Category Marvel

Oct 29 2013

Young Avengers 11

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Today, Spencer and (guest writer) Suzanne are discussing Young Avengers 11, originally released October 23rd , 2013. 

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Spencer: You don’t just wake up the day you turn 18 or 21 and immediately become an adult. There’s no ceremony or initiation. Adulthood is subjective, and most of us spend the majority of our twenties trying to figure out just what it means, or even actively fighting against the idea of growing up. It’s a difficult transition period of our lives to navigate, and the only thing that could make it worse is throwing a multidimensional parasite and a league of evil exes on top of it. That’s exactly what Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie do in Young Avengers 11; while the issue mostly sets up the plot and characters for the final battle against Mother, it’s anchored by the various characters’ viewpoints about becoming adults. Continue reading →

Oct 28 2013

Thunderbolts 17

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Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Thunderbolts 17, originally released October 23rd, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Communism was just a red herring.

Wadsworth, Clue

Patrick: We’re used to seeing clues pop up in detective stories. Even when those stories are as farcical as Clue, we always try to sort through the bits the matter and those that don’t. Any piece of information that doesn’t pay off can be referred to as a “red herring” – a literary device so well-known, the characters within the story will be able to point them out. It’s superfluous information, dressed up as the key to understanding the mystery. Charles Soule has accomplished something quite the opposite with his Thunderbolts Infinity crossover: we’re told repeatedly that the alien invasion and the resultant war between the Avengers and Thanos’ army are of little concern to our trusty Thunderbolts – particularly Punisher, Venom and Elektra. But just as it seems like Punisher’s myopic obsession with taking out the Paguro family is about to payoff, Infinity intrudes on his plans in a way he just can’t ignore. Turns out that red herring was worth paying attention to in the first place.

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Oct 28 2013

Daredevil 32

daredevil 32

Today, Ethan and Drew are discussing Daredevil 32, originally released October 23rd, 2013. 

Ethan: There have been a couple of times now that I’ve wondered aloud about whether this or that character in Daredevil is about to die. Sometimes with tongue in cheek, like when we saw the crooked judge take a pot shot at Matt in the courthouse, or with a little more concern like at the end of the last issue, where we saw something that looked like Foggy hanging from the neck in a darkened room. I don’t know if it’s just coincidence or a concerted effort by Mark Waid to always seem like he’s killing off one of his characters, but guess what: in Daredevil 32, I think he’s really done it. He’s gone and punched Matt Murdock’s ticket.

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Oct 25 2013

Wolverine and the X-Men 37

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Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Wolverine and the X-Men 37, originally released October 23rd, 2013. This issue is part of the Battle of the Atom event. Click here for our complete coverage of Battle of the Atom.

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Patrick: Marvel and DC are known for their outrageously fun sandboxes. Each publisher has an impossibly large sack of toys to play with, and creators work their entire lives to have access to them. And when they finally get their hands on those toys, the gloves come off, and the story telling gets ambitious, bombastic and spectacular in every sense of that word. Brian Bendis, Brian Wood and Jason Aaron may have been given access to a shallower sandbox, but their gleeful deployment of several versions and generations of the same handful of characters has cast an enormous number of iconic characters into the spotlight. We’ve had the pleasure of watching them wrestle with the emotional result of all of these characters coming together, but Wolverine and the X-Men 37 finally gives us the Battle Royale (of the Atom) we’ve been waiting for. It trips every pleasure-center in my lizard brain, and I’m suddenly 9 years old, playing with my toys in my childhood bedroom. In this way, Battle of the Atom achieves something amazing — not only do I have to confront time traveling X-Men, I have to reconcile my own prepubescent excitement, as it rockets from the past and lands squarely in the present. Continue reading →

Oct 23 2013

The Superior Spider-Man 19

superior spider-man 19Today, Shelby and Ethan are discussing The Superior Spider-Man 19, originally released October 16th, 2013.

Shelby:  Self-awareness is a very important strength to have. You need to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, to exist in the world with other people. Sometimes you need to put your head down and push through a situation, and sometimes (more importantly, I think) you need to know when you can’t do something and ask for the help you need. The problem comes in when the help you need is in the form of erased memories of a man who used to be in the body you currently occupy.

