The X-Men are now led by Magneto, who's married to Rogue and has a young son named Charles. His son Pietro (Quicksilver) has taken up the second-in-command role traditionally held by Cyclops. Cyclops is a bad guy along with his brother Havoc. He lost an eye to Wolverine (or just Logan) but shot off Wolverine left hand in the battle when Logan came to New York to free Jean-Grey. Logan and Jean-Grey have been freelance ever since. Storm is still on the X-Men but into Pietro. Colossus and Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) are married and training a group of recruits known as Generation Next. Angel runs a nightclub sort of like Rick's in Casablanca, only it's in New York, the heart of Apocalypse's empire. Nightcrawler is kind of jerk who doesn't really work for either side. Gambit is still a petty thief with his own crew known as the X-Ternals and he had a falling out with Magneto after Rogue rejected him. And instead of Cable, Nate Summers is a powerful young telepath, who instead of traveling back in time was created in a lab by Mr. Sinister until he was broken out, but he's still the genetic son of Cyclops and Jean-Grey.
Only the time traveling mutant Bishop still has any memory of how things were supposed to be. He goes to Magneto and so they set a plan into motion to go back in time to put things right. This plan of course requires different teams to do different things so they could support all these titles. The main X-Men title focuses on trying to save humans. Generation Next focuses on Colossus and Shadowcat's students trying to free Colossus's sister who has some special power. Nightcrawler and his mom Mystique go to what was the Savage Land in Antarctica to find a woman known as Destiny. The X-Ternals head into space to find a special crystal. Logan and Jean-Grey work with the human government (led by Bolivar Trask of Days of Future Past and a de-mutantized Emma Frost) to help set up a fleet of blimps to drop nukes on New York. Meanwhile Nate Summers is traveling with a troupe of actors led by Forge and learning to use his powers.
Oh and you might wonder: what about all those superheroes? You know, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, and all that? Well despite that this timeline shift happened "twenty years ago" when the Marvel Universe had already existed for 10 years, there were no superheroes. In a couple of issues called "X-Universe" we find out that the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom never went into space to be changed by cosmic rays, Tony Stark is just a dude with some tech but not an Iron Man suit, Peter Parker and T'Challa are dead, Thor is just Dr. Donald Blake--the original person who found Thor's hammer--and presumably Captain America is still frozen. Bruce Banner is caught in an explosion that turns him into the gray Hulk, but he just goes on a rampage before being put down.
You can pretty much figure how this is going to go: in the end Bishop is able to go back and stop Legion and everything goes back to how it was. Which after all the set up I guess it might be disappointing it was such a predictable ending. But it was one of those stories I had heard about and never gotten around to reading, so it was good to finally be able to read it.
This was a pretty ambitious idea with a lot of stuff to read. I don't think I even read all of the issues, though the main ones at least. The thing is that the original trade collections Marvel put out were pretty poorly organized by reviews I read. The ones I read were put out later in a better order. Especially if you're a big fan it would be neat to see how the characters are changed. Even a casual fan like me can get most of the references.(3.5/5)
The last two volumes continue the story and wrap it up. Most of the main characters are packed into a dead Decepticon who turned into a spaceship. Strange things start to happen though and ultimately the entire crew is "killed" and finds themselves in the Transformers version of the afterlife. But is it? No! It's actually a place where Transformers would be shown elaborate fantasies to make them happy before being euthanized. And it turns out the whole "Knights of Cybertron" story was created by someone's vision in this "afterlife."
Though they escape being euthanized, the crew faces an even bigger threat when the Functionists cross over into their reality with a giant robot based on the Transformer god Primus. Along with the giant robot is a group of rebel Transformers led by Megatron, who was thought to be dead.
It all leads to an epic showdown.
