Just wonderful.  After being mugged by Aunt May, Howard tracks down a ring of elderly criminals, which is a fun enough premise – particularly when Howard goes undercover by shedding all his clothes, getting down on his hands and knees in the park, and eating bread tossed to him by old folks while keeping an eye out for the culprit.  But then there are the details.  There’s the cover quote, “My favorite comic currently being published by Marvel Comics!,” attributed to Cherp Zdorsky.  There’s comedy footnotes.  There’s just little moments like this to help flesh out Howard’s character.  We even get a bonus back-up story where superhero impersonators who dress up like Captain America and Thor are worried about losing their jobs to “women and minorities.”  It’s smart, it’s off-beat, and it’s just a joy to read.

This dumb issue made me almost cry on the MAX!  Captain Marvel returns from her largely inconsequential editorially-mandated cross-promotion with the Guardians of the Galaxy space-adventure, and finds herself unexpectedly having to bid farewell to an old friend.  Well-played, Kelly Sue Deconnick, you managed to spear me right through the sentimental chink in my armor of ironic detachment!

So you guys cannot imagine how overjoyed I was when it was announced that Moon Knight would be relaunching as a series of done-in-one “weird crime” stories written by Warren Ellis.  Which, of course, lasted for all of six issues, Warren Ellis’s attention span being what it is.  But those six issues were sooooo goooood.  Say what you will about Warren Ellis (don’t mind if I do), but his writing just has that something, that edge that makes it jump off the page.  (There’s one entire issue that follows Moon Knight as he climbs the stairs of an abandoned tenement building to rescue a kidnapped girl, brutally beating each of the kidnappers one by one, floor by floor!)  Then Brian Wood’s arc was okay… more of a six-part storyline, but still very well-designed.  But y’know, with the notable exception of Fearless Defenders (and what an exception it is!), Cullen Bunn’s writing just never does much for me.  It’s never awful, of course, but it rarely catches me by surprise, just staying firmly in the middle of the road.  So I feel like I’m just constantly giving him one more issue.  Like this one: Moon Knight fights a pack of wild dogs that are trained to hunt… rich people?  And then he frees them to eat their mean junkyard owner?  Okay, sure.  Next issue: moon Knight fights… some kind of monster under the bed?  I mean, that sounds pretty cool, I guess…

Oh, it’s super awesome, if you enjoy Doctor Doom and the Molecule Man bandying about ponderous Hickmanesque dialogue for page after page.  But at least it helps explain how Doctor Doom reached his apotheosis here at the cusp of Secret Wars… I mean, I assume it does, since it’s one of those comics that’s so dry my attention keeps wandering whenever I try to read it.  Molecule Man is a bomb scattered across realities.  Doctor Doom starts his own religion of Black Swans to counter the actions of the Beyonders… but not the Black Priests… and also something with the Mapmakers… anyway, it’s a whooooole lot of ground to cover just to get to the ultimate confrontation between Doom and the Beyonders, which, I admit, starts out pretty rad before it ends the same as every other Jonathan Hickman comic of late: blank space!

I just miss the Molecule Man of the Jim Shooter era of yore, in which he was just this average nerdy guy who, despite his god-like power of complete control over all molecules, just wanted to stay in, watch TV, and eat popcorn with his curvaceous lava-powered girlfriend, Volcana.  So when the Beyonder kept knockin’ on his door during the events of Secret Wars II, all wonderin’ what it means to be human, he was the one who kept quietly repairing the damage to the universe behind the Beyonder’s back.  Now he’s just standard-issue Jonathan Hickman crazy character.  Oh well!

Man, I hate to say it, G. Willow Wilson, but this storyline was bad.  About one, maybe two issue’s worth of story in a four-issue bag… I think one could easily have cut the entire issue spent fighting giant bug-monsters in a cave and the story would not have suffered for it.  I have nothing against the idea of an all-female cast as a matter of principle — see Fearless Defenders for a great example of how to do it right — but when it comes to an X-team comprised of Storm, M, Rachel Grey, and Psylocke, they’re all too bloody similar.  Three of them are telepaths, for pity’s sake.  The thing about X-Men is that their diversity gives everyone something to play off with each other, be it their background, powers, motivations, or gender.  These four women, each within the context of the X-Men, just don’t have enough tension or conflict to make for an engaging team dynamic.  (Hence that time Brian Wood turned Rachel into a lunatic, constantly demanding of Storm, “Who went and made you leader, anyway?!”)  The story ended well as they tried to reach a deranged Krakoa monster that had been experimented on and weaponized years ago, but ended up bring forced to destroy it… but all in all, I’m glad my hex took effect and brought about this series’ cancellation as just one X-title too many.

