Lately, this book has been cramming three stories into 40 pages. This means the stories are really more like scenes or jokes or gimmicks. Not always bad, but almost always too short to do very much. Good news: This issue doesn’t do that. Bad news: Instead of cramming in three stories, this issue has FOUR. First, there’s a story about White Queen. The story is what it is. What’s interesting about it is that the writer is David Conway–and I think he’s the same David Conway who was the vocalist for My Bloody Valentine. Cool. Story #2 has Dani Moonstar stop a robbery at a ski lodge, only to have ..read more

Anthology comics are up-and-down affairs, and this issue is no exception. The first story has the Exiles crossing over with the Spider God from JMS and JR Jr.’s Amazing Spider-Man, only it’s all alternate reality stuff (’cause of the Exiles), so it’s out of scope for my blog. Next, we get an X-Statix story by Mike Allred and Nick Derington. At the time, Derington was a complete unknown–but a few decades later he’d work on Doom Patrol with Gerard Way. Doom Patrol and X-Statix have lots of similarities in the ways they portray offbeat, misfit characters in dark stories told with humor. It’s a c ..read more

The Christmas issue in which Spider-Man kills Santa. OK, so not really.  But it is a lot of fun. Puppet Master makes Flash Thompson (in a Spider-Man suit) and Medusa wreak havoc at a toy store.  The FF and Spidey save the day, but not before fake Spider-Man trashes Christmas for the children, which enables J. Jonah Jameson to prove to the little kiddos that Spidey is, in fact, a menace to society ..read more

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In the last arc, Logan took down a mob boss. That’s usually Punisher’s gig. Plus, in the pages of Marvel Knights, Punisher ran over Wolverine with a steamroller. So in this issue of Wolverine’s own book, they fight again and this time Logan wins. He also teases Punisher, suggesting he’s gay. Really? We had to add some gratuitous homophobia as the capper to Frank Tieri’s low-quality run on this series? Sigh ..read more

This is a terrific miniseries that asks, “What If? the super soldier serum was an experiment administered to black soldiers”–an obvious parallel to the real-world Tuskegee experiments. We are witness to Isiah Bradley’s origin in the U.S. Army, and see him receive the same Super Soldier Serum given to Captain America. (Yes, the serum is supposed to have died with its creator–so there’s a little bit of a retcon here.). Isiah’s family is told that he died in combat to keep his participation in the experiments secret. Eventually, he dons the Captain America uniform while on a suicide mission to ..read more

By Maris Wicks ..read more

Indie writer James Sturm and future Guillermo del Toro visual collaborator Guy Davis team up for this very unusual installment of Startling Stories, a series that focuses on the early days of the characters who would later become the Fantastic Four. The series shows Dr. Reed Richards’ work in the ‘50s on (guess what?)…Unstable molecules!  If that sounds boring, it isn’t.  This book won an Eisner Award. There’s LOTS of good in it: Johnny’s hippie days are explored, for example, using characters from the Lee/Kirby days.  There’s a “comic within the comic” about a fictional superh ..read more

Filler story about an alternate future where a young black kid finds and uses Thor’s hammer ..read more

Punisher goes after a brotherhood of dirty, drug-dealing cops. The story arc brings back Detective Soap from Welcome Back Frank. Soap’s a more mature cop now, and when Frank brings him evidence of the Brotherhood, Soap warns him not to kill cops, or their “partnership” will end and the NYPD will come down hard on Punisher. I love that scene for many reasons. It reveals that the cops could, in fact, go after Punisher–but instead they deliberately look the other way. It shows Punisher in a rare deferential moment, and honoring a partnership. Perhaps best of all, Punisher is a true solo book. T ..read more