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#it is a Comic. idk im going to wait a few issues to fully form any opinions
phantastragoria · 1 year
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GotG #1 spoilers I guess but bro this is so sad. She didn't even make it past half the dang issue.
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renaroo · 7 years
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Wednesday Roundup 15/6/2017
So this is a day late but in my defense I had a ridiculous amount of comics to get through with no one to blame but myself here. And you know what? I genuinely enjoyed almost everything. But does that mean every comic was good this week? And even so what did I think was the best? 
Honestly I don’t know how to write these intros for people who wouldn’t be here to read my opinion anyway so let’s just jump into it. 
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Marvel’s All-New Wolverine, Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, DC’s Detective Comics, DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester, DC’s Justice League of America, Image’s Motor Crush, DC’s Superwoman, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, DC’s Titans, IDW’s Transformers: Salvation, DC’s Wonder Woman
Marvel’s All-New Wolverine (2015-present) #21 Tom Taylor, Leonard Kirk, Cory Hamscher, Terry Pallot, Michael Garland
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Okay I need this issue to reread a million times over because there are just so many things I love all at once. Like, oh my gosh. I was almost in tears multiple times because relationships! Healing! Supporting each other!
Wade and Gabby alone could just about make this issue perfect, but then you have Laura and Daken hugging and worried about each other, and Old Man Logan being likable for the first time in any of my readings of him. There’s so much I enjoy, though I find the cover rather deceiving. This is much more of a Howlett family reunion than anything else, though I did enjoy Riri’s parts in it.
I just eriously adore these characters and it meant a lot to see them all come together like they have here and that cliffhanger HURT so much more for it. 
I will nitpick the art a bit because we’ve been doing so good about keeping Laura in the Wolverine costume which is much preferred to her X-23 wardrobes, for sure, but this issue it pretty much looked exactly like one of her old costumes without the midriffs and it was kinda weird. I know she took off a lot of her armor for skin contact but it’s... idk. It was weird. 
The main thing I’m happy about though is that as we go on, I realize that literally all of the Marvel books I’ve kept are going out of their way to not involve themselves in Secret Wars and it’s kind of beautiful. Laura and Gabby are stuck on an island that’s quarantined (and I can pretend Wade’s there with them instead of whatever’s going on since I dropped Deadpool for the summer crossovers, thanks Tom Taylor!), Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are literally off world, and the rest are non-616. So yay me!
Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows (2016-present) #8 Gerry Conway, Ryan Stegman, Jesus Aburtov
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For those who don’t know, Mary Jane Watson is genuinely one of my favorite Marvel characters and is easily one of the reasons I ever stuck with the Spider-Man comics for as long as I did was because of my interest in her and wanting to see her and Peter.
I can also thank her for my genuine attraction to redheads probably.
But one of the main reasons that I’ve loved this book so much is because, as written by Gerry Conway, this is the Peter and MJ of my dreams. I love them so much, and the complications that comes from their relationship and from growing older, raising a daughter, and MJ’s desire to continuously be the glue to keep both Peter and Annie together logically causes her to seek out a way to continue being Spinerette without syphoning off Peter’s powers. 
It’s almost like growing old, having a stable relationship, trying to keep things fresh while raising a kid, are all dramatic and worthy of good storytelling in their own right or something HMM.
Anyway, yes it’s completely on the nose where this is going and it’s a little curious how MJ’s not immediately aware of the connection between what’s going on with her right now and the horrible, arguably traumatizing experience she and Peter had, but who knows what’s canon anymore lol
Basically, I sideye a bit from a story point of view, but this series continues to make up for it with the real thing that matters to me: these characters and their development.
DC’s Detective Comics (2016-present) #958 James Tynion IV, Aluaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson 
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Honestly I really love the slower issues where Tynion takes more time to make moments for the relationships between the characters and give us interractions we didn’t know we wanted -- Kate going with Luke and Jean Paul to a basketball game, Cass and Clayface being adorable by reciting a play, Bruce at a poker game with a bunch of assholes in homage to Almost Got ‘im!? It was a lot of fun honestly. 
...
Okay I take issue with Cass’ dialogue. I know she was repeating lines from a tape and such but it’s weird to see her make so much progress when just two issues ago she was almost monosyllabic. Like... I want to see Cass gradually learning, I want to feel her frustration with hitting walls, I want to see her struggle and achieve despite the struggle because that gradual progression was honestly something we weren’t delivered in the former canon. We have a great opportunity for it here. 
But y’know. I’m particular with Cass and it’s hard to say where her baseline for reading and speech even is in this canon because her dyslexia may be in tact but her circumstances growing up are completely different. So I don’t know. 
Now. I’m a sucker for Bruce and Zatanna team-ups because I’m a schmuck but I’m really excited for next issue. Had a lot of fun with this one. This feels like a decent pace for Tynion -- at least in my opinion. 
DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester (2016-2017) #10 Brenden Fletcher, Becky Cloonan, Karl Kerschl, Adam Archer, Massyk, Sandra Hope
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This comic is speeding toward an end and I’m not sure if I’m ready! 