Oh look, the next issue is apparently the last!  Well then, I guess I won’t get too worked up over anything that happens in this series… particularly since it seems its sole purpose was to continue the ill-conceived storyline of confirming that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are not and never have been mutants, much less related to that Magneto guy!  And in this issue, yeah, the High Evolutionary basically just shrugs and says, “I took you from your parents, made my alterations, then, upon my disappointment, returned you to their care, disguised as common mutants,” and then goes on about his business with a couple more jabs about what disappointments they are.  Yup, guess it just never came up before now, during one of the dozen times they’ve all encountered each other in the past!  (Et tu, Bova?)  And did I mention their “sister,” Luminous, the High Evolutionary’s creation who’s faster than Quicksilver and more chaos-magically-adept than Scarlet Witch?  Can you not see how much this is adding to their characters?  

Otherwise, as far as the rest of the team… the first volume of Uncanny Avengers focused on a “Unity” team of both X-Men and Avengers, which I thought was a fun idea that never quite had a chance to take off.  With only a couple appearances outside their title series, they never felt like The Avengers, just… some Avengers.  And once the Apocalypse Twins showed up and plummeted the entire series into chronal dams and mutant raptures and alternate timelines and undead Horsemen and a Celestial executioner literally blowing up the planet Earth, it all just felt like so much “What If?” fodder; for the whole “Planet X” story arc, I couldn’t help but feel like nothing I was reading mattered, because sooner or later our heroes would reset reality, the characters who’d been killed would be resurrected, and we’d get back to storylines that “counted.”  (And then AXIS happened and, well… time makes fools of us all.)  Then Rogue had the brilliant idea to start a new Unity squad alongside the Scarlet Witch, conveniently forgetting that roughly one hundred percent of the threats faced by the Uncanny Avengers could be traced back to the Scarlet Witch one way or another.  So this series also features Sam Wilson as Captain America, Vision, inexplicably-resurrected Rick-Remender-pet-favorite Doctor Voodoo, and good-guy Uncle Sabretooth, who joined the Avengers between issues (and, as revealed in The Rage of Ultron, is kept locked inside a cell in Avengers Tower when not on-mission… “Can’t be too careful!” declare our heroes!).   But in this issue, even Rogue seems mildly frustrated at this series, referring to her “stopgap Unity squad.  And we’re scattered.  As usual.”  Before we even get to see this team of Avengers interact as a team — arguably the entire point of an Avengers series — they’re immediately separated across Counter Earth; some encounter worse perils than the others, as while the High Evolutionary dispassionately removes Sabretooth’s nervous system whole and intact from his living body, Rogue basically gets tied to a chair by a mad scientist straight out of Labyrinth, and Captain America… gets turned into a tree-person.  Hoo-boy.  So, yeah… maybe a five-issue run for this series isn’t something to lament.

A perfectly satisfactory twist ending! I successfully managed to avoid the minefield of Internet spoilers regarding Thor’s secret identity, not to mention the following conversation with my husband the night prior:

“And you get to find out who Ms. Thor is.”
“Yes!  Did you see that on the Internet or something?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who Thor is?”
“Yes!  You don’t want me to tell you, do you?”
“No, of course not! ……………Is it Roz Solomon???”
“Who?”
“Well, that answers that!”

I’m glad I kept it a surprise, though I admit to some hasty skimming in my mad dash toward the last-page reveal. And the comedy bit with Roz Solomon flying in and yelling at Thor while Odinson stood by with jaw agape was pure delight. So from here on, now that Thor’s no longer a big question mark, I really hope we can ditch boring ol’ He-Thor altogether and keep the focus of this series on the title character please. While I can appreciate his wandering around all shirtless and bearded, his character has not actually been improved by the constant moping over his unworthiness, and I don’t know why he is still hanging around taking up as much of the spotlight as he is. Meanwhile, my god, the Russell Dauterman art remains simply breathtaking – I can only offer my thanks to whoever decided to extricate him from the Teen Cyclops series, since his talents were clearly just being wasted.

