Tag Archives: Brian Michael Bendis

Jun 21 2013

Age of Ultron 10

age of ultron 10 AU

Today, Drew are Shelby are discussing Age of Ultron 10, originally released June 19th, 2013. This issue is part of the Age of Ultron crossover event. Click here for complete AU coverage.

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Drew: Age of Ultron 9 found Taylor asking “What is time?” It’s something so central to our perception of the world, yet something we barely understand. Issue 10 continues the trend of focusing on subjects at the edge of our scientific understanding, this time taking up the question “What is reality?” What really are these things we believe to be true? History, as they say, is written by the victors (and re-written by whoever beats them, and so on), suggesting that “reality” might be a bit more subjective than we like to think. But what if the victors could actually alter history, not just our retellings of it? What if reality was objectively malleable? That’s kind of the question this series has been asking all along, but its conclusion puts a finer point on it, making the very fabric of Marvel’s “reality” the focus of this issue. Continue reading →

Jun 13 2013

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

guardians of the galaxy 3

Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Guardians of the Galaxy 3, originally released June 12th, 2013.

Shelby:  I AM GROOT!
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Jun 13 2013

Guardians of the Galaxy: Infinite Comics 1-4

guardians infinite 1-4Today, Patrick, Shelby, Mikyzptlk and Drew are discussing Guardians of the Galaxy: Infinite Comics 1-4, originally released March 6th, March 20th, April 10th and May 1st, 2013. 

Patrick: Marvel Studios makes no great secret of their film plans. We already know that a Guardians of the Galaxy movie is to be released in 2014 as part of their second phase of Avengers movies. Unlike Thor or Hulk or Iron Man, regular movie goers have absolutely no idea who these “Guardians” are, and — truth be told — I could use the introduction as well. Enter: Guardians of the Galaxy: Infinite Comic, a series of free digital comics that will introduce the four non-human members of the team.

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Jun 7 2013

All-New X-Men 12

all new x-men 12

Today,  Shelby and Mikyzptlk are discussing All-New X-Men 12, originally released June 5th, 2013.

Shelby: Making a mistake is a simple matter. Whether it’s your fault or not, when you make a mistake you acknowledge the error, fix it as best you can, and apologize. Provided you’re not a total asshole, of course. Nothing is ever so simple in ComicBookWorldLand, though; when you can be suddenly possessed by some sort of malevolent cosmic entity, that adds a lot of layers to the idea of mistakes and culpability. Things can get really complicated really quickly, and if there’s anyone who isn’t going to understand a nuanced situation, it’s going to be a bunch of teenagers.

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Jun 6 2013

Age of Ultron 9

age of ultron 9 AU

Today, Taylor are Patrick are discussing Age of Ultron 9, originally released June 5th, 2013. This issue is part of the Age of Ultron crossover event. Click here for complete AU coverage.

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Taylor: What is time? This is perhaps one of the most fundamental questions to human existence, and as such, it has been discussed by mankind since time immemorial.  While philosophers and physicists debate about what exactly time is (it’s a question that still rages today), science fiction and pop culture have popularized the question by using it in a countless number of plots and stories. So none of us should be surprised that a comic book entitled the Age of Ultron (my emphasis) would come to center its plot on time travel and its consequences. Indeed, with time travel we have seen a proliferation of ages in this event increase exponentially, the consequence of which has been the raising of an eyebrow both for better and for worse. Yet while the plot of Ultron isn’t always all that original, issue nine raises the question of what exactly time is and what the consequences of traveling through it could be.

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May 28 2013

Uncanny X-Men 6

uncanny x-men 6Today, Ethan and Drew are discussing Uncanny X-Men 6, originally released May 22nd 2013.

