Civil War: Fantastic Four

As I really enjoyed the main Civil War TPB, I decided that it would be worth while to collect the whole crossover event, or at least as many as I could easily find fairly inexpensively.  So I grabbed a handful of them and got to reading, little did I know that some of them would suck and even lie in contradiction with the main TPB book they were meant to support, or was it the other way around.  Regardless, continuity in a crossover event is key and in this book at least, Marvel missed the boat.

As one might expect after having read the main book, this book starts in the hospital with the Fantastic Four looking over the concussed form of Johnny Storm after he was viciously attacked on the city streets after the Stamford incident. Almost immediately the conflict between Reed & Sue Richards starts.  Reed is one of the three people instrumental in the designs and plans not only for the enforcement of the Registration Act, but also for the Fifty States initiative and the prison called 42 located in the negative zone.  Susan on the other hand can’t imagine trying to capture and imprison heroes that have not only done a lot of good, but are also friends of theirs.  This rift comes to a head and Sue and Johnny actually leave Reed and the children to come to the aid of those following Captain America, the freedom fighters if you will.  Ben Grimm on the other hand makes his own decision and it’s a good one that I’m surprised more heroes didn’t think of or act on.

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In the end, Sue and Reed reconcile but she says something to the effect that things can never be the same again.  I don’t imagine that’s a surprise to any Fantastic Four fan who would have known by now that the two aren’t divorced or separated.

I’m pretty disappointed in this book and I’m keeping my finger’s crossed that not all the Civil War books are not as bad as this one or two of the other’s I have read but haven’t reviewed yet.

Avengers Disassembled

Wow, that’s quite a cast I listed in the tags and I tried to just list those characters that made an impact on the story.  The full cast list would account for almost every Marvel Hero of consequence.  It seems only fitting though to have such a prestigious cast when you end an era.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the Avengers were rebuilt not real long after they broke apart, but things could never be the same.  In an attempt to modernize the book Marvel will inject popular characters from other series into the Avengers, they’ll add more of a real feel to the book and probably make it darker as well.  According to Marvel, it had to be done to keep the book alive so there’s no point in complaining about what has been lost.

I knew going into the book that Avengers Disassembled was going to be the breaking point of the team and I had heard mumbled rumors as to what happened in the book, but I wasn’t exactly clear how it would go down.  I was very worried that in order to get to where they wanted to go in the book that it would feel rushed and very contrived.  When I finished the book I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at the story but still saddened by the loss of what had been, exactly how I think Marvel wanted to end the series.

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I’m sure there are others that did not enjoy Avengers Disassembled as I have, it’s too controversial an event to make everyone happy.  It is a more important book than first blush indicates when multiple Avengers titles launched not too long after.  Any fan of the Avengers or just a fan of Marvel in general should pick up this book even if you became a fan after the original Avengers era had ended.

New Avengers: The Collective (4)

What, another New Avengers review?  I know, but I needed to get through it so that I could read the New Avengers: Civil War which I’ve been hanging onto for a while as I am thinking of collecting all the Civil War books even though I thought a few of them were horrible.  I’m also really trying to force myself to review each TPB I read right before I read another one because otherwise I’ll put off the reviewing and it’ll never get done (like my DC & Darkhorse reviews).  So yeah, another New Avengers review. 

Ok, now that all of that nonsense is out of the way, how about I talk about the book.  Honestly I was a bit disappointed, not just in this book but in how the entire New Avengers series went after Vol 1 (Breakout).  Secrets & Lies was much better than Sentry, but The Collective is nearly as frustrating as Sentry was.

The vague story, there’s some entity that comes from space and takes out a town in Alaska and Maria Hill, Director of Shield reluctantly asks for help from the Avengers.  Relations between the team and Shield are at an all time low which effects the entire story.

What I liked best about the story was the first chapter in which Luke Cage took the Avengers to the streets of Detroit to actually try and make a change that would effect the everyman.  It had nothing to do with the story really, but it wasn’t inane like the rest of the book.

