weekly comics

[resnullius_bells]

For a while, I wanted to get back to reading comics (the only run I've managed to follow in the last years was the latest Iron Man, and that was out of pure stubborness. At least the art & Gail Simone's issues were good *sighs*. It was more than I could do with Red Hood's or Wonder Woman's, at least), so I decided to check up what came out this week, regardless of what issue it was, and see if there's anything for me. Otherwise I'll never catch up with anything.

-Justice League Odyssey #17: in the A plot, Jessica Cruz, Orion, and a brainwashed Victor Stone have been captured by Darkseid’s forces, who call themselves New New Gods or something. At some point we see a message from Vic to Jessica warning her that she should treat him as an enemy and kill him before he kills her, blah blah, that gave me some shippy feelings. Some new girl helps free Jessica and Orion and there’s a fight. In the B plot Blackfire, Dex-Star, and another new (blue) girl are in some kind of weird facility with time-whamming qualities, and the issue ends with some guy that calls himself “Lord of Time”. It all has a weird GOTG vibe. I’m mildly intrigued by what the hell is Blackfire doing in a JL team, and a bit by Jessica/Victor, but the dialogue was SO DULL. I might look up previous issues in the wikia to satisfy my curiosity, but at the moment I don’t feel like keeping up with it.

-Nightwing #68: I wanted to check out this run again since I heard about the amnesia plot (I have a weak spot for them. Even when they’re bad, they can inspire me fic ideas, at least). Apparently in this issue his head was knocked, along with some goggles the Talons were using to control him. The comic starts with some old memories that made me really nostalgic (the ridiculous disco suit, oracle Barbara, villain Catwoman in a purple suit…). Then we go back to the present, where his Talon outfit is SOMEHOW more ridiculous than the disco suit lmao. He has to fight his surprisingly athletic Talon grandfather (?? I left comics for to long), while he monologues about heritage and stuff. And there’s some new Nightwing dude? And some new pretty girl Dick is dating (DICK, not Ric. I hate that new name lol). I’m definitely going to go back and read the amnesia plot at some point, it sounds at the very least fun.

-Teen Titans #38: Damian is fighting a fucked-up clone of himself that wants him to take his mantle and tempts him with the possibility of freeing his djinn girlfriend (??). He shows Damian the future and what will happen if Damian accepts his offer, and it’s apparently everything he ever wanted. But Damian stays firm and refuses, and then his team (comprised of people I currently don’t know or care much about) appear and help him defeat the clone. There’s some pep talk, one of the others says they can’t be a real team with Djinn, Damian says they’ll get her back and go after the main villain, blah blah. I love you Damian, but I don’t think I’ll stick to this run tbh.

-Avengers #29: they are fighting in space to save a new Starbrand. Natasha now has an armor provided by Tony, War Widow, and she’s fighting the Silver Surfer. Blade is there covered with some Alien living goo thing to survive space. She-Hulk grunts, and Thor looks like a monster. Starbrand turns out to be a pregnant woman with fire powers that destroy worlds, and Gladiator appears to tell her she’s sentenced to death. Tony doesn’t appear; Natasha mentions him a couple times, once to make yet another out-of-place mention to his “ego” *sighs*. I went back to his panels in issue #28 and there he’s trapped in the past fighting some prehistoric Avengers. It was a very short appearance that didn’t give him much time to be as OOC as the other issues I’ve seen from this run. I’ll keep an eye out to see how he’s doing but I really, really don’t care for what happens here.

-Iron Man 2020 #1: putting aside that I still think “Tony is not real anymore because he has a new body” is a ridiculous premise in comics, and that I HATE seeing Arno getting his hands on his stuff and his plots… it could’ve been worse. Slott’s writing still falls short -so many ideas that could’ve been interesting and yet are terribly written…-; losing Schiti as an artist doesn’t help, he was the one that made the run worth reading tbh. I liked seeing Jan defend Tony (“stop calling him ‘it’”). I wanted to punch Sunset when she said Jocasta was “their robot”. The resurrected artificial Starks make less and less sense with every piece of information about Arno we get (why would he want MORE AIs, if they’re going to be used against humanity by an invader? Btw, that plot is yet another hijack, from Tony’s fears about Thanos in the MCU. I haaaaaate it). And Tony is now calling himself Mark One, has a horrible hair style, and is leading the robot revolution… but at least he’s not drinking and has a role in the story, so that’s something (I love his old drinking arcs, but I do NOT trust Slott with one).

