...it's the right thing to do? No, well, let's get on with it then.
Young X-Men #12
Written By Marc "Deus Ex Marchina" Guggenheim
Art By Rafa Sandoval and Daniel Acuna
Now last time I reviewed Young X-Men I assumed that they would bring Dust back to life via the use of an unreal Danger Room scenario, but I was wrong, and I apologize for insinuating that Marc Guggenheim would use a cheap stunt like that to bring a character no one really cared about back to like.
Anyway, it turns out that the future-that-went-horribly-wrong from last issue (which I believe is about the landmark 100th time that plot device has been used in an X-Men book), was caused by the events in this issue...I think. However, obviously that future isn't going to come to pass, because with the cancellation of this title, its characters have been reassigned to C-list cannon fodder duty, and therefore are likely to be killed, one by one, in order to help sell the villainy of new antagonists for years to come. Oh, it's not a pleasant duty, but it's part of the circle of superhero life.
You see, team books make sense because there are more characters, and therefore a better chance of creating someone that readers actually like. Of course, for every success in today's market, there are bunches of failures, and you have to do something with them.
Invincible #60
Written By Robert Kirkman
Art By Ryan Ottley
Speaking of cannon fodder, this issue of Invincible is a bold experiment in comic bookery, trying to reduce an entire summer crossover-sized story into one issue, a bold response to the typical bloated epics that the Big Two put out.
Okay, so this issue isn't very good, but that doesn't mean that the central idea of making more contained stories is wrong, just that too much of anything is a bad idea.
You see, the problem with this issue is that it seems like Kirkman's taking about a half-year's worth of story and just cramming it all into thirty pages. Most likely that's because Kirkman took about a half-year of stories and crammed them into thirty pages, which makes for an interesting gimmick, but not a particularly good story.
I mean, you have characters getting killed left and right, and the world being pretty much torn apart, and I can't help but feel that the gimmick wasn't worth...well, blowing everything up for. But I'm sure I'm in the minority on that one.
Ultimatum #3Written By Jeph "Destroyer of Heroes, Creator of Hush, Eater of Puppies" Loeb
Art By David Finch
You know, Marvel, no one's forcing you to keep up the Ultimate Line, you could just stop publishing it if it's really that bothersome to you. But giving it to Jeph Loeb....that's a fate worse than death.
Ultimatum is a miniseries about Magneto deciding, "Fuck it, I'm killing everyone and this time I'm serious," except he actually manages to be half-successful. So you have a lot of B-list versions of B-list Marvel superheroes biting the dust. It kind of smells of desperation, actually.
I guess what bugs me about this issue is this bizarre sequence that involves about a whole bunch of things that don't make sense in a row. First, the Blob manages to kill the Wasp in what is a major upset because you'd think someone whose power is shrinking would be able to survive against the least agile villain of all time. Anyway, then Hank Pym bites off the Blob's head because...he's angry...or hungry...or something. Then he decides he's going to bring back the Wasp in a robotic body (I'm assuming) but not before luring all of the suicide bombers that have surrounded him and his friends onto to him and then lumbering out a safe distance to sea. Which is kind of weird because both in this issue and Ultimate X-Men #100, which deals a lot more with the Madrox suicide bombers, it's implied that they actually have the ability to think....
You know, this comic just is bad, and analyzing it hurts my head, so I'm going to stop now.
Supergirl (v5) #39
Written By Sterling Gates
Art By Daniel Igle and Talent Caldwell
Who is Superwoman? Well, despite this being part three of the story, it's not quite clear, actually, and I can't say I really care. John Byrne may have degenerated into somewhat of a cariacture over the years, but he used to be a really good comic writer, and one of the smartest things he ever did was to effectively say that Superman was the only Kryptonian. It made Superman unique, and made his origin that much richer, because he was the only one of his kind throughout the universe.
Of course, it didn't stick, and before long there were pocket-universe Kryptonians, the return of Krypto and so on, but overall DC kept a pretty good handle on it...until something unexpected happened.
In the later 90s and early 00s, the existing version of Supergirl was some sort of half-alien, half-human, earth angel or something....thing that was, at least during the later stages of the comic, only tangentially related to the Superman mythos. Now, a book like that isn't going to last forever, even if you have a good writer like Peter David working on it, and he saw the writing on the wall. So, he did the smartest thing he could think of to drive up sales: He brought back the pre-crisis Kryptonian Supergirl. It didn't save the comic from being cancelled, and PAD had to put the old Supergirl in limbo before he left, but sales did rise. And thus the first real dent in the Kryptonian embargo was made.
A couple of years later, DC basically said, "Fuck it, we have the Supergirl trademark, we're going to make money on the goddamn Supergirl trademark," and assigned Jeph Loeb to bring back Supergirl. Of course that plan was half-savvy and half-imbecilic, because it involved Jeph Loeb creating a marquee character...which didn't work out to well, then they gave it to Greg Rucka, who lasted about three weeks before giving way to Joe Kelly, who burned out the last of the goodwill he earned from his run of Deadpool by turning Supergirl into a near-psychopath who managed to be batshit crazy, insufferably whiny, and boring at the same time.
Oh, they've tried to fix Supergirl since then, but the damage was done.
In this issue, Supergirl must find and capture the mysterious Superwoman for her mother in order to prove that she's not totally useless. Supergirl spends most of her time failing and then whining to her mother about her failure, but gets bailed out at the last minute because Superwoman is assigned to hunt Supergirl herself down.
Star Trek Countdown #3Written By Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Art By David Messina
Okay, so let me get this straight....here's what I know about the plot of the new Star Trek movie based solely on the issues of this miniseries and the trailer:
A few years after the last Star Trek Next Generation movie, Romulus gets blown up good, and that makes some dude named Nero a little less than happy. So he, blaming the Federation, and more specifically the crew of the Enterprise for the fiasco, decides to go back in time in order to get revenge on Captain Kirk, Spock and company, because...well, if you're going to back in time get some retroactive vengeance, you might as well make it worthwhile.
But Nero ends up in a time period where Kirk is but a student at Starfleet Academy, and somehow manages to create a situation where Kirk gains command of the Enterprise years before he did in the original timeline, and, for some reason that I'm really hoping is good in the movie, all of his future crewmates are there too...even those who should be children given the timeframe the movie is operating in.
And then...then...boy, this is not going to be a good movie, is it? It's going to be one of those movies that all of the major critics give decent enough reviews, but people who don't like Star Trek are going to forget about it in a matter of hours, and fans are going to be pissed.
Also, it just occurred to me that by having this film be the next Star Trek project after Enterprise, the producers thought that the best way to relaunch the Star Trek brand after a much-maligned prequel series that took painful and unnecessary liberties with continuity was to do a prequel movie that takes painful and unnecessary liberties with continuity.
P.S. Hey, Trekkies or Trekkers, or whatever, guess who's continuity has just been rebooted?
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