Oh look, the next issue is apparently the last!  Well then, I guess I won’t get too worked up over anything that happens in this series… particularly since it seems its sole purpose was to continue the ill-conceived storyline of confirming that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are not and never have been mutants, much less related to that Magneto guy!  And in this issue, yeah, the High Evolutionary basically just shrugs and says, “I took you from your parents, made my alterations, then, upon my disappointment, returned you to their care, disguised as common mutants,” and then goes on about his business with a couple more jabs about what disappointments they are.  Yup, guess it just never came up before now, during one of the dozen times they’ve all encountered each other in the past!  (Et tu, Bova?)  And did I mention their “sister,” Luminous, the High Evolutionary’s creation who’s faster than Quicksilver and more chaos-magically-adept than Scarlet Witch?  Can you not see how much this is adding to their characters?  

Otherwise, as far as the rest of the team… the first volume of Uncanny Avengers focused on a “Unity” team of both X-Men and Avengers, which I thought was a fun idea that never quite had a chance to take off.  With only a couple appearances outside their title series, they never felt like The Avengers, just… some Avengers.  And once the Apocalypse Twins showed up and plummeted the entire series into chronal dams and mutant raptures and alternate timelines and undead Horsemen and a Celestial executioner literally blowing up the planet Earth, it all just felt like so much “What If?” fodder; for the whole “Planet X” story arc, I couldn’t help but feel like nothing I was reading mattered, because sooner or later our heroes would reset reality, the characters who’d been killed would be resurrected, and we’d get back to storylines that “counted.”  (And then AXIS happened and, well… time makes fools of us all.)  Then Rogue had the brilliant idea to start a new Unity squad alongside the Scarlet Witch, conveniently forgetting that roughly one hundred percent of the threats faced by the Uncanny Avengers could be traced back to the Scarlet Witch one way or another.  So this series also features Sam Wilson as Captain America, Vision, inexplicably-resurrected Rick-Remender-pet-favorite Doctor Voodoo, and good-guy Uncle Sabretooth, who joined the Avengers between issues (and, as revealed in The Rage of Ultron, is kept locked inside a cell in Avengers Tower when not on-mission… “Can’t be too careful!” declare our heroes!).   But in this issue, even Rogue seems mildly frustrated at this series, referring to her “stopgap Unity squad.  And we’re scattered.  As usual.”  Before we even get to see this team of Avengers interact as a team — arguably the entire point of an Avengers series — they’re immediately separated across Counter Earth; some encounter worse perils than the others, as while the High Evolutionary dispassionately removes Sabretooth’s nervous system whole and intact from his living body, Rogue basically gets tied to a chair by a mad scientist straight out of Labyrinth, and Captain America… gets turned into a tree-person.  Hoo-boy.  So, yeah… maybe a five-issue run for this series isn’t something to lament.

A perfectly satisfactory twist ending! I successfully managed to avoid the minefield of Internet spoilers regarding Thor’s secret identity, not to mention the following conversation with my husband the night prior:

“And you get to find out who Ms. Thor is.”
“Yes!  Did you see that on the Internet or something?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who Thor is?”
“Yes!  You don’t want me to tell you, do you?”
“No, of course not! ……………Is it Roz Solomon???”
“Who?”
“Well, that answers that!”

I’m glad I kept it a surprise, though I admit to some hasty skimming in my mad dash toward the last-page reveal. And the comedy bit with Roz Solomon flying in and yelling at Thor while Odinson stood by with jaw agape was pure delight. So from here on, now that Thor’s no longer a big question mark, I really hope we can ditch boring ol’ He-Thor altogether and keep the focus of this series on the title character please. While I can appreciate his wandering around all shirtless and bearded, his character has not actually been improved by the constant moping over his unworthiness, and I don’t know why he is still hanging around taking up as much of the spotlight as he is. Meanwhile, my god, the Russell Dauterman art remains simply breathtaking – I can only offer my thanks to whoever decided to extricate him from the Teen Cyclops series, since his talents were clearly just being wasted.

So here’s a perplexing thing!  This is issue is the second part of a three-part story, which began in — follow me here — the Avengers: Ultron Forever one-shot.  The story will conclude in the third and final installment, Uncanny Avengers: Ultron Forever.  I won’t blame you for being confused, as I take objection to the idea that rather than have a simple three-issue Ultron Forever miniseries, we split it up into three one-shots, sacrificing clarity for the sake of having OMG NOT ONE BUT THREE ALL-NEW NUMBER-ONE ISSUES for Age of Ultron movie fans.  It’s not like each of the three issues feature three different teams of Classic, Diet, and Cherry Avengers fighting Ultron; it’s a three-part story over three issues.  I would think anybody picking up one issue out of the three is just going to be confused.  Bad form, Marvel!

As for the story itself, I recommend it – sure, it’s a watered-down Avengers Forever, but it’s still an Al Ewing story.  The first part was okay, if only for a nice long scene featuring Black Widow and Vision interacting like the longtime comrades they are, but it was mostly just Doctor Doom assembling our cross-temporal heroes (from Jim Rhodes in the Iron Man armor, to Danielle Cage as the Captain America of the future) and sending them off on their respective quests to defeat Ultron, who’s now… haha, whoops, the omnipotent All-Father of Asgard?  The Alan Davis art gives the story a classic feel, as does Al Ewing’s focus on these mismatched Avengers characters.  But this second part was a real stand-out, which, for me, was largely due to the footnotes that helpfully explained specifically where these characters were from in their respective storylines, which gives Al Ewing just so much credit in my eyes, since it makes it feel like he has those issues right at hand.

I don’t have anything to report here except that Mark Waid and Chris Samnee are continuing to put out one of, if not the most consistently enjoyable run on this comic that there has ever been.  Also as far as I’m concerned Daredevil has never been hotter:

You guys I can’t even

Pointedly not featuring the title character! Instead we get a strange little Black Vortex epilogue focusing on Star-Lord’s half-sister Victoria – who I admit had completely slipped my mind amidst all the Kitty Pryde nonsense – as she confronts the Collector, you know, from that movie that time? I will say that he’s well-characterized for an Elder of the Universe, avoiding the usual ponderous dialogue usually associated with cosmic immortal types. He’s fun, inviting Victoria to join him for a friendly drink as they discuss the return of Victoria’s father J’Son, former emperor of Spartax and current amber-encased bauble in the Collector’s collection. He then takes Victoria on a tour of his collection, not the items of monetary value, but those of I’mnotevenkidding emotional value. My favorite part was the Collector taking a moment to ponder stillnotjokingyouguys the boots worn by young Thanos himself: “From when he was an innocent child.  Perhaps… before he was evil.”

