Astonishing X-Men Volume 2 Hardcover for $23.09

Whedon continues his smash hit run on the X-Men with this final 12 issues of Astonishing X-Men. While the series continues after this, he’s not the writer on it. So how do these final 12 issues stack up?

This was the second art of the Whedon run of Astonishing X-Men, coming in at another 12 issues. There were a lot of story elements that Whedon set up in the first arc and he does quite the admirable job of taking an intergalactic X-Men story and tying up the loose ends.

The general gist of the plot is the X-Men decide to head to the home planet (Breakworld) of the primary villain from the first arc. They combine forces with SWORD, basically SHIELD in space, and they fly across the galaxy to prevent Breakworld from setting in motion a plan to destroy the Earth.

While this story is still a memorable one in X-Men history, it suffers from more issues than the first arc did. It’s not as interesting for one, the Kitty/Colossus situation can be seen from a mile away (though it’s satisfying that they finally build their relationship), and there’s a few outright stupid moves that were mind-boggling.

The primary stupid movie is the way that Breakworld’s inhabitants are planning to destroy the Earth…it makes no logical sense why they waited for the X-Men to arrive, and once they did arrive, why the Breakworld peeps didn’t immediately fire the weapon. It’s ridiculous to pretend all of Earth’s major heroes couldn’t figure out a way to stop one giant object. If they can take out Galactus and Thanos while he was wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, they can take care of this problem. The second issue was when Cyclops commits his clever ruse. It takes roughly 2 seconds to figure out why this “clever” idea would’ve failed, and by that, I mean he would’ve been disintigrated.

3.5/5. Very much worthwhile reading, and the story has pretty huge consequences for two of my favourite X-Men characters. While not nearly as good as the first Astonishing X-Men, that story feels incomplete unless you read this as well.

The Walking Dead Vol. 3 Hardcover for $19.79

With the positive tone in the last review, does the series stay on an entertaining path, or does it descend into mediocrity? Let’s find out!

The story starts with our now familiar group of characters adapting to the somewhat zombie-free life inside the jail. They’ve made it more habitable, restored electricty, fooled around with the riot gear, things are looking up. Building a stable life in a disastrous world filled with zombies isn’t quite that easy even in a prison, so there’s plenty of human conflict and character development that comes with the crew trying to adapt to their new lives, some of it is as downright depressing as life on the outside.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, something comes along to disturb their relative tranquility. A helicopter is seen overhead and crashes nearby. A few members of the group decide to go scope it out, leading them to a small inhabited village, which ends up being the main issue for the rest of the graphic novel. Soon enough, they find the village leader is a psychopath, many people within the village are mentally damaged beyond repair, few signs of humanity are left. It’s not an uncommon idea in zombie fiction, but a realistic one to consider. The suspense built through some of the situations was intense. Switching back to the prison and seeing how people are dealing without some of the main characters was interesting and well done. While some of the situations are almost overplayed, it’s not bad by any means.

The art was done just as well as the rest of the series. If you’ve liked it previously, you should like it now.

4/5. The evolution of the characters and the story continues well. If you enjoyed Volume 2, Volume 3 is a must-read.

Absolute Kingdom Come available at Amazon for $47.50

This short series is one of the better known DC events. It’s one of the best examples of Alex Ross’ work, just utterly gorgeous through every issue. The premise is that in the future, Superman, and most of the classic heroes, have retired. A new generation of heroes roam the streets, but their methods show they care little for what happens to the people they’re protecting, leading to a massive radioactive event that wipes out the food supplies of most of America.

Certain events lead Superman to change his mind, coming back to change the fate of the planet. The story build up involves a superhuman gulag, a human coalition against superheroes, leading to a giant war amongst superbeings. You can’t ask for much more than that!

The writing in it compliments the art well. It deals with hope, what it is to be a hero, how time changes us all, wonderful themes to play with. As far as DC comics go, I consider it a must-read.

5/5.

Dark Phoenix Saga for $16.49 currently at Amazon

I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this one, but I just straight up dislike the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Story starts off Professor X being back in the lives of the X-Men (he was gone for a while) and the X-Men discovering two new mutants, Dazzler, and Kitty Pryde. You’re brought into the rest quickly by seeing the Hellfire Club working over Jean, trying to exploit her for a nefarious purpose.

Soon enough she becomes Dark Phoenix, there’s a battle royale with the Hellfire Club, and Dark Phoenix makes her way out into the galaxy to become a true threat to existence. The best parts of the story were easily once Jean leaves the Earth.

Now, my primary problems? Certainly not that they’re ambitious with it and it had consequences for the X-Men for a very long time afterwards, that part was good. The thing is, I never felt excited or that interested by any of it. The writing, it comes off as bland. There were a lot of other X-Men comics of that era that I quite enjoyed, so I have no clue why this turned me off. Even when they’re out in the galaxy and going up against the Shi’ar, it didn’t do much for me.

The art? Well, it’s classic X-Men art. I like it, newer comic readers probably won’t, but it’s not the best of the classic X-Men art either.

2.5/5. I’ve read the Dark Phoenix Saga a few times in my life. When I was a little kid, in my teens, and now, for this review. I’ve never enjoyed it. It’s considered a classic and it was a storyline that had huge effects on the X-Men, so you should give it a whirl anyways, you might enjoy it.