From the beginning, for me at least, the selling point for Gotham Academy has been just how much these kids felt like real teenagers and real friends with all their various relationships and connections, platonic or romantic or something in between. And it’s powerful to see that coming to play as an advantage to completing Olive’s arc, but also as a disadvantage since the consequences of many of her actions hurt that much more.
I’ll save a lot of my thoughts for a complete wrap up of the series but overall, very happy and very grateful for the continuously good read that is GA
DC’s Justice League of America (2016-present) Volume 1: Road to Rebirth Steve Orlando, Jody Houser, Ivan Reis, Andy MacDonald, Stephen Byrne, Jamal Campbell, Mirk Andolfo
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WE GOTTA GET THE BAND BACK TOGETHER. WE’RE ON A MISSION FROM GAD. 
In all seriousness, I’m a huge fan of Vixen and Ryan Choi as well as a big fan of Justice League International, as it was in its 80s glory. So my interests with this particular lineup were piqued from the beginning and I made myself wait for the first volume to dive in. 
For the most part, this is a team gathering exercise. Characters that have lacked the spotlight in the last few years -- Vixen, Ray, Killer Frost, and the Atom -- were given whole issues to reintroduce them to this continuity. And honestly those issues were great. I really, really love the updated origins for them and feel that they’re a good blend of honoring the past of the characters as well as adapting them for a new world. 
Lobo, Batman, and Black Canary took back seat, but considering that there were already tensions showing within the group, I think it’s safe to assume that giving the spotlight to the rest of the team won’t always last this long. Things are nothing if not explosive among these members.
I really did mean it when I said this is a team gathering exercise, because there’s no first case to unite everyone. There’s not any real antagonists or team-ups we see to speakof. It was just getting hte jLA together. 
And for me it’s enough to get me intrigued, though I’d completely understand if people told me it was far from enough for them. 
Now they just need to add Big Barda, Booster Gold, and Ted Kord and I’ll be satisfied. 
Image’s Motor Crush (2016-present) Vol. 1 Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart, Babs Tarr
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I was not the biggest fan of this team’s Batgirl team though I appreciated the aesthetics and what not. There just never seemed to be a storyline that really interested me and I couldn’t be sold on the characterization for Barbara. So I kept hearing about Motor Crush for the last year and was really itnerested in it so I wanted until this volume came out and. 
Well, quite simply, I’m in love.
Tell you what, those biker gangs that kept coming up really confusingly out of place in Batgirl make a hell of a lot more sense now that I can see this team’s actual passion project. 
So I love Motor Crush a lot, I’m really invested in Domino, the mystery that is her origins and the powers of Crush itself. I love her relationship with her ex, Lola, I love her father -- I love just about everything and the cliffhanger really surprised me. 
I will say that while I love having a world that speaks for itself rather than constant narration, it’s a little hard to follow this world entirely, I’d like a bit more explained than what has been, but at the end of the day I’m very excited to see more. 
DC’s Superwoman (2016-present) #11 K. Perkins, José Luís, Ray McCarthy, HI-FI
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You know, I have made it clear that I’ve been worried about this title for a while now, really just hoping it was going to find its direction and wow us with the great potential that is the Super Family outside of the main Kent triad. And I feel like that’s for good reason -- the end of Jimenez’s run let a lot of people feeling justifiably scorned, there was a mishandling of a lot of heavy and important subjects that were raised, and at least the initial stuff with Perkins taking over kind of left one wondering if they had a fully formed direction to go toward next. 
But I am really glad that I stuck it out for this long because the family of John, Lana, Nat, and everyone else is so important and so fundamentally different from the dynamics found elsewhere in the new familial renaissance of the DCU that I needed it. And I hope it continues to emphasize these relationships and how important they are to each other.
I’m still unhappy with how anxiety and mental illness is being handled in the title and find it lacking since it was brought up to begin with and now being ignored. That subject alone is making me rethink my disinterest in Green Lantern books as a whole because I have loved and felt inspired so far by what I’ve seen of Jessica Cruz and their handling of anxiety, and it’s why I picked up Silk at the high recommendations of a close friend. 
So I’d like for mental illness to be treated better in this title -- the least it can do after bringing it up and treating it the way it did at the end of Jimenez’s run, but there’s so much value in the non-nuclear family dynamic of the Irons household and of the uniqueness of Lana’s powers and her approach to fighting crime that it’s worth it. For me anyway.
IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011-present) #70 Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Mateus Santolouco, Ronda Pattison
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I knew the end of this storyline was going to be, at the very least, explosive but wow, WOW I had no idea how many twists and turns it was going to take in that time. That was a phenomenal ending to the Mutanimals storyline for the time being, and I just feel so bad for Slash, down to my core. I’m so worried about him, and whenever he will be allowed to recover.
At least I hope he’ll recover.
This series is seventy issues strong and i’m just so blown away by the way they still manage to keep me on the edge of my feet while so many different storylines and character developments are happening at the same time.
I mean, I even feel for Old Hobb here!
I do suppose a complaint I could hold here is that the titular turtles themselves have ultimately not been very front and center throughout this storyline, and that really showed in the conclusion, where for the most part they were lost to the colorfulness of the huge, colorful supporting cast that has been developed over the years. 