So when the Collector laughingly refuses to let Victoria take her father to be tried for his war crimes, how does she convince him otherwise?  Any guesses?  Any…?  Did I hear someone in back say “Mesmerize him with the power of dance?”  No?  No one said that?  Because that would be CUCKOO BANANAS???  (Haha, did I forget to mention the flashback from earlier in this issue when J’Son summoned poor little tween Victoria to tell her that she was his illegitimate daughter and he was shipping her off to space-military-academy and oh by the way no more dance lessons and when she protested he basically said she was lucky he wasn’t listening to his advisors and just having her executed instead?)  So moved, the Collector tearfully tells her to just take her father and go already (but not before collecting his own tears in a vial [???!!!???]).  Afterwards, Victoria reveals that her distraction allowed her stealthy subordinate to successfully swipe the seed of the Kree Supreme Intelligence, presumably killed when the Kree homeworld Hala was recently blown up, and apparently this was their true goal all along to help consolidate galactic supremacy.  This was a pretty weird issue.

Aaauuuuggghhh why did I buy this. I only picked this up because I swear the solicitation for this series read exactly like Warren Ellis Mad-Libs:

Once upon a time, there were five crazy people, and they poisoned the 21st Century. Now they have to deal with the corrosion to try and save us all from a world becoming too weird to support human life. INJECTION is the new ongoing series created by the acclaimed creative team of Moon Knight. It is science fiction, tales of horror, strange crime fiction, techno-thriller, and ghost story all at the same time. A serialized sequence of graphic novels about how loud and strange the world is getting, about the wild future and the haunted past all crashing into the present day at once, and about five eccentric geniuses dealing with the paranormal and numinous as well as the growing weight of what they did to the planet with the Injection.

But then upon reading I immediately remembered that Warren Ellis stories take four to six months just to get started. This issue isn’t a story. Nothing happens. They spend a few pages throwing around the Warren Ellis buzzword of the day (“cunning man”), and the rest of the pages are devoted to his standard-issue cranky lady who keeps demanding someone give her a sandwich under the erroneous assumption that it gets funnier with repetition.  And with every Warren Ellis comic, there’s always that voice whispering in the back of my head: “Are any of these plotlines going to matter? Is this story going to actually reach a conclusion before Warren Ellis’s attention inevitably wanders over to something else?” Ain’t nobody got time for this.

I would like to talk about Eldrac, the living Inhuman gateway with the plot-convenient power to teleport those who enter him wherever they need to be.  So you think okay, sure, a living door, that’s fun.  But in the previous issue it took Lineage – this new sneaky, schemey Inhuman who’s been all hangin’ around the Attilan throne room in a black suit and grinning all the time, clearly just an incredibly trustworthy kinda guy – to have a chat with Eldrac, pointing out that while everyone else gets fantastic powers, he gets turned into architecture?  Which is a fair point — nobody thinks about poor Eldrac’s feelings!  So in exchange for Eldrac teleporting Medusa and company to precisely where they aren’t supposed to be, giving Lineage the opening to enact his coup, he rewards Eldrac with his own giant mechano-body awwwww!  Look how happy he is, presumably!

The following annual continues the story of the temptation and ultimate redemption of Eldrac.  While Medusa and her allies fight for their lives and Lineage continues his mischief, we find Eldrac in a quiet moment of contemplation.  At last he comes to a momentous decision: he activates his portal, reaches through his own maw all the way to Eastern Europe,  plucks an unsuspecting Medusa, Triton, and Frank McGee into his giant robo-hands, pulls them back out of danger, and before a disoriented Medusa can demand to know what the royal @#$% is happening, he immediately hurls them all back through his own face to return them safely to New Attilan, and as penance for his betrayal, pulls his own head from his mechano-body and presumably dies on the Long Island shore, if an Inhuman gateway can even be said to be “alive” in the first place!  I do not know whether or not it is a compliment to Charles Soule’s writing that the character who I found most engaging never said a word of dialogue, but there it is.  Misguided, noble Eldrac, your sacrifice was not in vain, and you will be missed.

This!  This, this, this.  As Jonathan Hickman’s specialty is not writing human beings, this Secret Wars tie-in issue, written by Al Ewing, is one of the only comics to make me feel like the world is actually coming to an end.  Grumpy Old Man Rogers brings the Mighty Avengers up to speed about the multiverse collapsing in on itself and how it’s basically too late for anyone to do anything about it.  He sums up Steve Rogers’ perspective on the situation beautifully:

Rogers: “Earth is the collision point — don’t you get it?  Remove an Earth — destroy an Earth — and there is no collision!  God… God!  You could see their minds work!  If I hadn’t been there — in that room — they’d have talked themselves into it inside of five minutes.  Into destroying worlds.”
White Tiger: “To save entire universes–”
Rogers: “There!  Just like that!  Seven billion lives, just like that!  Murdered!  Because you can’t think of a better option!”

Both intense and sympathetic… everything and everyone is telling Captain America there’s no other choice, that it’s their Earth or ours at stake, but he refuses to succumb to the cold logic of it.  But then, once the news starts to spread, then the comic circles around with the common man.  Mighty Avengers volunteer Ruby Neal simply adds the whole “death of the universe” to the list of things of worry about that become “so much less important when your kid’s sick and your car’s in the shop and you can’t make rent.”  As the days count down, White Tiger attempts to reunite with her estranged sister; another Avengers volunteer hesitantly confesses their role becoming increasingly devoted to suicide prevention; a news anchor from a thinly-veiled Fox News declares this alternate Earth on a “literal collision course with our families and freedoms” as a “terrorist planet”; and we even get a panel devoted to a crazy-pants conspiracy theorist with — get this — a “STAMFORD WAS AN INSIDE JOB” poster on his wall.  These details don’t just happen, you guys, and it’s those small yet crucial details that make Al Ewing’s writing stand out from the din.

