f13.net

If I see the line "It was the worst day in Avengers history" one more fucking time...  The worst day in Avengers history was the day the people at Marvel got together and decided to do all this Disassembled and House of M crap.

So anyway the first issue of the House of M mini came out this week.  If you've read the preview pages or the multitude of interviews Marvel has been throwing out there the past several months, you don't even really need to read this issue to know what's happened.  Professor X and Dr. Strange can't seem to do much to help Wanda and won't be able to hold back her powers much longer.  The New Avengers (and a few old ones) as well as the Astonishing X-men team have been called together to decide if they should kill Wanda or not.  Anyone who has been reading comics for any length of time of course knows that with a few exceptions, pretty much nobody on either team is going to vote to kill a friend of theirs.  So instead they decide to go to Genosha and ask Wanda if she wants them to kill her (because asking someone who has gone insane and can't control their reality altering powers if they want you to kill them is always a great idea).  Quicksilver, who was apparently in the room for just a split second to see the Avengers and X-men getting together, decides to jump to the conclusion that they've decided to murder Wanda, and runs to Genosha to warn Magneto and beg him to do something. 

Long story short, the X-men and Avengers go to Genosha, try to find Wanda, and apparently end up in an alternate reality.  Yes I know Bendis insists it isn't an alternate reality.  It's the actual Marvel reality it's just been altered, which common sense would dictate makes it an alternate reality but I guess Bendis is special and when he does a cheesy alternate reality story it's really something new and different.  I know it's not professional in an unbiased review to say this, but fuck that prententious asshole with a hardbound collection of the entire House of M story (including all the fucking mini's, one shots, special newspapers, and art books).  This story is just the self-indulgence of someone who has bought into his own hype.

I also know how much Haemish enjoys his company-wide event stories being released out of order so it should make him happy to know that we see Sentry in the background a few times as a New Avenger (even though he hasn't joined up yet in New Avengers which of course is also written by Bendis so no excuses there).  We also get a scene between Professor X and the Astonishing X-men which I can only assume will make sense after the next issue of Astonishing comes out.  Also included in this issue are the usual filler pages, with almost a full page of Genosha, and 3 wordless pages near the end of Spiderman watching a portal open (which as many have pointed out does look a lot like a mystical vagina) creating the not-alternate universe.  This is one of the few situations where I'd advocate downloading a comic if you really just have to read it.  I'd hate see Bendis or Marvel getting the idea that people actually pay money to read this stuff because it's good and not just because they're curious as to how bad the Marvel Universe is about to get screwed up this time.

OK.

You make that all sound horrible.

Especially the Vagina.

Just read it. Yes, it's that bad and much fucking worse.

I have a bone to pick with Bendis and Geoff Johns especially. Lots of bones, really, but specifically the use of wordless panels. Now, not every panel needs words. A lot of older comics were TOO wordy before the 90's, with too much reliance on omniscient narration. But now we've swung the other way, where 1/4 of a book is made up of panels that do nothing to advance the story, or even serve the story. But I'll be damned if they don't pad the entire story arc out to 6 issue chunks suitable for graphic novelization. Johns is bad about this, because in every book of his I've seen lately, no matter the artist, there are 2-4 pages that have the exact same design: large image at the top covering half the height of the page and spanning 2 pages, with 4-5 panels on the lower half. The spread panel really doesn't need to be there, but it sure helps pad out the issues.

I like long story arcs, but I want their length to be organic, NOT padded just for novelization. This feels that way.

It's also written as total and utter shit. Really, Bendis just doesn't have any business writing team books. He can't do it. More than 2-4 characters together at once and his dialogue just falls totally flat. Dr. Strange is a fucking cipher in this book, he's like the mystic tricorder, only consulted when they need to ask a magic question. The scheduling issue Velorath mentioned above with Sentry has been repeated at least twice now that I know of. Through Avengers #5, he STILL ISN'T A FUCKING MEMBER AND NEITHER IS WOLVERINE. Yet, both are pictured here and everyone knows them, even though the readers are confused. Sure, through marketing and metabook stuff, we know these two are members (no matter how fucking silly that is). But we haven't read it. It's just shitty, shitty scheduling and lazy writing.

