New Comix! - Week of 8/1/12

This was Spider-Man's week to shine, for both Peter & Miles!

Avengers Vs X-men (AvX) #9

In the last issue, the Avengers teamed up on the attacking Namor, and with Scarlet Witch's help managed to depower him.  His portion of the Phoenix Force then split into 4 and was absorbed by the remaining Phoenix-Powered X-men.  The Avengers, in the meantime, fellback to their last hideout, the mysterious kung-fu (I know, I can't believe they're resorting to mystic kung-fu either) city, K'un Lun.

The X-men have been capturing Avengers and are holding them prisoner in a Phoenix-made volcano in Siberia that houses the denizens of Magik's Limbo realm.  It's basically a volcano full of what most people think hell looks like, including the demons monsters.  Cap orders a strike on the prison in an attempt to free their friends.  Unfortunately, the prison is currently guarded by half of the "Phoenix Four", siblings Colossus and Magik.  The entire strike force would have been defeated and captured as well, but Spider-Manused his webs to pull everyone (including most of the prisoners) out of the volcano's enterance and sealed it behind them.  He then attempted to slow down half of the Phoenix Force on his own to buy them time to escape.  Believe it or not, it worked!  Pete got beaten to mush, but he managed to used his sarcastic whit to turn the increasingly paranoid and power-hungery mutants against each other.  They battled, attempted to gain the other's portion of the Phoenix power and defeated each other.  Their power then left them and went to the only Phoenix hosts left, Cyclops & Emma Frost.  The issue ends with Cyclops appearing above the city demanding Hope come with him to fullfill her Phoenix destiny.

The story moves along and focus's on my favorite character, Spider-Man.  What's not to love?

Pick of the Week!

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #13

In the last issue, Miles' uncle (the super villain) attacked him and in the ensuing fight, one of his gadgets misfired and exploded, burning the Prowler to a crisp and killing him.  Since then, (apparently) the Ultimate Marvel U has fallen apart and I didn't know about it because I'm only keeping up with this comic in that universe these days.  America has partially collapsed, with militias popping up around the country in revolt, Texas seceding from the union, and who knows what else. 

This issue opens up with Iron Man and Cap discussing the new Spidey with Cap saying he's too young.  Miles is informed by his father that his uncle has been murdered and that the news is saying that Spider-Man is the killer.  Miles spends a few days dealing with what happened and coping with the idea that the media thinks he's a killer.  Then while at school, he gets a text asking for him to meet up with someone.  He says "after school" and heads that way after his classes let out.  On the way he stumbles across Batroc the Leaper (a lame French villain) and foils his burglary attempt.  After evading the cops, Miles enters a warehouse and meets Aunt May and Gwen Stacy.  They discuss who he is and why he's doing it.  Just when Aunt May is about to give him something of Peter's, Cap steps out of the darkness and says, "Hold on, Ms. Parker.  I don't think he's going to be Spider-Man any longer."

This issue wasn't as exciting or enthralling as most, but I've enjoyed every issue of this series so far and this was no exception there.  Bendis knows how to write Spider-Man and Miles is just fun to read about.  Sarah Pichelli's art is missed, with her spending time on the awesome crossover SPIDER-MEN, but the fill in guy does a good job, except for Captain America's silly shoebox-shaped shoulder pads.

New Comics! - Week of 7/25/11

It's the RETURN OF AXE COP!  ... oh, and some other comics too.

Axe Cop: President of the World #1 (of 3)
Axe Cop is back!!!  What?  You don't know what I'm talking about?!?  C'mon, man!!!  Axe Cop!!!  He's the awesome product of a 5 year old boy and his talented 30-year-old artist brother!  The brothers have been cranking out the Axe Cop web comic for 3 years now and Dark Horse is releasing the 2nd full-color mini series.  This series is the craziest thing I've ever read.  It's the wildest stories a 5-year-old can come up with expertly drawn by a professional comic book artist!  Malachi (the writer) is now 8, but the stories are just as crazy as ever.  This is the only comic I know of that can out-weird Saga.

At the end of the last mini-series "Bad Guy Earth", Axe Cop killed off all the bad guys in the world by poisoning them and making them poop themselves to death.  The grateful citizens of Earth then made Axe Cop the President of the World!