In which we conclude the current volume of this series by having the anarchic saboteur Ghost demolish Parker Industries.  As much as I love Dan Slott’s writing, I think the time may come for me to part ways with Spider-Man; during the Superior Spider-Man era, in which Otto Octavius inhabiting Peter Parker’s body resulted in a Spider-Man series without fun, I had to intentionally douse my love of Spider-Man down to the embers in order to break up with it.  And now Peter Parker’s back, and Spider-Verse was fun in a “fun but exhausting vacation that was way too jam-packed with activities and now I’m glad it’s over and looking forward to getting back to real life” kind of way… but my heart’s just not in it, and my anticipation for the upcoming Secret Wars series “Renew Your Vows,” teasing at the return of Peter’s magically-annulled marriage to Mary Jane, is tepid at best.  But for now, this issue had two big things going for it: first, Otto’s genius ex-girlfriend Anna Maria Marconi, who is perfect as Peter Parker’s ally and not yet another person around whom he needs to tip-toe.  I just love the way she blithely cuts through Peter’s entire lifestyle of secrecy and lies, and in this issue, she even donned a pair of modified web-shooters to help snare the Ghost.  Secondly: Black Cat affirming her new role as supervillain by stealing back everything she lost during her most recent incarceration… and then setting it all on fire!  I’ve often felt that there is a lack of quality Marvel villains in recent years, so I think Black Cat is much better served as an adversary to Spider-Man than as yet another one of his on-again/off-again love interests.  Faster, Felicia, kill, kill!

Seriously, Rick Remender is unable to kill any character.  (Well, so’s every other comic writer these days, but that’s a discussion for another time.)  A few issues back, that villainest of all villains, Baron Zemo, killed Captain America’s sidekick Nomad, a.k.a. Steve Rogers’ adopted son Ian from Dimension Z, by hanging him upside-down from chains, slitting his throat with a sword, and filming his death with the intent of sending to Steve for Christmas! (And then he wanted to sterilize America’s minority population via an army of fleeeas! You just don’t get more villainous than Baron Zemo!)  It was pretty unambiguous!  Oh but wait never mind Ian’s alive.  Turns out his armor is full of patented Arnim-Zola-brand ooey-gooey bio-gel, so it fixed him right up!  With that in mind, I found myself skeptical at the cliffhanger of that same issue where the vampiric Baron Blood ate Redwing, the Falcon’s longtime avian sidekick, leaving him to happen upon the grisly remains!  Could this be an actual fatality?  Because, yeah, that would be pretty messed up!  But nope, never mind, now I guess he’s just a vampire falcon whaaaaat is happening.  After Ian tells Captain America to go stop Baron Blood while he holds off Zemo, later the building explodes, with no survivors, so Baron Zemo and Ian are presumed dead by absolutely no one.  Seriously, Steve Rogers, the guy’s adopted father, just shrugs it off!  Well, I guess if he can’t bother getting emotionally involved in this story…!  But at least this was all illustrated by Stuart Immonen, who remains a treasure and we are lucky to have him.

But can we talk about Steve Rogers?  For those of you blissfully unaware, Captain America had the super-soldier serum leeched from his body, so after the Falcon took over the role and iconic shield of Captain America, Steve Rogers is just a wee little old man with a cane in more of a strategic, advisory position.  That is, when he’s not being a vengeance-crazed lunatic on a crusade against his fellow heroes, smashing stuff, suiting up in battle-armor, and again suiting up in battle-armor.  I absolutely allow that Tony Stark has way more history and dramatic tension with Steve Rogers than with Sam Wilson, but I can’t help but feel like Sam isn’t getting a chance to (oh god) fully spread his wings (I’m sorry) as Captain America while Steve hangs around like a helicopter parent.

Yeah, okay, I’ll talk about Ant-Man.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the millennial, Apatowian/Always Sunny influence on modern comics, where these days we don’t just want a hero who’s flawed, we want a hero who is actively botching up their own life.  Perhaps my fellow comic-nerd man-children and I are meant to relate to affable underdogs like Chris Pratt and Paul Rudd, haplessly goofing around while shirking responsibility and avoiding consequences for their actions, only to achieve, every once in a while, the occasional victory, a quiet moment of grace before starting the cycle all over again.  So Nick Spencer brings a lot of that same vibe from Superior Foes of Spider-Man to this series, where Ant-Man is a screw-up trying to con his way back to being a respectable superhero, so you can’t help but root for him.  Alongside his daughter and ex-wife, he even has a supporting cast of would-be supervillains,  Grizzly and Machinesmith, giving his fellow ex-cons the chance to redeem themselves by hiring them on to his fledgling security business.

What some of you may not know is that his daughter, Cassie, was the one who indirectly inspired Scott Lang to begin a life of crime as Ant-Man, in order to procure the funds to help treat her heart condition.  Since then, Cassie realized that her exposure to her father’s size-changing Pym particles also allowed her similar abilities to grow and shrink at will, and she jointed the Young Avengers as Stature.  Through trans-temporal hijinks, both Scott and Cassie have recently died and returned from the dead – which you’d think would be a fun topic for father/daughter bonding!  But okay, I can understand wanting to make this comic series “accessible” for “new readers” (sigh!).  The first issue actually got things off to a very promising start, in which Cassie was going on to her dad about how Hunger Games is “a ripoff of a vastly superior foreign film,” Battle Royale, prompting Scott to think, “And this is why my kid is cooler than yours.”  That’s beautiful, that is.  Sure, a case could be made that a teenage fan of foreign movies isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it was something.  In contrast, based solely on the trailer, my biggest glaring concern for the Ant-Man movie is this stupid little wretch right here.  Because that is not a supporting character.  That is not a “child actor.”  That is a Raggedy Ann doll that says “I wuv you Daddy!” when you pull its string.  I mean, can you imagine a Marvel movie where the struggling dad has a willful teen daughter to play off of, all texting on the latest product-placement smartphone and wearing T-shirts featuring that band you love, instead of this little idiot who may as well have “KIDNAP ME” stamped on her forehead?

But I digress.  In this issue, Augustine Cross — a great example of a villain one loves to hate — kidnaps a doctor to save his father, obscure Ant-Man villain Darren Cross.  His heart, you see, can’t take the strain of changing size, so what else can Augustine do but kidnap Cassie, extract her Pym-particle-infused heart, and surgically implant it in Darren Cross’s body!  (Don’t worry, he’s not a monster — he’s also got plenty of homeless people on-hand to swap her one of their hearts instead!)  Cassie’s body starts to reject the transplant, but Ant-Man saves her life by going inside her bloodstream and fighting off her white blood cells until she recovers, which is just good classic comic fun.  But I think this story mostly serves to sweep Cassie’s size-changing powers under the rug and have her more closely resemble her move equivalent.  To be fair, I can absolutely understand having the title character of the series be the only one with size-changing powers… but as illustrated above, I don’t think movie Cassie is a standard for which we should strive.  As Ant-Man’s fatherhood is one of his defining character traits among the other Marvel superheroes, I can only hope his daughter remains a part of Scott’s supporting cast in one form or another, and, ideally, a character in her own right.

Adventure Time 39 – As per usual, Adventure Time can catch one by surprise when introducing truly terrifying monsters.