So here’s a perplexing thing!  This is issue is the second part of a three-part story, which began in — follow me here — the Avengers: Ultron Forever one-shot.  The story will conclude in the third and final installment, Uncanny Avengers: Ultron Forever.  I won’t blame you for being confused, as I take objection to the idea that rather than have a simple three-issue Ultron Forever miniseries, we split it up into three one-shots, sacrificing clarity for the sake of having OMG NOT ONE BUT THREE ALL-NEW NUMBER-ONE ISSUES for Age of Ultron movie fans.  It’s not like each of the three issues feature three different teams of Classic, Diet, and Cherry Avengers fighting Ultron; it’s a three-part story over three issues.  I would think anybody picking up one issue out of the three is just going to be confused.  Bad form, Marvel!

As for the story itself, I recommend it – sure, it’s a watered-down Avengers Forever, but it’s still an Al Ewing story.  The first part was okay, if only for a nice long scene featuring Black Widow and Vision interacting like the longtime comrades they are, but it was mostly just Doctor Doom assembling our cross-temporal heroes (from Jim Rhodes in the Iron Man armor, to Danielle Cage as the Captain America of the future) and sending them off on their respective quests to defeat Ultron, who’s now… haha, whoops, the omnipotent All-Father of Asgard?  The Alan Davis art gives the story a classic feel, as does Al Ewing’s focus on these mismatched Avengers characters.  But this second part was a real stand-out, which, for me, was largely due to the footnotes that helpfully explained specifically where these characters were from in their respective storylines, which gives Al Ewing just so much credit in my eyes, since it makes it feel like he has those issues right at hand.

I don’t have anything to report here except that Mark Waid and Chris Samnee are continuing to put out one of, if not the most consistently enjoyable run on this comic that there has ever been.  Also as far as I’m concerned Daredevil has never been hotter:

You guys I can’t even

Pointedly not featuring the title character! Instead we get a strange little Black Vortex epilogue focusing on Star-Lord’s half-sister Victoria – who I admit had completely slipped my mind amidst all the Kitty Pryde nonsense – as she confronts the Collector, you know, from that movie that time? I will say that he’s well-characterized for an Elder of the Universe, avoiding the usual ponderous dialogue usually associated with cosmic immortal types. He’s fun, inviting Victoria to join him for a friendly drink as they discuss the return of Victoria’s father J’Son, former emperor of Spartax and current amber-encased bauble in the Collector’s collection. He then takes Victoria on a tour of his collection, not the items of monetary value, but those of I’mnotevenkidding emotional value. My favorite part was the Collector taking a moment to ponder stillnotjokingyouguys the boots worn by young Thanos himself: “From when he was an innocent child.  Perhaps… before he was evil.”

So when the Collector laughingly refuses to let Victoria take her father to be tried for his war crimes, how does she convince him otherwise?  Any guesses?  Any…?  Did I hear someone in back say “Mesmerize him with the power of dance?”  No?  No one said that?  Because that would be CUCKOO BANANAS???  (Haha, did I forget to mention the flashback from earlier in this issue when J’Son summoned poor little tween Victoria to tell her that she was his illegitimate daughter and he was shipping her off to space-military-academy and oh by the way no more dance lessons and when she protested he basically said she was lucky he wasn’t listening to his advisors and just having her executed instead?)  So moved, the Collector tearfully tells her to just take her father and go already (but not before collecting his own tears in a vial [???!!!???]).  Afterwards, Victoria reveals that her distraction allowed her stealthy subordinate to successfully swipe the seed of the Kree Supreme Intelligence, presumably killed when the Kree homeworld Hala was recently blown up, and apparently this was their true goal all along to help consolidate galactic supremacy.  This was a pretty weird issue.

Aaauuuuggghhh why did I buy this. I only picked this up because I swear the solicitation for this series read exactly like Warren Ellis Mad-Libs:

Once upon a time, there were five crazy people, and they poisoned the 21st Century. Now they have to deal with the corrosion to try and save us all from a world becoming too weird to support human life. INJECTION is the new ongoing series created by the acclaimed creative team of Moon Knight. It is science fiction, tales of horror, strange crime fiction, techno-thriller, and ghost story all at the same time. A serialized sequence of graphic novels about how loud and strange the world is getting, about the wild future and the haunted past all crashing into the present day at once, and about five eccentric geniuses dealing with the paranormal and numinous as well as the growing weight of what they did to the planet with the Injection.

