Tag Archives: Emma Frost

Apr 5 2013

Age of Ultron 4

age of ultron 4 AU

Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Age of Ultron 4, originally released April 3rd, 2013. This issue is part of the Age of Ultron crossover event. Click here for complete AU coverage.

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Patrick: One of the things I’ve absolutely loved about picking up monthly comics is that I’ve had the opportunity to get know the work of a ton of great writers and artists. It pains me a little to think of how few people will ever read a funny exchange written by Jeff Lemire, and how few people will never see Adam Hughes masterful acting simply because they don’t read comics. Drew, Shelby and myself have been at this for over a year — I like to think we’re in the club now — and I have this brand new skill of identifying someone by their work. Brian Michael Bendis, the writer behind Age of Ultron is notorious for his massively decompressed stories, and between this series, Guardians of the Galaxy, and his X-Men books, I feel like I can spot his handiwork a mile away. But Age of Ultron is a special case, and its glacial pace allows almost every issue to be a Bryan Hitch vanity project. This makes it kind of tough to discuss in the same way we discuss other comics, but it’s clear now that this is the series’ identity – the problematic obsessions with character development and plot and theme are mine and not Ultron’s. Retcon Punch needs a new way to talk about comics. Alright, let’s see what we got. Continue reading →

Mar 29 2013

Age of Ultron 3

age of ultron 3 AU

Today, Mikyzptlk and Drew are discussing Age of Ultron 3, originally released March 27th, 2013. This issue is part of the Age of Ultron crossover event. Click here for complete AU coverage.

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Mikyzptlk: In any post-apocalyptic scenario, you can either give in to the destruction that surrounds you or you can find that one last sliver of hope to hang on to. The first two issues of this event have mostly centered on a group of defeated heroes who are on the verge of giving up hope. The resistance, if you could even call it that, was rudderless and quickly losing its steam. It was all quite depressing, if not in a fascinating kind of way. The latest issue of Age of Ultron reveals that perhaps not all hope is lost and, armed with a shiny new plan, our heroes start on a path that can hopefully lead them to victory.

Continue reading →

Mar 20 2013

Uncanny X-Men 1-3

uncanny x-men 1-3Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Uncanny X-Men 1-3, originally released February 13th, February 27th, and March 13th 2012, respectively.

Patrick: The X-Men are the perpetual outsiders. They’re different — that’s their whole shtick. Sometimes the X-Men don’t even get along with the X-Men. With Uncanny X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis doubles down on this outsiderness, pitting Cyclops’ band of merry mutants against every one — the government, the Avengers, the rest of the X-Men. It’s the rumblings of a truly unnerving mutant revolution.

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Mar 15 2013

Age of Ultron 2

age of ultron 2

Today, Ethan and Drew are discussing Age of Ultron 2, originally released March 13th, 2013. This issue is part of the Age of Ultron crossover event. Click here for complete AU coverage.

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Ethan: In recent years, after the financial markets fell screaming into their perennial nosedive, the city of Detroit hasn’t done so well. Workers who had spent their lives with a company were laid off, branches were closed, businesses died, buildings were abandoned. Over time, the violence of the changes and departures faded as the temperatures, wind, and microorganisms went to work. Materials that we associate with longevity — brick, stone, even plastics — took on a distinctly alien appearance of decay. The effect even got a name — “ruin porn” — and photographers from across the country flocked to capture the scenes. Reading through the second issue of Age of Ultron evokes the same mix of wonder and horror, albeit the decay is in much fresher stage, and the characters are fictional. Bryan Hitch continues to deliver impressive vistas of metropolis in its death throes, and writer Brian Michael Bendis fills these images with sparks of life as the heroes try to find their place in the new world.

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Mar 7 2013

Age of Ultron 1

age of ultron 1AU

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Age of Ultron 1, originally released March 6th, 2013. This issue is part of the Age of Ultron crossover event. Click here for complete AU coverage.

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Patrick: Y’all remember Battlestar Galactica? Until the show’s premise became too complicated to be expressed in a few simple sentence fragments, each episode would begin with the following titles projected across the screen:

The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan.

It’s exactly enough information to tease the world of the series. Yeah, there’s a lot more to it than that — this description makes no mention of the last scraps of humanity drifting through space in outdated battleships, or God or gods or Starbuck or Frak. It doesn’t have to: the purity of the threat represented by Cylons is so elemental and to render the rest beautiful, beautiful set-dressing to this central conflict. Battlestar would go on to tell a hundred compelling stories based of that clean slug-line, replete with rich themes and psychologically complex characters. Brian Michael Bendis’ Age of Ultron looks like it will have a great deal in common with BSG, the first such indication is a straightforward and agonizingly clean premise: “Hank Pym of the Avengers created an artificial intelligence known as Ultron. It hates humanity… and it has returned.” Game on.

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Jan 8 2013

All-New X-Men 5

all new x-men 5

Today, Patrick and guest writer Ethan Andyshack are discussing All-New X-Men 5, originally released January 2nd, 2013.

Patrick: I had to do a group English project in the first quarter of my Sophomore year in high school. We were on the Junior High / High School system, so this was actually my first year at the school, and sort of my first experience really having to work with new people. There were four of us, and because it was high school, we got together the night before the project was due to essentially do the whole project. I won’t bore you with the details of the project (gigantic literary baseball cards), but there came a point in the night where all three of my other group members thought we were done… but then I noticed that we had woefully neglected the assignment requirements and we actually had another night’s work ahead of us. This was around midnight, so we tabled the project for a second and had to decide which was worse: the unpleasant task of staying up all night or failure? We chose the former and still ended up just getting Bs.

This all relates to All-New X-Men, I promise.
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Jan 2 2013

All-New X-Men 4

Alternating Currents: All-New X-Men 4, Patrick and Drew

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing All-New X-Men 4, originally released December 19th, 2012.

Patrick: Time travel narratives end up appealing to our vague understandings of chaos theory and the butterfly effect (thanks Jurassic Park, for introducing those into our media-vocabulary). But usually that assumes a time-lapse: events unfold differently throughout time and our future is changed to match the changing past. All-New X-Men shows these same ripples, but throughout the present, as the emotional impact of Beast’s time-travel project effects everyone in turn. Instead of seeing a cause, and then skipping 25 years later to see the effect, we’re subjected to the slow, real pace of cause and effect. It makes for a much smarter, much more sincere time travel story. Oh and there are X-Men in it too. Continue reading →

Dec 12 2012

All-New X-Men 1-3

Alternating Currents: All-New X-Men 1-3, Drew and ShelbyToday, Drew and Shelby are discussing All-New X-Men 1-3, originally released November 7th, 21st, and December 5th 2012, respectively.

Drew: Regret is a funny thing. We’ve all felt it, even if for something as simple as wishing we had ordered that other thing that looked good on the menu. It comes in many flavors, from shame to wistfulness, but all require us to be removed in time from the event we regret. As an observation, that’s almost too obvious to mention — except when time stops working like we expect it to. We’re used to looking back, but how does regret work if you can look forward, as well? At the end of its first three issues, All-New X-Men seems poised to address this very notion, as we rapidly take the perspectives of people looking to their pasts, as their pasts gaze into their future. It’s a crazy idea, but just like the plan that brought it about, it might be just crazy enough to work. Continue reading →