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So what did we really learn in this book?  Not all that much, but Maria Hill kept mentioning the registration act in her effort to foreshadow the events to come.  In fact, even though it appeared like the emergence of this entity was important at the time, it really wasn’t.  I almost get the feeling that this book acted merely as a placeholder before the whole Civil War storyline began and they really didn’t want to rock the boat right before whole Marvel universe was changed forever.

Where would I rate it?  Above Sentry but below Secrets and Lies and again, I’m disappointed in the series as a whole because it had so much promise.

The Ultimates 2 – Grand Theft America (2.2)

Well, this book finishes up the story where Gods and Monsters left off and to be honest with you, I could use a bit of a break from The Ultimates so it will be a while before I check out The Ultimates 3.  So does this book do justice to the series?  In my humble opinion, no.  I’ve mentioned before that the normal pace for The Ultimates books tends to be a bit slow, but this book isn’t slow at all.  In fact it moves so fast at times it seems frantic, like we’ve missed a panel or two.

Basically the bottom falls out on The Ultimates in this book, which could have worked out very nicely, but I feel that Marvel took the wrong path on this one.  I see what they were doing, I get the fact that Marvel likes to tie issues in the real world into their stories:  Mutant/Super-hero registration, segregation, the Legacy virus… I get it.  I normally enjoy the way Marvel intertwines issues between the real world and the created one, but sometimes it gets in the way.  In fact, I think this could have been a much better book had they just removed the politics and just told the story.  It felt very contrived and rushed the way it is.

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There was some great action in this book, so if you pick it up just for that reason then you’ll probably enjoy the tale, but if you are looking for story that feels honest you may be left a bit disappointed like I was.

Civil War

The thing to ask yourself before going into Civil War is ‘do I like change?’.  I figure most readers of Trade Paper Backs do enjoy change.  They enjoy villains rising from the dead, characters changing powers and even super-heroes getting killed.  Not all the time mind you, but once in a while to shake things up.  Well that’s exactly what Civil War does to the entire Marvel universe, and things will never be quite the same.

This is important for you TPB readers and I can’t emphasize this more, if you want to understand what Marvel’s Civil War was all about, buy this TPB first! I have read many of the other Civil War TPBs and some of them are downright confusing and most add nothing substantial to the main plot.

Long story short and a minor spoiler– chances are anyone knowing even the slightest about Marvel’s Civil War probably knows all of this anyway — the New Warriors which include Speedball and Namorita are starring in a reality TV show about super-heroes and to boost their ratings they raid a hide out for super-villains.  Unfortunately they aren’t up for the challenge and things go wrong when the villain named Nitro uses his exploding power to kill everyone in a two block radius which just happens to include an elementary school.  There’s major repercussions from this tragedy as the American people demand accountability from their super-heroes and in this case, accountability means un-masking.

What really sets things off in this book is the horrible way the current Director of Shield Maria Hill handled the situation in her briefing with Captain America which forced him to take a stance.  In fact Cap took a stance to an extreme that he probably never would have  if cooler minds had prevailed.

So here’s the synopsis.  Half of the Marvel super-heroes led by Tony Stark agree to register with the government, get trained in how to use their powers responsibly and even draw a government paycheck.  The rest of the heroes following Captain America believe the registration act is a violation of their civil rights and refuse to arrest and imprison super-heroes who don’t feel that they need to register.  So of course, the two sides must clash.

Perhaps if the rebellious team led by Captain America had just buried themselves and hidden out things wouldn’t have turned violent, but these are still heroes, people who feel the need to be where the public needs them most, making them easy targets for Tony Stark’s team of heroes and the entire Shield force.