This conclusion feels like it was a little rushed. I'm sure it would have played out differently if the series weren't wrapping up after issue #25. Which I don't think was based on sales so much as Hasbro wanting to introduce a new line of toys. That's the problem when you have a series based on toys, I guess. Anyway, it was a fond farewell for this ragtag group of misfits and while everything wasn't wrapped up perfectly, it pretty much covered everything. A little sad that some characters like Whirl "died" in the final battle, but on the plus side we finally learn what Rung's seemingly useless alt mode is for--creating Matrices! Because of course Rung, the seemingly useless character, is actually the god Primus! That's something I'm sure will be overwritten soon enough. I just wish they'd make a Rung figure, though they'd probably just recolor some other figure. Sigh.
It's disappointing the series is ending because it was the only series I ever liked so much I subscribed to it because I wanted to support it. But my $3.99/issue couldn't save it from Hasbro's greedy machinations. (4/5)
I read DC's Dark Nights: Metal and thought it was pretty dumb. One dumb thing is it introduces 7 evil Dark Knights but except for "the Batman Who Laughs" the main line of comics doesn't do much with those characters. Since it was on sale, I decided to buy the supplemental collection: Dark Knights Rising which has all the spin-off issues for the evil Dark Knights. I thought maybe it'd help things make more sense, but not really.
The first story presented is the Red Death. On an alternate Earth, Batman's "family" (the Robins, Nightwing, Batgirl, etc) are all dead and so he captures Barry Allen (the Flash) to access the Speed Force. Thus Batman becomes the fastest man alive! And goes on a killing spree.
This pretty much sets the pace for most of the stories. The Dawnbreaker is based on an Earth where after Bruce Wayne's parents died, the Green Lantern ring found him and he became a Lantern. His will was so strong that he overpowers the ring's prohibition on killing to murder the man who killed his parents. Then he murders Gotham's criminals. And when Jim Gordon tries to talk him out of it; Dawnbreaker kills him too. When the Green Lantern Corps comes to stop him, he kills them too. Sort of wondered why he didn't get a red Lantern ring since rage would have been more appropriate.
Merciless is from an Earth where Ares became really powerful and Batman and Wonder Woman tried to stop him. They knock off Ares' helmet, the source of his power, but Wonder Woman is killed. Batman puts on the helmet and turns into a bloodthirsty god of war. There's a twist at the end when he reveals Wonder Woman wasn't dead--she was just stunned and he killed her before she could get to the helmet, his precious.
The weakest story was Murder Machine. On this Earth the villains break into the Batcave while Batman is gone and Bane snaps Alfred in half. With Cyborg's help, Batman makes an AI Alfred that begins murdering Gotham's villains to protect Bruce Wayne. Then the AI merges with Batman and he becomes a cold, unfeeling cyborg. I dunno, couldn't he have just hired a new butler?
The Drowned is a gender-swapped Batman named Bryce Wayne whose lover Sylvester Kyle (Sylvester? Seriously? Amateurs. Or maybe because it's the gender-swapped Catwoman and Sylvester is a famous cat?) was killed by meta humans and so she goes out and kills all meta humans. (None of this is actually shown, though.) Then Aquawoman shows up and asks if Atlanteans can live in peace with the surface, but Bryce ends up starting a war instead. To fight the Atlanteans, she implants amphibian DNA so she can breathe underwater. And so she defeats the Atlanteans, though most of the world is drowned. (Fun Fact: My Batman character in the Gender Swap Heroes series was named Wynn Bryce, so I was thinking along similar lines.)
Devastator is a Batman who took a Doomsday virus, not a giant Transformers combiner. On his world, Superman went evil for...reasons and when traditional means (Kryptonite spear) don't work, he injects himself with the Doomsday virus to turn into a Doomsday monster that then kills Superman. Probably the second-weakest story of the bunch.
