Eight Alpha Flight members today, no room for the Avengers on the cover too.

In ye olden times, when a comic reached it's hundredth issue, that usually meant a double-sized extravaganza, and maybe a good time to check back with a book you hadn't read in a while. Maybe. From 1991, Alpha Flight #100, "The Final Option" Credits weren't in this issue, but per the GCD, written by Fabian Nicieza, pencils by Michael Bair, Tom Morgan, June Brigman, Dave Ross, and John Calimee; inks by Michael Bair, Chris Ivy, Danny Bulanadi, and Larry Mahlstedt.

A ton of plotlines come to a head here: the alien Consortium assaults Toronto; as another alien species, the Quwrlln, explain why they saved James Hudson, the original Guardian, from the explosion that apparently didn't kill him back in Alpha Flight #12: to get super-heroes to help them save their world from Galactus.

A brief aside: Hudson returns in AF #25, where he reveals the explosion actually threw him through a space warp to Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. He nearly died, but aliens found and saved him, but put him and his suit together! This was revealed to be a lie the next issue, when Omega Flight trashes Alpha Flight and "Hudson" is revealed to be evil robot Delphine Courtney! Several years and several writers later, in AF #89, Hudson is found held prisoner in a Roxxon facility, and the alien story is revealed to have been true after all! Hudson is killed again this issue, and although he'd be back later, I don't think he and his wife Heather would wear their Canadian-flag costumes together again: they've had different outfits here and there, and offhand I don't recall which one was using Guardian and which one was Vindicator at the time, or if they've switched since.

The dimension the Quwrlln were stuck in played havoc with Galactus's "life functions," but not anyone else: apparently, whatever was wrong with the place was beyond mortal kin, but messed him up. The heroes mostly pummel the poor Big G, and Hudson sacrifices himself to move the Consortium's world-ship into the Quwrlln's place, and vice versa. Galactus eats the invaders, both Quwrlln and earth are safe, and everybody's happy. Everybody still alive that didn't know Mac, I guess.

The Avengers guest-star, with Hercules punching Galactus a bit, a very enthusiastic alien biting She-Hulk, Captain America and Black Widow helping Northstar and Puck infiltrate a Consortium ship, and writer Nicieza apparently forgetting Quasar was basically Green Lantern and could've been way more helpful. Cap does show Black Widow mad respect, when Northstar asks how she's going to get off the ship before it warps out, Cap just nonchalantly tells him not to worry about it.

I...I'm not sure that guy's trying to stop her, exactly.

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"Attacked, on Titan."

In my head, Thanos sounds like Ted Cassidy at his most intimidating: hmm, I may have forgotten he did Brainiac and Black Manta on the old Super Friends cartoon.

Trying to grind out some homemade scripts this week, so I'm not sure what we're doing here the rest of the week as far as scans. Better get going, then.

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If Congresswoman Gordon isn't in continuity, this oughta be.

Barbara shows Bruce the Master of Laws from Harvard, that she quite possibly picked up over the weekend, in one of the few light moments in Batman: Gotham Knights #25, "No Exit" Written by Devin Grayson, pencils by Roger Robinson, inks by John Floyd.

This was part four of the crossover Bruce Wayne: Murderer? There's a lot of cover elements, but the Brian Bolland cover of a handcuffed Batman is pretty sweet. I actually had to do a quick search, since I wasn't sure this storyline had been collected, the GCD didn't mention a reprint. But the storyline ran over twelve issues through seven titles, with at least five writers! (Grayson, Chuck Dixon, Ed Brubaker, Kelly Puckett and Greg Rucka.) I have to believe that sort of thing is going to be a bit of a trainwreck, unless one writer or the editor really rides herd on the rest. Grayson may have also had the unenviable task of having to try to make Batman, or Bruce Wayne at least, seem unstable in the issues leading up to the murder of Vesper Fairchild. (She appeared in the Doug Moench/Kelley Jones run of Batman, and deserved better.)

The judge rules that Bruce, with his vast resources, would be a flight risk and denied bail. Pending trial, Bruce is held in Blackgate Prison, but seems oddly reticent and reluctant to have Nightwing, Oracle, Robin, Alfred, or anyone else help him. And...that's about as far as we get this chapter; counting the conclusion Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, this is part four of thirty. (About $75 cover price!) And Vesper's real killer only makes sense if you'd been reading Batman comics all the way back to No Man's Land, and possibly then-current issues of Superman and JLA as well.


