Ultimates #11/Amazing Spidey #55/Capt Marvel #12/Uncanny X-Men 428-429/New X-Men #144

Chat about stuff other than Transformers.
Post Reply
Cliffjumper
Posts: 32206
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2001 5:00 am

Ultimates #11/Amazing Spidey #55/Capt Marvel #12/Uncanny X-Men 428-429/New X-Men #144

Post by Cliffjumper »

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

Yep, read these on Das Train [as the Germans no doubt call it... yes, I know they don't, so **** off... You know who you are, but thankfully you never bring your twattish arse in here...]...

Ultimates #11

Ack... Slight cop out with Iron Man's forcefield there, though I was glad to see a whole ton of grunts making it through also, and not just the central characters... It's a shame in most media multi-parters that the better the cliffhanger, the worse the cop-out... I don't have #10 at hand right now, but is the head of them aliens the chap Cap had the fight with on the train at the start? Some good suspense before the forcefield thing, though - obviously the Ultimates weren't going to die, but for the first half of the issue I really thought we wouldn't see them for a while... One thing is, though, that I really hope the rigid 6-issue arc thing isn't kept, as we all know this is going to be more-or-less wrapped up [a few villains will peg it, but for now the situation will be averted... it's very constricting. Overall, good, but not quite as great as the rest of the arc so far. Oh, and is it me, or since flashing the Hulk, has Jan spent an inordinate time naked?

Uncanny X-Men #428

No, wait, is X-Men Unlimited #4. Yet another take on Nightcrawler's origin, and Mystique's relation to it. Ho-****ing-hum. The fact that the thing was damn near incomprehensible, and very badly drawn [Christ, Tony Stark is Nightcrawler's Dad!] really, really didn't help.

Uncanny X-Men #429

Is it me, or is credibility more stretched than [thinks of non-obscene comparison] Stretch Armstrong [well done my son!] that Polaris is allowed to wander round with nothing more than an inhibitor...... There are just too many characters in this book. There's no need for Logan to show up all the time. There's no need for Lorna [cart the bitch off somewhere, I don't care]. There's no need for Jubilee. There's no need for Northstar if Chuck just intends to wheel him out as Jack from "Will & Grace" whenever he thinks it'll get a cheap laugh. There's no need for Cain. There's not really much need for Alex. Bring Jono back, drop some of the "shock" recruits he's done bugger-all with, and actually plan ahead a few issues... I'm actually feeling a lot more sympathic to Casey's stuff, as at least he settled on a team and worked with them. Austen's writing like a spoiled child. He gets a new toy, shoves the rest of his collection aside and plays with it a bit, and then sees an even newer one, grabs it and chucks the last one aside.

New X-Men #144

The Assault on Weapon Plus arc is pretty damn good, probably my fave since E is for Extinction [the follow-up went on a little bit]. Morrison's got enough snappy dialogue and imagination to distract from the fact Chris Bachalo can't draw. Pretty good, but I'm growing to dislike numbered plot arcs, as again, next issue we'll know that to some degree, everything will be sorted... About the only possible surprise I can think of is killing off Fantomex, but Grant's too chuffed with him, unless he's leaving the book or something.

Amazing Spider-Man #55

Pretty good, to be short. I just hope the addition of Avery writing doesn't mean MJS is moving on , as he's literally the only writer to have made Spider-Man consistently interesting over any period of time.

Captain Marvel #12

Okay, I'm kinda starting to get a bit fed up with the "phewwotaloony" angle now... it's just going on a bit, and to be honest David's kinda pissing me off with the "he's sane... nah, just kidding" endings - I stopped falling for that a while back, and the book is kinda getting a bit of a smug edge...

Anyone else have any thoughts on the above? :)
User avatar
Hound
Posts: 9700
Joined: Tue Sep 26, 2000 4:00 am
Location: Henshin!

