’s going on at Marvel, but we can’t always dig deep into every issue. The solution? Our weekly round-up of titles coming out of Marvel Comics. Today, we’re discussing All-New Wolverine 13, Amazing Spider-Man 19, Death of X 1 and Doctor Strange 12. Come back on Friday for our discussion of Cage! 1 and on Wednesday for our discussion of Jessica Jones 1! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps 5

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Today, Michael and Spencer are discussing Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps 5, originally released September 28th, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Michael: One of my cardinal sins of writing about comics is leaving the artwork by the wayside in favor of a heavier focus on the narrative of a comic book issue. Similarly, I think we tend to primarily associate iconic superheroes with a specific writer instead of an artist. And while he’s worked on many different projects, I will always associate Ethan Van Sciver with Green Lantern. Continue reading

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 9/28/16

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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, we discuss Captain Kid 2, Star Trek Waypoint 1, Outcast 21, Snotgirl 3, and Surgeon X 1. Also, we discussed Josie and the Pussycats 1 on Monday and will be discussing Descender 15 on Tuesday and Star Wars 23 on Wednesday, so come back for those! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Marvel Round-Up: Comics Released 9/28/16

marvel-roundup50We try to stay up on what’s going on at Marvel, but we can’t always dig deep into every issue. The solution? Our weekly round-up of titles coming out of Marvel Comics. Today, we’re discussing Sam Wilson Captain America 13, Steve Rogers Captain America 5, Deadpool 19, Ms. Marvel 11, Spider-Gwen 12 and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 12. Also, we discussed Spider-Woman 11 Thursday and we’ll be discussing Deadpool Annual 1 on Tuesday so come back for those! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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DC Round-Up: Comics Released 9/28/16

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How many Batman books is too many Batman books? Depending on who you ask there ain’t no such thing! We try to stay up on what’s going on at DC, but we can’t always dig deep into every issue. The solution? Our weekly round-up of titles coming out of DC Comics. Today, we’re discussing Action Comics 964, Batgirl 3, Detective Comics 941, The Flash 7 and Hellblazer 2. Also, we’ll be discussing Wonder Woman 7 on Friday and Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps 5 on Wednesday so come back for those! As always, this article containers SPOILERS.

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Spider-Woman 11

Alternating Currents: Spider-Woman 11, Drew and Spencer

Today, Drew and Spencer are discussing Spider-Woman 11, originally released September 28th, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

The five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Drew: As a psychological heuristic, Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief is arguably as well-known as Freud’s id, ego, and super-ego structural model. However, that may make it one of the most misunderstood, as Kübler-Ross explains in the quote above. We often talk about those five stages as if they fall into a prescribed linear order, but it was never really meant to be understood in that way. Which is to say: someone experiencing grief may feel any or none of these feelings in any order or any combination. Grief is a remarkably complex phenomenon that everyone experiences differently — some might feel mostly depression or mostly denial, while others, like Jessica Drew in Spider-Woman 11, feel mostly anger. Continue reading

The Wicked + The Divine 1831 1

wicked-and-divine-1831-1Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing The Wicked + The Divine 1831 1, originally released September 21st, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

–George Santayana

Spencer: The Wicked + The Divine‘s Pantheon live in a perpetual cycle of rebirth: as the opening scrawl reminds us, these deities are reborn every 90 years, whether they like it or not. It’s unclear exactly how much the Pantheon can remember of their previous incarnations — if they remember anything at all — but I get the impression that however much they remember, it’s not enough. Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans use The Wicked + The Divine 1831 to give readers their first extended glimpse at a previous Pantheon, and it proves to be enlightening in many ways. Turns out the Pantheon are caught in quite a few perpetual cycles, and most of them are far more destructive than their rebirths. Continue reading

Marvel Round-Up: Comics Released 9/21/16

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We try to stay up on what’s going on at Marvel, but we can’t always dig deep into every issue. The solution? Our weekly round-up of titles coming out of Marvel Comics. Today, we’re discussing All-New Wolverine 12, Civil War II 5, Civil War II Choosing Sides 6, Mighty Thor 11, Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat 10, and Power Man and Iron Fist 8. Come back on Tuesday for our discussion of Karnak 5 and on Wednesday for our discussion of The Vision 11As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Batman 7 and Nightwing 5

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Today, Patrick and Spencer are discussing Batman 7 and Nightwing 5 (aka, parts one and two of “Night of the Monster Men”), originally released September 21, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Patrick: If I had to guess conservatively, I’d say that we’ve covered a billion crossover events over the last four years on Retcon Punch. These kinds of stories always beg the narrative question “why?” The commercial question is a lot easier to answer: I’m reading Batman, and I’m certainly not going to skip an issue of Batman, so I might as well pick up the attendant issues of Nightwing, Detective Comics, and whatever else might be participating in this story. The result is usually a tonal mess, superficially tying together the storytelling styles of a disparate set of teams with some arbitrary commonality. “Night of the Monster Men” cuts a different swath through the series bearing its banner, uniting them under one writer, the always excellent Steve Orlando, and a unified artistic vision. Continue reading

The Fix 5

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Today, Spencer and Drew are discussing The Fix 5, originally released September 14th, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Spencer: The stars of The Fix are not good people; Roy, especially, has been portrayed as completely immoral and self-serving. There’s one more aspect of his personality, though, that we shouldn’t forget, one which Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber thoroughly remind us of in The Fix 5: he’s pretty bad at being a criminal, too. Roy’s ability to break the law and get away with it has more to do with the corrupt institution he serves than his own skills, meaning he’ll squander any chance he has to progress as a criminal. For the citizens of The Fix‘s L.A., that’s probably a very good thing. Continue reading