My Name Is Bruce, 2008.

I bought the My Name is Bruce one-shot a couple of months ago, and I've gotta tell you, it was pretty awesome.

This book is actually an adaptation of a movie by the same name, which I was rather shocked to hear about. Normally, this kind of movie is right up my alley and I have advanced notice of it before it hits the theaters. It's your classic "actor thinks he's acting, but it's a real situation" scenario.

I've actually met Bruce Campbell and he is an awesome human being. It was at a book reading for his autobiography, and he's just a cool dude. His book is very good, I HIGHLY recommend it; his story is very interesting, because he doesn't claim to be a movie-star, in fact, he professes to be quite the opposite; he describes himself as a working-class actor.

Anyway, this book is a one-shot and, like I mentioned before, it's an adaptation of the movie, and the plot is your basic "movie-star thinks he's filming a movie when it's actually a real event". I know, it's a tired plot plotline, but it works and, I mean, it DOES star Bruce Campbell, so if you're not prepared for a decent amount of cheesy antics, you are really reading the wrong comic/watching the wrong movie.

Sidenote: this was published by Dark Horse, and it is pretty shocking to read real curse words in a comic book; check the page to the right. I guess I'm kind of used to seeing the super-lame "####" whenever characters "curse" in mainstream books. My personal thoughts on the matter are; if you can't cuss in a comic book without being censored, don't do it. It's just lazy writing. Really, any effect you're going for is diminished when you see something like, "HOLY ####" in a word balloon. Moon Knight is probably the biggest offender, and I know that's supposed to be an edgier book, but if Marvel is going to censor you every time you do it, think of something else. Hell, MAKE-UP a curse word, I don't care, it's just annoying to pound marks everywhere. But this book doesn't have any of those problems, because the curse words are used rather liberally.

Anyways, Bruce is abducted and brought to a town to fight Guan-di, the Chinese god of war and protector of the dead. The only problem is, Guan-di is real, and Bruce thinks that he is filming a movie. Of course Bruce (in the comic/movie) is a pretty sleazy character, and he runs screaming when he finds out that Guand-di is real. Ghosts, explosions, gunfire, fist fighting and bean curd (Guand-di's only weakness) are all involved in the telling of the story and of course at the end, Bruce turns into the hero we all know and love. There's also the obligatory "death scence" where Bruce is thought to be dead, only to stumbled out of a pile of rubble to deliver a couple of wise-cracking one-liners.

All-in-all, it was a pretty fun book and I enjoyed it an awful lot. The art was pretty good, and even though it followed a movie script, it was written very well and it packed a lot of stuff into 32 pages. There was also a very nice balance of action, back story and humor that made it a very fun read. I saw copies of it for months after it was released so you could check your local comic book store, or try eBay. It's really fun and I wouldn't mind Bruce getting his own series. I'd add it to my pull-list.

One last thing: according to wikipedia, there is a sequel planned intitled My Name is Still Bruce. I have one thing to say to that: sign me up for some more.

Secret Invasion: Review.

Secret Invasion #8 came out yesterday, and that finally wrapped up an eight or nine month massive cross-over. Other people have talked about it, but I thought I'd chip in with my two cents about the series. There are spoilers ahoy, but just in-case, here's a friendly reminder:

:::::SPOILER WARNING:::::

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU STILL PLAN TO READ THE SERIES

I thought Secret Invasion started out pretty strong; it's a great idea, and the more the plot kept unraveling and you started to see how far back this thing went, the better it got. It did kind of start to lag a little in the middle; a lot of the minor cross-over books went back to their regularly scheduled programming, but then Secret Invasion #7 came out and I started to get really excited again.

Then Secret Invasion #8 hit the stands. Man, what a let-down. I read another person's view on the series, and I think there was a good point in there, that the series really ended in the seventh issue, this last one was just tying up loose ends. I personally thought it had a deus ex machina ending, and it felt very rushed, it felt like they had too many things going on at the same time. I thought issue seven was very good; it was well paced, there was lots of action, and the reveals and story in general was great. Issue Eight just fell on it's face in my opinion.

Another annoying thing it the repeating going on in other issues of the cross-over. This happened to me twice during the series; I read a cross-over issue right before the issue of Secret Invasion, and there were specific parts that were exactly the same. It happened in a Thunderbolts issue where Bullseye takes out a giant Skrull, and then it happened last night when I read New Avengers #47. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' baby got stolen by Skrull-Jarvis and they spent two to three pages where they fly back to their apartment and freak out. Then I started reading Secret Invasion #8, and near the end, there's two pages with almost the same exact panels, and it had the exact same dialogue. It's just annoying to pay $6.98 to have the same exact thing happen in two different books. I understand there should be a little overlap, but there should be a reference to it, not two to three pages of the exact same thing happening twice when the characters have the exact same dialogue line-for-line.

And the ending, what the hell Bendis? (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) Thor kills a giant Wasp (Janet Pym) who is infected with a virus that is killing everyone, Iron Man shows up in some old armor, Norman Osbourne kills the Skrull Queen, then most of them fly into outer space to destroy Skrull spaceships, and Iron Man finds all of the heroes that were replaced as Skrulls in one of the spaceships and brings it back to New York. I think this all happens in like 5-7 pages, which is why I brought up the fact that it felt rushed. The heroes coming back really annoys the hell out of me. Really, there were no risks taken with the series. The Wasp was the only one that died, and they tried to make it a big deal because she was one of the "founding members" of the Avengers, but seriously, who really cares about her death? I sure don't. I thought that "killing" Henry Pym was a pretty bold move, but it turns out that he's alive now. I'm not arguing the details as to why they're still alive, I actually think it holds water, I'm arguing the reasoning and the choice to keep them alive.

The reason all of those Heroes are still alive is because the process that the Skrulls used to impersonate them depended them being alive, because it somehow accessed their memories, which couldn't be replicated if they were dead. Ok, I get it, and you kind of earned it in a way (a couple of crossover issues hinted at it), but I'm going to say this again; there were no risks taken. I would have liked to have seen some of those characters die. It's the same thing I've been complaining about for years; the constant return to the status quo. It's annoying. And Janet's death isn't risky, and it doesn't impact very much, they really weren't doing much with her character anyway.

One part that I thought was a good thing, but that also pissed me off, was Tony Stark getting his comeuppance. Basically, he totally screwed up and because of his involvement in Civil War, he has no friends. S.H.I.E.L.D. is mothballed by the President, which was more about damage control and getting Tony out of power than about anything else. What's disturbing, however, is his replacement. You could see it coming from a mile away, but Norman Osbourne in charge now. He's heading up the "Thunderbolts Initiative" and that's what leads into the "Dark Reign" crossover. More on that later. The thing that really pisses me off though, is that it's basically a giant middle finger to anyone who collected any Marvel comic from 2006-2007, because it basically negates EVERYTHING that happened as a result of the Civil War Crossover. Personally, I would really prefer if they would just cool it with the giant crossovers that are obviously all written to be packaged into a trade at a later day. We've gone from House of M, to Civil War, to World War Hulk, to Secret Invasion, and now we've got Dark Reign. Enough already.

Anyways, back to the point about Tony Stark, he's pretty much decimated at the end of this whole thing. Stark Tech is basically dead technology now, no one is going to touch it because the Skrulls hacked it and inserted a virus. Since he insisted that S.H.I.E.L.D. he's basically screwed now because they're not a functioning entity anymore. And I guess Osborn has taken over StarkTech and has absorbed it into Oscorp. There is a panel at the end of the issue where he is pretty much catatonic. I think that the most interesting story to come out of this whole thing is going to be Tony's story and how he deals with his situation. He basically has nothing. Thor came as close as he could to telling him to lose his number. It could be pretty funny if he turns into a Moon Knight kind of a character, where he's reduced to an unauthorized, street-level crime-fighter.

So the ending revolves around the next giant cross-over, Dark Reign. There are major spoilers ahead, but it's not like I'm the first to talk about this. Basically, Norman Osborne is in control now. He assembles a kind of "Dark Illuminati" consisting of; himself, Dr.Doom, Namor, Loki, The Hood and Emma Frost. Ok, so, I get the rest; and I kind of understand Namor's role, even though he was in the original Illuminati, but I totally don't understand Emma Frost's role. Several people have stated that "she's not evil", but why is she there? From what I've read, it's supposed to "mirror" the original Illuminati, and they're not supposed to be evil per se, but when, Dr. Doom, Norman Osborn, Loki and the Hood are involved, I question anyone else's involvement.

