Catching Up With Marvel

Unfortunately , The big bang lately hasn't been on the shelves, but on-line with the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer springing up and  the dishearteningly underwhelming Fantastic Four re-boot, which does a race flip with Johnny Storm, for no good reason. Guardians is going to be strong and prove sticking more closely to the source material works every time, while Fantasitc Four will flop, much like the impending Amazing Spider-man sequel.

Last week nothing really wowed me,  the high point has been a Thor story that is bringing him back to earth. this week is getting better

Avenger's World issue 3  has Shang -chi, who has no business being an Avenger, getting his butt kicked by Gorgon. When this character was created as the Master of Kung-fu it was an attempt for Marvel to have their own Bruce Lee, so I am surprised they still have him going. ...Note to my self as a Marvel writer... Kill him off,.

Captain America number 17 sees the series taking a turn into...shaky ground as this Dr. Mind Bubble arc begins. Superior Spider-man team , has some great art, and t he sotry worked with the main title, so I can't complain much about it.

Amazing X-men 4 was a lot of fun recaptured more of an old 80's  X-men feel. I think this is my favorite line-up currently in print. The worst continues to be the X-men book. Enchantress is not enough to keep my interest.  The Mean while.. story in the back of the book was better than the main story in every respect.

Daredevil 36 closes out a fairly iconic run, the book continues to impress despite my rather lackluster attitude toward the character. Murdock outs himself in court and the next series is going to pick up in San Francisco. Speaking of characters that once underwhelmed me the first issue of New Warriors was pretty impressive, it's a book that I want to see where it's going and hope New Salem , remains a fixture.

Punisher issue two had a weird feel, the art work tried to be overtly stylistic and felt like the writer had been watching too much Breaking Band and Sons of Anarchy. Electro is showing up in the next issue so it should keep the book more grounded in the Marvel u.    

Marvel Now Phase 1

We are now entering phase one of the 2014 Marvel Now. All New Invaders lives up to it's hype with the second issue, the artwork is the best the company has going. For fans of this Sliver age team, this book is a must, they don't cut corner, even the original Vision makes and appearance of sorts when they are recalling the old days, the next issue should have more Namor, in it who only comes up in conversation this issue.

The first issue of Loki Agent of Shield... err Asgard , seems interesting. I like the art work, the Avengers make an appearance as he sneaks into Avengers tower to purge Thor of some corruption left in him that in turn seems to have become the original or more traditional depiction of Loki in the marvelverse, Leaving the question well now with two Lokis?

New Avenger's 14- seems to be lost the way many D/Ctitles are with too much dimensional jumble as other earth's collide. The Dr. Strange arc is worth following as Stephen sells his soul for more power.

Iron Man 21... was a decent superhero comic , the Mandrains' power ringer's continue to plague Toney, the art work is crisp like something from a D/C book, very Super-man in the scope of it's action.

Punisher and Wolvering both kicked off this week with new number one titles and truth be told neither was that gripping, the art work in Wolverine was good , which is much more than can be said of the Punisher, who appears to be drawn rather scrawny, sure a new version of the Howling Commandos are going to be popping up, but the appearance of the Superior Spider-man in the new Wolverine book is much more likely to give me reason to check it out. The Wolverine book also seems much more firmly rooted in canon.