Amazing X-Men 19 -For what I expected to be just another X-Men versus Juggernaut story, this issue actually had a few unexpected twists.  Cain Marko is once again the Juggernaut, gifted by Cyttorak with more power than ever before, so what does he want to do with it?  Kill Cyclops for murdering his step-brother Professor X, of course, who he apparently cares about this time around, as he “was the only one who ever cared about me.  He gave me a second chance when no one else would.”  The X-Men immediately attempt Juggernaut Plan A to remove his helmet and attack his mind, but… whoa, uh… yikes.  Scratch that!  So Colossus starts fighting Juggernaut hand-to-hand, which even Cain himself points out has never, ever worked, but then a wondrous things happened: Colossus grew as a character!  He decided to stop being so willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of the team, fought smarter instead of harder, and flipped Juggernaut off a cliff!  This next part gets a little weird – while Juggernaut plummets into the ocean, Colossus is, I think, hanging backwards off the cliff by his legs(?), reflecting about how if his life is required to save his friends, then so be it – but then he snaps out of it and hauls himself back up, with an adorable moment of self-reflection neatly circling back to when Storm totally laid into him for being a self-destructive idiot back in issue 15.  I think he’s definitely turned a corner!  This storyline got off to a bit of a rough start, but it wrapped up well.

Black Vortex Omega – The final chapter of the ridiculous, unwieldy Black Vortex crossover, and boy, is it a doozy.  While our cosmically-empowered teammates are holding off the (sigh) “Slaughter Lords” in orbit around Spartax, Kitty Pryde uses her cosmically-jacked-up intangibility powers to “relax my atoms.  My consciousness.  I phased through galaxies and transcended the multiverse.  I touched the consciousness of an infinite number of Kitty Prydes,” which was kinda cool, since they made it a point to not only remember Days of Future Past Kitty Pryde, but also Jewish Ghost Kitty Pryde.  That took some research.  She then phases the amber shell and Brood infestoids off of the entire planet of Spartax, freeing our heroes to say stupid things, and then literally smiles down upon the planet like a benevolent god, all praise and glory unto Kitty Pryde (but yea, thou shalt beware of her mood swings!).  Gara, lone survivor of the previous race annihilated by the Black Vortex like a bazillion years ago, declares that “she alone resisted the corruption of cosmic power” and came back to save them, to which an awestruck Star-Lord asserts that “Of course she did — she’s Kitty Pryde.  My dream girl.”  At which point I thought okay, cool, Kitty nobly sacrificed herself to save all her friends and now she’ll fade away to become one with the universe or whatever.

But nope!  She shrinks back down to human proportions and the next item on the agenda is to assemble our huge unwieldy cast into yet another giant crowd scene just standin’ around gabbing on some planet.  (Haha, look, you guys, Teen Iceman used the word “selfie!”  That’s comedy!)  But hey, you remember how submitting to the Black Vortex was this irrevocable decision that will leave you forever changed and should not to be taken lightly for reals no backsies?  Well nah, don’t worry about it, ’cause Gara can invoke the cosmic rite of do-overs, but warns that “you will not return to the way you once were.  No one can use the Vortex and remain unchanged.”  Which Gamora laughs off, as does, irksomely enough, Teen Angel, as poor Teen Beast (and the reader)’s pleas on behalf on the timestream continue to fall on deaf ears.  And so the others are changed back: Groot has a new look, Teen Iceman is now an ostensibly-gay ice cube, and Beast and Teen Cyclops look the same as before.  Of course the first thing stupid Teen Jean does is read Teen Cyclops’ mind, after which she confides to Storm, “The worst part is… the change didn’t occur in his mind.  It happened in his heart.”  Aw god.

And as if all that weren’t enough… Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde go for a romantic walk in the airless vacuum of space, whereupon Star-Lord asks Kitty to marry him.  I admit to enjoying Star-Lord addressing her by her full name as “Katherine Anne Sprite Ariel Shadowcat Kitty Pryde,” but that’s about all I approve about this turn of events.  I’ll plan on delving in deeper at a later date, but suffice it to say, I feel nothing for this blandly-handsome blond guy who bears no resemblance to Chris Pratt’s character, to his detriment; as such, it’s been fascinating to watch the development of a couple characters engaging in a relationship with no believable human romantic chemistry.  But hey, everybody else seems happy about it, even resident expert on human emotions X-23, so what’s my problem, y’know?  (But seriously, look at this huge unwieldy cast of characters you guys)  The issue ends with a clunky monologue from Kitty — “I found love in outer space.  And that’s when I knew.  The most amazing discovery… is each other.” — but the hilarity isn’t over yet, as Sam Humphries cranks up the schmalz full-blast and Storm asks Rocket Raccoon if he wants to be her date to the wedding and at this point I just gave up.

Guardians of the Galaxy 26 – It was… okay.  A nice classic “giving our heroes everything they want” story.  This issue opens with the Guardians hanging out in a space bar (complete with ham-fisted Bendis-brand sci-fi “comedy”), whereupon Kitty learns that Peter has been elected as president of Spartax without his knowledge or consent, and his flippancy over the situation once again flips her switch from “girlfriend” to “shrew.”  The royal guard show up to escort their missing president Star-Lord back to Spartax, and as he begrudgingly learns that he’s got to deal with this sooner or later, there’s a fun scene where he assigns the rest of the Guardians positions on his presidential cabinet to justify bringing them along — Gamora as legal counsel, Rocket as secretary of raccoon/Spartax relations (LOLOLOLOL), Groot as secretary of agriculture, and so on, while Kitty looks on in silent disapproval.  And now our heroes are faced with giving up their lives of mischief and settling down in royal splendor, each in their own ways, which is unfortunately interrupted by that whole Secret Wars multiversal catastrophe literally looming over the horizon.

But I’d like to talk about one character in particular.  In issue 23 before all the Black Vortex nonsense got underway, at the risk of sounding like a melodramatic fanboy, it only took Bendis one issue to completely destroy everything about the symbiotes.  Am I a particularly huge fan of these squealing slime-monsters?  Not really.  Well, okay, yes, but no more so than most.  My point is that, fan or not, I can tell you what the symbiotes are about: incredible power versus uncontrollable rage and insanity, and whether the one is worth the cost of the other.  It’s Spider-Man, not @#$%ing rocket science.  And Rick Remender actually added an interesting new layer to this dichotomy in his Venom series in the form of Flash Thompson, an alcoholic with no legs who becomes addicted to the Venom symbiote in order to walk again, to literally make him whole.  Which I thought was an inspired new take on a classic theme.