They're supposed to form the Dark Avengers, who are supposed to go after the New Avengers. I personally hope that Tony Stark joins the New Avengers in hiding and he has to start all over again. I guess the more I start thinking about it, the less upset I become. I remember being really disgusted with the end of the series, but now, looking forward, it's kind of a means to an end.

One last thing that really annoyed me was Wolverine's involvement in this whole thing. He's supposed to be in San Francisco, but he's also in New York with the New Avengers, then he goes to the Savage Land with everyone, and then he's on the front line with the rest of the Super Heroes, but if I remember correctly, he's also in San Fran with the X-Men for their part in the cross-over. You can only use the he's best at what he does line so many times before you start to call B.S.

Overall, I would give Secret Invasion an average grade. There was a whole lot of hype and it lived up to it for awhile, but I was really turned off by the ending. AND, a lot of the cross-over issues were MUCH better than the actual series issues. Like there were issues of Hercules that were pretty amazing, and the first three issues of Deadpool were integral to the ending and weren't even branded as Secret Invasion cross-overs; then a lot of these story lines were pretty much dropped and it was back to normal programming. I don't think they co-ordinated this one as well as they have done in the past and a lot of series were over with their cross-over involvement before the regular series was half-way done. I am on the fence about Dark Reign. I am thinking about adding the Dark Avengers and the Dark Reign limited series if they have one, but I'm not going to go out and get issues of Ms. Marvel or most of the branded mini-series (I can't tell you how disappointed I was in Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four; I read someone describe it as a bait-and-switch and they are 100% correct; half of the team [Reed and Susan] aren't even in the book).

As I said, I would give the series a passing grade, I would try and pick it up in the trades if you missed it, it's probably easier to find and read that way, instead of hunting down all of those issues; and again, the cross-over issues are hit-and-miss; when they hit, they're really good, but when they miss, they can be pretty terrible.

Crises

Thanks to the library, I finished up reading Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis recently. Both were better than I expected. As I've said here, I'm not much of a DC fan but got drawn into both stories even though I didn't know who some characters at all.

Identity Crisis doesn't really tie in to the whole Crisis multi-verse storylines DC is known for. Identity is a tight murder mystery story written by novelist Brad Meltzer. The identity of the killer and their motivation was a little bit of a letdown, but I did enjoy the story. I especially liked how it focused more on characters like Green Arrow and Zatanna, and the villain Doctor Light, who comes off looking like a threat. Rags Morales does a great job on pencilling the series, too.

Infinite Crisis deals with the multiple Earth storyline, and Earth Two's Superman, Superboy, Alex Luthor and Lois Lane wanting to make their Earth the true one. They consider Earth Two to be a more perfect world, as Earth One's Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have all had their own individual meltdowns and struggles lately. JLA Watchtower has been destroyed and the entire DC Universe seems to be coming apart at the seems. Villains are uniting and all out chaos erupts. There are so many characters in this series it's hard to keep track of them all, especially to a casual DC fan like myself. Still, you can't help but get excited when the entire Green Lantern Corps races into space, Firestorm is taking care of business, and other characters are dying every few pages.

Infinite was a really thought out, well paced series. Since I'm always behind on comics, I'll have to wait until the trades come out for Final Crisis and/or the One Year Later storylines, but this series got me excited about the DCU.

Bone

I finally finished reading all 1,300+ pages of Bone: The One Volume Edition which collects all 55 issues of Jeff Smith's independent comic Bone. It took a while to get through after numerous attempts to read it over the last 2 years. 55 issues is a lot of anything. Overall, Bone is good but falls short of being great.

I got a very Lord of the Rings feel from the book - at its root, there's a quest involved and a power they must stop. At the end of the LoTR movies, I felt like saying, "Huh." The quest in the movies didn't seem to be an impossible task with consequences, it just took a while to do. Bone is quite entertaining along the way, though. I was surprised by how funny the book is - quite a few pages and panels had me laughing, but the tone gets more serious as it goes on.

The story revolves around three Bone cousins who get run out of their home, Boneville. They end up in the Valley and entangled in a plot involving dragons, a princess, an ancient cult and a bad dude named the Lord of the Locusts that's trying to come back to destroy everything. All of Smith's characters are lovable, from the Bone cousins, Thorn, Lucius to minor characters like Ted the Bug. Yes, a small talking bug.

It's available as the black and white One Volume edition for about $40 (or cheaper used on Amazon) and it's also being reprinted in color as a children's book series, if you want to see some more shading and background elements. I guess I was expecting a little more out of Bone, but it's far from being disappointing. Entertaining and quite funny is more than you get out of most books these days.

The End League.

So, about two months ago, I wrote about Knights of the Old Republic and how I had bought a run off of eBay. Well, the guy I bought it from decided to throw in a bonus issue of The End League. I finally got around to reading last week, and I'm now hooked on that series as well.

What's really interesting about the series is that it's basically the opposite of what every super-hero comic is about. Normally, the Good Guys always beat the Bad Guys and the status quo is always maintained. Well, in this series, the Good Guys have lost. What's left is The End League, and they're still trying to save the day, even when the odds are massively stacked against them.

::SPOILER WARNING::
What's also pretty cool about it is that the main character was actually mainly responsible for the way that things are. He's the big guy at the bottom of this post; Astonishman. He was tricked into triggering "The Green Event" by his archenemy, "Dead" Lexington. The Green Event ended up giving superpowers to every one person out of ten thousand. Astonishman put together a group of super-heroes called the Squadron of Righteousness to help save the planet as well as fight villains that chose to use their new powers for evil. Twelve years before the current story, most of the world's super-villains banded together and killed a majority of Squad, and those who survived went into hiding and reformed as The End League.

So it's a pretty cool concept. It kind of reminds me of Star Wars and how most of the original trilogy was about people just surviving and trying to fight back against an evil empire. It's also similar to what I liked about The Umbrella Academy in that there is a large gap in the story, so they hint at certain events that have happened and they go back and tell certain parts of the history. It also has a lot of Super-Hero archetypes that have been turned on their heads. For example, Astonishman is obviously Superman, and he caused the whole situation. He deals with a lot of guilt. There is also a Captain America type character, who also has to deal with the guilt of killing his side-kick while he was possessed by his arch-nemesis. So it's interesting how these characters would have to deal with things if they made a mistake and ended up on the losing side of things instead of always on the winning side.

Most of the story is about the team trying to survive. The world has been divided up by the major villains into territories, and they are all now slums. So the team basically focuses on surviving, and their one standing mission is to find Thor's hammer. Turns out that Thor went missing during The Green Event and is presumed dead; his hammer, which is the only thing that can turn this whole situation around, is also missing.

One kind of shocking aspect of the series (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILER) is that they kill off the main character in the second issue. That's right, Astonishman is killed by reanimated Thor and the hammer is taken by someone who has yet to be revealed. I think that was a pretty bold move by the creators, but it works because, again, this is not your normal comic book. And Astonishman will be back, well, at least in the flashbacks. So there's that to look forward to.

There's an interesting page at the end of the first issue. It's written by the writer, Rick Remender, and it basically explains the series, how it came to be, and how long it took to get off the ground. There's an interesting paragraph in there about how hard it is to develop a series about Super-Heroes outside of Marvel or DC. It took them five years from the initial idea to the first issue. (Here's a different interview with the creative team with plenty of preview art)

So, to wrap this up, I really like this series, and I'm pretty impressed with what Dark Horse has been doing lately. They're really going out of their way to break away from what they were doing for decades (licensing existing properties) and they're really taking some risks. I highly recommend The End League, the only downside is that it will probably take some work to find back-issues, a lot of shops are just now adjusting orders to demand. I had to buy issue #2 off of Things From Another World, and they still have plenty of back issues so I recommend them as a back-up if your local shop is out. Dark Horse is also releasing a trade in December, which I think collects the first four or five issues and it is moderately priced. Go out there and buy it already, I promise you, it's a very entertaining book.

The Umbrella Academy.

So, I've got a secret to reveal today; I recently bought The Umbrella Academy Trade about a week ago. And it's really, really, really, really good. I've actually read it twice and I really want to read it a third time, but I might lend it to someone instead.