For me, personally, I think that’s honestly okay. We can’t have the same story over and over again with only the main four characters driving the narrative, and it’s been a long standing tradition in TMNT for a good 30 years now to sort of embody the concept that our main guys don’t really look for situations to get involved with but sort of fall into them naturally. 
Not to mention it’s probably a strength that 70 issues in, we haven’t once repeated plots or stories or put any of the characters on a loop of development to end up right back where they started. I don’t think the achievement of that can be understated, especially as we near that landmark #75!
DC’s Titans (2016-present) #12 Dan Abnett, Kenneth Rocafort, Dan Brown
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Bleh. BLEH. I was holding out judgment on the twist of Wally and Donna and Roy ending up in some kind of love triangle because I wanted the context but honestly the context is kinda... bleh. It would be awesome if we lived in some world and time where Donna’s origins were not constantly retconned and thus the source of her characterization in every run of every thing she showed up in. Which is by no means a new problem but still.
And my opinion is... Wally and Donna are both going through a hard time and Wally is having to accept that his life is fundamentally different from the previous world he knew, that he can’t just badger people into returning things to the way they were -- especially Linda, who he loves but it’s a very one-sided relationship as a result of the parallel universe paradox and stuff. It makes sense to me that in a ploy to gain some sense of control over that, he and Donna both would try to take fate in an unexpected direction, into their own hands. 
But making it a love triangle with Roy just kinda keeps my eyes firmly rolled into the back of my skull. 
I overall like Lilith, Dick, Garth, and Karen’s development and characterization in this issue. I think they’re taking Lilith in interesting directions and I’m really curious about what her omen means for the future, since apparently there’s a traitor among them. And they set up plenty of reasons for various members to be that traitor in this issue but I can’t help but assume already that it’s going to end up being a twist. Good twist or not remains to be seen. 
IDW’s Transformers: Salvation (2017) John Barber, Livid Ramondelli
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I’m going to be completely “original” here and say that I’m not a fan of Ramondelli’s at for the various Transformers comics. i know! I know. Shocking, never said before, completely going against the general fandom consensus. I’m such a brave soul. I know. 
Okay, joking aside though... I didn’t think the art was bad in this one-shot. Actually! I’d argue a lot of it was even good. He may not be my favorite artist and I’ll think that his colo gradients are butt ugly most of the time, but there was better handled action sequences than usual, the characters looked like they had weight, and we even got a range of expressiveness in the characters that is... well, frankly, not usual for Ramondelli. 
So other than that shocking revelation, I thought Barber performed good once more on tying the TF universe together again, answering some prior plot points and nicely knotting off loose ends. Trypticon being a Titan is not the biggest revelation in the world, but the development of Sandstorm and the Dinobots was great, and I loved just how devious Starscream truly is under Barber’s pen even though I’ve fully been enjoying the characterization for him in Till All Are One. 
But the most important thing of all: SPARKLINGS. SPARKLINGS. All I’ve wanted for years is baby transformers so I am HAPPY BEYOND BELIEF. THEY’RE NO LONGER A DYING SPECIES AND THESE PRECIOUS BABIES COULD BE BORN WITHOUT EVER KNOWING THE CIVIL WAR AHHHHHHHH
DC’s Wonder Woman (2016-present) #24 Greg Rucka, Bilquis Evely, Romulo Fajardo Jr. 
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WOW! I mean, just wow! What a resolution to everything. I have so many emotions for Diana, for Barbara Ann, for even Veronica Cale of all people. Etta and Steve were great, the art was amazing.
It’s just such a relief and such... honestly just an amazing feat that Greg Rucka is beginning to wrap up this just phenomenal run of Wonder Woman 
I really enjoyed how everything turned out and it was so remarkable to see Diana’s resolution to save Veronica but also to not turn her back on her friends and loved ones as well as the torment it is for Barbara to not be able to get into Themyscira after all her life’s work.
And I liked Diana’s assessment of Veronica at the end, it was true and also blunt to the point of cruelty. But fitting also. 
It’s amazing what a turn around I’ve personally felt when it comes to Veronica’s character because in all honesty I was not a fan of her most of the time in the preboot, but Rucka really has fleshed her out and done something unique with her perspective now. There is tragedy but there’s also less deniability for her fault in all of it. 
I’m sad to be coming toward Rucka’s end on the run, but I’m also so happy to see the love and passion he’s put into everything culminating to what it is now.
This is a genuinely hard choice but I think if I go by what tugged on my heartstrings the most, what gave me the most joy overall and just feelings unrelenting from start to finish, I would have to say that my pick of the week is All-New Wolverine. I adore this series and I couldn’t be happier with this issue and how they’re keeping my precious Marvel girls faaaaaar away from Secret Empire. A close second would be Wonder Woman but really I would happily recommend my entire pull this week. It was a geat week for comics.
But that’s just my opinion! I’d love to know your thoughts. Agree? Disagree? Think I missed something I should’ve picked up this week? I’d love to hear from you!
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