-Jessica Jones – Blind Spot #1: I haven’t read anything with Jessica in years, man. So when I saw there was a brand new title starting today I jumped. It starts with Jessica kidnapped and tied to a chair, with a Miss Marvel costume, threaten the off-scree kidnapper. Then we go back to her and Luke acting all couple-y and lovely with their daughter in a park. Later in her office Jessica finds a dead body and the cops arrive and arrest her; the body turns out to be an old client with a sketchy boyfriend Jessica feels she failed to help. Matt comes to her rescue and they have some nice banter (and she breaks her handcuffs instead of waiting to be uncuffed, because as she tells him, it’s cooler). She goes back to her office to look for information on the client and someone comes in and shoot her in the head. Which I’m guessing will be solved/explained in the next issue. Overall, I liked it (it’s clearly influenced by the show, but so far only aesthetically), and it’s a short run, so I’ll continue it.

-Marvel’s Spider-Man – Black Cat Strikes #1: Peter is thwarting an art robbery, with MJ on the comms, when ofc Felicia appears (and he hangs-up on MJ). But instead of taking the painting she breaks it and steals a pen-drive hidden in it. Then Peter has a flashback to when they first met, with him trying to stop her robberies in their eternal game of cat-and-mouse, ending with them hooking up on a rooftop. Back in the present he chases her again, and it’s revealed she doesn’t know what’s in the pen-drive, but that she has to steal it, or Hammerhead will kill her son. Cut to Peter freaking out. I’m definitely continuing this one, I love these kids.

I guess this one is cheating, since it didn’t come out today. But I saw there was a new limited series with Diana and I had to read it, ofc.

The premise is that she wakes up after centuries of sleep, to a post-apocalyptic Earth. The art is different than your usual, and a little rough, but I like it; especially in the flashbacks with her mother, where she warns her about humanity and the world outside Themyscira. Diana and her mother are drawn with brown skin too, which is nice.

Anyway, she wakes up when a group of scavengers going through the woods for food and resources find her hide out while running from a mutated animal. Said hideout turns out to be the Batcave (she finds Bruce’s corpse later. He’s wearing the Batsuit. I can’t even). She chooses to leave with the group and find out what happened, but since she isn’t as powerful as she should, she takes weapons and armor (and the utility belt) from Bruce and apologizes for it -which is SUCH a Diana thing to do.

The group later betrays her, wanting to turn her in to their leader to avoid his anger. She ends up his prisoner and not his wife when she fights back. In the cells she has a conversation with one of the people that turned her in, barely more than a kid really, and says she forgives him because she “loves him”. That leads to a scene where she talks about meeting Steve and how she fell in love with humanity, with their curiosity, that I found really touching (especially because the stranger she was talking to freaked out and yelled that it's "inhuman" to love like that, to which she replied "exactly". Which again, very Diana).

ETA: I posted the panels here because I simply adored the scene.

Ofc, they want her to fight gladiator style… and it’s Minerva in the other side. The fight is interrupted by more mutant animals attacking the castle, and when Diana singlehandedly takes care of that the people cheer for her. She stops Cheeta from killing their leader and tells them to take her to her previous cell. Minerva runs away, and then Diana reveals that her plan is to take everyone to Themyscira, which might have survived the apocalypse.

All in all, I really enjoyed the issue, and wait for the continuation (in a month, I think), even if the synopsis of the series is damn fucking ominous. It’s an interesting Elseworld, even if not the height of originality, but most of all, I loved Diana’s characterization here.