But then Bendis stepped in and botched that all up, giving Venom was given an entirely new armored look, and had the symbiotes (oh, I’m sorry, THE KLYNTAR) (god) assure Flash Thompson that he was just the super-coolest space-hero of all time and all they want is for him to be happy and they apologize for that whole uncontrollable brain-eating psychosis thing, which was just an awkward misunderstanding.  Completely smoothing over every rough edge of the character in service of… nothing.  I think the symbiotes even grew Flash’s legs back, which hasn’t exactly been made clear, and which brings me (eventually) to my main point: since that change, Venom has contributed precisely @#$%-all to this comic and every comic he’s appeared in since.  Would you like to know Venom (Star-Lord’s royal bodyguard, if you were curious)’s single, solitary contribution of note in this entire issue?

“I was just remembering… I had this coach in high school.  He told me I was never going to leave Forest Hills.  I’d really like to call him right now.”

THUD.  What if twenty, or even ten years ago, a comic character was given an entirely all-new badass costume, direction, and (presumably) set of powers… and then just hung out in the background doing and saying nothing for three months?  This would be unheard of, right?  It’s all symptomatic of Bendis’ inherent laziness and inability to get these characters, and why I continue to think writing team books do not play to his strengths.

Inhuman Special 1 -Well, this was definitely the middle chapter in a three-part storyline, so not a whole heckuva lot actually happens: the deranged Red Raven confronts Medusa in order to gain revenge for his people being mutilated by the Terrigen mists (complete with lengthy origin flashback), while Spider-Man and the rest of the Inhumans attempt to arrest their free-fall and clamber back up the floating island to help rescue her.  But I want to give a special shout-out to artist Ryan Lee and his creepy webby rendition of Spider-Man!  He’s just incredibly expressive, not to mention intricate – look at that neck!  I love it when Spider-Man is portrayed as creepy, because he’s a skinny grown man in a head-to-toe costume who climbs up walls and ceilings, which, in real life, would actually be deeply unsettling.  But my favorite writer of the moment, Jeff Loveness, continues to hit me just right with details like the close-up shot of Spider-Man’s misplaced Avengers ID signal card in his futon, and show me someone who thinks this “What would Cyclops do?” digression is anything less than 110% perfect, I will show you a liar.  I am looking forward to the conclusion!

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 4 – You guys, you need to read Squirrel Girl.  I feel like I just want to type that sentence over and over.  We are lucky enough to live in an age where Ryan North is writing an ongoing series in which Squirrel Girl fights Galactus and if you are not reading this series you are doing a disservice to yourself.  For example, while struggling to make themselves heard on the surface of the moon, Squirrel Girl and her sidekick Tippy-Toe each submit their suggestions in classic “are you thinking what I’m thinking?” fashion.  They also address whether or not Galactus indeed appears differently to any species that beholds him, and her plan to dissuade Galactus from consuming the Earth… I don’t want to spoil this for you guys because I want you to experience the sheer joy of this comic for yourself.  Kamala Khan may be a media darling, but she has no chance of replacing Squirrel Girl in my heart.

Wolverines 15 – I remain… not the biggest fan of Juan Doe’s art.  In keeping with this series’ careening from the ridiculous to the sublime, this is very much a treading-water chapter: after the Sabretooth and company handily knocked out Portal last issue, this issue finds the team continuing to just stand around his unconscious body, while below the ship, X-23 and Daken continue their fight against Siphon, the scary monster-thing that robbed Daken of his healing factor.  Oh, and Blade the Vampire Hunter is here, too.  Which is weird, since he’s so semi-present I actually forgot he showed up last issue.  I think he’d even already killed all the vampires by the time X-23 and Daken even showed up, so I’m not sure what exactly he brings to the story?  Perhaps it’s Blade’s unapologetic eagerness to kill this monster that’s been rendered a savage by its ceaseless appetite, while X-23 pleads with Blade not to kill it, since keeping Siphon alive might be the only way to restore Daken’s healing factor.  But if this story is about Daken fighting Siphon in order to become whole again, wouldn’t the story have been better by served by X-23 pleading with… Daken?  But I think the strongest scene of the issue is at the end when Daken checks in with X-23, X-23 immediately calls him out as Mystique in disguise, and tells her, “And this is what’s really gonna keep you up tonight: how did I know you’re you and not Daken?  I’ll never tell.”  Good for her!

Sigh.  Okay, let’s… let’s go ahead and talk about All-New X-Men 40.

Brian Michael Bendis’ run on the X-Men titles has… not numbered among my favorites.  Without going into too much detail, I would consider Bendis’ strongest Marvel works to be Daredevil, Alias, and Ultimate Spider-Man.  You’ll notice that these three titles have something in common: focus on one main character, giving the reader abundant insight into this character’s thought processes as they interact with their supporting cast.  When it comes to team books, however, I feel like every issue written by Bendis devolves into a big yammery crowd scene, in which everybody yells “funny” things over and over, every character speaks in essentially the same voice, and it’s that much harder for all characters present to actually contribute to the story in any meaningful way.

Specifically, regarding his run on All-New X-Men, I have not enjoyed the introduction of the time-displaced Teen X-Men in the present day.  The word that keeps coming to mind is “irksome.”  It would have been fine for a single story arc, but they’ve all just continued to stick around, haven’t they?  From a story perspective, it makes me anxious, as most clearly demonstrated during the Battle of the Atom crossover: Teen Cyclops was near-fatally blasted by a Sentinel, and the timestream nearly tore itself asunder due to paradox.  But from a creative perspective, I feel it’s been a huge missed opportunity to really distinguish these characters from their modern-day counterparts.  What if the Teen X-Men were actually written like they were from the ’60s?  Can you imagine how much fun it would be if they just kept describing their powers out loud in abundant detail while they were using them, and the rest of the modern-day young X-Men just stared at them like they were foreign exchange students?  But I feel like that would’ve been too much effort; the only detail I recall liking was early on when Teen Cyclops was in a grocery store wondering, “Why is all the water bottled?  Did something happen to the water?”  Otherwise, they all just read like standard-issue Bendis characters.