I had heard good things about it, but I had massive reservations about it because of who was involved in the project. If you don't know, it's written by Gerard Way, and if you don't know who he is, well, you should really get out of the house more often. He is the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. I hate his band, but I love his comic. It's been a very pleasant surprise and I actually can't wait until the next series comes out. It's THAT good.

As I said, a lot of people are saying good things about it, but then I heard him talking about it on the radio. Then, while I was reading Knights of the Old Republic, I saw an ad for the series (see the picture off to the right further down). The ad prominently features "Spaceboy" and it peaked my interest because I noticed that Space has the body of a gorilla. If you've got gorillas, or even half-gorillas involved in your comic, I'm in.

Turns out, there are zombie robots, talking chimpanzees, and space travel in the first story arc, which are four out of my top five favorite things to look for in a comic book (Ninjas are the fifth thing. And I count Zombies and Robots as two separate entries on the list). The plot device is pretty simple, but effective, and I found myself starting to think about all of the possibilities that the series has. It's pretty limitless. But in a good way.

A little backstory (don't read the following if you don't want any spoilers); twenty years ago, there was an event where 43 births occurred to women that showed no previous signs of being pregnant.

A well known Olympian and Nobel Prize Winner (and upon re-reading it, also an alien), Sir Reginald Hargreeves, aka; The Monocle, set out to adopt as many of the children as possible. He succeeded in adopting seven of them and formed the Umbrella Academy to raise them. It turns out that they all have super powers and he grooms them into a super team.

The cool thing about the plot device is that there is a mix of flashbacks and the current time line (twenty+ years after "the event"). There's also a member of the Academy that can time travel and has been missing for about 10-15 years, so you have that thrown in the mix too. I really like how it was set up with a short history of the group, then it included their first adventure, and then it flashed to the present. The team hasn't been together for a very long time, some of them have drastically changed, and one of them is dead. Like a family would, they all interact with each other differently. The writing is really quite real. They end up gathering for the first time in several years for the death of their father, and every member of the team has a different opinion of their adopted alien father.

The gaps really draw you in because they way it's presented, you REALLY want to know what the hell happened to the team. And that's what I like about it. There's a whole lot of back-story that needs to be addressed. They give that to you, but of course they don't give it to you all at once. So they have to fill in that twenty year gap, and then there's the time travel story that has to be told (one line I liked was when when someone asked the time traveling kid about what happened or what he had to do to get back to the present time, he answered, "Well, I guess I should start with the Kennedy assassination..." and then of course something happened and they didn't get to it. Don't think I haven't forgotten about that though. I WANT TO KNOW!), so with all of that, there's a lot of possibilities and a lot of different ways that the series could go.

It's also refreshing that it's a brand new mythology. I think Invincible has succeeded in part due to this because there are brand new characters in a brand new universe. They're not established properties with a whole lot of back story where, as a writer, you're going to offend huge chunks of your readership if you try and do something different. I think a lot of the big publishers and writers who work with the big publishers get locked into doing certain things with established characters because that's how things have been done with that character for 40-50 years. Case in point, look what happened with Spider-Man and the "Brand New Day" story that completely shook things up; there was big time backlash from the readers, even though the Spider-Man franchise was extremely stale at that point. Again, I think the reason why Invincible and The Umbrella Academy are so good is because no one or nothing is really safe, and if it's done the right way, you're left hungering for back story. Lately, they've tried, but I really don't get the same feeling when I read Wolverine stories, I know he's going to survive, and if he "dies" (which kind of happened a couple of story arcs ago in the regular Wolvie series) you know he's really not dead permanently. I mean, especially in the Marvel Universe, everyone's "Marvel Dead" until there's a definitive answer to the question, and even after that, they can still come back, (i.e. - Colossus). I have part of a post written about that very subject, at some point I'll get around to publishing it.

I guess what I'm trying to say it that I think when you start something from scratch, there's a certain level of freshness involved that gets people excited. And that's what is going on with The Umbrella Academy. It's a very interesting move for Dark Horse, because they've pretty much made their living off of licensed properties for the last 15-20 years, so this is a very radical departure for them. It seems to have paid off, and I hope they make more decisions like this.

I also think that it's success partially comes from the fact that Gerard Way is who he is, but I think even more than that, it's successful because he's a new voice. One of the reasons I think I really like it is because it's not just "this writer" with "that artist" starting a run on an "established super-hero series". It's a first time writer and a relatively new artist. So it's just totally new. And totally good.

Anyways, the next installment of The Umbrella Academy is set for a November 26th release, and I cannot wait. I highly recommend picking up the trade to get started though, you WILL NOT be disappointed.

Excalibur #5. 1988.

And we're back. This was supposed to be the third part in my Arcade epic, but then I got busy with work and other stuff and didn't have any time to scan/write. Well, here it is in all it's glory.

This one (like most of the early Excalibur issues) was written and drawn by the almighty duo of Chris Claremont and Alan Davis. Through a bizarre series of events, the team had found themselves in Arcade's Murderworld and have had their bodies swapped with those of The Crazy Gang. Also, Captain Britain's ex-girlfriend, Courtney Ross was kidnapped by Arcade and was being tortured in a fashion that only Arcade can manage. If that doesn't catch you up, here's a two page spread with everyone involved.

So at some point, Shadowcat phases through the control board disrupting the computer system that runs the place. Then later, Kitty hacks into the system to give her control over Murderworld. This is not a good situation for Arcade, because he is forced to enter his own Murderworld and try and survive it. Hilarity ensues.

First off, Jester (who is in Nightcrawler's body) tries to kill Courtney Ross with the old "tablesaw with a long conveyor belt" routine (Are you serious Claremont? I know this was supposed to be a fun story, but you're digging into Wile E. Coyote's bag of tricks? Yikes). Well, for probably the millionth time in a row, this trick doesn't work and Nightcrawler (who is in Jester's body) starts fighting with Jester (who is in Nightcrawler's body) while Courtney is allowed to escape. She then finds Arcade rather quickly and slugs him in the mouth.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Miss Locke and Mr. Chambers are trying to lure Lockheed away from his post of guarding the control board (see the panel to the right). Mr. Chambers gets burnt but Miss Locke turns on the charm and they escape off panel.

Choas ensues, a special performance by The Cat's Laughing occurs (I think this was Kitty's favourite band) and eventually, everyone is restored to their rightful bodies. Oh yeah, and Arcade is arrested. Everyone wins, except for the reader, because Arcade was written into the story. I'm sure the reason why Miss Locke and Mr. Chambers escaped was so they can break Arcade out of jail. He should have gotten the chair. Sorry, but that's just how I feel. So that's about it, hope it was worth the wait.

X-Men #145, 1985.

So judging by the cover, you're thinking that this book is totally gonna kick some ass, right? I mean, it's got Doctor Doom, he's just destroyed the entire X-Men crew and he's doing his best Captain Morgan impression while holding Storm and standing on top of a defeated Colussus. Totally awesome cover. So right about now, you're asking yourself, "Tyler, how does this comic not suck?" Well, slow your roll there, compadre, because while this one does feature the X-Men's first clash with Victor Von Doom, it also features an appearance by Arcade.

Just to get some administration stuff out of the way, this issue was written by the almighty Chris Claremont, and penciled by the combo of Dave Cockrum and Joe Rubinstein.

So, one night while Storm is at an operahouse, Miss Locke (yum) confronts her in her box seat. Storm's first instinct is to electrocute the crap out of her, so after she recovers, Miss Locke tells Storm that Dr. Doom kidnapped Arcade after the two had a falling out. Storm basically says, "And I should care because..." and then Miss Locke reveals that she wants the X-Men to go and rescue him.

So Storm reports back to the X-Men with the info, and the Professor calls the Beast because he's got the hookup over at the Avengers mansion. And he's actually faced the man they call Victor Von Doom, which is something that the X-Men have not. He gives them some pointers, but some of the team aren't really too fired up to go and save Arcade's uesless ass. Wolverine in particular is not a happy camper.

And I guess this is the first time the X-Men have every gone against Doom, because they have no clue who he is. Storm even asks Beast, "Is he that formidable a foe?" Is he a formidable foe? He's Doctor Doom! Hello? Seriously? Wow, Storm. I mean, wow.

Anyways, apparently they're down on membership, because Professor X has to call in some backup. He contacts reserve members Havoc and Polaris (who is looking pretty fine in her old costume if you ask me) and Iceman and Banshee to help out.