But then upon reading I immediately remembered that Warren Ellis stories take four to six months just to get started. This issue isn’t a story. Nothing happens. They spend a few pages throwing around the Warren Ellis buzzword of the day (“cunning man”), and the rest of the pages are devoted to his standard-issue cranky lady who keeps demanding someone give her a sandwich under the erroneous assumption that it gets funnier with repetition.  And with every Warren Ellis comic, there’s always that voice whispering in the back of my head: “Are any of these plotlines going to matter? Is this story going to actually reach a conclusion before Warren Ellis’s attention inevitably wanders over to something else?” Ain’t nobody got time for this.

I would like to talk about Eldrac, the living Inhuman gateway with the plot-convenient power to teleport those who enter him wherever they need to be.  So you think okay, sure, a living door, that’s fun.  But in the previous issue it took Lineage – this new sneaky, schemey Inhuman who’s been all hangin’ around the Attilan throne room in a black suit and grinning all the time, clearly just an incredibly trustworthy kinda guy – to have a chat with Eldrac, pointing out that while everyone else gets fantastic powers, he gets turned into architecture?  Which is a fair point — nobody thinks about poor Eldrac’s feelings!  So in exchange for Eldrac teleporting Medusa and company to precisely where they aren’t supposed to be, giving Lineage the opening to enact his coup, he rewards Eldrac with his own giant mechano-body awwwww!  Look how happy he is, presumably!

The following annual continues the story of the temptation and ultimate redemption of Eldrac.  While Medusa and her allies fight for their lives and Lineage continues his mischief, we find Eldrac in a quiet moment of contemplation.  At last he comes to a momentous decision: he activates his portal, reaches through his own maw all the way to Eastern Europe,  plucks an unsuspecting Medusa, Triton, and Frank McGee into his giant robo-hands, pulls them back out of danger, and before a disoriented Medusa can demand to know what the royal @#$% is happening, he immediately hurls them all back through his own face to return them safely to New Attilan, and as penance for his betrayal, pulls his own head from his mechano-body and presumably dies on the Long Island shore, if an Inhuman gateway can even be said to be “alive” in the first place!  I do not know whether or not it is a compliment to Charles Soule’s writing that the character who I found most engaging never said a word of dialogue, but there it is.  Misguided, noble Eldrac, your sacrifice was not in vain, and you will be missed.

This!  This, this, this.  As Jonathan Hickman’s specialty is not writing human beings, this Secret Wars tie-in issue, written by Al Ewing, is one of the only comics to make me feel like the world is actually coming to an end.  Grumpy Old Man Rogers brings the Mighty Avengers up to speed about the multiverse collapsing in on itself and how it’s basically too late for anyone to do anything about it.  He sums up Steve Rogers’ perspective on the situation beautifully:

Rogers: “Earth is the collision point — don’t you get it?  Remove an Earth — destroy an Earth — and there is no collision!  God… God!  You could see their minds work!  If I hadn’t been there — in that room — they’d have talked themselves into it inside of five minutes.  Into destroying worlds.”
White Tiger: “To save entire universes–”
Rogers: “There!  Just like that!  Seven billion lives, just like that!  Murdered!  Because you can’t think of a better option!”

Both intense and sympathetic… everything and everyone is telling Captain America there’s no other choice, that it’s their Earth or ours at stake, but he refuses to succumb to the cold logic of it.  But then, once the news starts to spread, then the comic circles around with the common man.  Mighty Avengers volunteer Ruby Neal simply adds the whole “death of the universe” to the list of things of worry about that become “so much less important when your kid’s sick and your car’s in the shop and you can’t make rent.”  As the days count down, White Tiger attempts to reunite with her estranged sister; another Avengers volunteer hesitantly confesses their role becoming increasingly devoted to suicide prevention; a news anchor from a thinly-veiled Fox News declares this alternate Earth on a “literal collision course with our families and freedoms” as a “terrorist planet”; and we even get a panel devoted to a crazy-pants conspiracy theorist with — get this — a “STAMFORD WAS AN INSIDE JOB” poster on his wall.  These details don’t just happen, you guys, and it’s those small yet crucial details that make Al Ewing’s writing stand out from the din.