Somewhat more cheerfully, this issue also features another sterling installment of Batman: Black & White, "Last Call at McSurley's" Written by Mike W. Barr, pencils by Alan Davis, inks by Mark Farmer. The titular bar may be a filthy, debauched gin joint; but to the Batman it's a virtual goldmine of information. When the bar faces closure over unpaid taxes, Bats chips in to save it...with a rare grin in the Batcave. He doesn't do the full on Alan Davis grin though; Bats is still too serious for that. Probably more enjoyable in eight pages than all of Bruce Wayne: Murderer?
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Somehow, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier doesn't crash this issue...

From 1977, The Incredible Hulk #216, "Countdown to Catastrophe!" Written and edited by Len Wein, pencils by Sal Buscema, inks by Ernie Chan. This issue, the Hulk takes a variety of lumps from an old favorite pretty new here, the Bi-Beast! He-or they, since the Bi-Beast's two faces refer to each other as "skull-brother"--had taken over the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, and was planning to nuke Earth with it; beaten S.H.I.E.L.D. had no choice but to bring in the Hulk for help!

The Hulk gets beat down by the Bi-Beast himself, several of S.H.I.E.L.D. experimental weapons, and a "battle-vest" Tony Stark left with S.H.I.E.L.D. for testing that is inexplicably Bi-Beast sized: they were taller then, but got shrunk down a bit in a later appearance in Thor #316. Hulk's also a little distracted by running into General "Thunderbolt" Ross, and having the opportunity to get even with the guy that's been hassling him for over a decade now. Still, the Hulk's persuaded to save the planet, since his friends Betty Ross and Jim Wilson do live there.

With the Helicarrier dropping out of the sky, Ross gives the order to restart the turbines; but the sudden jolt throws the battling Hulk and Bi-Beast off. As they fall out of sight, Ross sheds a tear over betraying his long-time foe, which I have to call crocodile tears. Or crying that he didn't get to murder the Hulk to his face.




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Honestly, the Ultimate Universe was dead to me years ago...

Wednesday, Hastings had a drawing for a variant black-and-white party cover of Secret Wars #1, and I won! Thanks to them! I also bought an issue to read, and well...

As a single issue? I didn't love it. As a cog in Jonathan Hickman and Marvel's grand plan? ...enh. Overall, it's joyless. I hate the fancy-pants design of it with title pages and epitaphs, and if you really want to sell the finality of two universes, an entire multiverse ending, maybe don't end the comic with a preview for another book.

Also, Nightcrawler doesn't teleport with a "POP" sound effect; to me that's inexcusable.


Luckily, I did pick up some other books that I heartily enjoyed: several issues of Waid's Daredevil for ninety-nine cents each (although I worry post-Secret Wars, post-Mark Waid, Matt's going to wake up back in New York City, with Karen Page as his secretary and his identity a secret, just like on the TV show, like it was all a dream) and a hardcover copy of Batman: Private Casebook by Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen! That was a swell pick-up, I don't know why I wasn't reading those at the time! And it was $3.99! A steal that washes the taste of Secret Wars out of my mouth!



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"Warehoused."

This set-up seems familiar somehow. Maybe it'll come to me.

It may be obvious from the strip, but I haven't actually read any comics with Anti-Venom; hence he basically becomes Bizarro Venom, doing the opposite of regular Venom! As in trying to be friendly and helpful, with mixed results. But OAFE's review of AV pointed out that Eddie Brock, formerly the human host of Venom, only briefly had this identity before being turned into the more traditional symbiote Toxin. I liked when Brock gave up and sold the symbiote (which then passed through a few hosts before getting to current Venom Flash Thompson) in Mark Millar's Marvel Knights Spider-Man; which may have been the last thing Millar did that I enjoyed. So far, Marvel seems unwilling to give up on Brock as a character, so he keeps turning up here and there; often in complete reversals of his most prior appearance.

This post was actually warehoused a couple weeks as well, but I'm working overtime and may be out for the rest of this week, so it seemed like a good time!
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"In Medias Res."

I may have bitten off more than I can chew here, but I almost have a plan. Really! We'll see how it plays out...

"The Stars My Aggravation" has been my tag for this storyline, that's been running weekly (or weakly) since March of last year! The occasional Satana/Black Cat strips have been sidebars, or occasionally attempts to stall while I figured out a plot. The last episode of the storyline is already finished and ready to go--it's even been scheduled a few times, but somehow we keep going!