It then cuts to a backup story about Cyclops. He washes up on the shore of some island without his visor or glasses and meets some chick not named Madelyne Pryor. I kind of sort of remember this part of the storyline, but in this issue it was only one page long.

So back at the ranch and after a quick briefing so that everyone is on the same page, the X-Men hop in the Blackbird and head over to Arcade's Murderworld. We find out that the reason why Doom is pissed at Arcade is because Arcade turned one of his castles into an amusement park. Yeah. Anyways, so the first team infiltrates the castle and Angel, NIghtcrawler, Collosus and Wolverine take out the cronies, while Storm calmly negotiates with Doom.

Then, suddenly, robots start attacking the X-Men while Storm sits down for dinner with the Doctor. I don't really know how all that happened, but Storm ends up sitting down and is eating and drinking with Dr. Doom, while the rest of the team is getting pummeled. Then the twist ending is revealed. Arcade was never a prisoner, it was just a ploy to get the X-Men to Murderworld! Diabolical!

It ends in a cliff hanger with Doom subduing the entire X-Men squad while Arcade stands there with his thumb up his ass. He can't even capture the X-Men, he has to get Doom to do his dirty work for him. And you know that he's just going to bungle things and they're going to escape. Wow is he lame. So this is a two-parter, but to tell you the truth, if I remember correctly, the second part is a heavy dose of Arcade. I will see if I have the strength to review that one or not.

Uncanny X-Men #311

Ah, UXM issue 311. At one point, this issue held a special place in my heart. I just read it again ten minutes ago and I don't know why I always thought it was so badass, but let's take another look at it. This story takes place after the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey over in X-Men #25 and they have a little bit of downtime. The ever-annoying Jubliee is dying to go see the Rocky Horror Picture Show but Beast is busy fixing the X-Mansion's power core and Iceman is busy watching over Emma Frost. Meanwhile, Bishop is outside in the snow having some fond memories, talks to Storm and then throws a snowball at her as she flies away.

Beast seriously does something wrong and the power to the entire X-Mansion goes out. No big deal, except - the X-Men were holding Sabretooth at this time trying to rehabilitate him! With no power to keep 'tooth in his cage, he's free to let the animal loose and stalk some prey. And prey, in this case, means going after Jubliee! Yes, please kill her Sabretooth!

For some reason, Bishop decides to save the day. Dammit, Bishop. He comes in from the cold, uses what little bio-energy he has to blast Sabretooth through a wall which is pretty cool. He blasts him again in a page pretty much the same as the cover, then Sabretooth gets the advantage. Jubliee saves the day by finding a taser gun in the emergency locker. Damn you, emergency locker!!

On the plus side, the power outage caused Emma Frost to take over Iceman's body and eventually push his powers further than he'd ever used them before, which led to Iceman at least looking way cooler than he had in years. I think I remember being kind of creeped out by this story when I first read it because come on, Jubilee vs. Sabretooth is no match, and I geniunely feared for Jubliee's life. Oh well, still a somewhat enjoyable read all these years later.

X-Force #76, 1998.

The battle I never expected to see...Domino™! Vs. Shatterstar™! To tha def! Nineties comic awesomeness! A dead giveaway that this issue was produced in the Nineties book are all of the Trademarks on the cover. Marvel was really protective of their trademarks in the Nineties. To the point of obsession.

Anyways, this one starts off with Cannonball hanging out with the team. He was dating Tabitha or Boom-Boom or Boomer or Meltdown or whatever she was calling herself back then, and he had left the team to join the X-Men. So he was spending some time with his girlfriend and his peeps. Recently, Dani Moonstar had returned to the team a couple of issues before this one, so the New Mutants connection was back in full effect. Several other things had happened in the previous couple of issues, Domino was captured and operated on and it somehow effected her powers, and the team also finally broke away from Cable's leadership. At this point in time, Cable had his own book and was barely featured in the pages of X-Force, so it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that there was a break coming.

So being a team composed of young adults that have some time on their hands, they like to go out and do things that normal kids like to do, and I guess kids still like bowling. The title page features Sam concentrating right before his shot. He ended up with the dreaded 7-10 split. Ouch. He didn't pick up the spare either. Boom-Boom spoils everything by using one of her timebombs as a bowling ball and they end up having to leave because she's blown their cover as normal teenagers/twenty-somethings. On the way to the car, Cannonball starts talking about coming back to the team and everyone thinks it's a good idea. Well, almost everyone. But more on that later.

The scene then switches to an oil tanker floating off the coast of Mexico, where Domino is beating the crap of out some dude for no real reason. We then find out she's on a freelance mission. Her assignment is get next to a reclusive european crimelord, who just happens to be holding a cage-match style tournament to determine his new bodyguard. I am not making any of this up. I'm also not making up the fact that Arcade is the special guest MC/matchmaker. God I hate Arcade. I'll probably devote an entire post to my hatred of that character at some point.

Anyways, Arcade announces that Domino's next opponent is...Shatterstar! Oh, Snap! This one features Shatterstar in his purple costume with the weird neck head condom. It's a weird looking costume, just trust me on this one. Anyways, they fight and eventually, Domino kicks him in the head and wins. SO finally, that question is answered, even though I don't really remember anyone raising the question in the first place.

So at the end of the story, we get to the dramatic, shocking, twist ending. Sam walks in on Boomer in a full on makeout session with his best friend, Sunspot! Dude, that is not cool! It turns out that they been seeing each other for awhile and Sam's not too happy about it. Tabitha decides to break up with him right there. Classy move right there. What a bitch. Sam is pissed and flies off and almost flies through Bobby when he tries to get in his way. I don't blame him, Bobby would have totally deserved it.

It ends with some uncertainty about X-Force's future and with Tab and Bobby feeling like crap for screwing their best friend over (as they should feel for tearing out a dude's heart and stepping on it). This was kind of the start of a different direction for the title, as they were transformed from a strikeforce into a group of young carefree mutants on a perpetual roadtrip. I think it would get retooled a few more times and somehow stuck around for another four years before Marvel finally folded the book. R.I.P. - X-Force, you kinda, sorta earned it.

Avengers #239, 1984

Beware! It's Assistant Editor's Month. I guess that basically meant you weren't going to get your typical story and they were just going to do whatever the hell they felt like. This particular issue of Avengers features the first appearance of David Letterman. They could have just stopped right there, but they actually paid someone to come up with a script and do the art, so here's a recap:

As for the story - Simon "Wonder Man" Williams decides his acting career is going into the crapper. Since he's a reserve Avenger, I guess he's got some clout so he books himself an appearance on Letterman. He needs fellow Avengers to join him so he gets Vision to round up anyone he can find and the Vision pulls together Hawkeye, Black Panther, Black Widow and Beast. I guess Quasar was too busy primping his hair, so that's not too bad for last minute notice. Thank goodness the Black Panther was at the Wakanda Consulate because if the government had flown him in from Africa just for a talk show appearance, tax payers would have been pissed.

Good ol' Fabian "Mechano Maruader" Stankowicz is out to start some shit, though. (No one was more surprised than me that he has his own Wikipedia entry.) First he sneaks into the building with the oh-so clever repairman / fake mustache disguise, then gets himself a seat in the audience.

Hawkeye is partially deaf but too cool to wear a hearing aid, so he gets a copy of the questions Letterman is going to ask. Hawkeye just gives an answer once Letterman stops talking, leading him to believe Hawkeye may have psychic abilities. Stankowicz is getting bored by now and decides it's time to unleash the lasers he's put into the TV cameras. The Avengers scramble into action fighting against grenades, missiles, giant rollers and other stuff Stankowicz rigged up. He uses the opportunity to run down to Dave's desk and book himself an appearance. So remember, kids, if you want to get on Letterman just be a reserve Avenger, or attack the Avengers when they're on. Of course, he reveals his villainous motivation for doing all this - just to show what one person can accomplish.

In the end, it's Letterman himself that comes to the rescue of the Avengers and the studio audience. Stankowicz has clearly underestimated Letterman's ass-kicking ablities - while he and Dave are safe under his force field, he never suspects that Dave will knock him out cold - with a huge doorknob! I don't remember a giant doorknob being part of Dave's set but it serves its purpose. Dave swings at him and yells out, "It's clobberin' time!" Okay, not really, but that would have been dope. He gives him a ringer, then takes the battery pack and releases the force field. The Avengers have their shit together by this point and the crowd erupts for Dave's heroics. I'm kind of sad Paul Shaffer didn't get his ass kicked because if anyone deserves it, it's him.

