Took me long enough but I finally found the time to post a few reviews/recaps. These are the books I've read the past 3 weeks, I hope you enjoyed your readings more than I did.
Amazing Mary Jane #2:
A good issue, nothing memorable in any regard, but not bad and with some decent jokes here and there.
The story is well paced so far, and MJ seems well written. I really don't know how the situation will evolve from here though because the intervention of the Savage Six is "side-quest" but there's only 3 issues left to this mini.
King Thor #3:
After a much better #2 we returned to the recent (low) standards of Aaron's Thor run.
I hate when writers are so focused on making callbacks here and there to show it's been in the works all along and they're great masterminds of storytelling, and it's clear as day it wasn't like this all along at all. You're not Tolkien, accept it and move on.
This finale was supposed to be, or would have worked better, choose what you like, an intimate story, just Thor, Loki and *maybe* Gorr.
Now there's Thor, Loki, Gorr who's suddenly become goth Ego, Thor's edgy teen granddaughters, a bunch of humanoid plants and some other ass*oles will certainly join in the next and fortunately last issue. The series completely lost focus and pathos.
The art as I said before is truly magnificent, Esad Ribic is certainly the best artist at Marvel and possibly the best in comics at the moment.
Immortal Hulk #27:
Barely 15 pages containing everything there is in this book. Vague anti-capitalistic ideas worthy of a 5 year old who read Animal Farm as a bedtime story, anticlimatic action, a plot unravelling at the pace of a lame mule and outstanding art by Joe Bennett.
Amazing Spider-Man #34:
The sooner this 2099 tie-ins end the better. Seriously. It hasn't even begun yet and I'm already tired of it.
First of all, at least Doom's double killing was avoided by it being a Doombot, it doesn't solve the evident continuity problems but it's better than I imagined.
Secondly, what was Miguel's purpose exactly? His plotline was absolute nothingness, total absence of a purpose, he met Peter, he mumbled something both Peter AND us readers knew, he mumbled something else that makes no sense with Marvel's continuity and disappeared.
Wonderful. How come Spencer's writing abilities have such steep falls whenever he's near an event/crossover?
Absolute Carnage #5:
An event that ended exactly like it started, kinda bad, but not as bad as I imagined. The finale was anticlimatic, and wasn't a finale at all truly since the main storyline is far from resolved, Brock's final choice was way less emotional and shocking than Cates clearly thought it would be and Spider-Man scenes were decent.
The art by Stegman was great, I hope to see him on ASM soon, his version of NYC's skyline would be a sight for sore eyes after the "artists" we've had lately.
Marauders #2:
This book truly gets dumber at every page turn.
Out of all the mutants in existence how exactly did Shaw strike them as the "dumb guy"? All he does in the book is getting repeatedly mocked by Emma.
Also, isn't whatever the writer is doing with Kitty a wee bit too "sudden"? She basically goes from usual Kitty with a bleeding nose to alcoholic ass*ole pirate in the span of a few pages, the result is almost comical considering the rest of the book is so slow that after 2 issues there's barely no hint of a plot yet.
Last but not least, all that "Mutants are superior" BS, Magneto saying to humans, in the middle of Jerusalem, "You have new Gods now" and we still have to endure that politically correct mumbling about rich and poor countries? Do the mutants have to be THIS perfect?
Excalibur #2:
I truly did not understand anything about this issue. Some scenes were truly poorly executed, the first appearance of the Druids Gambit warns Betsy but what is he warning her of if he can't see them?
What exactly did that flashback of Apocalypse was supposed to mean?
Why would Shogo be a dragon?
Why would Jubilee bring Shogo in the middle of a warzone in the first place?
What was the point of that mermaids scene?
I doubt I'll get an answer to half these questions.