Re: Ultimates #11/Amazing Spidey #55/Capt Marvel #12/Uncanny X-Men 428-429/New X-Men #144

Post by Hound »

Originally posted by Cliffjumper
Anyone else have any thoughts on the above? :)

Yeah, you should go read Sandman...
Image
1921\4\6-2010\1\21 Goodbye Grandma, I love you
User avatar
angloconvoy
Posts: 2793
Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2000 4:00 am
Location: Ichihara, Japan

Post by angloconvoy »

Only read Ultimates and Captain Marvel of that bunch, but yep, all fair points. I'm not too keen on the alien menace angle Ultimates have Jumped into so soon, it reeks of Authority, but it hasn't been too badly done. Yes though, lots of naked Jan. ooh they're hardcore.

Captain Marvel continues to be a fairly entertaining read while maintaining its status as a mere shadow of it pre-relaunch self. But the whole insanity angle is dragging, or at least being dealt with poorly. I do hope its going somewhere.
Image
User avatar
Halfshell
Posts: 19167
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2000 4:00 am
Location: Don't complain to me. I don't care.
Contact:

Post by Halfshell »

Yep, numbered plot-arcs are a load of guff. I'd rather not know when the plot's going to be resolved.

Uncanny, I agree on the character overload. Yet Austen still insists on drafting in Scott and Jean to flesh things out, despite the fact that (according to Morrison's book) they've barely spoken to each other in months.

And is it really necessary for Wolverine to be in every single title? Okay, he's probably the most recognisable character to the casual fan, but he's hardly the be-all and end-all of the franchise.

I'm not comfortable with the inferrence that Kurt's only 19. I know Marvel-time is absolutely screwed up anyway, but I prefer being allowed to draw my own conclusions about that sort of thing. Seriously, we're meant to believe that all those other storylines happened when they were kids in the space of five years? Ouch. Chucky X should be locked up, the man's a menace.

And now I have mental images of the Vanisher saying "and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids."

New's gotten funky. The art may be cack, but it somehow works with the storyline... shift in focus, if you will. And so long as they go back to somebody with a sense of proportion after the next issue, I'll be happy.
Morrison's actually made me start to care about Summers as he drops the whole "I'm a responsible person" act in favour of something that shows actual depth. And Fantomex is fast becoming one of my favourite characters ("I thought you were French?" / "No, I just like the accent")

I'd agree that the Iron Man forcefield was an utter cop-out. But you knew that there had to be something coming. And it's nowhere near as big a stretch as when Doom thought everybody back to life in Secret Wars (guess what I recently read and wished I hadn't?).

X-treme X-men is still a load of guff. It's taken six issues to get to the blatant "he's a robot and it's all an illusion" coclusion. If Kitty wasn't in it, I seriously wouldn't have started buying it again. I hate exposition - if I want to know what happened last issue, I'll find it. Oh, hang on, nothing happened last issue because all the characters were busy soliloquising for three pages. It's Sam Guthrie, not ****ing Hamlet.
Image
Cliffjumper
Posts: 32206
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2001 5:00 am

Re: Re: Ultimates #11/Amazing Spidey #55/Capt Marvel #12/Uncanny X-Men 428-429/New X-Men #144

Post by Cliffjumper »

Originally posted by Hound
Yeah, you should go read Sandman...


I kinda meant one which wouldn't cost me a bomb... though I will be making a brief, illict run over the Marvel border tomorrow to buy a few trades - probably Stormwatch and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I think I'm slightly riled about the "Nazis were aliens" angle... I dunno why, but it feels a bit B-Movie, and thinking about it, it's quite a complicated plan... why not pick Russia, with an already dominated population of a much bigger size, and a hell of a lot more resources in the 1930s. Oh yeah, because then Cap wouldn't have an old score to settle... but it's the first slip the book has made, and it's only minor... It was probably the best of the lot I just read, and Bryan Hitch is one of the few artists where I just look at a page and savour the details. And Cap in a Tornado will be fun! Cap's well-done actually, they've given him more of an edge than the "standard" version without completely ****ing the character and book with right-wing, current affairs neo-fascism in the "Marvel Universe" [I use the term lightly, it's the biggest of the things given the chop by Quesada...] version... I gave that book up after #5, probably missing out on Cap battling Bin Laden and impaling him on the Statue of Liberty's torch...