This is a great book as far as TPBs go because with minimal knowledge of the Marvel Universe you can easily understand what is going on yet fanboys will enjoy the more subtle references that aren’t integral to the storyline.  That’s the other great thing about this book as a read, it’s completely self-contained and meant to be just that.  There’s a beginning, we see how and why the conflict began, there’s a middle filled with conflict and loss and finally there is an ending that offers closure, not hinting at what’s going to happen in the next book.  This is obviously a result of Civil War covering a limited series and the end result is a very enjoyable experience.

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You’ll notice that this review has a ton of tags.  I actually limited the character tags to those characters that actually contributed significantly to the action or the storyline.  The number of tags would be double if I had merely included anyone who made an appearance in this book.  So yeah, just about everyone in the Marvel universe picked a side, fought for it and had their lives changed by all that happened.  So to me, this TPB is a must have for any Marvel fan, the companion books…not so much.

New Avengers: Secrets and Lies (3)

Will the 3rd New Avengers book restore the series to the top of the shelf or did Sentry begin a downward spiral that there’s just no getting out of?  Will this be the book where Daredevil finally joins the team?  Will Spider-Man make any more booty jokes?  Ok, so not so much the last one, but seriously this has to be the issue Daredevil jumps into a black costume and joins the New Avengers right?  They keep showing pictures of a black clad ninja-guy, who else could it be?  Well, the darkly clad stranger actually does get unmasked in this book, see the spoiler below.

The Avengers start out this book with a trip to Japan to fight some ninjas, not contrived at all.  So… of course we get a little New Avenger on ninja action, which is nice.  We also get to see our mysterious ninja like black clad figure doing a bit of ass-whooping alone.  Hydra was there and so was the guest star of the night was the Silver Samurai.  Turns out the Silver Samurai was apparently illegally imprisoned by Sheild at the Raft and he just happened to escape during Breakout.  That’s the reason why the Avengers are there, see how it all ties back together.

Ok, so now that their little Japanese adventure is over it’s time to get to the Secrets & Lies.  One of the New Avengers has got a dark secret they may cost them their membership on the team. Oh please don’t let it be Spider Woman.  I have an unhealthy attraction to her.  I mean I know she’s just a drawing but… like I said it’s unhealthy.  I think maybe they embedded her pheremones into a scratch and sniff on the pages.  Come on, you know what I mean, drawn to perfection with thick black hair, who wouldn’t be attracted to her.

Ok, it’s her.  I hate to spoil it here, but it’s kinda obvious when you look at the collected books that this TPB contains, which I love.  Others may feel differently, but I appreciate the fact that Marvel goes out of their way to recap a story through a collected comic I would have never bought but directly relates to the Avenger story contained within this book.

When that little bit of nastiest is completed, the New Avengers decide that they can’t keep the reformation of the Avengers from the public any longer and hold a press conference that has mixed results.  Throw in a cameo by Ms. Marvel and you’ve got the book in a nutshell.

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So, how did it compare to the other trade paperbacks in the series?  Somewhere in the middle actually; not as good as Breakout but not nearly as bad as Sentry.  It’s good enough to make me give the next book in the series a chance.  So it’s ordered and I’ll review it when it gets in.  Until then, I have a ton of other TPBs just waiting to get a write up.

The Ultimates – Homeland Security (1.2)

Homeland Security opens up just where Super Human ended and it also concludes this run of the series.  As I began reading the second book I was reminded of how this series are darker and covers more mature themes than a normal Avengers book would and in my opinion they aren’t really suitable for younger readers.

Ok, now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s get to the difference between books.  Even though this book concludes the story of the previous Ultimates book, there are significant differences.  For instance, the problems the Ultimates face in the first book are problems that they brought about themselves.  In Homeland Security, there are significant outside forces to deal with, forces of an extra-terrestrial nature.

Another significant difference is the cast.  The core five were established in the last book but that changes as Giant Man’s actions from the previous book significantly reduced his role in Homeland Security and added to the team are Black Widow, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch — the last two are only bit players though.  In an homage to The Matrix Hawkeye and the Black Widow make their entrance in black trench coats carrying black duffel bags filled with weapons and deal some serious damage to some unsuspecting aliens.  Both Black Widow and Hawkeye play important roles in the final battle of the series.