Conan #11:
Ladies and Gentlemen we have a plot moving... kind of... After 10 issues of flashbacks Conan finally meets his death, and in death he faces Crom, the Cimmerian God he cursed his whole life, in the very sense of the word. As Crom refuses to help his people against the incoming menace of Razazel, Conan calls him a coward and attacks him sword in hand, only to be swiftly defeated. Crom however, because of his insults, curses Conan to live again, till his legendary name is forgotten and his glory vanished. The issue is well written, this is as much introspection you can get with a character like Conan and finally we have something moving.
Invisible Woman #5:
This mini was incredibly boring, and I'm being kind, but at least this last issue was the best of them all. Nothing particularly exciting and/or noteworthy, just something happening, and with an artist like De Iulis anything that happens looks good while happening. Hopefully he gets a promotion after his amazing work, his talents are really wasted here.
New Mutants 2:
Pretty good issue actually. Xandra was one of the best things to come out of Mr&MrsX, I'm glad she's back, it doesn't look very in-character for Kallark to renounce his title, but at least they found a way to keep her relevant.
The humor was great, the art is quite good and the reunion with Cannonball was great.
This was the best Dawn of X issue so far I have to say.
X-Force #2:
Dawn of X is really slowly getting better, or at least some books are. Xavier's death is still the single most anticlimatic plot point ever, and that is the most boring plotline of the best and has barely anything to do with the name X-Force, but Wolverine and Quentin's scenes work much better, and that last closeup on Domino was quite unsettling.
I also liked that at least Wolverine stayed reasonable and tried to teach Quentin that humans are a bit more complicated "puny weak and evil" as they've been described since the whole relaunch began.
Fallen Angels #2:
What a terrible issue through and through. Each sentence uttered by any character in the book sounds like a proverb rather than part of a conversation.
The plot is unreasonably convoluted and most of what happens is not explained in the slightest.
The art is terrible, characters have unnatural positions in basically every panel, the reading order of the pages is confused, the perspective in some scenes is so bad it's comical and it seems like the only thing the artist worked on is Psylocke's ass because it appears more than her face.
Marauders #3:
Wow what a plot twist. After they showed us that every mutant can be revived they revive Shaw's son, and he tells him someone else murdered him. Totally unexpected.
Also, the art of this book is rather mediocre, the plot just isn't there and last but not least it's filled with that vague bleeding heart humanitarian comunist "philosophy" worthy of a 5 years old who read an abstract of The Capital.
Excalibur #3:
The fact that you can put fillers in the middle of a series that won't run for more than a couple of trades is astonishing. Truly nothing happened in this issue. I don't even know what to talk about.
X-Men #3:
When you think you've hit the rock bottom brace yourself for you're about to dig much much deeper.
I can hardly imagine Hickman wrote this thing and then decided to submit it.
It's beyond terrible, a poor attempt at a joke that's been prolonged so much it makes you sad.
Were the old ladies supposed to be funny? Or are they supposed to be a credible menace when everyone in that group could have killed them right away?
And let's not take away from the fact that one of Marvel's flagship titles doesn't even have a plot halfway in.
Black Cat #7:
I don't usually do it, but first of all I have to talk about the art of this book. It was beyond terrible, my eyes hurt after reading this book. Whoever it is that drew this abomination should be fired on the spot.
The writing sucked as usual, but this art is so obscene it made me forget how bad the rest of the book is.
Doctor Doom #3:
The writer is quite clearly overcompensating. He's shoehorning basically every Marvel characters in anyway related to Doom, even though they serve no actual purpose to the story, and then some.
This book seems so dense you can barely understand what's going on, but if you look deeper you'll see that nothing is really happening, it's all smoke and mirrors and random nods that sound more like movie-style easter eggs.
It's the writer's debut at writing comicbooks and it seems like he's doing all these to make it clear that he knows Marvel. The result is not pretty.
Amazing Spider-Man #35:
Well, this tie-in is almost over at least, only 1 issue left. This arc is not bad, but far from the best.
Teresa is the best part of the arc so far, hopefully she stays in the supporting cast after the whole thing's done.
I don't really have much more to say about it.