This series starts off with Axe Cop ruling over a peaceful planet.  He creates a new town in Washington State, called Axeville where he rules from the "Gold House", which is a gold version of the white house.  Axe Cop prays to God asking if the bad guys will ever return.  God tells him there will be a million years of peace, but then the bad guys would attack from outer space.  To ensure this, God places a million-year forcefield around the Earth.  Not wanting Earth's defense to weaken over the next million years, Axe Cop sends all the superheroes into the future to fight the eventual bad guy invasion.  In the meantime, Axe Cop  does his thing, staying perpetually young thanks to his Chief of Staff's healing eye beams.  During this time Axe Cop meets a goo-powered hero with mind-controlling goo powers and dubs him Goo Cop.  He thens meets a talking Gorilla with gun fists, giant-growing powers, and a tail that shoots out jet fighters.  The Gorilla (named Junior Cobbb) comes from Gorilla Planet that is under attack by robot penguins.  Axe Cop, Goo Cop, and Junior Cobbb head to Gorilla Planet to save the gorillas.  They find that the penguins are impervious to harm, so they head to the Robot Penguin planet and disable their master computer, which kills all the penguins.  The gorillas want to recycle the penguins, but Axe Cop sees that their metal is tainted with evil and can't be recycled, only destroyed.  Junior Cobbb grows into a giant and shoots a volcano out of his tail (see below..this is great!), in which the penguins are destroyed.  They then head back to Earth.  Time passes and God's force field disintegrates as the heroes from a million years ago appear thanks to Axe Cop's time portal.  The army of good guys wait and wait and wait but no bad guys appear, so Axe Cop sends the heroes back to their own time and goes to bad disappointed.  He's awoken in the middle of the night by his Chief of Staff, Ralph Wrinkles the dog, and is informed that the bad guys are attacking Seattle and that there are roughly ONE BILLION of them!

Tell me that's not the best comic book plot you've ever heard!  Man, this book is pure fun!  I hope little Malachi makes enough off of this weird character to pay for college.  That would be awesome!

Check out more Axe Cop goodness HERE.

- PICK OF THE WEEK!!!

The Mighty Thor #17
Previously: All of Asgardia had been taken captive by a race of little alien dog nightmare monsters, putting everyone into a dream prison.  Thor escapes, waking up just in time to see The Enchantress and her newly created boyfriend, The Keep, heading for Asgardia's empty throne.

Thor and The Keep start pummeling each other, being that this is a Thor comic and all, and Enchantress drones on about how she created her own boyfriend since Thor wasn't good enough for her (she's been chasing him for eons).  Then Dr. Blake's head starts yelling at Thor and explains how after he "died" the last time, he and Thor were separated.  Thor didn't even notice, but Dr. Blake was left a shell of a person, having only been created by Odin to house Thor's spirit to humiliate him.  In response, Blake made a deal with the Enchantress that ended with him being a disembodied head and The Keep being made from his body.  Thor is bummed that his half host body person was so upset about being separated from him when the rest of Asgardia wakes up and The Keep and Enchantress are uncermoniously ejected from the land.  Thor goes and makes a deal with the nightmare alien dogs that gives them a representation in the assembly of the realms and he gives them Dr. Blake's head to put into a perpetually happy dream.  So weird.

The Keep is a pretty cool looking character and I was hoping for a more dramatic fight between him and Thor.  It wasn't bad, just kinda standard.  The art was pretty good.  The story was just above lame, but below interesting.  I really like Thor, so I'm holding out hope that the next story arch doesn't center around nightmare dogs or emo Oklahoma teenagers (that's a story thread that wasn't worth mentioning...see my previous reviews for some details if you care enough).

- This was a pretty standard Thor book.

Wolverine & the X-Men #14
In the midst of an ongoing war between the Phoenix-powered X-men and the Avengers, Colossus takes some time out to go court Kitty who is acting as head of the school during Wolverine's absence.  Colossus takes Kitty off to have a romantic lunch in a setting straight out of the old testament, with walls of water on both sides and eating their meal on the dry seabed.  Colossus tries to propose, but Kitty shuts him down and warns him that the power he holds is dangerous and changing him.  After a few attempts at love, Colossus gets mad and takes her back to the school.  He then decides to destroy it because Kitty chose it over him (in his mind).  The few remaining X-men on the grounds try to stop him, but don't even slow him down.  Kitty stand her ground and he freaks out on her, throwing her to the ground and telling her that he could kill her, bring her back to life, and maker her do whatever he wanted.  At that he pauses, realizing that he has become some kind of monster and flies away.  Just then Iceman, Rachel Grey, and Angel come back to the school, having left Cyclops's crazy X-team.  Kitty loses no time putting them back to work, as the school has been severely under-staffed.

This series continues to be a fun read and the quiet presence of Doop as an adjuct professor makes it all the better.  In this issue I thought we would FINALLY see some Doop action.  When Colossus attacked he showed up with a huge Cable-sized gun and shot it, but that was all.  We didn't even get to see what Colossus did to him, if anything.  C'mon!  This is the weird little guy who ate Thor's hammer, then spat it back at him duplicated 100 times!  This is the guy who created a wormhole to another dimension by popping a zit!  This is the guy who's brain exploded into pieces and had to live off the backup brain in his butt for a week!  All he can do is shoot a gun at Colossus?!?

Don't get me wrong, I love this book, but they're missing a lot of opportunities with Doop just floating around doing nothing.

- This continues to be the fun X-book to read!