Professor X and the X-Men are supposed to have left on bad terms? PIKA? Since when? From what I read during the shitty X-Reboot after Morrison left, Xavier just wanted to deal with the death of Magneto (oh, which wasn't really Magneto and NO ONE HAS EXPLAINED THAT OR CARED ABOUT IT IN OVER A FUCKING YEAR). And why the fuck does no one in the room, Avengers or X-Men included, bat a fucking eyelash when told that MAGNETO IS FUCKING ALIVE AND BEING HIDDEN AND AIDED BY XAVIER? WHAT THE FUCK? Just like in Disassembled, Magneto's death and attempted destruction of New York must never have happened, because no one even cares that he's still alive and unpunished. The Excalibur book, which is one of the worst at ignoring this inconsistency, has been total shit from the beginning, the equivalent of Bosom Mutant Buddies. But to take that big of a continuity fuck up into a supposed company wide, sales heavy crossover event is just inexcusable. I seriously do not know what the fuck Marvel is thinking, but it isn't writing a good story.

The art work is good, though it suffers from the same muddy coloring issues that New Avengers does.

Heh....

Fucking Magneto.  When I read comics in the early 90's, this guy or Jean Grey was constantly alternating between dead/MIA/ally/enemy/coma state, or whatever.  Hell, for a while there was some young pseudo-Magneto clone kicking around I think....  His "deaths" could never be taken seriously,  since they usually follow close on the heals of a mysterious resurrection.

That, and the problem that the whole "Mutant as repressed minority" allegory just can't work when it takes place in the same world as regular superheros.  I could never figure out why people went apeshit about the Hulk and the X-men/mutants,  but the Avengers amazingly popular public figures.

I've read plenty of horrible stories before, many of which are even worse than this.  What makes this so much more worthy of derision than those other stories though is that Marvel has locked themselves into this story and the ramifications of it until at least 2007 according to their interviews.  Marvel's hype machine has gotten so out of hand in recent years that they were in a position where they felt they had to try to top DC's current Crisis stuff by just pulling some shit out of their ass (read the interviews and you'll see that none of this was really planned until sometime after Disassembled had finished).  The story has become less important than the hype.  Bendis and Quesada spent so much time blowing each other in press releases (in the guise of interviews) and telling us how great the story was going to be that the actual writing became secondary.  The sad thing is that much like New Avengers, this will probably outsell Runaways, G.L.A., the current volume of Captain America, and probably Gravity, combined.

Ultimately, the lesson here is that it's always Raging Douchebag Week somewhere in the world and that's the real reason we can't have nice things.

I like Ultimate Fantastic Four.

Just read issue 2. Yep, this truly is an alternate reality world, with mutants on top and humans, or sapiens, as they are referred to being considered almost second class citizens. The Wasp is Storm's fashion designer, Kitty Pryde is a school teacher of mutants, Logan is a nutjob shacked up with Mystique, Dr. Strange is a shrink to the Sentry (I assume since the man he's talking to is none of the other heroes I know), etc.

Each character is given about 2 pages, and the "plot" is advanced... nil, really. You could summarize this issue with "the characters end up in an alternate world where mutants are dominant and humans are subservient" and you'd have just about all of this issue down.

Sigh.

Not much I can say about this issue since it really didn't go anywhere.  This is the kind of "story" the should have given away with an issue of Wizard to promote House of M.  This isn't the kind of thing you put out as the second part of what's supposed to be a major storyline.  This is sloppy writing.  All of this could have been shown while actually advancing the plot.  We sure as fuck didn't need a full wordless page of Colossus plowing a field or a near worldless page of old Cap.  3 pages of Ms. Marvel stopping a criminal Gambit is neither exciting nor important to any sort of plot.

Lazy storytelling and insulting that Marvel expects people to buy phoned-in filler crap like this just because they hyped it up.