And yeh, my slight annoyance with Captain Marvel isn't helped by the fact that the 3rd series was bloody amazing, 30-odd issues of which every one was great - even Busiek had to let goons like Jerry Ordway take over from time to time, meaning Avengers #1-56 weren't quite as perfect as they could have been [letting Alan Davis draw it didn't help either...]. There was just the best central cast in a comic I've read for years, and the Marlo/Lorraine double-act was as much of a reason for reading the thing as Rick/Genis... One of my favourite issues is the Marlo spotlight one, where Genis only appears on the last page, and you don't mind... Can you imagine something like Spider-Man being readable if the whole thing deals with Flash Thompson?

I really don't get why Austen keeps filching New X-Men cast members either... at times, such as in parts of the Holy War storyline, it felt like an extension of New, with hardly any of the Uncanny team really getting a look-in... In a way it seems slightly amusing... it's as if Morrison doesn't speak to Chuck. The way Austen's going round fiddling with X-Men history, drawing on the past, and Morrison just sees the past stuff as an irrelevance... Remeber how we had that little thing about whether or not Polaris' insanity was believable or not? Sure, it was believable, but only if you'd been keeping tabs on the character since the mid-90s... Even the Genosha issue didn't help, as by the time she rolls into Uncanny she's presumably seen as well enough to wander around the Mansion with her powers all charged up...

Wolverine's been over-used for years, from the very late-80s onwards, and I bet there seriously aren't many Marvel titles he hasn't appeared in, and at least 40 boom 'n' bust ones where he's turned up on the last page of #1... But now it's more of a pain because there's no need for him... Casey's basic team of Bobby, Kurt, Warren and Jono was pretty good on paper, though the constant bringing in of Logan undermined it a little, as it made 'em look like they couldn't handle anything [e.g. Poptopia, where they're all at sea until Wolvy arrives...] when with decent writing, it could be a nice dynamic team, and then moved on, slotted Stacy in for a bit of sand in the vaseline and then either add Jean-Paul or Alex to round it off... sure, have guest-spots for Cain and Lorna, but not everyone who shows up at the mansion can just saunter into the team, can they? Well, it would seem they can, but hey...

Another thing is I don't see the point in bringing Paige in when she's actually a different character... Sure, I dropped Gen X for 50-odd issues, but I picked it up again and no way does the character in the later issues of Gen X tally with the one in Uncanny, and neither does Jubilee for that matter... She seems to have just replaced Stacy, just without the sluttish past. Was it me, or about three issues ago, her and Warren hadn't been kissed, and then about two issues ago she was a ball of frustration because he wouldn't bed her?

Argh... it's just it's been about 20 issues now, and up to about #420 it was spotty, and now there seems to be even less going for the title... I mean, I make that three issues on the trot which haven't been any good...
User avatar
Halfshell
Posts: 19167
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2000 4:00 am
Location: Don't complain to me. I don't care.
Contact:

Post by Halfshell »

Oh, I wouldn't say they've not been any good... we've learnt that Mystique was a bit of a goer. And that, uhm, she can only carry the kid of another mutant. o_0

And that there's lots of other blue kids that could be Mystique's bairn.

Uhm.

And that Chuck Austen is very possibly about to resurrect the whole "Neo" storyline. Funnnnn.

Gah.

Am I the only person who starts to wonder about the numerical classification of Sabertooth, Deadpool, etc in the Weapons Plus program? Are they a part of Weapon X, or maybe just ones that didn't quite make the final grade?

Ho hum.
Image
User avatar
Cyberstrike nTo
Protoform
Posts: 4186
Joined: Sat Mar 16, 2002 5:48 pm
Location: In the Dead Universe known as Indianapolis
Contact:

Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

I read mostly DC and while most the Marvel stuff doesn't appeal to me anymore.

Captain America, Captain Marvel, Amazing Sider-Man, Spider-Girl, Punisher, and Supreme Power are the only ongoing serises I read from them the rest are mini-series like 1602, Born, Trurth: Red, White and Black and Trouble
Please visit Outlaw Colony my new message board it's a fun site for fun people.
Post Reply