Tag Archives: Mr. Fantastic

Dec 16 2014

Avengers 39

avengers 39Today, Spencer and Mark are discussing Avengers 39, originally released December 10th, 2014. 

Spencer: When you read enough comics, you start to see certain repeated themes and styles emerge among various writers. Brian Michael Bendis is known for dialogue-heavy, somewhat decompressed comics. Kieron Gillen makes no attempt to hide his musical influences and knack for clever dialogue. Geoff Johns loves to rehabilitate long-forgotten or mishandled characters and concepts (and is also a bit infamous for cutting off his characters’ arms). Jonathan Hickman, meanwhile, is probably best known for his cerebral, somewhat detached style of writing that can spend years setting things up before finally letting all the dominos fall into place. With this week’s Avengers 39 we’re getting closer and closer to the end of Hickman’s Avengers epic, but the most interesting part of the issue is the commentary Hickman seems to be making on his own writing style. Continue reading →

Jun 16 2014

New Avengers 19

new avengers 19Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing New Avengers 19, originally released June 11th, 2014. 

slim-bannerSpencer: The more I look at the following panels, the more I realize how succinctly they sum up the primary conflict of Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti’s New Avengers 19.

Are we monsters, or are we DEVO?The Illuminati are no longer concerned about whether they can stop the Incursions without destroying inhabited worlds (spoiler alert: they can’t), nor are they any longer concerned about their mission turning them into monsters (they seem to have realized that it’s all but inevitable, and the title of this issue is even “We Are All Monsters Now,” as if to dissuade the reader of any hope otherwise); instead, the million dollar question now seems to be whether it’s better to die with one’s morality intact or to save the universe, but at the cost of one’s own soul.

Continue reading →

May 15 2014

New Avengers 18

new avengers 18Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing New Avengers 18, originally released May 14th, 2014. 

slim-bannerSpencer: As I’m sure most of us do, I love the big, climatic final battles that usually come at the end of superhero stories. That said, I’m perhaps even more fond of the moments before the final battle, the calm before the storm, the time where the heroes prepare and steady themselves for the horrors to come. Many heroes use this as an opportunity to reflect on what they’ve lost or to visit with their loved ones, but the Illuminati — as pragmatic as ever — mainly use it to steel their resolve and to prepare to do the unthinkable. After all, for them this is only the final battle if they lose; if they win, they get to continue on dealing with an infinite number of Incursions. No wonder they’re so grumpy. Continue reading →

Apr 1 2014

New Avengers 16

new avengers 16Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing New Avengers 16, originally released March 26th, 2014. 

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Spencer: What do you do when a problem has you stumped, when you’ve tried everything you can think of to fix it, but nothing works? Perhaps you ask for help, hoping that a fresh set of eyes will provide a new perspective, or perhaps you examine how others have solved similar problems in hopes of finding an answer. Lately the Illuminati have been taken both approaches in their attempts to end the Incursions. The Mirror has provided them with an endless variety of alternate Earths to observe, but no matter how things differ on the various worlds, so far they have all been recognizable as versions of the Marvel Universe. Not so, though, in Jonathan Hickman and Rags Morales’ New Avengers 16, where we get to see how the heroes of the distinguished competition might handle an Incursion. Continue reading →

Mar 18 2014

Fantastic Four 2

fantastic four 2Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Fantastic Four 2, originally released March 12th, 2014.

Patrick: I don’t like the way James Robinson writes dialogue. Don’t like it. He invents unnecessarily awkward contractions; his characters use cliché superhero rhetoric; there are frequent problems with subject-verb agreement; and he’ll mix up countable and uncountable objects (using words like “fewer” and “less” incorrectly). I can accept some of these “mistakes” as affectations of Robinson’s characters: lord knows Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm aren’t going to edit the words that come out of their mouths. But dialogue is like 5% of a comic, right? As long as the art and incident are compelling, a few glaringly stupid sentences shouldn’t bother me, right? RIGHT!? Continue reading →

Jan 7 2014

New Avengers 13.INH

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Today, Spencer and Ethan are discussing New Avengers 13, originally released December 31st, 2013. 

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Spencer: When you need to fight evil dictators or invading aliens, you call the Avengers, but when you find yourself facing threats a tad more existential, threats that can’t just be punched in the face, you call the Illuminati. Indeed, the Illuminati have spent most of writer Jonathan Hickman’s run on New Avengers trying to solve the Incursion problem, but in this month’s issue they find themselves faced with a threat much more tangible, yet just as overwhelmingly impossible as the Incursions themselves. As Doctor Strange says, the Black Priests are eviler than evil, “darker than dark.” Continue reading →

Dec 5 2013

Inhumanity 1

inhumanity 1 INH

Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Inhumanity 1, originally released December 4th, 2013.

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Spencer: First issues are hard to pull off well. They have to be as exciting as possible to ensure that readers come back for issue two, yet they also have to somehow find space to establish a whole new world/concept/set of characters and make sure the readers aren’t lost; if those two goals sound completely incompatible, well, they often are. Matt Fraction’s task in Inhumanity 1 is made even more difficult by the Inhumans’ long and complicated history. Fraction goes out of his way to make sure we understand everything we could ever possibly need to know about the Inhumans in this issue, but unfortunately, it leaves little room for actual story—or excitement.

Continue reading →

Dec 3 2013

New Avengers 12

new avengers 12 infinityToday, Spencer and Patrick are discussing New Avengers 12, originally released November 27th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Spencer: Unsurprisingly for a group that claims to rule the world in secret, the Illuminati functions much like a government. Both are made up of various individuals each supposedly dedicated to bettering the world (or their country, whatever), but who are also devoted to personal causes of their own which quite often cause major conflicts of interest. In the past, we’ve worried that these conflicts could tear the Illuminati apart, but New Avengers 12 flips that situation by showing the Illuminati putting aside their differences (if only temporarily); their actions keep the world safe, but do serious damage to their personal lives. Continue reading →

Nov 29 2013

Infinity 6

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Today, Ethan and Spencer are discussing Infinity 6, originally released November 27th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Ethan: When I was starting college, I knew – objectively – that I would at some point no longer be a student; I’d graduate, get a job, do the adulthood thing. But at the time, steeped in the day-to-day evasion of and frantic return to schoolwork, hanging out with friends, sleeping as little as possible, the thought if college actually ending rarely crossed my mind. And then BAM it was time to get up to go to the early-morning rehearsal for the graduation ceremony. College was finished, I was moving into a new apartmen and starting a new job. That sense of disconnect – when something long awaited feels as though it happens and is shoved into the past before we have the chance to actually experience – is the same feeling I’ve gotten during most of the turning points in the Infinity event, and the same is true of its finale. Continue reading →

Oct 31 2013

Infinity 5

Alternating Currents: Infinity 5, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Infinity 5, originally released October 30th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Drew: The ubiquity of three-act structures often makes the form of a story predictable. We know what’s supposed to happen in a second act — even if we don’t know the specifics of a given story — but what happens when a narrative breaks that structure? Infinity takes the form of a six-part miniseries, with primary crossovers into ten other issues. To further complicate things, the series has long followed an A/B structure as the avengers face two very different threats in very different locations, and the event itself could be described as the third (or second and third) act(s) of narratives started in Avengers and New Avengers. What do we expect of the fifth issue of Infinity (itself the twelfth issue of the event)? What it supposed to happen? Unfortunately, writer Jonathan Hickman doesn’t offer a particularly compelling answer in the issue itself. Continue reading →