This is why I stick to the Ultimate Marvel line and try to avoid mainstream continuity as much as possible.
Its much more entertaining.  Then again, now that Bendis is full of himself Ultimate Spider Man is probably gonna start sucking.  Gwen Stacy's death in it was probably the harbinger.  Sigh.

Hey, cheer up.  You get Moon Knight.

ffs....

Just read issue 3.  Still crap.  Until something important actually happens I'll be skipping further commentary here.

But the last page of issue 3 was supposed to break the internet.  :cry:

Bringing back a character the same writer killed in his last major event story, in an alternate reality where other dead people like Gwen Stacy and Uncle Ben have already been shown to be alive, doesn't crack the Internet or even jostle it.

I have only 3 words for House of M #3.

Fucking cock monkey.

I liked that it didn't even deserve the big red letters.

Top 300 for June 2005 (http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/7257.html)

No surprise that the first two issues of House of M and Issue 6 of New Avengers top the charts.  Of course the fact that HoM and New Avengers are both massively hyped and have variant covers every issue couldn't possibly inflate the numbers.

To correlate, it probably cost more to market it. Madden, for example, may very well sell more copies (since it's on all platforms) than Halo 2 in America. Even without competition they're spending millions and billions of dollars advertising it. Me no Understando.

Comics are easier to market (at least in regards to marketing to the fanboys on the Internet).  Marvel has been hyping HoM for months prior to its release in the guise of interviews on  Newsarama and the like (which have no problem printing shit like that because really, how much actual fucking news can you post about comics.  Quesada has a weekly column on Newsarama), and on panels at conventions.  They certainly don't spend money placing ads or anything (they don't even tie a comic book ad to their movies).

Yawn-inducing look at some of Marvel's post-HoM stuff (http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=eea951755a71d65d44b756dd0c9ac028&threadid=40013).


Claremont is almost like the George Lucas of comics.  He hasn't written anything good in a long, long time, and the stuff he writes now is so shitty it makes you wonder why you ever even liked his old stuff.  He should have just given up writing comics and accepting his place in comic history rather than tainting his work churning out crap like X-treme X-men, X-men:  The End, and the recent Excalibur series.


Five issues for what sounds like it will amount to seeing the various new status quos of characters I probably don't give a damn about.


For those of you who were wondering when Marvel was going to give the tragically underused Wolverine some more exposure.


I guess that would sell more than calling it a Quicksilver mini.

Looking forward to the new X-Factor series (Madrox was surprisingly good), and Brubaker's X-men:  Deadly Genesis mini (mostly because of Brubaker).  Other than that, all this HoM aftermath stuff seems rather pointless.

Multiple Man is alive again?

I still have the comic where he died to the Legacy Virus.

If everyone who died from the Legacy Virus keeps coming back to life, they might as well start calling it the Legacy Surprise Vacation.

I think it ended up being one of his dupes that died of the virus or something.

It's always the dupes. Damn the dupes. Even if a hero isn't capable of duping like Multiple Man, he's still going to have dupes....Somehow.

Give the tpb of Madrox (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0785115005/qid=1123429871/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-6296622-8471813?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) a try.  Here's aa full issue preview (http://milehighcomics.com/firstlook/marvel/madrox1/) of the first issue.  Some good use of dupes there.

No!  It wasn't the dupes!!

Goddamnit!

All of his dupes were fucked up.  Madrox himself was the sick one, but he had two dupes who were becoming increasingly independent because he was losing control of them (they were arguing through the whole issue) and when it got really bad, his dupes didn't have faces or minds.  It wasn't the friggin dupes!

(Note that I'm sure that's how they explained it away, I'm not doubting you, but they put very little effort into that explanation.)

I know all that.  I have those issues somewhere (probably came in one of those 50 packs I used to get from Price Club/Costco because I never went out of my way to buy X-books).  I didn't see the issue where he came back, but I seem to remember reading it was a dupe somewhere.  I do remember an issue after he "dies" where a mysterious figure comes into the X-Factor HQ and sees a group picture and is shocked to see Multiple Man in it.