Transformers #10, 1985.

Transformers, More Than Meets The Eye! So, looking back, I didn't really collect as many Transformers comics as I thought I did. I bought way more G.I.Joe comics. There's kind of a reason why I didn't buy too many Transformers books and I'll get into that as we go. So picking one to review was pretty easy, because this one was far and away my favorite for a very long time. However, as I went back and read it, I really wasn't that impressed. This comic is beat the hell up though and I remember reading it over and over as a kid, so as a kid, I enjoyed it. Marvel actually came up with most of the back story for Hasbro in addition to the cartoon, but there was a difference vibe going on in the cartoon that I liked a lot better. A lot of stuff didn't translate to the comic very well. A lot of things. But we'll get to those later.

Anyways, so this one opens with Shockwave talking to Optimus Prime's severed head. Early on in the series, Shockwave arrived and totally takes out most of the Autobots and in the process, Optimus gets his head chopped off. During this time, Megatron is also pretty hurt and Shockwave keeps him on the disabled list by attaching him to some kind of machine that just barely keeps him alive. This plotline actually took awhile to get through, I think it was about 12-14 issues, which is forever in terms of reading a comic book series. That's over a year with your best hero and villain both on the shelf and reduced to minor roles. Not good. This is kind of reason #1 as to why I didn't collect the Transformers title, Optimus was my favorite, and why should I buy a comic book that doesn't feature him or his arch-nemesis, when I could watch them beat the crap out of each other every afternoon on TV for free? Even 10-year-old Tyler saw this as a no brainer.

Anyways, it's also revealed that Shockwave was able to steal the Creation Matrix along with Optimus' head, and he doesn't waste any time creating new villains. He introduces his new creations as the Constructicons, because, well, they all look like construction equipment, like cranes, bulldozers, cement trucks and so on. Optimus' severed head doesn't like this development but he can't do anything about it, because he's just a head.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, aka: The Ark, the Autobots are making some repairs and talking to some guy in a suit, basically providing expository dialogue, just in case you weren't up to speed on some of the recent plotlines.

Bumblebee breaks this up with a report. He's keeping an eye on the badguys and reports that Lazerbeak and the Constructicons took out a military base. Prowl tells him to follow them to see where they go and that he'll send a team along to help.

Cutting back to Shockwave and Optimus' severed head, and Shockwave reveals that the Constructicons weren't his only creations. He unveils...Jetfire (who was called Skyfire for some reason in the cartoon) and he will bring about the destruction of the Autobots. Or not. I didn't buy the next couple of issues, but I'd probably put money on not if I were a gamblin' man.

Anyways, to fast forward through a bunch of stuff, we finally get to the part where there are robots fighting each other, which to me, was the whole point of buying the comic. The Constructicons build a giant satellite dish (because they're good at building stuff) and Soundwave plugs in and tries to dial up Cybertron. Well, the Autobots figure out what is going on and, it's clobberin' time! Wait a second, I think that's a Registered Trademark. Ok, it's Robot Smashing Time™!

But before we get to that, I'd like to bring up another one of the major problems I had with the comic: the transformations sucked. Normally the artists can draw a ok car or truck or plane, and they can draw kick-ass robots, but the transition from ok car or truck or plane into kick-ass robot pretty much left a lot to be desired. For example:




See what I'm sayin? How much does that suck? And there's no way that the cool transforming sound that they used in the cartoons could translate into the comic. I've seen a lot BA-DOOMs and KA-BLAMMOs in my day that get the job done when used correctly, but you just can't replicate that sound with words. However, I used to do the sound while I was reading the book. I'm pretty sure that was the only solution.

A second thing I really could have done without was all of the human characters they introduced during the series. Every issue had a least one to three new humans in it and you could never really keep up with them, because they would be gone just as fast as they were introduced. This issue introduced a dude named "Bomber Bill". He's a truck driver. He goes on to help the Autobots as much as he possibly can, but he's a human and he really can't do all that much against giant metal robots. in fact they kind of have to stop what they're doing to save him a couple of times while they're fighting the Decepticons, which is not an easy thing to do. I'm just sayin' that this comic could have used a lot less of Bomber Bill and a lot more of robots beating the crap out of each other.

Getting back on track, so we finally get to the part where the Constructicons reveal their deadly secret: they can combine into a super giant robot named Devastator. They didn't just randomly name him Devastator, he can back up his talk. In fact, he proceeds to start tearing into the Autobots right after the transformation is complete and we finally get to see them start beating the crap out of each other. It's about time.

So this one ends with what was basically the hallmark of the Transformers comic series; the classic Good News/ Bad News ending. Good News: they saved Bomber Bill (or was that bad news?) and no one got seriously hurt or deactivated. Bad News: Soundwave was able to send a message to Cybertron, they got their asses kicked by Devastator, and Optimus Prime's head is still severed from his body. Mmmmm, not a very balanced ending now that I think about it. Like I said, upon rereading it, I really wasn't that impressed, but you could kind of see why kids would eat this stuff up. So there you go, Transformers #10, sort of entertaining.

Transformers 2007, Review #3

Why do another Transformers post? Why NOT, is my question. My review will be brief - I didn't like this movie. The most obvious plot hole that bothers me is - if they were all after the glasses, why didn't they just bid on eBay? That auction had zero bids, and since "they learned about Earth" from the internet and they mention eBay like, twenty times, it would have been so easy. The movie could have been 2 hours of Bumblebee trying to outbid Starscream, and someone getting sniped at the last minute.

The marketing team could have totally had fun with the eBay page, too, but they totally blew it.

Hasbro has a GI Joe movie in development and I seriously, seriously hope they make it cheesy. That's what makes the cartoon so awesome - it's over the top ridiculous, but they'll probably crap it up by trying to make it all serious and realistic. On a scale of "See it on iMax" to "You're better off stabbing your eyes with a pencil," I give Transformers a "Rent it and watch it drunk with your buddies."

Transformers, 2007. Review #1.

"You've got the touch. You've got the POWER!!!" Oops, sorry, that was from the Eighties animated movie. So, if you haven't heard already, Transformers is out in theaters, and I saw it yesterday, so I thought I'd give it a review. I think there are spoilers ahead, so be prepared if you haven't seen it yet (But I only think three people in the entire United States hasn't seen it yet, because it grossed something insane like $156 million for it's first week. It broke Spidey's record. Crazy.)

Let me start by saying that I was a huge Transformers fan back in the day. Much like G.I.Joe, I watched the cartoon, I had a lot of the action figures and collected the comics (in fact, I'll probably review one on Wednesday). So I was pretty excited to see this movie, even though Michael Bay was the director, which was kind of a major turnoff.

Anyways, so I got to the theater about a half hour before the movie started and went to one of the kiosks to buy tickets, because only suckers wait in long lines to buy tickets. Well, I was almost a sucker because the first kiosk I tried didn't work and I was afraid that what happened on the Fourth when I tried to see FF2 was going to happen again. None of their kiosks were working and I didn't get to see the movie. Luckily, the second kiosk worked, and when I was flipping through the list of movies, I was going to go for the regular ten o'clock showing, but then noticed that they had a Digital Laser Projection (DLP) showing at ten thirty. Making the ten o'clock would have been a little tough, and since the DLP was the same mantinee price of six bucks, I decided to follow my own advice and went with the DLP.

So my advice is, if you've ever got the choice to see any of these superhero/action movies on a regular film projector or on a DLP, you've gotta go DLP. The image is sharper, the colors are brighter and because there are so many CGI effects in these kinds of movies, they show up much cleaner on a digital projector. Transformers is no exception. Bumblebee was super bright yellow, even when he was robot form and Optimus was actually pretty cool with the flame paintjob that he had going on. There's also a pretty cool part involving Optimus that I don't want to give away. But that scene was pretty rad with the DLP and I highly suggest it if you know you've got one in your area.

So, moving on to the actual movie. It was ok, not super great, but not super bad either even though it was a little long at two and a half hours. Some stuff could have been cut out and I wouldn't have cared that much. A lot of the comic relief seemed forced and probably could have been cut down or cut out.

