Comics Reviews (March 9th, 2016)
Guardians of the Galaxy #6
The good part of this thin and uninspiring week is that even the lowest ranked book is pretty good, especially for this largely disappointing All-New All-Different relaunch. A nice two-hander that focuses on the relationship between Peter Quill and Kitty Pryde, it provides Bendis the space for the sort of hyper-talky character work he excels at. It’s artful, but often heavy-handed, not least with Kitty’s tear-stained shout of “it’s a concentration camp.” Although “chag sameach, mother-#$@#$@!” almost makes up for it. Still seriously minded to drop this, but at least I can see why someone else would enjoy this issue.
Ms. Marvel #5
A very silly premise is allowed to get a bit out of hand here, and while numerous parts of it are thoroughly delightful, perhaps most obviously the stunning line “what, Tyesha gets to be a Muslim but my anarch-atheism is a phase?” the whole feels like markedly less than the sum of its parts, and like this story is more an opportunity for everyone to be silly and let their hair down than anything else. I suppose after an apocalyptic Secret Wars arc and a big reintroduction that’s deserved, but equally… meh.
Radioactive Spider-Gwen #6
A strong issue long on good character beats, with genuinely fantastic exchanges between Gwen and her father, Gwen and Captain America, and Gwen and Harry Osborne. The last of these is probably the most interesting, providing one of the book’s characteristically clever reworkings of the standard Spider-Man relationships and offering an insight into some of the ways in which Gwen is better at this than Peter. Not exactly thrilled that we’re headed into a crossover next month, but I’ve been curious about Spider-Woman and am at lest game for it.
March 9, 2016 @ 10:13 pm
What about the codes?
March 9, 2016 @ 11:32 pm
The codes were inside you all along.
March 10, 2016 @ 6:25 am
And then CodesDude was a code
March 10, 2016 @ 10:05 am
Huh. I suppose this depends on one’s pull list, but I felt it was a packed week, with Descender providing several interesting reveals, Shutter knocking it out of the park as usual, InSeXts getting better and better, All-New Wolverine providing the best X-23 story in years and The Vision being continuously high quality. For me it was so good, the new Ms Marvel was surprisingly the weakest of comics read this week (while still being darn good).
March 10, 2016 @ 10:33 am
Big draw for me this week was MTMTE #50, which… had it been a normal issue I’d have been all over, but as a double sized 2 1/2 times the price issue felt underwhelming in terms of value, and for a big 50th issue, it was all setup!
Setting up the plot promised in the solicitation blurb, no less! No, sorry, you can’t advertise a double sized issue as “Megatron finally confronts the DJD!” when that (doesn’t even!) happen on the last page!