All New X-Men 07

   All New X-Men. I'm not sure if there has ever been a less accurate title for a comic. The premise here is that after the events of AvX, Hank learned that he was dying(from another mutation or something) and out of desperation tried to fix the shitstorm Phoenix Cyclops left in his wake. So he went back to the 60s?(Marvel's sliding timeline means events keep getting shifted. Cyclops of course isn't 50+ years old.) and gathered up the original team: Cyclops, Jean, Beast, Iceman, and Angel and brought them to the present so they could talk some sense into modern day Cyclops. Once they figure out what happened, including the whole Cyclops-killing-Professor X thing, they all begin to shun 60sclops, even 60sJean. 60sclops steals Wolverine's motorcycle, as Cyclops's are known to do, and left the school.

   60sclops goes to a bank he knows he has an account at, hoping Modernclops still has one there, hoping to get some money so he can stay on the run. He ends up finding a safe deposit box loaded with cash, eyeglasses, and an invitation from his and Jean's wedding. Some of the bank staff freaks out because, you know, there's a mass murdering mutant psychopath there, so they call the cops. Wolverine shows up and flashes his Avenger's card and gets him out of there, where it's revealed that Wolverine was Mystique all along. She talks 60clops into going back and setting things right with Modernclops, while at the same time convincing him that Wolverine isn't qualified to be headmaster of the academy. She gets out of there before the real Wolverine shows up to pick up 60sclops. Meanwhile, Mystique hops into a van with someone we can't see, and tells him that her plan all along was to sow chaos within the X-Men so she can accomplish some sort of plan. When 60sclops makes it back to the school, he gives 60sJean the invitation and walks off.

    I was really scared before All New X-Men came out. Time travel bullshit? Fucking Jean Grey again? It seemed like it was impossible for it to be good. The fact that it was announced during AvX made me think that it was going to be directly related to that, which made me fear how that was going to end. But I was honestly surprised. Bendis really brought this shit together, and earned back some of that faith he had lost during Secret Invasion and Siege. This issue continues this comic's trend of surprising me, with the character interactions Bendis is known for being the strongest point. Post AvX is a great point to jump back into X-Men if you've lost track of them, and this is absolutely a recommended read.

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The Superior Spider-Man #3

   Guess I should comment on this, seeing as how it's been a pretty hot topic among comic fans. Not issue 3, exactly, but the whole thing. If you're not familiar with what happened, here's the short and stupid version (as opposed to the long and stupid version. There is no not stupid version): Doc Ock was dying, so he switch brains with Spider-Man using a brainwave doodler. Spider-Man tried to switch back, but Doc-Ock planned for that and blocked it, and then Peter in Doc Ock's body died. However, when Peter tried to switch back, Ock got a look at all of his memories, which inspired him to use his new body to continue Spider-Man's legacy, and even improve on it, becoming the "Superior Spider-Man.

   In the first issue, we found out that Peter's mind still exists as a ghost or something, and he can see everything Otto is doing in his body, and even slightly control it, such as when he made Ock pull his punch. In the second issue Octo-Peter tried to re-kindle things with Mary Jane, but after frustratingly slow progress, he decided to give up on her and use his newfound youth to find someone new. At the end of that issue The Vulture attacked MJ's nightclub, and Octo-Peter of course saved her.

   This issue deals with Octo-Peter fighting The Vulture, while Carlie Cooper begins to suspect that he may not actually be Peter. The Vulture had been employing a bunch of little Vultures, which Octo-Peter traced back to his hideout. He was prepared to offer The Vulture a huge sum of money in exchange for him giving up villainy, flashing back to a conversation they had together in The Sinister Six where he said all he wanted was money. Vulture thought this was a trap and sicked the little Vultures he'd been using on him. Peter struck one, thinking it was a midget or something, but it was revealed he'd been using children. Another flashback(there's a lot of them, Peter's ghost even ends up stuck in one for a bit) shows Otto's dad beating him, so Octo-Peter was enraged when he was tricked into striking a child. He and The Vulture ended up fighting through the city, when Octo-Peter has his first encounter with the ol' "Imma outta webbin'" problem. The Vulture had the upper hand until Octo-Peter used a blinding light he had set up to turn the tide, and crashed The Vulture into JJJ's makeshift spider-signal, severely-injuring-but-of-course-not-actually-fucking-killing The Vulture while Carlie watched. She thought this was out of character for Peter, so Octo-Peter came up with some bullshit that she may or may not have bought.