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Oct 22 2013

Uncanny X-Men 13

Alternating Currents: Uncanny X-Men 13, Taylor and Shelby

Today, Taylor and Shelby are discussing Uncanny X-Men 13, originally released October 16th, 2013. This issue is part of the Battle of the Atom event. Click here for our complete coverage of Battle of the Atom.

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Taylor: Mutants share a special connection with one another. Given that they’re discriminated against and face obstacles your average human would never face, it only seems natural that they would find solace in each other’s company. For that reason alone, many a mutant (in particular those who are X-Men) find the idea of mutant fighting mutant to be a violation of an unspoken mutant rule. However, just because mutants are united in their tribulations doesn’t mean they always agree on everything. The classic case of this is the struggle between Magneto and Professor X, who share different ideas of the role mutants should play in the future of humanity. But they aren’t the only two mutants to ever disagree on something and in Uncanny X-Men 13, part of the Battle of the Atom event, we see mutant battling mutant and the anger and sadness it causes.

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Oct 21 2013

New Avengers 11

new avenger 11 infinityToday, Spencer and Patrick are discussing New Avengers 11, originally released October 16th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Spencer: When Infinity was first announced, we knew very little about it besides the fact that it would be vaguely connected to writer Jonathan Hickman’s two Avengers books and that Thanos was involved; once the first issue dropped, I declared that it was “the story if what happens when two different universe-ending threats hit at the same time, leaving the Earth absolutely helpless.” We’re over two-thirds of the way through the crossover and those words are still mostly holding true, but New Avengers 11 takes this concept to a place I would have never expected when Infinity began — yet a place that makes perfect sense — by tying the space-bound and Earth-bound threats together. Continue reading →

Oct 21 2013

Indestructible Hulk Special 1

hulk special 1Today, Greg and Taylor are discussing Indestructible Hulk Special 1, originally released October 16th, 2013. This issue is part of the three-part Arms of the Octopus story.

Greg: A friend of mine asked me the other night, “If a guy teleported in front of you, told you he was a time traveler, and asked what year it was, how would you respond?” We’re both comedy folks, so I imagine he was looking to start riffing. Yet rather than fire off any number of instinctual punchlines (“What year is it? Why, it’s Christmas Year, sir!” is one of the many perfect ideas I had), I decided to pause, think, and mull over what I, Greg Smith, human being, would actually do if that actually happened.

“I would probably try to ask him who he was, stammer out panicked words, and then fall over.” And that truth, over any dumb joke I could’ve invented, made him laugh.
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Oct 18 2013

Avengers 21

avengers 21 infinityToday, Ethan and Drew are discussing Avengers 21, originally released October 16th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

infinity dividerEthan: The Infinity arc has been many things: ambitious, epic, nail-biting, repetitive, crowded. The adjective that perhaps best describes the current bit of the story — Avengers #21 — is “compressed.” We’ve groused a bit about the many angles through which we were forced to watch the events of Starbrand wiping out a Builder fleet and an Avenger strike team freeing their teammates, so maybe this issue is a welcome departure from the exhaustive coverage of the previous battles. Yet I’d almost welcome an alternate perspective / re-hashing of the events of this issue, because it was anything but drawn-out. We get the meditations of supercomputers, hand-to-hand fighting across 6 different planets, absurdly dangerous decisions made by a handful of commanders far from the fighting. The brink of despair, total salvation, all in a couple dozen pages.

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Oct 17 2013

Hawkeye 13

hawkeye 13Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Hawkeye 13, originally released October 16th, 2013.

Shelby: FINALLY! Six months ago, something terrible happened to our favorite hot mess Clint Barton. I won’t spoil it here before the jump, but if you’ve been reading this title you know what I’m talking about. Matt Fraction has taken us on a whirlwind tour of everyone’s involvement and reactions, and I mean everyone: the man responsible, Kate, Lucky the Dog, even Clint’s brother. The one voice who’s been silent is the one I’ve been most eager to hear. That is, of course, Clint, and finally today Fraction, David Aja, and Matt Hollingsworth tell us Clint’s side of the story. It’s exactly as heartbreaking and lonely as you would expect.
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