 :mob:

He's dead! I saw him die! He's a witch! Burn him!

Blearg. Claremont was ok on X-treme X-Men, but everything else after that has been total shit. The reboot has been at best silly. At worst, it is absolute shit. Excalibur was one of the worst books I've read ever. Let's just totally invalidate the death of a major character (Magneto), not even explain HOW the death was invalidated, nor explain who the supposed Magneto imposter who almost turned the world upside down was, then just go along playing bosom buddies like NOTHING HAPPENED. WHAT THE FUCK? So now we get more Claremont stamp on the entire Marvel Universe? YAY FOR US.

Please, get Claremont away from comics. He's just not good for them anymore. I got excited about the X-Men when I heard he was coming back, enough that I tried to read as much on what had happened with the Grant Morrison run and others before the reboot. After the reboot, my interest is nil.

And Wolverine needs to die in all forms. Worst comic character ever.

If Lobo couldn't kill him, nothing will.

Fuck... Lobo, right up there with Carnage as second worst comic character ever.

Lobo was originally created to be a mockery of all that shit. Specifically Wolverine. It's supposed to be stupid.

[EDIT] The only reason why I say that nothing will kill Wolverine is that someone tried to do it with an even more "extreme" and retarded character --- and it still didn't work.

The thing about that kind of mockery is that it only works the first time.  You can't keep reusing the character.

Heh..Probably so. But money does strange things to people.

Actually, I'm not even sure if the creators were the ones who kept cranking it out or not. Could have just been DC's fault.

Hmmm....

You guys have the same conversation going on in three threads in two different forums.  It's like the comics crossovers of old...

Soon we'll be putting asterisks in our posts.*


*See "Thomas Haden Church to be Spiderman Villain, post 67! 'Nuff said!

Just read #5. Still not getting the vibe. In fact, the vibe I'm getting is DECIDEDLY BAD. It feels like Heroes Reborn all over again, with Layla (?), the little psychic/not quite pyshic chick taking the place of Franklin Richards as the gateway back to the real world or something. I also normally like Copiel's work, but here it just feels off. It's got the same muddy coloring that I think mars the Avengers books. Also, the big surprise at the end of it (I won't spoil it) should have been the first fucking clue to the people involved as to what had happened. It also invalidates the lesson of Age of Apocalypse or something.

The whole "alternate reality" thing is just going to make this whole thing feel like Deux Ex Machina in the worst possible way.

Just read this myself.  Pretty much consisted of Layla "plot device" Miller waking people up, while Emma Frost repeats a lot of what Bendis has said in interviews, explaining various plot points.  Peachy.

Edit:  Just glanced at a review topic on another board and someone pointed out something I missed.  These characters, even after having their memories restored still have memories of the House of M world.  With that as the case, given what was shown on the last page they should know exactly why they can't find Xavier as that seems like an important event in the history of HoM, but they act like it's a big mystery what's happened to the Professor.

6 issues into an 8 issue mini, and we've almost got to a point where something is happening.  Something tells me this story is just going to keep this pace all the way through that Decimation epilogue or whatever that shit is.

Best part of issue 6? Magneto stopping the Sentinel flying at him in mid-air. Worst part? The entire rest of this useless issue. They spend 24 pages to find out one thing. And there isn't even a good fight scene. They spent like 2 pages just emoting in some useless anime yaoi way about if it's right or not to try to set the world straight, before just going ahead with it anyway. Bendis is better than this entire series.

I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry at the "cliffhanger" at the end of issue 6.

Issue 5 twist ending:  OMG Xavier is dead in this reality!
Issue 6 twist ending:  OMG Xavier isn't dead in this reality!

#7 down.

Still shit. Only now, the artist seems to be rushing things, and I can't tell the difference between Magneto and Quicksilver. Which is important in this issue.

Ugggg.

EDIT: A character dies in this book. And the words cockmonkey squared don't even begin to describe my contempt for the way in which it's done.

Hint. I should put AGAIN on the end of that sentence.