   Not a bad issue, none of them have been really. Fairly basic Spider-Man stuff. The only problem of course would be whether or not you support Octo-Peter. I know many of my friends don't. But if you can get past that, I'd say this is worth a read, if not, just wait until they inevitably return to the status quo; the way things are going, it'll probably be sooner rather than later.

Invincible #100 The Death of Everyone!

    Spoiler: Everyone doesn't die

   Ok, now that we've got that out of the way, let's get to the meat of this. As I've mentioned before, I'm  huge Kirkman fan. Up until recently, he's been the only reason I walk out of the shop with anything labeled Image in my bag. Invincible and The Walking Dead are both stellar series, and I highly recommend them to anyone who likes comics. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Invincible, well, the rest of this post isn't going to making any goddamn sense. But if you're looking for a somewhat more realistic take on superhero comics(realistic in the sense that people react to things like real people, and there are consequences for actions, because people totally fly around in space and punch through planets and shit), check it out.

     So this is it. Issue 100. Anyone remember what happened in issue 100 of The Walking Dead? Seriously, fuck Negan. Nothing that crazy happens here, so long as you make it past page 2. Because that's where Invincible dies at the hand of Dinosaurus, who in issue 98 melted the polar ice caps and flooded coastlines around the world, killing only a million people due to the intervention of every other superhero. It's quickly revealed that Dinosaurus mastered teleportation technology and "killed" a lifeless clone of Invincible he had created months prior. In reality he had escaped back to his lab with the real, unconscious, Invincible. Dinosaurus wants his help to save the world, by whatever means necessary. That's what the global flood was about, thinning the population to reduce humanity's strain on the planet. Invincible responds by telling him that this isn't the way to save the world. Killing people would work, yes, but it's not really saving anyone. If you want to save people, you need to teach them, and things like this aren't the way to do it. Dinosaurus realizes he's been clouded by his pursuit, and always will be, so to prevent anything like this from happening again, he asks Invincible to kill him. Cecil, the head of the secret organization that polices superheros, and does pretty everything, shows up and offer Invincible a deal: work for him again, as an on-call superhero, or go to jail for freeing Dinosaurus weeks earlier and allowing all this to occur. He accepts and flies home to meet his parents and girlfriend, Atom Eve, who are glad to see it wasn't him who was brutally murdered on national television. On the last page, Eve tells Invincible that she's pregnant.

     Ok. That got kind of long, but given that it was the 100th issue, and a lot of ground was covered, I don't think it could have been compressed much more than that. So, my impressions? Good, but not great. Invincible not actually being killed was to be expected, since Kirkman doesn't take death as lightly as some other comics do. So his apparent death was extremely effective, and not really cheapened by the fact that he was alive, since that was what I was expecting. What did feel a bit off was the whole conversation with Dinosaurus. He seemed to accept Invincible's  argument too easily, considering Dinosuarus is considerably more intelligent than Invincible. So him being talked into letting himself be killed in such a short exchange felt a little forced. Cecil's reappearance also struck me as a bit of a backslide, since he'd been put through Cecil's shit so many times already. All of this seemed like a roundabout way to slip back into the old way of doing things, although I'll give Kirkman the benefit of the doubt on this one. The biggest event was of course the pregnancy reveal, which I am looking forward to. Sure, there was the previous pregnancy and abortion(?), but this is different, due to Mark actually knowing about it. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

     So, if you're an Invincible fan, well, you've probably already got this, so this review didn't really affect you too much. If you're not a regular reader, well, despite me spoiling all the major plot points, pick it up, along with anything else Invincible that you haven't read, because it's absolutely worth it.

Getting back in the swing of things.

    Alright folks, decided to dust this off again. I don't know why I stopped in the first place. I was writing, which I enjoy, about comics, which I enjoy. So, I'm shooting for 2 posts a week this time around, which is a bit more restrained than when I started, but hopefully it'll be a schedule I can keep.

And to show my commitment, and to prove I'm not one of those bloggers whose last post is "Hey guys I'm gonna start posting again soon. See you tomorrow!" dated 2/11/12, I'm going to follow up this post with a real one.