In which we conclude the current volume of this series by having the anarchic saboteur Ghost demolish Parker Industries.  As much as I love Dan Slott’s writing, I think the time may come for me to part ways with Spider-Man; during the Superior Spider-Man era, in which Otto Octavius inhabiting Peter Parker’s body resulted in a Spider-Man series without fun, I had to intentionally douse my love of Spider-Man down to the embers in order to break up with it.  And now Peter Parker’s back, and Spider-Verse was fun in a “fun but exhausting vacation that was way too jam-packed with activities and now I’m glad it’s over and looking forward to getting back to real life” kind of way… but my heart’s just not in it, and my anticipation for the upcoming Secret Wars series “Renew Your Vows,” teasing at the return of Peter’s magically-annulled marriage to Mary Jane, is tepid at best.  But for now, this issue had two big things going for it: first, Otto’s genius ex-girlfriend Anna Maria Marconi, who is perfect as Peter Parker’s ally and not yet another person around whom he needs to tip-toe.  I just love the way she blithely cuts through Peter’s entire lifestyle of secrecy and lies, and in this issue, she even donned a pair of modified web-shooters to help snare the Ghost.  Secondly: Black Cat affirming her new role as supervillain by stealing back everything she lost during her most recent incarceration… and then setting it all on fire!  I’ve often felt that there is a lack of quality Marvel villains in recent years, so I think Black Cat is much better served as an adversary to Spider-Man than as yet another one of his on-again/off-again love interests.  Faster, Felicia, kill, kill!

Seriously, Rick Remender is unable to kill any character.  (Well, so’s every other comic writer these days, but that’s a discussion for another time.)  A few issues back, that villainest of all villains, Baron Zemo, killed Captain America’s sidekick Nomad, a.k.a. Steve Rogers’ adopted son Ian from Dimension Z, by hanging him upside-down from chains, slitting his throat with a sword, and filming his death with the intent of sending to Steve for Christmas! (And then he wanted to sterilize America’s minority population via an army of fleeeas! You just don’t get more villainous than Baron Zemo!)  It was pretty unambiguous!  Oh but wait never mind Ian’s alive.  Turns out his armor is full of patented Arnim-Zola-brand ooey-gooey bio-gel, so it fixed him right up!  With that in mind, I found myself skeptical at the cliffhanger of that same issue where the vampiric Baron Blood ate Redwing, the Falcon’s longtime avian sidekick, leaving him to happen upon the grisly remains!  Could this be an actual fatality?  Because, yeah, that would be pretty messed up!  But nope, never mind, now I guess he’s just a vampire falcon whaaaaat is happening.  After Ian tells Captain America to go stop Baron Blood while he holds off Zemo, later the building explodes, with no survivors, so Baron Zemo and Ian are presumed dead by absolutely no one.  Seriously, Steve Rogers, the guy’s adopted father, just shrugs it off!  Well, I guess if he can’t bother getting emotionally involved in this story…!  But at least this was all illustrated by Stuart Immonen, who remains a treasure and we are lucky to have him.

But can we talk about Steve Rogers?  For those of you blissfully unaware, Captain America had the super-soldier serum leeched from his body, so after the Falcon took over the role and iconic shield of Captain America, Steve Rogers is just a wee little old man with a cane in more of a strategic, advisory position.  That is, when he’s not being a vengeance-crazed lunatic on a crusade against his fellow heroes, smashing stuff, suiting up in battle-armor, and again suiting up in battle-armor.  I absolutely allow that Tony Stark has way more history and dramatic tension with Steve Rogers than with Sam Wilson, but I can’t help but feel like Sam isn’t getting a chance to (oh god) fully spread his wings (I’m sorry) as Captain America while Steve hangs around like a helicopter parent.

Yeah, okay, I’ll talk about Ant-Man.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the millennial, Apatowian/Always Sunny influence on modern comics, where these days we don’t just want a hero who’s flawed, we want a hero who is actively botching up their own life.  Perhaps my fellow comic-nerd man-children and I are meant to relate to affable underdogs like Chris Pratt and Paul Rudd, haplessly goofing around while shirking responsibility and avoiding consequences for their actions, only to achieve, every once in a while, the occasional victory, a quiet moment of grace before starting the cycle all over again.  So Nick Spencer brings a lot of that same vibe from Superior Foes of Spider-Man to this series, where Ant-Man is a screw-up trying to con his way back to being a respectable superhero, so you can’t help but root for him.  Alongside his daughter and ex-wife, he even has a supporting cast of would-be supervillains,  Grizzly and Machinesmith, giving his fellow ex-cons the chance to redeem themselves by hiring them on to his fledgling security business.