We know from advanced solicits that Hawkeye will make some sort of appearance in the first issue of She Hulk's relaunch.  Also I couldn't really tell from the story if Magneto killed Quicksilver or if Wanda brought him back, or what the heck was going on.  Worst art in the series so far and this issue had actually been delayed a week.

I am frustrated to the point of apathy.

Having just read an interview with Chris Claremont about the relaunching of an Excalibur title that actually fits the name (one with Capt. Britain, Dazzler, Juggernaut, Nocturne?, Pete Wisdom and Sage), I have figured out two things.

1) House of M was done to reduce the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe. It was essentially a rebooting of the Marvel universe back to a more mutant-hating time.
2) Magneto from the pages of Excalibur was a creation of the Scarlet Witch's. The real Magneto is dead. (Or alternately, the real Magneto is the pussy from Excalibur and the Xorn/Magneto mix that tried to take over New York in the end of the Grant Morrison one and was killed was created by the Scarlet Witch).

Either way, they've both made me realize a third thing. Or re-realize.

House of M sucks ass.

Yeah, as far as 1 goes a lot of people have pointed out what a bunch of shit that is.  We already know from real life that a minority doesn't have to have miniscule numbers to be persecuted, and Morrison's run had already succeeded in wiping out a large number of mutants anyway in Genosha.  All it comes down to though is Marvel wanting to move backwards rather than forwards.

There's no way they can fix the Magneto thing at this point, and we've known for a while now that every crap plot device the doesn't make sense is going to get blamed on Wanda now.

Oh, and Nocturne is the daughter of Nightcrawler and Wanda from an alternate reality.  She was one of the main characters in Exiles (a group of reality hopping mutants led by Blink from AOA) until she got dumped off in the normal Marvel reality (and joined the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants for some unexplained reason).

I knew he wanted to tap that.

Just picked up the issue of She-Hulk actually and I'll be interested in seeing where Slott goes with this.  Dan Slott is one of my new favorite writers after his GLA mini this year, and probably the best comedic writer in comics right now.  I first read his work over a decade ago when he was writing the Ren and Stimpy comic for Marvel.  I'm not sure what he's done since then, but his 12 issue She-Hulk series last year got great reviews (I've only read a couple issues, but I'm going to order the trades at some point).  The Hawkeye plot doesn't turn up until the last couple pages of this issue, but you can already tell that Slott is going to be having fun with this one.

Oh and pick up the GLA trade in December.  It's funny shit, but Slott also manages to be serious at times and actually makes you care about a group of 4th-string losers.

Ugggghhhh. Just read that She-Hulk. It's got some funny bits, particularly the parts about trade paperbacks. I don't really like the artwork, though. And if that's their way of bringing back Hawkeye for good, I just have to shake my head.

You know, I just don't think there's any good way to bring back a character that was killed so badly.

Knowing Slott, he probably won't be bringing Hawkeye back for good.  He'll get some jokes out of the whole situation and then Hawkeye will probably go back to his own time.  I think She-Hulk is entertaining, but I'll say once again that I loved GLA.

Read the final issue of HoM.  Everyone wakes back up in the normal MU, except now almost all the mutants are gone.  Magneto and Iceman are the only major characters who have lost their powers so far, Hawkeye may be back regardless of what happens in She-Hulk, the heroes continue to seem inable to actually affect the plot rather than watch it go on around them, and Layla "Plot Device" Miller makes an appearance suggesting that Bendis has further plans for this "character".

Of course now Marvel would have us believe that Decimation is the real event, and that HoM was just the over-hyped, padded-out, 8 issue long fucking prelude to the actual story, so we should all go rush out and buy all those one-shots and mini's that'll be out soon.

Read it. More UGGGH.

