Comics Recap 9/13

I haven't read as many comics as since last month when I did this.  Money's been tight so I've been resisting the urge to buy just anything that goes on sale.  Sometimes that can be difficult to resist.  (Like last night when I dropped $30 on a bunch of comics on DC's site.)  Anyway, here's what we got:

Ultimate Spider-Man:  I guess the "Ultimate" universe is like a different universe than the rest of Marvel comics.  In this universe Peter Parker dies fighting Electro, but conveniently a kid named Miles Morales just so happens to get bit by a spider the Green Goblin created and Miles's ne'er-do-well uncle stole.  I read the first six issues that focus on Miles getting Spidey powers and then becoming the new Spider-Man thanks to a nifty costume given to him by Nick Fury.  I found it to be pretty slow, but then I thought, wait, me of all people shouldn't be throwing stones about that since A Hero's Journey starts off pretty slow.  Hypocrite!  The only other thing that annoyed me was the way they drew the character I was never sure how old he was supposed to be.  Most of the time he looks about 10 years old, which is always a little disconcerting because little kids shouldn't be crime fighters.  Anyway, maybe he's supposed to be older.  I don't know.  (4/5)

I done this already

Justice League Dark:  I read issues #14-18 of this just because the story sounded like something I had already done a couple years earlier in Betrayal Begets Blood, Tales of the Scarlet Knight #5.  What happens is this Justice League of magic people goes through a portal to another planet and all the sudden their magic doesn't work right no more.  The one who is supposed to be immortal starts to get old and die, which I did in the Scarlet Knight book.  I'm starting to think someone from DC Comics has read all my Scarlet Knight books.  Anyway, it was OK but I think it was too short to really accomplish much.  The good thing about the Planet Hulk series was that since it ran 13 issues there was more of a chance to really show you what the planet and its people were like, whereas in only 5 issues you really only get a glimpse of what's going on.  (3.5/5)

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  I bought this just because it is apparently the basis for the movie coming out next year.  It was OK, but not great.  Even for a comic it's pretty implausible that the Russians could have made an advanced robot arm for the Winter Soldier in 1956.  There's a little deus ex machina in the end where Captain America uses the Cosmic Cube to basically wish the Winter Soldier's memories back.  Since they already used the cube in the movies I wonder how that's going to play out there.  I think overall more could have been done with the conflict between Cap and the Winter Soldier.  I guess I actually read just the second volume; there's a whole seven issues before this that builds up the introduction of the Winter Soldier, though really I don't think that's necessary.  (3/5)

New X-Men Vol 1:  I've read quite a bit of Grant Morrison's work for DC, so I thought I might as well sample some of his work for Marvel.  The "New" X-Men focuses on Professor X, Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, and Emma Frost, all of whom have shown up in the various movies by now.  This first volume from Morrison focuses on a story called "e for Extinction" where once again someone is trying to wipe out all the mutants using a new breed of Sentinel robots.  In a sad irony the issue where millions of mutants were killed came out in September of 2001.  Kind of poor timing there.  The story is from the more normal Morrison collection, though really it's not anything you haven't seen before even if you just watched the movies.  This also included the Annual about someone trying to buy mutant organs to implant in normal humans.  The artwork by Frank Quitely is kind of ugly.  I mean just look at the cover and you can see the proportions on the characters are kind of distorted and they all look like bad caricatures of what they should look like.  (3/5)

Is that it?  Yeah, not much going on.