Acting: Personally, I find Shia LaBeouf really annoying, but he was tolerable in this movie. This next observation is pretty obvious, I probably don't even have to bring it up, but Megan Fox and Rachael Taylor are superhot. I understand Megan Fox's character, she's from the wrong side of the tracks, blah, blah, blah, but Rachael Taylor's character is kind of hilarious because she works for the government as a highlevel codecracker. I'm not trying to be sexist here, but there is a scene where the camera pans around a room full of super codecracking nerds and then it stops on her, and she's smokin' hot with an Australian accent. Right. And it turns out that she can't even crack the code, that's why Anthony Anderson is in the movie. But she was still smokin' hot.

The Plot: So the effects were great. I mean it's a Michael Bay movie, so you're really not expecting an intellectual, plot-driven, mind-expanding movie. Effects are his bread and butter, and he's good at it. Basically, you want to see Robots beating the crap out of each other, and that's what they do. I do have one gripe though. There was one scene where they're at Hoover Dam and they say they're going to go to a city twenty miles away to extract Shia LaBeouf's character. Why they couldn't do that somewhere in the desert to cut down on the collateral damage is beyond me. Oh, that's right, there aren't any radios in this movie that work, so they had to use some shortwave radios and they had to get them in the city. Yeah, lame plotline. Anyways, they get to the city and it's downtown L.A. Now, it was pretty well publicized that it was filmed downtown, but they could have at least made an effort to downplay it in the movie. At one point, they prominently showed a Wilshire street sign. Alls I'm sayin' is that they could have made an effort here. And the ending left out a whole group of characters, I guess they survived, but you really don't know because they did show them at the end. And of course they set it up for a sequel.

So, overall, it was good, but I probably won't be buying it on DVD, so there you go. It's a superbargin as a matinee, so go out and see it when you get the chance. I think Rich is working up a review that he'll post tomorrow and from what I've read it's pretty good and hits on a couple of points that I didn't bring up.

Fantastic Four #96. 1980.

Well, FF2 has been in the theaters for a few weeks, so it's high time we do some Fantastic Four content around here. So here we are, FF #96. Written by Archie Goodwin, Pencils by John Buscema, Inked by Joe Sinnott, and Lettered by Artie Simek. John Buscema, I've got a lot of comics from the late seventies/ early eighties by that guy. He stepped up when The King left Marvel and did a great job of blending in his own style in with Kirby's and pushed it to the next level. Look at that cover, even with the old school Marvel treatment cramping Buscema's style it's still pretty dope. And this was when they were still putting the title of the story on the covers, but it totally works in this case. The Alien...The Ally...And ARMAGEDDON! And whoa, the FF is going join forces with Doctor Doom? WTF! With an event that monumental, you've gotta have a good title and it's gotta be on the cover.

So it starts out that some dude called The Overmind busted his way into the Baxter building and zapped Reed Richards. A little backstory on The Overmind, it turns out he has "the force of a billion brains"; he somehow has the mind-power of an entire race and he's not afraid to use it. So while Reed is getting his ass handed to him (Yo, Reed! You got knocked the eff out!), the other three members of FF sit around and formulate a plan. What they end up with is not much of a plan, it's basically exactly what they always do, Ben and the Torch try the direct approach and end up getting smoked. Sue arrives and tries to surround The Overlord with one of her invisible force bubbles, but The Overmind ain't havin' none of that, and BA-DOM!, he busts through it and lays the smackdown on Grimm and Johnny, again.

So Sue checks in on Reed, but he's possessed by The Overlord and tries to strangle her. She takes off on her flying Segway (I'm not joking, check out the pic to the right) and leaves Ben and Torchie to continue to get their asses kicked by The Overmind. Reed chases her, but Sue gets her swerve on, Reed misses and ends up in the river. This is not one of Reed's better days. While she's flying through the city, she notices that people are going apeshit. They're rioting, robbing, and looting, you know, basically having a good old time. So she stops on to rest on some rocks and starts crying (I think this was back when she was still the Invisible Girl and she still cried a lot), when some old lady named Miss Harkness appears like Obi-Wan and tells Sue that she needs to go to the Dagobah system and train with Yoda, the Jedi Master that instructed her. Oh, wait a minute that totally didn't happen. What really happened is that she tells Sue that there's only one prescription for what's ailing her; and it's a healthy dose of Doom, baby. Doctor Doom.

With that info, Sue hops on her trusty Segway and crashes her way into Doom's building. This doesn't even faze Doom in the slightest. He's just cold lampin' in a chair, smoking a cigarette, and being completely awesome. That's why Doom is so cool, nothing surprises him. In fact, he's been watching the whole thing on the TV. He knows what's up. It takes a little convincing, but Doom agrees to help. It is officially ON, people!

They stop off at Reed's lab to pick something up and when finally get to the action, Ben and Johnny are just waking up from their ass kicking and they see Doom standing there in his B-Boy stance. So of course they want to battle him even though the Overmind is standing right there, totally ready to kick their butts again. Sue calms everyone down and gets them all on the same page. So they start attacking The Overmind and Doom hits him with his Psionic Refractor (Patent Pending) which turns The Overmind's mental bolts against himself. Oh snap, The Overmind's in trouble now! Basically it kinda just royally pisses off The Overmind and he starts cappin' on everyone. But, this is where Sue comes in. She forms a bubble around Doom so he can use the Refractor without getting hit by The Overmind's mental bolts. However, Reed is back, and he's pissed. He starts strangling Sue and without Sue's force bubble to protect Doom, the feedback is too much and the Refractor breaks (It's a prototype, dude, what did you expect?). This doesn't stop Doom from fighting though, he's a BFM, it takes a lot more than a weak mental bolt to take him out. So then The Overmind picks up the pace a little and he collapses. But he's still a BFM. Even when he collapses from exhaustion, he does it in a cool way. That's why he's Doom.

So what's gonna happen now? They have to stomach a humiliating loss and The Overmind has won, right? Well, hold on a second there cowboy, a comet comes outta nowhere and lands on Earth and it turns out that it's The Stranger. He takes The Overmind out behind the woodshed and beats him like a redheaded stepchild. Then he shrinks him down to the size of a mote of dust (just trust me on this one, a mote of dust is really, really small) and teleports him to a planet that's somewhere close to Barstow (aka, the middle of nowhere) so The Overmind can stay there and not bother anyone. Sucks to be The Overmind now, doesn't it? So, Deux ex machina ending, huh, Goodwin? Sigh. Way to go there pal.

Anyways, there is still the matter of Reed trying to squeeze the the life out of his betrothed. Lucky for her, he's somehow able to shake The Overmind's control and ends up feeling really, really, really tired. Doom wakes up and says he's outtie, but Johnny wants to throw down. Reed and Sue ask him why he's trippin', and they tell him to let Doom go, but Johnny's a hothead and takes off. For some reason, The Watcher shows up and tells them they did a good job and to keep up the good work (enlarge the pic to the left). He also tells them that The Stranger wouldn't have been able to find/defeat The Overmind if they hadn't made The Overmind use his full power. So that's good to know. Then Reed, Sue and Ben walk off into the sunset, and the status quo is maintained. The moral of this story is, like so many other comics from the eighties, the status quo must be maintained at all cost.

So to wrap things up, I've got a question for you, our readers. You, true believers, you will decide which comic will be reviewed next (and hopefully I'll be able to get it done sometime before the end of the week). Will it be What If #11 - "What If...The Fantastic Four All Had The Same Power?" Or will it be What If #15 - "What If...The Fantastic Four Had Lost The Trial Of Galactus?" You decide. Leave your vote in the comments section.

GI Joe Classic #63 - My First Ever Comic

G.I.Joe Classic #63. Ah, here it is. The first comic book I ever owned, straight out of 1987. If I remember correctly, I got it at a hotel gift store while on a family trip. It had Snake Eyes on the cover and I probably bugged my Dad to buy it for me. I never understood why it said "Classic" on it until a few days ago. I guess there were only 5,000 of each of these made and mine has been beat up, folded, creased and sat upon that it wouldn't fetch the $22-$200 range these other ones have.


Anyway - on to the actual issue itself. The cover is misleading - even though Snake Eyes and Scarlet walk through a mine field, they aren't wearing their costumes when it happens. They are, in fact, on vacation with Flint and Lady Jaye so they're in casual resort wear. I'm surprised Snake Eyes doesn't wear his ninja costume all the time, since Cobra shows up at the most inappropriate times in the cartoon.