Yes, the Teen X-Men served their intended purpose of facing the modern-day X-Men with their more youthful, idealistic selves.  It was an interesting story arc in keeping with the feel of the X-Men (though I might argue that Beast’s scientific expertise runs more towards the genetic than the trans-temporal).  Yes, the Teen X-Men’s time in the present has brought about changes to both their personalities and their powers, possibly irrevocably.  Nonetheless, I feel like that story has been told, and that having two Cyclops, two Icemans, etc. hanging around only serves to dilute the X-Men – for example, I cannot immediately recall when we last saw modern-day Angel after he encountered his young counterpart in All-New X-Men 8.  And some Teen X-Men stories can’t help but feel like retreads: did we need to have Teen Cyclops relegated to awkward eager-to-please son getting to know his long-lost space-pirate dad?  Did we need to have Teen Jean halfheartedly tried for her crimes as the Phoenix by the Shi’ar Empire?  Furthermore, why are these characters hogging so much of the spotlight?  If Bendis wanted to tell a story about idealistic teen mutants clashing with the dour mutant revolutionaries of the X-Men, why not focus on the VASTLY more interesting young recruits in Uncanny X-Men – characters that Bendis himself created?  Goldballs, Triage, and Benjamin Deeds (more on him in a sec) are only getting lost in the crowd, without getting a chance to really demonstrate their potential.

But I consoled myself with remembering a valuable lesson I’ve learned in my old age: comics are cyclical, and everything changes if you wait long enough, especially in this modern age of short creator attention spans.  (I still proudly own every issue of Chuck Austen’s run on the X-Men titles, because I knew that one day it would end, and that I would want to go back and remember everything we lived through.)  And so I was relieved when it was announced that Bendis would be wrapping up his run as of Uncanny X-Men 600, due out in May, and no issues of All-New X-Men have been solicited past issue 41.  I hoped that Bendis might not want anyone else playing with these toys after he was done with them, so perhaps my wish would come true and that Beast would face the consequences of his actions, the Teen X-Men would go away forever, and we wouldn’t have to think about them ever again.

And then Teen Iceman was outed as gay.  Welp, looks like the joke’s on me!

In this issue, all the Teen X-Men are relaxing after the events of Black Vortex.  Surprisingly enough, I think Magik is the real stand-out in this issue: she explains that she’s taking on mentorship of the Teen X-Men while Kitty stays in space, but while she’s treating them to lunch as a one-time deal – “You save the galaxy, you get a hamburger” – she is not responsible for feeding them, nor is she a taxi service.  Her character comes through crystal-clear, and I like that.  After she teleports away and Teen Iceman makes note of her hotness, Teen Jean pulls him aside and asks him why he keeps saying things like that, because they both know he’s gay.  She then argues the point with him until he comes around, and they have some cutesy girl-talk and end up huggin’ it out.  This is followed by a scene where Teen Angel – still cosmically-empowered by the Black Vortex – flies away with X-23 to declare that he luh-luh-loves her and they share a tender kiss on a mountaintop.  The last double-page spread introduces a ragtag band of mutants on the former X-Men headquarters of Utopia, whom I’m sure our heroes will encounter next month, but with only one issue left of the series, I’m expecting more of a perfunctory and uninspired fight scene than a saga of conflicting ideologies.  (P.S. Masque and Random, sure… Elixir, glad to see you’re not dead after all… but Karma?  Girl, what are you doing getting mixed up with these nutjobs?)

It seems a bit thin when summed up, doesn’t it?  Because when it comes down to it, not a whole lot actually happens in this comic.  As much as I like issues that take a break from events and crossovers to let our characters catch their breath, I did not like Teen Iceman, this character ostensibly from the ’60s, calling Jean a “nosy bitch.”  (Which she is, of course, no question.  Teen Jean’s #1 job has been to get a story rolling by 1) reading peoples’ minds without permission, 2) throwing a big ol’ melodramatic telekinetic hissyfit, and 3) repeat as needed.  I submit that this does not make for a likeable character.)  I did not like Bendis’ quirk of having his characters tell him how funny he is, as “Baby Tyke-lops” was not as hilarious as Teen Jean would have you believe.  I did not like going the easy sitcom-audience-laugh-track route with S.H.I.E.L.D. director Maria Hill repeatedly thunking her head against a control panel when she receives news of mutant hijinks.  But because my heart is not completely made of stone, I did like Teen Iceman snowing himself in the face with embarrassment, and I enjoy this panel for the sheer understated simplicity of it.  Teen Beast, you… you are okay in my book.

The thing of it is, believe it or not, there are already currently six gay X-Men: Northstar, Anole, Karma, Bling!, Graymalkin, and Benjamin Deeds.  If Brian Michael Bendis actually had anything of substance to say about homosexuality, I’m sure he would have been more than welcome to make use of any of these characters in order to say it.  WHICH HE DID.  Uncanny X-Men 14 was a breath of fresh air after the non-stop bickerfest that was Battle of the Atom, in that it focused on Emma Frost taking new student Benjamin Deeds under her wing; she singles him out because she expects he has more potential as an infiltrator than a combatant, thanks to his power to unconsciously shape-shift and mimic the features of whoever he’s talking to.  (As demonstrated by this awesome montage, not to mention this gorgeous cover.)  She takes him to Atlantic City to test out his powers, starting by telling him to go over there and seduce that lady:

“I don’t want to ask her out.”
“You’re not marrying her.”
“I’m gay.”
“I don’t care.  What does that have to do with this?”

And that’s it.  That’s all the attention they devote to Benjamin’s sexuality, and it’s perfect, because it was incidental to the main story.  Now, am I arguing that issues of sexuality have no place in comics such as X-Men?  Quite the contrary.  I just think when it comes to gay X-Men… it benefits from being handled with subtlety, like in Uncanny X-Men 14 (a true anomaly, since Bendis is usually about as subtle as a hammer).  On the other hand, speaking of the Chuck Austen run, Northstar joined the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men 414, which was a seriously strong issue handled with maturity, but still true to Northstar’s established character.  Unfortunately, immediately after Northstar joined the team, it felt like nobody really knew exactly what to do with him.  He developed a catty friendship with the school nurse, Annie, and an unrequired crush on (sigh) Iceman.  While it was nice to see for those of us readers who have been there ourselves, it was as if even among his fellow mutants in the X-Men, Northstar didn’t exactly fit in.  It’s awkward because mutant powers are a metaphor for the outsider, ostracized by a society that hates and fears you, and the metaphor applies just as well to race, religion, sexuality, nationality, planet of origin, artificial intelligence, and so on.  As such, I think that having a character declare their homosexuality doesn’t necessarily add anything to their character in and of itself (and it’s arguably newsworthy); unless the story is outright about the character’s sexuality – e.g., if Teen Iceman was actually going out on a date, or even actively crushing on somebody – maybe it would be better off just remaining as incidental to the story, rather than the focus thereof.