While there are hints of something interesting that MIGHT happen (Iceman losing his powers), it's all just a muddled cluster fuck of stupid. Some of the heroes remember, and some don't. And instead of just removing the mutants, it removes their powers. And the Scarlet Witch is still alive, just hiding as a fucking gypsy. And Magneto has no powers, but there's still no fucking explanation about how he isn't the Xorn-dead Magneto or dead from the gigantic Sentinel nuclear explosion on Genosha during Grant Morrison's run. And yes, they do hint about Decimation now being the big event, but I just don't fucking care. It's awful, awful writing.

And of course none of them REALLY lost their powers. They just 'forgot'.  That way any writer can come along and have them 'remember'.

Damn they made a mess of Magneto.  One of my favourite bad guys ruined to the point where I wish he were dead and stayed that way.  I haven't really followed HoM put I'm sure half the point of this whole exercise was to retcon the whole Magneto clusterfuck.

The thing with Magneto was that Grant Morrison handled him well. He sort of killed him off, then brought him back in the Xorn/Upside Down/Drugged-out version, which Wolverine then killed with a satisfying snikt. He left it wide open enough so that later writers could come and do something with the character to explain the whole Xorn thing.

But instead of explaining it, Claremont just had him shrug his shoulders and turn into Bosom Buddies with Xavier in Genosha. That Excalibur book was dreadful, and turned Magneto into even more of a wimp than ever before. I'd have been better off with the House of M if it HAD been Magneto who put the ideas into the Scarlet Witch's head.

Every once awhile I go to this sub-forum for a reminder to why I dont touch comics anymore.  I used to read Sleepwalker (from issue1) Iron Man and various non DC/Marvel offerings (Aliens, Predator, Armorines and some other random stuff from image/valiant).  When they killed iron man, then cloned him, then had the clone fight the oringal one, then the original one kill the clone.  I said fuck this, went outside, and never bought a comic again.  Threads like this assure me that I made the right call.

Actually threads like this exist because it's easier to make fun of bad comics that a lot of people are reading than it is to talk about good comics that no one is reading.  I could make plenty of topics about good comics and tpbs but they don't tend to get many responses, but we can keep a topic like this going for months.

Also, House of M is one of the truly bad comics out there. Really, really bad. There's some good work being put out. If you want to see a blockbuster event done (mostly) right, read Infinite Crisis.

Read through Generation M which had some interesting bits including some specifics on the mutants being depowered.  Apparently there was some randomness as to the effects and while some of the non-human looking mutants became completely normal, some just lost their powers.  Chamber for instance is pretty fucked up and being kept alive by machines as he has a big hole in his chest and no heart.  There is also mention of mutants crashing to their deaths after loosing their powers in mid-flight and other such tales of tragedy.  The rest of the issue is dragged down by focusing too much on a new character, the journalist who is writing a column about the ex-mutants.

Over in X-men 178 there some more shit with the Sentinels parked outside the mansion.  Polaris has lost her powers but is trying not to let anyone know.  Meanwhile Bobby is out in the woods surrounding the mansion and gets attacked by some anti-mutant group looking to attack the mansion.  Emma, back in the mansion using Cerebra at the time senses the attack, and with some mental prodding is able to activate Iceman's powers, and the issue ends with Cyclops and Rogue finding Bobby in his (now kinda fucked up looking) Iced-Up form, with him apparently not even knowing he's Iced.  I assume the implication here is that Bobby's power loss was more of a mental thing (which would make sense since he's had a lot of control issues with his powers in the past).

I haven't read the X-Men lately (I'm only up to about #171 so far) but man has that book taken a nosedive in quality since Chuck Austen left. I like Peter Milligan, but the whole Golgotha storyline was just scattershot.

I read Gen M and almost wept at how badly they've handled Chamber. He's reduced to a fucking vegetable. Sure, it makes sense, but I'd like to see a good character get used instead of abused like he's been.

Bendis interview (http://comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=6316).

I'll avoid using Haem's trademarked large red type, but there were parts of this interview that did stir up the Rage in me (apologies in advance for SirBrucing Bendis).


Good to know that Bendis didn't actually have any long term plans and that a throwaway comment from Jeph Loeb was the basis for a big MU changing event.



Never a truer word spoken.



