X-Force #1 Preview.

Marvel posted an article including about X-Force and included a free 5-page preview of the first issue. Here are links to the pages:



I can't wait for this to come out on Wednesday.

Favorite X-Men.

Marvel posted and article called Greatest X-Men. They polled several writers and artists and asked them to name their favorite X-Man. I was introduced to the X-Men right before the Mutant Massacre, so that team always meant a lot to me. If I could only pick one, I would probably choose Wolverine, but if I had to go with a team, I'd go with the core of Storm, Wolvie, Rogue, Colossus, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler with Phoenix (Rachel Grey) and Cyke mixing in and out. That team was never really full strength though, because Cyclops was in and out of the lineup until he lost the leadership position to Storm. Storm was de-powered at the time. Wolvie was recovering from several injuries and then ended up severely injuring Rachel who was basically dropped from the Marvel Universe after that until she resurfaced in Excalibur. Then Colossus, Shadowcat AND Nightcrawler were all seriously injured as a result of the Mutant Massacre and I don't think that team was ever reassembled again. Too bad because I think it was their best lineup; they weren't around for a very long time; and as I said, they were never full strength. I kinda sorta liked the team after that, which was together for awhile, but the story that happened after the Fall of the Mutants was really hard to stay interested in. I hung out for awhile, but then actually stopped collecting for awhile after Gambit was introduced mainly because it wasn't a team book anymore and I didn't like what they were doing with the characters. I've recently bought a run of the issues that I'm missing and I've gotta clear out a block of time to read them. It's going to take awhile.

So I think it's interesting to see that with all of this Endangered Species/Messiah Complex/Divided We Stand crossover hype, it's really nothing we haven't seen before. Basically, weren't the X-Men disassembled during The Fall of the Mutants? Professor X wasn't anywhere near earth for about 75 issues at about that time, so it's not like he had any control over the X-Men or their actions. I think it's an interesting twist right now because of they're still an endangered species, but I guess my point is, this has been done before. Obviously they're going to take it to a different place, but the X-Men have gone through this kind of flux before. I am interested to see where it goes and I'm a huge X-Men fan, but my opinion is, it's not like they're doing something totally groundbreaking here. I guess we'll see what happens.

And the New Captain America is...

And the new Captain America is...Bucky! That was the obvious choice from the 6 contenders Marvel narrowed it down to. The story made Yahoo! news and I'm sure it got some press elsewhere. From what I've heard / read, it seems like Marvel has done a good job of building the Bucky character and making him relevant to today's Marvel Universe. Good job, Marvel, I'll have to track some stuff down.

So now the questions is - what happens to Steve Rogers? Will he stay dead at the bottom of the ocean? Will they find a Steve Rogers from an alternate reality and somehow bring him back? Even though I love Steve Rogers, I think he always had the stigma that he was kind of outdated and stiff. He's a patriot, though, and he fought in freakin' World War II. Of course he's gonna be old-school. Still, we'll see where Marvel goes with this. Should be interesting.

January 2008 Reads Part VI.

Fantastic Four #553: This one marks the end of Dwayne McDuffie's run on the book and I've gotta say, the man can write. There was a lot of buzz on the internet about this run and a little bit of skepticism about the creative crew that's going to replace them, so I don't know if I'm going to be buying it after this. I think I'll flip through it and check it out. I especially liked the last couple of issues because it has a lot of what I look for in a comic; Doctor Doom, lots of fighting, time travel and Doom. How can you go wrong with the formula? The answer is; you can't go wrong, it's Dr. Doom, baby.


House of M: Avengers #4: I keep writing about how good this one is and again, I'm going to say that this issue was really good. Too bad it's only a five-issue limited series because I could hang out for an additional five issues at the very least. This issue is definitely ramping up for the sapian/mutant battle that will take place at the end of the series. I'm kind of disappointed that there's only one more issue to go, but I really enjoyed reading it and sometimes all good things must come to an end. So I'll wait until the last issue comes out at the end of the month and give it a nice sendoff.


Mighty Avengers #8: This one was a little strange, but it's also a pretty fun book, so as I said last month, I'm going to keep buying it. It's funny, it's got a lot of action, basically the only drawback is that Wonder Man is involved. Hate that guy and his stupid jacket and sunglasses. There was a pretty funny part in the book where Pym gives Janet the ability to become super tall or super small and then the first time she uses it, she gets infected by the Venom virus, becomes a twenty-foot tall Venom and starts destroying New York. I think I've said this before, but this book is also bringing back the thought balloons and I couldn't be happier. They way they use them is how people think in real life when you're saying one thing but thinking another. It's a pretty fun book, so check it out if you get the chance.