What some of you may not know is that his daughter, Cassie, was the one who indirectly inspired Scott Lang to begin a life of crime as Ant-Man, in order to procure the funds to help treat her heart condition.  Since then, Cassie realized that her exposure to her father’s size-changing Pym particles also allowed her similar abilities to grow and shrink at will, and she jointed the Young Avengers as Stature.  Through trans-temporal hijinks, both Scott and Cassie have recently died and returned from the dead – which you’d think would be a fun topic for father/daughter bonding!  But okay, I can understand wanting to make this comic series “accessible” for “new readers” (sigh!).  The first issue actually got things off to a very promising start, in which Cassie was going on to her dad about how Hunger Games is “a ripoff of a vastly superior foreign film,” Battle Royale, prompting Scott to think, “And this is why my kid is cooler than yours.”  That’s beautiful, that is.  Sure, a case could be made that a teenage fan of foreign movies isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it was something.  In contrast, based solely on the trailer, my biggest glaring concern for the Ant-Man movie is this stupid little wretch right here.  Because that is not a supporting character.  That is not a “child actor.”  That is a Raggedy Ann doll that says “I wuv you Daddy!” when you pull its string.  I mean, can you imagine a Marvel movie where the struggling dad has a willful teen daughter to play off of, all texting on the latest product-placement smartphone and wearing T-shirts featuring that band you love, instead of this little idiot who may as well have “KIDNAP ME” stamped on her forehead?

But I digress.  In this issue, Augustine Cross — a great example of a villain one loves to hate — kidnaps a doctor to save his father, obscure Ant-Man villain Darren Cross.  His heart, you see, can’t take the strain of changing size, so what else can Augustine do but kidnap Cassie, extract her Pym-particle-infused heart, and surgically implant it in Darren Cross’s body!  (Don’t worry, he’s not a monster — he’s also got plenty of homeless people on-hand to swap her one of their hearts instead!)  Cassie’s body starts to reject the transplant, but Ant-Man saves her life by going inside her bloodstream and fighting off her white blood cells until she recovers, which is just good classic comic fun.  But I think this story mostly serves to sweep Cassie’s size-changing powers under the rug and have her more closely resemble her move equivalent.  To be fair, I can absolutely understand having the title character of the series be the only one with size-changing powers… but as illustrated above, I don’t think movie Cassie is a standard for which we should strive.  As Ant-Man’s fatherhood is one of his defining character traits among the other Marvel superheroes, I can only hope his daughter remains a part of Scott’s supporting cast in one form or another, and, ideally, a character in her own right.

Adventure Time 39 – As per usual, Adventure Time can catch one by surprise when introducing truly terrifying monsters.

Amazing X-Men 19 -For what I expected to be just another X-Men versus Juggernaut story, this issue actually had a few unexpected twists.  Cain Marko is once again the Juggernaut, gifted by Cyttorak with more power than ever before, so what does he want to do with it?  Kill Cyclops for murdering his step-brother Professor X, of course, who he apparently cares about this time around, as he “was the only one who ever cared about me.  He gave me a second chance when no one else would.”  The X-Men immediately attempt Juggernaut Plan A to remove his helmet and attack his mind, but… whoa, uh… yikes.  Scratch that!  So Colossus starts fighting Juggernaut hand-to-hand, which even Cain himself points out has never, ever worked, but then a wondrous things happened: Colossus grew as a character!  He decided to stop being so willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of the team, fought smarter instead of harder, and flipped Juggernaut off a cliff!  This next part gets a little weird – while Juggernaut plummets into the ocean, Colossus is, I think, hanging backwards off the cliff by his legs(?), reflecting about how if his life is required to save his friends, then so be it – but then he snaps out of it and hauls himself back up, with an adorable moment of self-reflection neatly circling back to when Storm totally laid into him for being a self-destructive idiot back in issue 15.  I think he’s definitely turned a corner!  This storyline got off to a bit of a rough start, but it wrapped up well.

Black Vortex Omega – The final chapter of the ridiculous, unwieldy Black Vortex crossover, and boy, is it a doozy.  While our cosmically-empowered teammates are holding off the (sigh) “Slaughter Lords” in orbit around Spartax, Kitty Pryde uses her cosmically-jacked-up intangibility powers to “relax my atoms.  My consciousness.  I phased through galaxies and transcended the multiverse.  I touched the consciousness of an infinite number of Kitty Prydes,” which was kinda cool, since they made it a point to not only remember Days of Future Past Kitty Pryde, but also Jewish Ghost Kitty Pryde.  That took some research.  She then phases the amber shell and Brood infestoids off of the entire planet of Spartax, freeing our heroes to say stupid things, and then literally smiles down upon the planet like a benevolent god, all praise and glory unto Kitty Pryde (but yea, thou shalt beware of her mood swings!).  Gara, lone survivor of the previous race annihilated by the Black Vortex like a bazillion years ago, declares that “she alone resisted the corruption of cosmic power” and came back to save them, to which an awestruck Star-Lord asserts that “Of course she did — she’s Kitty Pryde.  My dream girl.”  At which point I thought okay, cool, Kitty nobly sacrificed herself to save all her friends and now she’ll fade away to become one with the universe or whatever.