I re-read this the other night and I can't figure out why this particular issue made me want to collect comics. It was (and still is) the only G.I. Joe comic I read, so the story makes no sense to me. Apparently the Joes have Cobra Commander's son (?) in captivity, and Storm Shadow is out of his badass ninja costume and working with the Joes. The aforementioned Joes are on vacation, and some other Joes are held captive doing grunt work. Roadblock, meanwhile, as back at Joe HQ and working on a touch football game.

At the end, some dipshit shows up at the end and wants a boat ride to Cobra Island. I hope he's planning on blowing some stuff up or taking compromising photos of Tomax and Xamot while he's there.

I was pleased to find this issue contains an appearance from Chuckles. And by pleased, I mean highly annoyed. Chuckles has to be one of the lamest Joes ever, simply because he dresses like a Miami Vice knockoff. If I found my old Chuckles figure tomorrow, I would grind it into pieces and blast it into oblivion. That's how much I hate Chuckles. Plus, his code name is beyond lame. How can anyone take him seriously? "General Hawk, select your team for assassinating Destro." "Yes, sir. I'll take Flint, Recondo, Alpine and leading the team will be Chuckles." Nope, not gonna happen. Screw you, Chuckles. But thank you, G.I. Joe Classic #63 for getting me into comics and thereby taking up 15 years of my life and God knows how much money.
P.S. - Sorry my HTML skillz suck. I'm still learning some of this stuff. (EDITOR'S NOTE: The problems have been fixed. It wasn't that bad.)

What If...Vol.2 #4. 1989.

Ok, this is probably going to be the last Spidey post for awhile. Unless Chris has something else to say about him or the movie. Anyways, I know some people don't like the What If... series (I've heard they recently started a third volume to lukewarm response), but I loved this kind of stuff when I was a kind. Alternate universes, twists on a popular storyline, the What If... series had it goin' on. I collected some issues from the first series if a particular issue interested me, but I was pretty faithful to the second series, despite it's egregious use of the font Serpentine for the masthead. It's #3 on my list of most hated/overused fonts of all time. Anyways, this issue is my favorite one from the second series, with What If #5 coming in at a very close second, and that was mainly because I was a big Vision fan. And the story/cover was great. Anywho, if I remember correctly, this ended up being a popular series and I personally think it kind of sparked the whole reboot/Ultimates madness of the late '90s, because there's only so many earth shattering events the same characters can keep going through.

Anyways, this issue starts out like all others in the What If... series, Uatu provides us a blow-by-blow recap of events, just in case you were sleeping under a rock somewhere (enlarge the pic to the right). So the beginning of this story holds true, Spidey gets whisked away for the Secret Wars fiasco and gets a new suit in the process, which turns out to be the symbiote, Venom. He starts to feel a little run down, so much like the real he decides to swing by the FF's pad and get checked out by Reed Richards. This is where the stories part ways, because in this reality, Reed and the FF are off either saving the world or on a vacation somewhere, so Spidey decides to skip the checkup. A couple of days later, he's still feeling run down, so he decides to stop by Dr. Connors office for a checkup. Prognosis, negative. He tells him to go see Reed ASAP, but when he does, Reed tells him that the suit has bonded to him and it's going to be tough to separate the two. While he's working on something, VenomSpidey breaks out of the cell they put him in and gets loose. Parker tries to assert himself and much like the real storyline, he ends up in a bell tower. But in this timeline Venom's bond is still too strong and that trick doesn't work. Poor Parker. He has to ride shotgun while Venom wrecks his life. Case in point; Venom's a pretty busy guy, but he does find some time to call Felicia at her apartment (where apparently she just hangs out in costume waiting for the right time to steal stuff) and breaks up with her. Over the phone. Yup, Venom's that guy, that's just how he rolls. Felicia does not take it well and starts trashing her apartment:




So Felicia is pissed and since she can't yell at VenomSpidey (apparently he's in the middle of changing cellphone providers and it takes a day or two to transfer the number), but she has to yell at a someone, so she heads over to the FF's HQ and rips Reed a new one, which is pretty tough to do because, you know, he's pretty elastic. So to get back at him, she breaks into a prestigious New York auction house and rips some stuff off and then gives it to the poor. Somehow, this makes her feel better.

Anyways, a couple of days later, the Hulk and Thor are beating the living crap out of each other for some reason, when the the Avengers and Doctor Strange show up to help out. Now, I know what you're thinking here, but even a Doctor Strange appearance can't drag down the awesomeness that happens in this book. While they're fighting, the Dr. creates a crossroads dimension so the Hulk can chill on a timeout and not kill anyone. The Hulk bumrushes him, but he opens the portal to the crossroads dimension right in front of him, so the Hulk will run right into it. BUT, VenomSpidey shows up out of nowhere and pulls Hulk out of the portal and then transfers his bond from Spidey to the Hulk. This ejects Parker from the equation and we find out the reason why Venom debonded from him: he's old. Apparently running around as VenomSpidey takes a lot out of a guy because now Parker is like 185 years old.

So now we've got a VenomHulk. He starts running around totally out of control and no one can really do anything about it. All the big brains can do is sit around and try and develop a tracking system and a sonicblaster to try and knock him out so Doc Strange can put him in the crossroads dimension. Sounds like a plan. Parker helps out, but ends up dying of old age. However, he does manage to head over to his Aunt May's pad and has a very awkward conversation with her, but he's a wimp and instead of telling her the truth, he tells her he was a friend of Peter's from the Bugle. But you can't fool Aunt May. She has a sneaking suspicion that the old dude was Parker and gets a little upset because apparently he's still "missing". MJ tries to calm her down, but even she doesn't know what really happened to Peter, I guess they were "on a break".

Back to the action, the heroes track VenomHulk to Mt. Rushmore and split up to try and find him. Thor ends up spotting him and they continue their scrap from before, but Venom decides to debond from the Hulk and tries to bond to Thor because Thor is a god and is more stable/powerful than the Hulk. Thor resists and summons a lightening bolt to strike himself to try and destroy Venom, but it only succeeds in weakening himself and Venom gets a stronger hold on Thor's body. So now we've got a VenomThor. This is still cool, but it's kind of getting a little out of hand here. Banner is left in his normal human form, and he didn't age at all. Apparently Venom burnt out the Hulk in him.

So now the heroes don't really know what to do here because VenomThor's holed up in a cave still trying to cement the bond with Thor, but he's in control enough to smackdown anyone who comes close enough. So they decide to call in the big guns: Blackbolt. Oh snap, the shit's about to go down right about now. So Black Bolt screams and ends up saving Thor, but he levels Mt. Rushmore in the process:




I'm sure the Inhumans are going to get a giant bill from the U.S. Government for that. Or at least a sanction or an embargo. Dude, that was a national monument you totalled. Anyways, there's still the problem of what to do with the creature. Reed wants to create a special cell for it, probably so he can study it (that's so like what he would do), while Dr. Strange wants to banish it to the Crossroads Dimension, so it won't hurt anyone (and that's so like what he would do). Felicia, however, has other plans. She comes outta nowhere, and quick SHZZAAAK! later, she kills Venom, using a copy of Reed's Sonic Blaster. She was with Parker the night he died so she copied the plans and got the Kingpin to get his scientists to make her a version, in return she just owes the Kingpin her services. For life. Like most What If endings, some people die, everyone learns a lesson and one person ends up getting royally screwed. Only it kinda, sorta, didn't even really happen.

The Amazing Spider-Man #282.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I thought I'd publish this one because my sidekick Chris wrote about Spider-Man 3 a couple of days ago, and this comic kind of, sort of, relates to the movie a little bit.