Thank God that Wanda's power to completely change reality somehow still has to obey the law of conservation of energy, otherwise we might not get stories about such inspired sounding threats as the Collective.  I can't wait to see how Iron Man single-handedly stops that one.  Or maybe Bendis will have Emma Frost or Dr. Strange step in again so none of the Avengers have to get their hands dirty actually doing something in their own book.



Maybe if you'd condensed the Ronin arc down to the one issue it could have been told in you'd have time to introduce her place in the Avengers before moving on to the next Big Event, jackass.



No, it's not new.  You just said it yourself, she's a fucking female Taskmaster!  I don't know why people at Marvel seem to think existing character + female = radically new concept.



When you're horribly late with the last issue of your mini, just bite the bullet and release it.  Don't try to make it seem more relevent by shoehorning a bunch of other crap in there to make it look like it leads into the next events, and especially don't tell the readers that you're doing it.  It feels cheap and forced.

Fucking hell. What the fuck happened to Bendis? What happened to the guy who wrote AKA Goldfish and Jinx, two of the best comics I read in the 90's?

WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?  

I mean, no it isn't at all that the Collective sounds like ohhhhh CRISIS. And the Illuminati? That doesn't sound anything like what's happening at DC with the conflicting ideologies of the Big 3 heroes. He sounds like a fucking snake oil salesmen nowadays. It's like he can't be arsed to have an original thought and he knows it, but he's got to keep the sales up so he keeps tossing this idiotic, out there bullshit at comics fans to piss them off. I love the fact that Jeph Loeb came up with Magneto showing up at the end of Disassembled. You know, the part that made NO FUCKING SENSE WHEN COMPARED TO CURRENT CONTINUITY. The part that still isn't resolved. I mean, they really haven't spelled out who the fuck the Xorn/Magento was, or even how he survived the fucking Genosha Super Sentinel Cassandra Nova attack.

Is there not one cockmuffin at Marvel who gives a shit that none of their universe makes any fucking sense anymore?

Overwork.

Seriously, they found a good writer that everyone liked, so they made him write everything.

You try it.  See how long before you're pushing out 'derivative shite number 62'.

Or that's my take anyway.

The worst part isn't so much that it's derivative, it's that like I've said all along, it doesn't fit the characters he's using. And it's boring and badly done. Yeah, Bendis is doing WAAAYYYYY too many Marvel books, and it shows. Geoff Johns is starting to push that limit, but at least he's got a few other guys (Winnick and Rucka) who are just as good taking up some of the slack.

Take a look at another one of Marvel's next big crossovers, Annihilation (http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=822d57c606b48fff3e5657650a998bc9&threadid=52298).


They've got to be fucking kidding me.

Wooga. I love Nova, but I somehow think this is destined to be mediocre. Though with Giffen and Abnett/Lanning on some of them, they might not be bad.

But overall, /meh. And yes, they do sound like the 4 series that preceeded Infinite Crisis.

Yeah, Giffen does seem to be one of the only bright spots in this whole thing.  This is the kind of event Starlin probably could have done well if he could ever do a cosmic Marvel title that didn't revolve around Thanos.  His Dreadstar stuff was really well done Sci-Fi.  Unfortunately that series was killed by the writers that followed him.

On another note, just read X-Factor #1 (the new series), and Son of M #1.  I expected X-Factor to be good, since I like a lot of Peter David's stuff and his Maddrox mini was some of his best writing.  If David keeps up this level of writing for the series it could challenge Whedon's Astonishing X-Men for best X-book on the market right now (Astonishing is actully coming back in a few months).

More surprising though was how much I liked Son of M.  Can't say that I've read a lot of David Hine's stuff, nor did I like the sound of the solicits for Son of M, which suggest that he's going to be betraying people in an effort to get his powers back.  I'd rather Marvel stop shitting on some of their characters for shock value.  So while I still expect to dislike the eventual outcome of this book, it gives you a good understanding of Quicksilver's situation, and even more surprisingly deals with Spider-man's aftermath from House of M better than any of his own books did.