But nope!  She shrinks back down to human proportions and the next item on the agenda is to assemble our huge unwieldy cast into yet another giant crowd scene just standin’ around gabbing on some planet.  (Haha, look, you guys, Teen Iceman used the word “selfie!”  That’s comedy!)  But hey, you remember how submitting to the Black Vortex was this irrevocable decision that will leave you forever changed and should not to be taken lightly for reals no backsies?  Well nah, don’t worry about it, ’cause Gara can invoke the cosmic rite of do-overs, but warns that “you will not return to the way you once were.  No one can use the Vortex and remain unchanged.”  Which Gamora laughs off, as does, irksomely enough, Teen Angel, as poor Teen Beast (and the reader)’s pleas on behalf on the timestream continue to fall on deaf ears.  And so the others are changed back: Groot has a new look, Teen Iceman is now an ostensibly-gay ice cube, and Beast and Teen Cyclops look the same as before.  Of course the first thing stupid Teen Jean does is read Teen Cyclops’ mind, after which she confides to Storm, “The worst part is… the change didn’t occur in his mind.  It happened in his heart.”  Aw god.

And as if all that weren’t enough… Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde go for a romantic walk in the airless vacuum of space, whereupon Star-Lord asks Kitty to marry him.  I admit to enjoying Star-Lord addressing her by her full name as “Katherine Anne Sprite Ariel Shadowcat Kitty Pryde,” but that’s about all I approve about this turn of events.  I’ll plan on delving in deeper at a later date, but suffice it to say, I feel nothing for this blandly-handsome blond guy who bears no resemblance to Chris Pratt’s character, to his detriment; as such, it’s been fascinating to watch the development of a couple characters engaging in a relationship with no believable human romantic chemistry.  But hey, everybody else seems happy about it, even resident expert on human emotions X-23, so what’s my problem, y’know?  (But seriously, look at this huge unwieldy cast of characters you guys)  The issue ends with a clunky monologue from Kitty — “I found love in outer space.  And that’s when I knew.  The most amazing discovery… is each other.” — but the hilarity isn’t over yet, as Sam Humphries cranks up the schmalz full-blast and Storm asks Rocket Raccoon if he wants to be her date to the wedding and at this point I just gave up.

Guardians of the Galaxy 26 – It was… okay.  A nice classic “giving our heroes everything they want” story.  This issue opens with the Guardians hanging out in a space bar (complete with ham-fisted Bendis-brand sci-fi “comedy”), whereupon Kitty learns that Peter has been elected as president of Spartax without his knowledge or consent, and his flippancy over the situation once again flips her switch from “girlfriend” to “shrew.”  The royal guard show up to escort their missing president Star-Lord back to Spartax, and as he begrudgingly learns that he’s got to deal with this sooner or later, there’s a fun scene where he assigns the rest of the Guardians positions on his presidential cabinet to justify bringing them along — Gamora as legal counsel, Rocket as secretary of raccoon/Spartax relations (LOLOLOLOL), Groot as secretary of agriculture, and so on, while Kitty looks on in silent disapproval.  And now our heroes are faced with giving up their lives of mischief and settling down in royal splendor, each in their own ways, which is unfortunately interrupted by that whole Secret Wars multiversal catastrophe literally looming over the horizon.

But I’d like to talk about one character in particular.  In issue 23 before all the Black Vortex nonsense got underway, at the risk of sounding like a melodramatic fanboy, it only took Bendis one issue to completely destroy everything about the symbiotes.  Am I a particularly huge fan of these squealing slime-monsters?  Not really.  Well, okay, yes, but no more so than most.  My point is that, fan or not, I can tell you what the symbiotes are about: incredible power versus uncontrollable rage and insanity, and whether the one is worth the cost of the other.  It’s Spider-Man, not @#$%ing rocket science.  And Rick Remender actually added an interesting new layer to this dichotomy in his Venom series in the form of Flash Thompson, an alcoholic with no legs who becomes addicted to the Venom symbiote in order to walk again, to literally make him whole.  Which I thought was an inspired new take on a classic theme.

