Well, I’m struggling to stay awake after a long shift at work, but I thought I’d still chuck up some comments on this week’s comics (at least the ones I’ve read tonight).
While I was saying last month that I was thinking of trade-waiting on JSA, I still ended up getting this month’s issue. And I’m glad I did. While the Kingdom Come stuff is stuff not working as well as I might’ve liked, the appearance of Gog, a soul surviving God of the Third World is an interesting idea. Especially with us witnessing the birth of the Fifth World Gods over in Final Crisis.
Also I found it interesting that Gog seems to have been the mystery “burning man” from DCU #0. Although I’m sure it was said somewhere else that that was supposed to have been Darkseid, the description also seems to fit Gog, going by what he said in this issue.
Unless its hinting to a parallel between Gog and Darkseid? Its fairly cliche for these seemingly benign Gods to turn out to be nasty in some way. It’ll be interesting to see how this arc plays out.
Meanwhile, over at Marvel, this week brought us Secret Invasion #3. I must admit, this event is doing a cracking job of keeping the issues flowing. The fact that the two Avengers books are so closely tied in is really helping keep up the momentum on this one.
That being said, I don’t feel either issue 2 or 3 has had the same punch as the first issue. I’m really enjoying the story, but the main title’s been lacking that really epic feeling an event should have. Saying that, I am pretty tired at the moment.
I don’t really buy the idea that Iron Man’s a Skrull. While I thought Civil War was in many ways a badly-handled event, I’ve always felt that registration made a lot of sense, and the whole thing had left the Marvel Universe a more interesting place. While it’d be nice to chalk some of Tony’s more dubious actions up to “he was a Skrull”, I think it’d be a real cop out. Especially since the creators have said previously there was no unseen force manipulating the Civil War. I think Skrull Spider-Woman is just messing with Tony’s head.
Did we really just see Echo getting killed off though? That was unexpected.
Rann-Thanagar Holy War #2 didn’t grab me as much as the first issue (again, I’m knackered, so I suspect that is colouring my enjoyment of the books a bit tonight). This felt very much like an issue which was just slowly moving things along, and introducing a main part of the mystery (the anomalies appearing over Rann).
I was really happy to see the Weird turn up though. Admittedly, in light to the fact this series is a direct sequel to Mystery in Space, this makes a lot of sense. But still, when he was revealed, I was slightly kicking myself for not realising who the ghost was.
My main interest in this series is still currently the Captain Comet plot. We’re doubtless going to see him face something that forces him to confront his demons, but I’m interested in seeing where it goes with the subplot of him pretending to be his own nephew.
I’ll also be very interested to see if this series does resolve the Rann-Thanagar War, once and for all. Its been running since Infinite Crisis, so Final Crisis does seem the logical place for it to draw to a close. However, I do feel its invigorated DC’s non-GL space titles, and I’d like to see more of a cold war-style conflict replace the out-and-out inter-galactic war we’ve had for the last few years.
It would be good though, to have a series really focusing on the war. While its been used to spark a few titles, it doesn’t feel like we’ve really delved into it in any way since the original mini. A mini-series really playing up the fact that this is a huge inter-galactic war could be interesting. There’s still some untapped story potential here I think, but I do also think it needs to move on soon, before it becomes stale.
Tags: Comics, DC Comics, JSA, Marvel Comics, Rann-Thanagar Holy War, Secret Invasion
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I was thinking the same about secret invasion. I reckon Jess is trying to keep Tony out of the fight, Iron Man is a heavy hitter, and if he can re-start the stark tech then there will be a lot of fight in SHIELD. How convincing can she be, remember she has Spider-Woman’s pheremone powers so with the effect the SKrull computer virus is having on his extremis system combined with that his head will be pretty screwy.
Was that Echo’s neck being broken? They could perhaps have her survive, but it sure looked like she died, similarly did they just Kill vision II? my thoght with him is that he is in essence a walking suit of sentient Kang armour from the future, so it could be that he can survive the head being destroyed.
Good issue, liked Fury’s cavalry coming in to save the day
Killing Vision II does seem a stretch given how advanced that armour was supposed to be. Although it could be paving the way for the return of the original I guess.
Echo dying in such an off-hand way was a bit of a shock, but in some ways I hope its true. Otherwise the only deaths so far would pretty much be Skrulls, and that’d be stretching things a bit, given the scope of the story.
I definitely think the Tony thing is just her messing with his head. As you’ve pointed out, if he fixes the Starktech then Iron Man and SHIELD are both back in the fight, and that’s bad for the Skrulls. Plus it’d completely undermine Civil War (regardless of what I think about that story).
Sadly, I do think the outcome of this is going to be the unravelling of the post-Civil War status quo anyway. Best I’m hoping for is that registration/the initiative sticks around but is no longer mandatory. Which I think would be a step backwards.
I’d hope that registration sticks around, but tehr eis much less of the “Superhuman Military” element to it that we’ve seen, and much more of the training people with their powers. I do hope Civil War doesn’t unravel as the MU has been more interesting because of it.
Someone on the SFX boards made a good point, If Tony was a Skrull, why the hell bother with replacing Jarvis? So that a Skrull can have a Skrully butler? Also in one of the Avengers titles Jarvis has to con Tony out of Sentry’s files, don’t think he’d need to do that if Tony was a Skrull.
That’s a really good point about Jarvis. Adds definite weight to the “she’s messing with him” theory.