My cousin Dave bought me this comic. This is significant because my cousin Dave lives in Canada and I've only ever met him like two or three times. In the summer of 1986, my family drove from Los Angeles to Niagara Falls, where my Aunt and my Cousin live. So one day while we were there, and Dave decided to bring me along to get some groceries from a nearby market. We zoomed over at about 48 KPH (I specifically remember asking him what the heck a Kilometer was) and arrived at the store. While we were in the checkout line, he saw me looking at comics and told me to pick one out. The Amazing Spiderman #282 was sitting on the rack and that ended being the winner, mainly because there wasn't a whole lot of other options. Published in "November" (really July) of 1986, it featuring the super rad cover with most of the Marvel Universe in a cool border treatment. I think I ended up buying G.I.Joe #53 after the trip because I was away for a month (G.I.Joe was the main title I was collecting at the time), so I had no idea that Marvel was doing this on all of their covers for "November" of 1986 in honor of their 25th Anniversary. As a kid, I thought this cover treatment was totally rad, and as an adult, I still think it's pretty cool, because I love covers that have a ton of heroes crammed into them. However, on this cover, I have no idea why the half of the Avengers are covered up by the UPC box when they could have moved Luke Cage over there. Now, I love me some Luke Cage, but seriously, in 1986, was he really in the upper echelon of super heroes in the Marvel Universe? He gets a spot right below the FF and above most of the West Coast Avengers? Really? Power Man? I refuse to believe he was that popular in the eighties. I don't even think he had his own book at the time. And as much as I really hate Ant-Man, he totally got jobbed on this deal. Cage got a prime and undeserved spot and Ant-Man gets half of his super small body covered by a big white box. He's Ant-Man for Christ's sake, they couldn't have found room for him? He's super small, you can stick him anywhere and he'll be visible, except for behind a big white box. Meanwhile, Powerman's cold chillin' on the other side of the frame without something covering his face or body, which would have been the right thing to do. I'm just sayin'.

Anyways, in buying me this comic, Dave would send me down a path that, at the time, he had no idea he would be sending me down. This issue had a guest spot featuring X-Factor. Up until this point, I was mainly collecting G.I.Joe, Transformers and a few other "kid" comics. The mutant titles, like X-Men, X-Factor and The New Mutants, were for adults or teenagers, or at least that's what I think my reasoning was at the time for some strange reason. Six months later I would purchase X-Men #213, and my life would be forever changed. But THIS comic set the groundwork for that life changing event.

Anyways, to get to the review, it starts off with a recap of recent events; Peter Parker's good friend Flash Thompson has been framed for the crimes of the Hobgoblin which was a big news item at the time. Mary Jane comes home to her apartment to find Spidey passed out in the bathroom, after getting his bell rung by the Rhino in the previous issue:




A quick sidebar: this issue featured Spidey in his super cool black costume. Now, as an adult I can fully recognize this for what it was; a total gimmick. Giving Spidey a new costume was a way to try and increase book sales. Look! It's Spidey! He's got new costume! Buy this book! I understand this now, but when I was ten, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Spidey had the same boring costume since about 1961 so he was due for a change. In fact after the success of this costume change, Marvel made a major costume/look change for each of their major characters, by the time they got around to Cap, I was kind of over it. However, since this change was the first one, I thought Spidey's new costume was totally rad and I remember thinking, "Look! It's Spidey! He's got a new costume! I'm gonna buy this book!" Ok, I admit it, 10-year-old Tyler drank the Kool-Aid, but in his defense, 10-year-old Tyler was pretty naive. (EDITOR'S NOTE: The same could be said for the new movie. Look! It's Spidey! He's got a new costume! Go see the movie! Adult Tyler hasn't seen it yet, and he might end up waiting until HBO starts playing it in six to nine months)

Ok, so we've established that this comic is totally rad for two reasons; the kick-ass cover and Spidey's black costume. But we're just getting warmed up. It also features X-Factor, aka: the orginal X-Men. Ok, so we need an angle for them to get into the story. If only JJ was standing around in his office talking to Robbie to give us some expository dialogue:




Yes, exactly like that. Good thing Jonah's around. Anyways, to recap: blah, blah, blah, he hates Spider-Man, blah, blah, blah, he wishes there was something he could do about it, blah, blah, blah. What would be really cool is if there was a TV on in the background with a commercial playing that could help him with his problem...




...alright, now we're cookin'. He calls X-Factor, and they're gonna totally, finally get rid of this Spider-Man pest, once and for all. For sure this time. Not playin' around. It's really gonna happen. Take it to the bank. Guaranteed. Hmmmm, it could happen, right? Um, yeah, probably not.

Cut to X-Factor training at their headquarters, and in the time honored tradition of "The Comic Book Guest Spot™", within the first page or two of appearing, each character must refer to all other guest stars by their name, in bold, so the readers will know who they are (enlarge the image to the right). Ok, so did we get everyone? Looks like we're good to go. Like most DangerRoom or training sequences, one team's members collide with each other in a ball of mutant arms and legs so Cyke can stand above them with an irritatingly superior demeanor. Yeah, I'm not the biggest Cyclops fan. The guy's a sick-in-the-mud. Anyways, Hodge (aka Judas) gets on the horn and informs them they've got a job to do; they have to hunt down Spidey. Wha? Spidey's not a mutant. Or is he?

Now, I'm gonna tell you the truth, I really never got the rationale behind X-Factor's gig. They help mutants under the guise of hunting them down. They have two identities, one as X-Factor in which they "hunt" mutants down, and one as the X-Terminators, where they're mutants that "fight" X-Factor and help the mutants that are being persecuted. I understand that they're trying to form some kind of mutant underground railroad while sticking it to the mutant racists that call them, but man it's kind of complicated to follow. No wonder they dropped that storyline after 25 issues. And seriously, no one can figure out that when they're in their civilian clothes, the guy with the ruby quartz sunglasses is Cyclops and the guy with the freakin' huge backpack is Angel? I thought Warren Worthington III (Angel) was a public figure because he was a multi-millionaire and I'm also pretty sure it was public knowledge that he was a mutant because it's kind of hard to hide those super huge wings he's got. So no one can figure out that he's running around with four other people as X-Factor and then when the X-Terminators show up he's the Angel and there happens to be four other people fighting with him? Sigh. Also, no one apparently can put two and two together because everytime X-Factor gets a gig, the X-Terminators show up and save the mutants that are being hunted down. Everytime. Sometimes comic book logic frustrates the hell out of me...

ANYWAYS, to get back to the story, Spidey slips out of MJ's apartment and he goes out to try and find his buddy Flash. But he's having a hard time keeping it together because he doesn't feel too good, he's still a little hungover from the fight with Rhino. The X-Terminators (X-Factor in disguise) are in the city looking for Spidey, and, wouldn't you know it, they find him in no time. They try and talk to him, but Spidey's got a migraine, so he's not thinking too clearly. He thinks they're out to get him. They fight, and at some point, Angel accidently knocks Spidey into Marvel Girl (aka: Jean Grey). Way to go Angel, you're a total pro at this Super Hero racket (I'm not the biggest Angel fan either). Spidey tries to save her, but passes out right after he shoots his web which he hopes can stop her from falling in time. Luckily, Jean's a telekinetic and can fly, so she saves herself. The weird thing is how Spidey passes out. He's still totally buffed out. This is totally not possible. Check the pic off to the left if you don't believe me. It just doesn't look right.

So while he's still passed out, the group then debates what they should do and they come to the obvious conclusion: they stick to JJ bigtime. They refund his money because Spider-Man isn't a Mutant, and they hunt mutants, not Super Heros. I mean, they have morales, Jonah. JJ does not take the news too well and in typical JJ fashion, he starts tearing everyone a new one. X-Factor just decides to ignore him and walk out (why didn't anyone think to do that before?), but Robbie takes offense to JJ's rant and turns in his key to the executive washroom. Whoa dude, calm down. Let's not get crazy here. Quick Sidebar: So. Executive washrooms. Are companies still doing this in the year 2007? Because it seems like a pretty lame idea. As if owners/executives aren't hated enough, they've gotta do their business and wash up seperate from everyone else? Doesn't sound like the greatest idea to boost your company's morale.

So later, after Spidey recovers in a van and Iceman tells him that Jonah hired X-Factor to hunt him down (still trying to keep up the lame gimick), and he tells him to take it easy. Spidey then goes back to looking for Flash, and it's like this whole story didn't even happen. How can this be? In a comic book? Oh, wait, I think I just answered my own question. So, to wrap things up, we cut back to the Bugle and Robbie receives an interoffice package (what, they don't have email?). He opens the package, and it's his key back. See, Jonah does have a heart of gold, it's just really, really, really buried deep in a pit of hate and self-loathing. So everything's ok, Robbie and JJ ride off into the sunset and the status quo is maintained. The status quo must be maintained at all costs. That's the lesson for today, kids. Anyways, I read this one a lot as a kid, and it does remind me a lot of that trip my family took in '86. I also still think it's a pretty good comic, despite all of it's faults and it's timely, given the fact that Spidey 3 features the super cool black costume that at somepoint becomes Venom. So go buy this comic! Or see the movie! Sorry about that. So, yeah, that's about it; Amazing Spiderman #282, two thumbs up.