Ethan: One evening in college, I was getting ready to turn in a paper that was due the next day. It was all written & polished, so I was just going to skim it one last time and make sure there weren’t any glaring issues. As the file loaded, Word showed a popup window, which I dismissed without reading in the same way you click “I agree” at the bottom of Terms & Conditions. Computers are always showing popup messages, right? They’re usually redundant, whatever. The first page of my paper rendered as a solid mass of gibberish: letters, numbers, and symbols smashed together without spaces… as did the rest of it. 15 pages of junk characters. Alarmed, I closed the file without saving & re-opened it; it turns out that the popup window was warning me that the file was corrupted. As I sat there, in the fading light of the last day before I had to turn this thing in, I thought about what it would take to reproduce the paper from scratch: all the quotes, analysis, and dozens of footnotes containing the specific page references. All of which didn’t exist anywhere else, neither as a hard copy nor digital. While I knew I could pull it together again given some time, in that moment I was overwhelmed with trying to figure out how I was going to make the situation work. While writing a paper isn’t quite the same thing as fighting a giant, fireball-headed master of a hell-dimension, the characters in Brian Michael Bendis’s Uncanny X-Men 6 are definitely up the creek without a paddle (OR MLA-formatted citations).

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May 17 2013

Age of Ultron 8

age of ultron 8 AU

Today, Patrick are discussing Age of Ultron 8, originally released May 15th 2013. This issue is part of the Age of Ultron crossover event. Click here for complete AU coverage.

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Patrick: A few weeks ago, I noted that I wasn’t having very much fun with the whole Age of Ultron concept – issue after issue of pure, relentless destruction and doom was getting to me. But that started to feel like the point: Brian Michael Bendis was taking my comic-book-fan apocalypse-lust and rubbing my nose in it. When the heroes decided they had to take drastic action and travel through time to fight Ultron on his inventor on different chronal fronts, I cheered the initiative. Anything to stop the suffer-slog through devastated cityscapes. But as the series moves further and further away from what’s familiar in the Marvel Universe, the harder it is to get a grasp on the story. Continue reading →

May 6 2013

All-New X-Men 11

all new x-men 11

Today, Drew and guest writer Charles Cress are discussing All-New X-Men 11, originally released May 1st, 2013.

Drew: Superhero comics have a strange line to walk when it comes to serialization. We want a sense of forward movement — we want the characters to grow and change — but we also want to read stories with them forever. In essence, we want the excitement of serialization (your LOSTs or your Breaking Bads) with the comfort of a more episodic structure (your Seinfelds or your Law and Orders). The problem with that is when something we expect to move forward doesn’t, we notice it. “Wheel spinning.” This is strictly a problem with expectations — nobody would ever accuse an episodic series of spinning its wheels — but Brian Michael Bendis has done such a stellar job at telling a propulsive story in All-New X-Men, it’s a little jarring when issue 11 retraces its steps.

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Apr 30 2013

Uncanny X-Men 5

uncanny x-men 5

Today, Ethan and Patrick are discussing Uncanny X-Men 5, originally released April 24th 2013.

Ethan: Each of us has at least two definitions of self – the one we show to the world, and the one we identify as our true self. The external definition — the mask — is usually a tool we use to fit in. Perhaps your mask is funnier than you believe the “real” you truly is, or more confident, or more flippant, or more compassionate. Some of us may present a version of ourselves that is not too different than the one we believe to be true; others of us may show a face that’s more dramatically different than our internal, hidden one. Whatever the distance between the public and private self, whatever qualities you infuse into this living theater of personality, you — and only you — can fully plumb the difference. That is of course, assuming that you know who the “true” you is. In Uncanny X-Men #5, Brian Michael Bendis begins to peel back the figurative and literal masks worn by Magik, reminding us of her past and exploring the present condition of the rebel mutants.

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Apr 17 2013

Age of Ultron 8 PREVIEW

age of ultron preview

Age of Ultron 8 comes out on May 13th, 2013 and is written by Brian Michael Bendis with Art by Brandon Peterson. Click here for our complete Age of Ultron coverage.

Marvel’s previews for these things are getting increasingly obtuse. Okay, what do we have here? Someone in the Iron Man armor sorting through images of Ultron’s destruction. The logical question – who’s in that armor? Unless Tony’s had a rough couple weeks, that ain’t him. I’ll get the ball rolling with wild speculation: LOST’s John Locke.

Also, the cover suggests we’ll see some of Sue and Wolverine’s adventures in the past. That could be fun.

Preview a couple pages after the jump. Continue reading →