The core team have had big changes as well.  Captain America gets a reminder of how out of touch he is with modern social norms, the Wasp has her own private struggles after having it out with her husband.  Tony Stark admits uncertainty in his self-imposed crusade and in a moment of weakness expresses self-doubt which is out of character for him.  Dr Banner is remourseful for his recent actions and scared about his future yet still has the ability to let his guard down and laugh when visited by Betty Ross. All these changes show one thing, our ‘Super Human’ team is all to human.

The biggest change between the two books is probably the amount of combat in Homeland Security.  You will not go more than four pages in between fights and some of them are just epic.  The main battle at the end of the book is chaotic and frantic just like a real battle would be.

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The main question I have to answer is, does the second book live up to the first Ultimates book?  The answer is yes.  The payoff of Homeland Security is worth the slower pace of the first book and it resolves almost all of the important storylines but still leaves us with a couple of more personal issues that leave us wanting more.  All in all I thoroughly enjoyed both Ultimates books and recommend them to anyone that likes a more realistic and slightly darker super-hero read.

The Ultimates – Super Human (1.1)

The Ultimates is part of Ultimate Marvel, a series designed to re-imagine the stories of some of Marvel’s classic characters with a modern twist.  Not only does this allow Marvel to remove some of the confusing and sometimes convoluted histories of these characters, update their origins within our current scientific paradigm but it also had the possibly unforeseen but beneficial side-effect of de-cluttering this new universe.  Sometimes the classic Marvel galaxy just feels too overrun with both villains and heroes.  Does the world really need to be saved from destruction everyday?  A reduced cast makes what you are reading somehow feel more important and more possible.

But that’s just my opinion on the whole Ultimate Universe of which the the Ultimates are just one part.  The Ultimates are this generations Avengers using pretty much the old cast.  The story begins with Captain America serving a much deserved beat down to some evil Nazis before an explosion sends him into the dark depths of the Arctic where he can cool off for 50 years or so.

Major Nick Fury, a black and more fierce version of than the one from the original universe — who even in the book compares himself to Samuel L. Jackson — is charged with putting together a government sponsored force capable of dealing with the world’s new super-threats.  This comes as a response to the Hulk ravaging a pier in Manhattan and coincidentally, the first member of the new team is a cured Dr. Banner with the hope that he can reverse engineer the super-soldier serum that made Captain America the man he was in WW2.

Dr Banner was eager to join the team and redeem himself but his colleagues Hank & Jan Pym who also agree to join the team as Giant Man and Wasp aren’t so eager to have Banner along for the ride; neither is Banner’s old girlfriend Betty Ross who was brought in as the Director of Communications for the new team.

Tony Stark volunteers his service so the only hold up on getting the team rolling is the new Super Soldiers Banner is going to create when his serum gets completed which is proving more difficult than previously believed.  As fate would have it though just when all looks bleak, a team of marine biologists discover a Captain America popsicle in the Arctic Ocean and somehow Major Fury’s team is able to revive him.  The Avengers have assembled.  Well, I left out Thor, and while he does help the team in a time of crisis he also refuses to work for ‘the man’.

Now that the team is together the problems begin.  Captain America is a man out of time, he struggles with understanding the world’s declined social standards and being 50 years younger than those he loves.  Next, the media starts questioning the governments choice to fund a team tasked at stopping super-powered crime when there’s been nothing worth fighting in months.

In moment of relaxation, Dr Banner overhears his colleagues joking about him and it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.  He feels like an utter failure having not come up with the answer to the Super Soldier formula and he turns to the Hulk for an answer.  That’s the irony of the whole book, Banner Hulks out and it’s his own team that stops him.  If the team had never been put together, Banner wouldn’t have had a reason to bring out the Hulk.  A team with no one to fight manages to to create their own foe to give them a justifiable purpose, even if it’s only one team member who is to blame.