But to save this reveal until the second-to-last issue of the series?  My god, why?  The actual coming out is crafted well enough, with these two Bendis characters ostensibly wearing the labels of “Bobby” and “Jean” having a conversation as friends.  But what’s the point?  Teen Jean herself confirms Iceman is indeed heterosexual.  There haven’t been “hints,” it’s not an organic development for his character, it just leaves me frustrated and baffled.  I suppose a case could – and that’s big ol’ dancing neon capital letters COULD – be made that this is a holdover from the Black Vortex crossover, where Teen Iceman spent some time as some kind of stupid-looking cosmically-empowered samurai elf.  It adds nothing, and it only raises more questions than it answers, mostly about where this leaves poor modern-day Iceman, who didn’t ask for any of this baloney.  And don’t talk to me about Iceman not being good at dating ladies, he can’t help it if Kitty Pryde is being written to vacillate wildly between lovestruck schoolgirl and judgmental harpy.  (Not to mention poor Opal Tanaka getting all mixed up with those cyber-ninjas!)  I have no problem with Bendis writing all the yammery teen coming-out stories he wants.  I just have no idea why he elected to use these characters to tell it.

But for all this ado… no one knows what the landscape of the Marvel Universe will look like after Secret Wars.  Either the Teen X-Men will be sent back to their rightful point in the timestream – in which case this issue, and hopefully the last three years, can be dismissed as a curious sidebar to be puzzled over by historians at a later date – or it will be revealed that they’re from an “alternate past” or some such nonsense and they’ll stick around indefinitely.  And all told, I’m an X-Men fan who feels proprietary and protective towards these characters, and who might not necessarily view these particular X-Men stories as “my X-Men.”  So I guess all I can do for now is join everybody else in shrugging, staring vacantly into space, and just waiting to see what happens.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers 7 – I hate to say it, but I think this issue… fell a little flat for me.  Make no mistake, Al Ewing can still do no wrong in my eyes, but for all the build-up from the last issue’s cliffhanger – where they acknowledged Warren Ellis’ Nextwave series as in-continuity in a big big way – Monica Rambeau didn’t get much opportunity to be the badass that we all know she is.  I did appreciate Al Ewing embracing Nextwave, since you could tell from the references that he had the issues right there on his desk next to him, right down to the title of the issue, “KICK ‘SPLODE!”  And I thought it was a particularly sinister touch to have the Beyond Corporation’s Jason Quantrell referencing the different types of entities from beyond, and he’s one of the kind that enjoys playing with little people like the toys they are: “It’s hard to believe, but we’re the friendly ones.  We just want to play.  Some of the others… they’ve got plans.”  But for all her need for vengeance, the only thing Monica did was hold Jason Quantrell long enough for the Blue Marvel’s long-lost son, “the first human being to exit the omniverse and make re-entry,” to descend from the neutral zone to take Quantrell back where he belonged.  I know, it’s not like a superhero can win in one-on-one fisticuffs against an omnipotent Beyonder, and the Blue Marvel acknowledged how impressive it was that she, one of the “little people,” managed to hold a cosmic being in place – “That was almost… biblical” – but not exactly dramatically satisfying, you know?  Still: solid superhero fun!  This title remains the best example of what I think an Avengers title should be – the perfect mix of cosmic-level superheroics and street-level crime-fighting adventure.

Doctor Who: Eleventh Doctor 11 – Delightful!  It moves the overall story forward, the “four dimensions” is a fun gimmick that works well for the comic medium, and there’s even a David Bowie reference I actually get.

Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor 9 – As fun as it was to see the Weeping Angels again, I feel like a four-issue storyline might be pushing it for a monthly comic. While the Eleventh series will probably remain foremost in my heart, this whole storyline was made worthwhile when the Doctor outwitted the Weeping Angels in just the best, cutest, most David Tennant-est way, wondering aloud why he hadn’t thought of it before!

Guardians 3000 6-7 – Toooooo manyyyyy characterrrrrssss… but at least they’re all in good hands with Dan Abnett on writing, so we can avoid Lewis Caroll-esque levels of nonsense in the primary GotG comics.  Notably adorable was the part with Rocket Raccoon and Nikki admiring each others’ tastes in heavy artillery.  Also the incredible depiction of Galactus in the year 3000 as some chipped, aged, hollow-eyed deity in a featureless black void with fragments of himself breaking off and floating into the ether, prepared to wrap himself in a cocoon of heavy gravity so he can ride out the end of the universe just like he did the last time.  So cool.  The sixth issue had a lot of the usual, “What do you mean you’re the Guardians of the Galaxy?  We’re the Guardians of the” et cetera et cetera, not to mention two Star-Lords whaaaaa???, but mercifully most of this was bypassed in issue 7 thanks to Starhawk mind-linking both teams and getting everyone up to speed.

Legendary Star-Lord 11 – New addition to the Black Vortex drinking game: take a drink every time someone uses the phrase “not my jam!”  In which case you would have taken… four drinks.  But yeah, so… the entire population of Spartax is encased in amber thanks to poor dumb easily-manipulated Thane.  To make matters worse, J’son has unleashed a whole planet-wide swarm of modified Brood “infestoids” that are currently burrowing through the amber to get to each individual’s brains, at which point they will lay their eggs, which will result in a universal scourge of Brood that will wipe out all life as we know it.  So Teen Jean attempts to use the Black Vortex to become a supremely powerful whatever, but thankfully everyone else rightly points out that that particular cure would be worse than the disease, so they talk her down.  Star-Lord gallantly gazes into the Black Vortex but beholds that he would become, yea, e’en unto the mightiest of douchebags, after which he delivers a ridiculous melodramatic to speech to Kitty Pryde that he can’t go through with it, because he’s trying to be a better man… for her!  Which means there’s nothing left but for Kitty herself to Black Vortex up and, I can only assume, use her amped-up phasing powers to save the world. It’s nice that this swerved away from becoming yet another Phoenix story, but by the same token, I can only hope that Kitty nobly sacrifices herself and dies at the end, if only to add some consequence to this overlong inconsequential story about space-weirdos.

Letter 44 15 – Haha, that last page!  Classic sci-fi.  It’s good to have this series back.

Loki: Agent of Asgard 13 – Oh boy, yet another version of Loki. Man, I don’t know what I wanted out of this series, but it is not scratching my itch – too much Asgardian mythos, not enough mischief.  I guess it’s a fine character study on Loki and all his many iterations, so it’s through no fault of the story itself, but Al Ewing aside, I think I may just have to break up with this series.