What If? Wolverine vs. Spider-man #1: I remember buying this one-shot WAY back in the day (I think it was back in 1987) so I was interested to see what they were going to do here. It was...interesting. Marvel lists it as #1, and I forgot if it said if it was a one-shot or not so it might turn into a series. They definitely left the door open for further exploits. I liked that it was kind of written with the same feel that I remember the original book was written in; it was set during the Cold War, so there was a lot of cloak & dagger and misinformation going on. I enjoyed it, like I said, I don't know if it's going to be a series and I don't know if I'd buy it as a series. I guess we'll find out. My opinion is that it was intended as a one-shot.

So I guess Marvel pushed some stuff back. I had X-Force #1 and Hulk #2 on my list, but looking on their website, it doesn't list them as being released tomorrow. I found X-Force got pushed back to the 13th (just in time for Valentine's Day). Whatever, Marvel. So I guess tomorrow I will be buying: Moon Knight #15 (actually it gets delivered in the mail), Uncanny X-Men #495 (The "Divided We Stand" Storyline begins) and The Twelve #2 (I'm really excited about that one).

Update 1/30/08.

It's been a pretty busy week for me so I'm a little behind on things. There was a whole bunch of stuff I was going to write about, but then I got busy. Anyways, there was a pretty interesting article on the Post Messiah Complex state of affairs on Marvel's site.

Tonight I am planning on buying Fantastic Four#553, House of M: Avengers #4, and Mighty Avengers #8. I have to go to Vegas for work tomorrow and won't be able to write until next week, so maybe my partner-in-crime, Chris, will post something. That's about all I've got.

January 2008 Reads Part V.

New Warriors #7-8 I have always liked the New Warriors, but this series is not like any of the previous incarnations of the team. It's really wordy and most of the team doesn't have any powers. And Night Thrasher is dead, and his brother is taking his place. It also features a de-powered Jubilee, and I'm going to say that she's even more annoying without her powers. Some of the story focused on each individual deciding on what technology they would choose to give them powers. And then there's a whole lot of in-fighting between the team. Kind of annoying. I'm probably not going to keep buying this one, I thought I'd check it out because I used to collect it. But it's not the same, there are only a very few characters that are hold-overs from the original run, and the rest of them don't have any powers, so it's kind of hard to keep my interest up. And there wasn't a whole lot of action. So I guess I'll flip through next month's ish, but I probably won't be buying.

X-Men #207: This issue concluded The Messiah Complex and it was a little disappointing. I think all of the stuff that was pre-released about changes to all of the titles hurt the ending, because I really wasn't surprised with the ending. ::SPOILER ALERT:: Cable leaves to take care of the child in the future. Professor X is shot and could be dying. Cyclops announces that the dream is over and that the X-Men are no more (he's supposed to reform them in a couple of months according to his vision of what the X-Men should be). I guess the most shocking thing was that Rogue almost killed her mother, Mystique, after Mystique tried to sacrifice the baby to cure her (you've gotta be up on the story-line involving the Strain 88 virus that Rogue has for that to make any sense). I guess she didn't kill Mystique, but now the only voices that are in Rogue's head are her own and her Mom's, and she's not too happy about having Mystique's memories. She basically just walked out on Gambit and the X-Men after that happened. I think that part of the story will be interesting just to see what happens with her character. Apparently in the next issue of Wolverine, he's supposed to go after Mystique for revenge. Mr. Sinister was not shown to be 100% dead in my opinion. Also, no one really died, except for Caliban, which I'm still a little mad about. I can't wait for the first issue of X-Force though, I've been waiting for that series to start as soon as I heard about it. So, I guess in the end, the status quo is slightly out of whack, but at some point I'm sure it will be business as usual.

X-Men: Declassified.

Here is a very good run-down of what is going to happen to all of the X-Titles now the The Messiah Complex is over with. I haven't read X-Men #207 yet (I am going to read it very soon tonight), but I am pretty excited to see where things go from here. One note, apparently I am retarded because Thunderbolts didn't come out today, so I bought some New Warriors issues instead. Scroll down for another post from today.