A few days back I saw that some comics were priced ridiculously low on Amazon, $15 MSRP for titles that normally go from $50-$100. I posted about it and linked a few forums (I doubt I was the first, but I was pretty damn quick on the ball). Some other blogs noticed it and posted (including Bleedingcool, who claimed they broke the story, apparently stealing credit for news they didn’t find is a habit of theirs), and many of the titles launched up the charts, easily taking Amazon’s top 10 in book sales.

The deal was up for 16-20 hours, tens of thousands of orders were placed. When some titles hit the top 100, they were discounted an additional 45% to $8.45, a standard Amazon pricing strategy for top selling books. When Amazon finally took it down, they outright cancelled some people’s orders, some orders disappeared from people’s accounts, and some orders were shipped, including some of mine. Some people called and managed to have parts of their orders restored but pretty much everyone else was given a $25 credit, which I thought was incredibly generous of Amazon considering how many orders were placed. As best as anyone can tell, this was the fault of Diamond screwing up and passing along the wrong MSRP to Amazon.

This became a more common belief when Barnes and Noble did the exact same thing yesterday. I unfortunately wasn’t available to post about it, it was Amazon all over again on a smaller scale. Some people have had partial orders shipped there as well. Will there be another huge mistake like this at another online book store before they realize their error? Quite possibly. Will this likely have huge consequences for Diamond, if it’s indeed their fault? I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t. If your company just screwed two major e-retailers to the tune of $50-$500k, well they’re obviously not going to be happy about it.

On another note, I’ve seen lots of comments wondering why Amazon wasn’t obligated to honour a price mistake like this. As someone who’s had the luck to take advantage of a variety of price mistakes over the years, in America, most online retailers aren’t required to honour these accidents. I don’t remember the relevant laws, but I’ve seen tons of people attempt to sue large companies over similar situations and it never works out. Now, if they were to charge your credit card then deny you the item? Or ship it and charge you another price when you receive it? Then you’d likely have a case. Not that I don’t advise people to know their legal rights and get what they’re owed from companies, trust me, I do. But in a situation where some people received product, and the rest received a reasonably sized gift certificate? Trust me, if you got in on the deal, you did well for yourself.

Villains United for $10.39 currently at Amazon

There were a bunch of separate stories that lead up to Infinite Crisis, I’m going to take a crack at reviewing the two that I enjoyed – Villains United and The OMAC Project. You can risk your time by reading the others on your own.

Villains United - This was a six issue miniseries that focuses on Catman, referred to as a joke of a Batman villain, and a team of villains that’s recruited together under threats of death to their families/etc…

After the events of the Justice League in Identity Crisis, Luthor’s been attracting villains to his “team”, offering them protection and revenge. So along comes this new mysterious overlord, gathering together a select few villains to go up against Luthor.

They end up going on some pretty cool missions, there’s some great action, the art is top notch and fits the story well, and the payoff at the end is solid. Considering I knew nothing about the villains involved, and that this is simply an intro to Infinite Crisis, I don’t think I could’ve asked for more.

4.5/5

O.M.A.C. Project for $10.19 currently at Amazon

The OMAC Project - While I liked this one, I had some problems with it. The primary one is that it takes place after some important events have already happened, so it might have a few spoilers you weren’t expecting. But if you don’t care (or already know) it’s not a big deal. Let’s just say that if you’re planning to read Infinite Crisis, you should google up a reading guide first, it’s confusing.

Anyways, for those not familiar with Identity Crisis, the basic idea is that the heroes did certain things that upset a whole lot of people. They did something to Batman’s memory that understandably, had him pretty pissed off. He created a system (OMAC) that could track every single hero. Unfortunately, he loses control of that system. Not only that, but a virus infects certain humans, making it possible for OMAC to convert them into the DC equivalent of sentinels.

As the story goes on, OMAC activates more and more of these sentinels with the goal of eliminating all metahuman activity. The whole trade is loaded with action since the superheroes are fighting a good million of these drones. It’s a strong lead-in to the event itself.

4/5.

Marvel 1985 for $13.59 currently at Amazon

Nostalgia overload, right here. Admittedly, I wasn’t reading comics until a few years after 1985, but I was pretty damn close.

You’ve got a lonely kid split between two families, his dad, and his mom and her new boyfriend. He’s a withdrawn kid that reads a lot of comics. One day, him and his dad are exploring and see an old building they’re familiar with. Only this time, the kid thinks he saw the Red Skull in a window. Of course, no one believes him…

It’s a short series, only 6 issues, but all of it is fun. The art is rather unique, it’s loose and colourful with deep etched shadows. I don’t think I’d enjoy it that much on a normal comic, but I thought it was wonderful here.

One thing the comic does exceptionally well? The characters. How they act, how they speak, all their little comic references. Shows a real love for the source material. Millar does a great job.

4.5/5.

“The sexy and mischievous Black Cat shows off her hot breasts and behind. It’s no wonder Spider-Man risked his life trying to bag this hot pussy. She a bad girl that Spidey couldn’t reform. Just look at those erect and stiff nipples.”

The Age of Apocalypse Colossus is just wonderful, the Emma? I can see why someone would want it in their collection, but it doesn’t do it for me, looks kinda off. But I’ve found most custom women statues look a little strange, I’m guessing women are harder to sculpt. Who knows, I’m not a sculptor!