I'll get back to you on that second part.
War of Kings #1
Written By Danny Abnett and Andy Lanning or DnA, if you must
Art By Paul Pelletier
Wait, Paul Pelletier, the guy who drew that crappy Outsiders comic I talked about last week? I would have assumed that most people who drew C-list superhero comics from the mid 90s had been washed out of the industry...but, well, there you go. Not that the art in that Outsiders issue or this issue is particularly bad or anything.
Anyway, this book isn't so much bad as confusing. And by confusing, I mean, confusing in the sense of "Why does this book exist?" It's a story about two groups of characters that no one really cares about fighting each for reasons that no one cares about.
On the one hand, it's not bad, but on the other, Vulcan's just a shitty character when you get right down to it. His backstory is, "There was this third Summers brother, and Charles Xavier brought him into to save the team from Krakatoa way back when, but they weren't very good at it, so most of them got killed, and Xavier wiped them from everyone else's memory because it was kind of embarrassing how much they sucked. So anyway, Vulcan wasn't quite dead, so he came back to Earth some number of years later, killed Banshee, got shot into space, took over the Shi'ar Empire and, well, you get the idea."
See, the problem is that he's basically a character too hopelessly tied into the worst bits of X-Men continuity to ever again tie into mainstream books, but he's done too much not to have his story resolved somewhere...
...And that's why he's now fighting the Inhumans who got involved because apparently one of them got married to Ronan the Accuser in some comic that I never read. If that's your sort of thing, great, otherwise...well...
It is probably as close as anyone's going to get to DnA ever coming back to the Legion, so that's got to count for something.
Solomon Grundy #1
Written By Scott Kolins...wait, but I thought....
Art By Scott Kolins...uh oh
Wow...this is not good...by a lot. First of all, isn't the Phantom Stranger supposed to stand around and give cryptic advice, not deliver exposition and order other people around?
Second, is Solomon Grundy really popular enough to warrant his own series?
Basically, Solomon Grundy has one week to find the man who killed him and forgive him, and if he' successful at this, he'll be freed from the shackles of rebirth, basically. So the Golden Age Green Lantern takes him to Slaughter Swamp to find clues, they get ambushed by Etrigan (you know, the demon that talks in rhymes) and they end the issue by teasing that next issue will involve Bizarro.
Except it's ten times worse than it sounds.
Dark Reign: Fantastic Four #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Sean Chen
Basically Reed Richards believes that all of the bad things, like Civil War and Secret Invasion were all his fault, so he builds a machine that will allow him to see how he handled the problem in other realities. Meanwhile, Norman Osborn plans to seize the Baxter Building because, well, I guess why not? But Richards' plan goes horribly, horribly wrong.
How wrong? Well, ask me next issue. You see, this comic is twenty-two pages of set up, and, well, it doesn't really need that much time to set up, especially since it's not the main book, and is, in fact, a crossover, although given how the issue ends, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's probably a crossover in name only.
So, it's a story that doesn't go anywhere, and most likely has little to do with Dark Reign when all is said and done. Buy at your own peril.
Black Panther (v5) #2
Written by Reginald Hudlin
Art by Ken Lashley
Okay, let's talk a little about Wakanda. You see, Wakanda is, according to this blurb on the recap page, "high-tech, resource-rich, ecologically sound paradise that is unmatched anywhere on the world," and it's run by a monarch. As you might guess, the idea of Wakanda was created during the Silver Age, when these sort of magical countries were fine because they were usually the least crazy thing happening.
But it's not the Silver Age anymore, and I kind of feel like looking at this book and saying stuff like, "resource-rich, eh? Too bad that they're ecologically friendly attitude means they can't actually take advantage of a lot of those resources."
Or, "so wait, there's a paradise in the middle of Africa, and people aren't moving there from all over the continent? Really?"
Or, "So, wait, we have a post-industrial economy that due to its technological achievement can't help but shed some of its isolationist ways, and yet they're really cool with not only being led by a hereditary monarch, but a hereditary monarch who dresses up like a panther and fights crime...mainly in America."
Or, "So the U.S. government, who legally passed the Super-hero Registration Act didn't attack the Wakandans the second their head of state actively broke their laws and helped to cause a massive street brawl in New York City." (As seen in Civil War #7) Actually the answer to that one would have been, "the Wakandans would totally have fought the Americans off with their super-advanced weapons."
Anyway, in case anyone's wondering, the new Black Panther looks to be T'Challa's sister, who apparently had exactly the same upbringing and training as the original. I couldn't possibly care less.
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