The book touches upon some dark aspects of humanity.  People break into Captain America’s new digs and destroy his personal belongings, Hank and Jan have a fight that goes way too far. It’s real, that’s what I’m trying to get across, some of the shine that normally goes hand in hand with superhero comics has been dulled, but that’s alright, it’s actually what I enjoyed about The Ultimates.

For instance, when Giant Man grows and when Wasp shrinks, their clothes don’t resize with them.  During a fight, Iron Man needs to take time out to recharge, Giant Man takes a hit and is out for the entire fight, Captain America gets beaten to a pulp.

The closer to reality action and the somewhat dark themes makes for a more mature book, and hey there’s a cameo by President Bush and you don’t wanna miss that.  It’s a great read but it does leave a lot of story left to be finished in the second Ultimates book which I’ll be reviewing soon.  That’s probably the only real knock I have against this book as a TPB, but that doesn’t really bother me honestly.

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If you are picking it up hoping for non-stop action, then you are bound to be disappointed, this is more of a character study of classic characters that deserve the attention.

New Avengers: Sentry (2)

The New Avengers – Sentry is the second title in the New Avengers collections and as the title suggests nearly the entire book is dedicated to the search for and comprehension of Sentry.  Who is he?  Why does nobody remember him?  They even ask, is he just a comic book character instead of an actual real life hero – a hyperrealistic question if ever there was one?

The story begins with a meeting of the Illuminati, and if you don’t know who they are I’m not going to spoil it here for you.  It’s actually not critical to the story but I figured it was worth a mention.  After that Wolverine, Spider-Man, Luke Cage and Spider-Woman have a heart to heart with Wrecker, one of the many super-villians that escaped from the Raft – a high security prison for super powered criminals (see Breakout).  Wrecker’s alone so all the power inside his magical crowbar is his own, which means he doesn’t have to share it with the rest of the Wrecking Crew and that makes him an extremely powerful foe as our heroes find out when he hands them a proper whooping.

Ok, it’s a decent fight, but one continuity problem: in one panel Wrecker slams his crowbar into Luke Cage who ends up flying back into the wing of of the quinjet the New Avengers had flown to Long Island on.  The impact does a significant amount of damage to the wing of the plane, more than it does to Luke Cage. Pages later when the fight is over, Iron Man calls the team and tells them to ‘assemble’, by which he means they need to get their butts on the quinjet and meet him in Connecticut.  In the next panel, the New Avengers are seen boarding the plane.  How do you fly a plane with a broken wing?  I can see how they missed it because they’re telling the story out of synch with time so the panels keep flipping between past events and the current which means the fight spans over several different scenes.  It’s not really a huge deal, but on a A-list type of book, it’s a flaw that probably shouldn’t have been overlooked.

That aside, as I alluded to earlier most of the book is trying to resolve a problem with Sentry, a super hero that no one can remember.  The solution involves bringing together the combined forces of the Inhumans, the New Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.  That’s quite a collection heroes and it would be really cool to see them all battling it out with some fiend, but that’s not what happens.  Well, actually it happens, but it happens off the page.  We – the reader – miss out on all the action!  What we do get to witness are scenes of possible past story lines that may or may not have occurred, comic panels intentionally drawn like it’s still the Golden Age of comics, a lot of discussion about the problem at hand and a vague solution which resolves everything in a single panel.  Huh?

Yeah, that’s the problem, the whole book leaves you feeling like you missed out on what was supposed to be important.  We miss the grand battle, the resolution is just a bright white light and we end up with a super-hero that has the ‘power of a thousand suns’.  I feel fully cheated and what’s worse is that it all feels like a contrived way for me to be able to accept one of the most powerful characters Marvel has to offer being dumped into an existing world without him having to have a history.  Dumped is the right word, because honestly it’s like the Beyonder dropped a deuce and it turned into Sentry.  Seriously, you guys could have done better.