But then Bendis stepped in and botched that all up, giving Venom was given an entirely new armored look, and had the symbiotes (oh, I’m sorry, THE KLYNTAR) (god) assure Flash Thompson that he was just the super-coolest space-hero of all time and all they want is for him to be happy and they apologize for that whole uncontrollable brain-eating psychosis thing, which was just an awkward misunderstanding.  Completely smoothing over every rough edge of the character in service of… nothing.  I think the symbiotes even grew Flash’s legs back, which hasn’t exactly been made clear, and which brings me (eventually) to my main point: since that change, Venom has contributed precisely @#$%-all to this comic and every comic he’s appeared in since.  Would you like to know Venom (Star-Lord’s royal bodyguard, if you were curious)’s single, solitary contribution of note in this entire issue?

“I was just remembering… I had this coach in high school.  He told me I was never going to leave Forest Hills.  I’d really like to call him right now.”

THUD.  What if twenty, or even ten years ago, a comic character was given an entirely all-new badass costume, direction, and (presumably) set of powers… and then just hung out in the background doing and saying nothing for three months?  This would be unheard of, right?  It’s all symptomatic of Bendis’ inherent laziness and inability to get these characters, and why I continue to think writing team books do not play to his strengths.

Inhuman Special 1 -Well, this was definitely the middle chapter in a three-part storyline, so not a whole heckuva lot actually happens: the deranged Red Raven confronts Medusa in order to gain revenge for his people being mutilated by the Terrigen mists (complete with lengthy origin flashback), while Spider-Man and the rest of the Inhumans attempt to arrest their free-fall and clamber back up the floating island to help rescue her.  But I want to give a special shout-out to artist Ryan Lee and his creepy webby rendition of Spider-Man!  He’s just incredibly expressive, not to mention intricate – look at that neck!  I love it when Spider-Man is portrayed as creepy, because he’s a skinny grown man in a head-to-toe costume who climbs up walls and ceilings, which, in real life, would actually be deeply unsettling.  But my favorite writer of the moment, Jeff Loveness, continues to hit me just right with details like the close-up shot of Spider-Man’s misplaced Avengers ID signal card in his futon, and show me someone who thinks this “What would Cyclops do?” digression is anything less than 110% perfect, I will show you a liar.  I am looking forward to the conclusion!

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 4 – You guys, you need to read Squirrel Girl.  I feel like I just want to type that sentence over and over.  We are lucky enough to live in an age where Ryan North is writing an ongoing series in which Squirrel Girl fights Galactus and if you are not reading this series you are doing a disservice to yourself.  For example, while struggling to make themselves heard on the surface of the moon, Squirrel Girl and her sidekick Tippy-Toe each submit their suggestions in classic “are you thinking what I’m thinking?” fashion.  They also address whether or not Galactus indeed appears differently to any species that beholds him, and her plan to dissuade Galactus from consuming the Earth… I don’t want to spoil this for you guys because I want you to experience the sheer joy of this comic for yourself.  Kamala Khan may be a media darling, but she has no chance of replacing Squirrel Girl in my heart.

Wolverines 15 – I remain… not the biggest fan of Juan Doe’s art.  In keeping with this series’ careening from the ridiculous to the sublime, this is very much a treading-water chapter: after the Sabretooth and company handily knocked out Portal last issue, this issue finds the team continuing to just stand around his unconscious body, while below the ship, X-23 and Daken continue their fight against Siphon, the scary monster-thing that robbed Daken of his healing factor.  Oh, and Blade the Vampire Hunter is here, too.  Which is weird, since he’s so semi-present I actually forgot he showed up last issue.  I think he’d even already killed all the vampires by the time X-23 and Daken even showed up, so I’m not sure what exactly he brings to the story?  Perhaps it’s Blade’s unapologetic eagerness to kill this monster that’s been rendered a savage by its ceaseless appetite, while X-23 pleads with Blade not to kill it, since keeping Siphon alive might be the only way to restore Daken’s healing factor.  But if this story is about Daken fighting Siphon in order to become whole again, wouldn’t the story have been better by served by X-23 pleading with… Daken?  But I think the strongest scene of the issue is at the end when Daken checks in with X-23, X-23 immediately calls him out as Mystique in disguise, and tells her, “And this is what’s really gonna keep you up tonight: how did I know you’re you and not Daken?  I’ll never tell.”  Good for her!