Magneto 17 – Magneto confronts the ghost of Hitzig, this Nazi that tormented Magneto during his concentration camp days, as Hitzig keeps murdering mutants in these weird Genoshan refugee camps… though why any mutants would volunteer to live among these ruins hasn’t exactly been made clear.  I love that Magneto is now in charge of the latest batch of Marauder clones, but it feels like they have yet to really do anything; the majority of the team just stands around in the ubiquitous Genoshan rubble as they fruitlessly search for the murderer, though I did like Arclight attempting to get a rise out of Magneto’s new bunkmate Briar Raleigh, to which Briar asks if she’s jealous.  Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s art definitely gets a chance to shine with Hitzig’s shark-teeth and black eye sockets and, like, flailing blood-tentacles!  Then they bust out the ol’ trope that Hitzig isn’t a ghost, but a distorted memory inadvertently pulled from Magneto’s psyche and given form by an innocent young mutant with the power to do that thing, and she doesn’t know how to stop.  I guess it never occurred to Hitzig that if faced with the “impossible” choice of killing one innocent mutant to save many mutants, Magneto is probably the character who would have the least difficulty in carrying that out, and so he does.

Ms. Marvel 14 – I appreciated circling back on Kamala’s fight with villainous Inhuman (sigh) “Kaboom,” exploring Kamala’s twinge of remorse over just slappin’ her around with her cartoonishly large fists.  That was a nice touch, as was jumping out of the window and ballooning up her feet to absorb the impact!  But as is the curse of three-part storylines, I do think flipping Kamran’s switch from “charming” to “sinister” was a bit abrupt.  But I think the best scene of this issue was Kamala’s brother and Bruno having their heart-to-heart, explaining that they think Bruno is a very nice boy, but Kamala’s parents are just trying to help her preserve her heritage.  You can definitely see where all parties are coming from, so that’s nice, it’s just nice.

Spider-Man and the X-Men 5 – Oh my god am I ever going to miss this series.  It’s so over-the-top and indulgently silly but it all… just… works.  I’m speaking, of course, of Beast and Spider-Man angrily comparing notes about each other’s ridiculous enemies – “despite clearly being parasitic” hit me just right!  I still love that every character has something to do, but the unexpected star of the show was yet again Glob Herman, saving the day to disprove everyone’s constant assertions that he must totally be the mole.  That panel with his thumbs-up… absolutely perfect.  Thank god for you, Elliott Kalan.  Please keep writing comics.

Squarriors 2 – Hee-hee!  The cat leader is wearing a jaunty makeshift crown of tiny ribcages!

Thor 7 – Oh my god, that scene on the moon, I feel like Thor is either 100% obviously Roz Solomon no question, or, more likely, Jason Aaron is gearing up for a massive mind-blowing fake-out and I seriously have no other potential candidates in mind. As much as I still do not care about seeing the Serpent again, the fight scene between Thor and the Destroyer was pretty bone-crunchingly powerful, giving Mjolnir a gentle kiss was great, and man, can we spend a minute or two just basking in the glow of that gorgeous page with Malekith and Dario Agger tearing into those light elves?

Uncanny X-Men 33 – Man, maybe it’s the magic of lowered expectations, but I would call this two solid Bendis comics in a row for this series. For one thing, Kris Anka art! For another, it focused on two X-Men, not a ridiculous yammery crowd scene! In this story, Magik teleports away with Kitty and tells her that whenever the X-Men start squabbling amongst themselves, she takes it upon herself to teleport away with a mini-Cerebro unit and rescue a young mutant in need somewhere in the world, which I think is both plausible and adorable. CBR raised some valid points about these two characters not really having any conflicts to resolve, but I nonetheless thought it was nice to see these two longtime friends hanging out, talking like people, and rescuing a cute little mutant girl who was abandoned by her father on Monster Island. (Darling husband: “’Monster Island?’” “It’s pretty much just what it sounds like.”) There were some cute details, like Magik fighting monsters with her soulsword while Kitty just stands there intangible and lets the monsters take ineffectual swipes at her… and Kitty makes a joke about Magik being a spooky demon sorceress, and Magik says that she actually hurts her when she makes jokes like that, and then Kitty’s all awkward. It’s dumb, but it’s a simple one-issue story with action beats and character moments, and the art is beautiful. And with All-New X-Men in mind, we know it coulda been a lot worse!

Wolverines 14 – Huh! When Mystique’s cryptic notes said “Portal will be essential,” I didn’t know she was literally referring to Portal from Darkhawk. (Did you know he also made a relatively recent reappearance during Marvel Zombies as head of A.R.M.O.R., the alternate reality division of S.H.I.E.L.D.?) I do appreciate Charles Soule’s willingness to re-appropriate forgotten nineties characters, a la Nightwatch! I should ask if he’d be willing to do something with Adam X the X-Treme – I mean, seriously, if there were any series in which he’d fit right in, it’s this one!

BaCk IsSuE cOrNeR

Captain Universe and the X-Men: Sleeping Giants – Even in this Internet age, there was one comic that to date eluded me, but I’ve finally managed to snag a copy! It was this promotional offer that ran in 1994 where you, yes you, could have your name included in a Marvel comic as the latest recipient of the power of Captain Universe! I know what you’re wondering – my god, Cody, did you have better things to do in 1994 than procuring your own? But I guess the opportunity just passed me by, to my lasting regret! I thought this story had been re-issued as a one-shot with some generic name, but it looks like this was one of the original limited run of 94, belonging to one Mark F_____ of Middletown, USA! It opens with a personal letter to Mark from Stan Lee himself, the included Captain Universe trading card(!) has Mark’s name, and even the ads are personalized to Mark directly! What has become of you, Mark, that you would part with such a personalized treasure?

The story, of course, is pretty mediocre – a hapless mutant dude named “Roger Fieldston” is inadvertently turning passersby into grotesque monsters through casual contact, and it’s up to the X-Men and Captain Universe to put a stop to it. All the animated-series-era X-Men behave true to character:

Rogue: “That sure looks like a mutant o’ some sort t’me! And it looks t’be in a real bad way!”
Jubilee: “Nothin’ that a new ‘do couldn’t cure, Rogue.”
Wolverine: “I’ll give it a haircut it won’t forget, Jubilee!”
Rogue: “Don’t pop those claws yet, Wolverine!”

And so on in that fashion. But there is one panel I particularly enjoyed wherein Captain Universe neutralized the threat of this dangerous new mutant thanks to his power of backin’ that thang up.

I just thought this acquisition was a bit timely because despite two waves of comic ads, it looks like the over-hyped “Zing Revolution” at crashthecomics.com is finally defunct, so I fear I may never be able to fulfill my humble dream of putting my husband’s face on the Hulk’s body in a pseudo-canonical licensed Marvel comic.