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Nowadays, this is an almost weekly occurance...

Spidey gets jumped by his greatest enemies, and the Shocker, in 1977's Amazing Spider-Man #170, "Madness is all in the Mind!" Written and edited by Len Wein, pencils (breakdowns) by Ross Andru, inks (finishes) by Frank Giacoia and Mike Esposito. Oddly, Spider-Man has had three stories using that same title, which is more interesting than much happening this issue...

Captain America villain and deal-a-meal candidate Dr. Faustus hypnotizes Spidey with "narcotic smoke" that causes the above hallucination. (Um...huh.) Faustus wants to break in to a heavily sci-fi guarded lab, in order to add a psychotropic additive to a flu vaccine that will be given to millions of Americans. Standing under a vent, Spidey manages to shake off the smoke's effects, only to take an embarrassing beating from the chunky Faustus, who at one point steps on Spidey's hand, a maneuver more effective than Doc Ock's last three bouts.

Faustus mentions his other trick, "the compulsive quality of my perfectly-modulated voice," but only uses that as a ruse, possibly because trying to out-talk Spider-Man seems like a losing proposition. Dosing Spidey again with his special smoke, Faustus almost escapes, but can't run that fast because he's fat but Spider-Man hooks the alarms back up and he's zapped by the stun-rays that are a standard fixture of any security system. The cover with the villains coming out of the walls makes this issue seem like it's going to be a trip, but not quite. Read more!

FCBD Haul!

Hopefully, you dropped some cash at your local comic book store for Free Comic Book Day. At my regular Comic Shop, I got the usual pile of books, and the trade The Strange Deaths of the Batman: I'd only read a single issue of it, and it's entertaining even if it's chock full of imaginary stories, lies, and dream sequences! Sadly, the trade doesn't appear to include the original covers, since I liked Batman #293, in which Lex Luthor claims to have killed Batman, but only as a "waste product" of killing Superman!

Later, at Hastings, I got 30% off the new DC Collectibles Batman: The Animated SeriesMan-Bat, and a pile of trades! Thanos: Infinity Abyss, Ghost: In the Smoke and Din, Star Wars: Empire volume 5, and Star Wars Tales volume 3. (I had much of the later in singles, but it included a Vader vs. Maul issue, and Garth Ennis's "Trooper.") On top of that, got the first three issues of Guardians 3000 and a pile of Batman: Gotham Knights, mostly for the Black & White back-up stories.

A fun haul, on a fun day! Now, if I just had time to read some of them...
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The Hodge and the Podge:

Hmm, I've used that title before, but so what. Here's another pile of random for this week:

Anyway, I went to California a couple weeks ago, to see my folks' new condo, and go to Disneyland and Legoland with the wife and kids. We didn't do a ton of rides at Legoland, but the Oldest and I tried out the Knights Tournament, which is like riding a paint mixer. It is hilarious. We both had to take our piercings out before riding, which we thought was dumb at the time...Disneyland was somewhat trying, since it was crowded, the Wife had her heart set on the Marvel exhibit and the petting zoo and they were both closed, and the Youngest steadfastly refused to ride Splash Mountain. Still, a mostly good time was had by all eventually; and I got this picture of the Youngest and I on Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, some seven and a half years from the last time!

The Wife beat me by a few thousand, but it was close!

I did buy a Lego Exo-Suit at the Lego store outside Disneyland; that was a fun build. Love the classic Space astronauts. Have a small pile of them, and a story I'd love to do with them if I was willing to sink so much time and money into Legos...

I'm not reading any DC comics regularly, but I still buy oddball DC items all the time. Earlier this week, I bought the Justice League: War DVD--based on a bunch of comics I haven't read--and yesterday a pack of Forever Evil chibis--also based on a bunch of comics I haven't read. Actually, the chibis are fairly clever repaints; but I was hoping to get Yellow Lantern Batman instead of Owlman there.

The chibis were $3.99 a pack, so I don't know if I'll go nuts and get the lot, though.

I did read a small pile of books while I was on vacation, but I finished Tom De Haven's novel It's Superman before I left. Starting in 1935, it takes a few liberties with Superman canon (he gets an indestructible costume late, and from an unexpected source...) but the last few paragraphs alone made it worth reading for me: something about Clark and Lois I never thought of before. Worth picking up.

Got my tickets for Avengers: Age of Ultron Saturday morning, and will be hitting some stores for Free Comic Book Day after that! Looking forward to both!
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