Tag Archives: Reed Richards

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

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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.

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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 →

Nov 11 2013

Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe 1

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Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe 1, originally released November 6th, 2013.

Patrick: This summer at E3, two of the biggest brands in video gaming had to pitch their new systems at an audience that hadn’t had to think about new consoles in years. It’s an absurd proposition when you think about it: spend $400 dollars on one of these boxes so you can play games (oh by the way, you can keep playing games on the boxes you already own). Technologically, the boxes are nearly identical, but something has to separate Sony from Microsoft, so the small differences suddenly became the biggest. In one of the biggest dick-moves I’ve ever seen come out of the conference, Sony specifically pointed to all of those tiny flaws in Microsoft’s XBox One, and said “yeah, we’re not making those mistakes.” There’s something refreshingly honest about Sony embracing the ‘us vs. them’ mentality that the fans have been espousing forever. Especially in light of DC’s reboot and their current editorial woes, Marvel is well-poised to make few quiet assertions about what they’re proud to be… and a few things they’re proud not to be. 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 →

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 →