The Batman Who Laughs is the one that got all the attention. On his Earth, the Joker had kidnapped Batman and a bunch of families. He was using the families to recreate the murder of Bruce Wayne's family over and over until Batman gets free and strangles him to death. When he dies, the Joker lets out a burst of Joker gas. For a few days Batman pretends to be normal. He lures the "family" into the Batcave and when they're not expecting it, he guns them all down. (They really should have made their costumes bulletproof.) Then he sets about killing all superheroes. He uses black Kryptonite to make Superman go crazy and kill his own family before killing himself. He's then recruited by the evil god Barbatos to recruit the other evil Dark Knights and do...whatever.
The last story is called The Wild Hunt and like the main story it makes no sense really. The Flash, Raven, and Cyborg are flying a ship...somewhere to do...something and the Dark Knights stop them. It's one of those that probably makes more sense if you're a total comic book nerd and not a casual fan.
Most of the other stories would have been better if they'd been longer. Like I said about The Drowned, there was half of the story that wasn't even shown; I would have liked to see "Sylvester Kyle" and how he died. The Dawnbreaker it would have been good to make the battle with the Green Lantern Corps a little more epic. The Batman Who Laughs it would have been nice to see why his son decided to Jokerize himself. Stuff like that would have made it better. At least it largely made sense except that last story. (2.5/5)
It seems around the time each Marvel movie comes out, Amazon Prime has a couple of related graphic novels you can read for free. So with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp there were a couple of Ant-Man titles released.
Astonishing Ant-Man Vol 1 (2015ish) is the most relevant to the movies since it stars Scott Lang and the suit pretty much looks the same as the movie one. Only in this Scott has moved to Miami where his daughter (a teenager, not a little girl) is living with her mom. He recruits a couple of henchmen to open a security business.
This volume was kind of confusing because the first two books aren't even the same title! One was I guess sort of a prologue and then another was a lead-in to the Secret Wars II "event" around that time. Then there are like 4 issues of the actual title but there's still not a really coherent story. Mostly as Scott tries to get his life going in Miami, some bad guy has created an Uber-like app for henchmen. With just a few taps on the screen you can have a bad guy go do your bidding!
If you like the movies then this is pretty much the same tone. (2.5/5)
Irredeemable Ant-Man was from a few years earlier and really has nothing to do with the movie characters. It focuses on a low-level SHIELD flunky who steals an Ant-Man costume Hank Pym is working on. Instead of using to fight evil, mostly he uses it to spy on and pick up chicks. That is while he's not trying to avoid being captured by another SHIELD agent wearing the more traditional Ant-Man costume.
If you like Deadpool then this is pretty much along those lines. The book is written by Robert Kirkman of Walking Dead fame. He probably should have asked Marvel to delete the letters column where at the end of one issue he jokes about using his female editor's panties as a prize for readers. That might not play well in the #metoo #timesup environment. (2.5/5)
Ant-Man and Wasp: From a forgettable period when original Wasp Janet Van Dyne was dead and so her former husband Hank Pym took up the mantle. Meanwhile the irredeemable Ant-Man was still the Ant-Man of record. In this 3-issue miniseries, they do battle against AIM, those jerks from Iron Man 3. it was fine, but definitely not essential reading. If it weren't free with Amazon Prime I wouldn't have bothered. (2.5/5)
Azrael/Ash: I read this a few months ago after Arion talked about it on his blog. I was stunned to realize there was an Azrael comic from the 90s I hadn't read! I mean I had painstakingly accumulated the entire DC series from 1995-2003 and the 4-issue original series and read most of the Batman comics when Azrael was Batman, but I hadn't heard of this!
The reason is it wasn't really a DC comic. It was a crossover with now-defunct Event Comics who had a character named Ash. He was a dude who could control fire while Azrael has flaming swords, so they kind of meshed. This crossover is basically two issues where Jean-Paul Valley travels to New York and he and this Ash dude team up to fight a bad guy burning down shit. It's not essential reading unless you're a fan of Azrael or that Ash dude. It wasn't on Comixology or anything so I had to buy it off eBay. (3/5)
1 comment:
I feel honored for making you discover something new.
Hopefully you didn't pay much for it on ebay..!
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