I was really disappointed with the follow-up to Breakout which by all accounts was a entertaining read.  Hopefully the guys pulled it back by book three or I might have to abondon the series in search for something better.

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It’s also worth mentioning that the TPB includes some bonus content at the end of the book.  They included a dossier of super-villians and a list of super-powered prisons they called the “New Avengers Most Wanted List”.  From what I can tell, all of the villians listed actually broke out of the Raft in Breakout.  It’s a kind of cool resource for getting caught up with your favorite villians in the Marvel Universe or even learning about someone new.  If my count is right it’s 51 pages long and it’s very text heavy. The dossier is a decent add-on and one of the saving graces of this TPB.

New Avengers: Breakout

Historically, I haven’t been huge on the Avengers.  I don’t exactly know why, when I started reading comics all of my friends were into the X-Men and so that’s what I began reading.  At that time, I also liked matching costumes which I know is lame but I was  bit anal back then.

Anyway, I actually got into the Avengers through the Ultimates, which was really the first true Avengers type book I had read.  After that I picked up the Essential Avengers and went from there.  So while I know the basics, I’m still a little foggy on their recent history right before Breakout which means, I read Breakout without without having read Avengers Disassembled.  Blasphemous, I know but that’s the way it is with TPB’s, sometimes you get what’s available.  So the question I had going into this book was, ‘how well is this book going to stand on its’ own?’  Turns out, pretty well.

I remember seeing a Joe Quesada interview about the New Avengers and I remember him seeming excited about a brand new start and mentioning how they could add popular characters like Wolverine into the mix.  Hearing his excitement made me want to pick up the title even more, but adding Wolverine to the mix, not so much – isn’t he stretched pretty thin as is?

Other than that I knew nothing about the title so I picked it up and jumped into it with both feet, reading and enjoying the book in a single sitting.  The first thing I noticed was that the coloring was amazing, just like it was in The Ultimates. See to me, coloring is really important because it can make good art look like crap if it’s done wrong.  The art, text and layout look excellent as well, as I would imagine it should in a top shelf title.

So the story opens up with Electro inciting a jailbreak at a maximum security prison for the super-powered.  I love this concept, even if it is a bit played out.  A bunch of bad guys with a lot of pent up rage make for an outstanding super hero beatdown, and that’s exactly what happens.  Some of the released criminals include Carnage, Purple Man and The Hydro-Man, you know the usual suspects. The heroes who just happen to be there or get there quick enough to make a difference include Captain America, Spider-Man, Spider Woman, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Man and some guy called Sentry who only plays a small part in this book.

The battle that takes place is absolutely fantastic.  It’s mass chaos set at a frantic pace with bone-crushing results.  I would suggest this book to anybody just for the initial fight scene alone, it’s just that good.

After the fight, Captain America attempts to recruit the heroes that helped put some of the super-criminals back in their cells to be the New Avengers, because as he says, ‘it’s fate’ that they all gathered at the same spot in a moment of need.  Most agree and a new team is born.  Soon after the collective team discover clues about the breakout that lead these heroes to the Savage Land where they run into Wolverine.  Our heroes let him tag along because it never hurts to have a killing machine along with you for the ride when you’re in a jungle filled with dinosaurs and mutates.

Our heroes eventually discover the reason for the breakout and and get caught up in intrigue fueled by an unsuspected conspiracy that leaves the New Avengers unsure as to who their allies and enemies really are.

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So with the amazing action in the jailbreak fight, the humorous interactions of Spider-Man with Luke Cage, the sexiness of Spider-Woman and the inclusion of some of the best heroes Marvel has to offer — Captain America, Wolverine, & Iron Man — you’ve got to pick up this book because it’s got something for everyone put together by some of the best writers and artists Marvel employs.