Spoiler Alert: I’m phoning this week in.

Here’s what happens: Animal Man’s creators patch him up and leave him back on the asteroid where they found him. Without the ability to absorb any animal powers around him, he reaches as hard as he can for one last shot, fusing with Sun-Eaters, which gives him the powers of migration maps and homing abilities, and he’s fast on his way back home. Elsewhere, Lady Styx is reborn. The rest of this issue (and the more interesting part) focuses squarely on the Black Marvel Family. Specifically, that cry-baby brother-in-law to Black Adam, Osiris.

He’s still all torn up about ripping Persuader in half back in Week Thirty-Four. This week, Osiris, along with his trusty crocodile chum Sobek, ventures into the Rock of Eternity, where he hopes the Marvel Family will take him as one of their own and rid him of the horrible powers Black Adam gave him. Of course, Black Adam and Isis show up, some punches are thrown, and, eventually, Black Adam talks some sense into the little brat and convinces him that his powers are a gift, and he should be proud to have them. Osiris agrees, and all’s well that ends well.

Or not. At the issue’s close, Osiris explains to Sobek that he was merely appeasing the rest of the fam back at the Rock of Eternity (by the way, what’s the Rock of Finality?), and he’s still going to desert Kahndaq and go somewhere else. Sobek gently coaxes him into saying the name of Black Adam and rescinding his powers, at which point, Osiris turns back into a weak little cripple, and Sobek devours that mealy-mouthed little son of a bitch!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Fourth Horseman has made his presence known.

Nothing more needs to be said. Let’s kick the tires and light the fires. Bring on the final nine!

See ya in a week.

P.S. Until I find the actual cover-art, my MSPaint fill-in will have to suffice.

I don’t know why, but I feel like doing a quick run-through of this month’s previews and giving my shoot-from-the-hip thoughts. As always, I reserve the chance to regret my actions later. And, I make no promises for this becoming a continuing feature. We’ll see. The numbers at the start of each section are the pages.

2-62: Ads and toys and other crap I don’t care about, except another issue of Hellboy is finally coming. Right? It’s on the way, isn’t it? Well, at least we got the cartoon.

63-65: Detective not written by Dini and Morrison showing us a future vision of Damien Wayne as Batman (it’s for issue 666, get it?), and I’m starting to think that DC wants me to never read Batman books again.

66: OMFG!!! ASSBAR!!! Frank Miller does exist!!!

67: For anyone who missed Catwoman: When in Rome, the TP is finally coming out. It was a good series. Not quite up to Loeb and Sale’s previous Batman work, but still good.

69: Action Comics features a two-part whammy about the stunning disappearance of Richard Donner and Geoff Johns. Only Superman can save them!

70-71: Why doesn’t DC just have Michael Turner and Frank Miller combine on a series called Power Girl and Supergirl: T&A?
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If you’re not already reading X-Factor, you should be. That’s why X-Factor #16 is this week’s Book of Doom, plain and simple. Stop by on Saturday to read our thoughts on the issue and share your own.

X-Factor #16

Cover by:
Pablo Raimondi
Writer:
Peter David
Pencils:
Pablo Raimondi
Colored by:
Brian Reber
Lettered by:
VC - Cory Petit

THE STORY:
James Maddocks: A good man. A family man. A man of God, who opens the door in his Minnesota home one day to discover himself face-to-face with his “maker”–Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, come to remove the runaway dupe from the home and life he’s created for himself. How far will Maddocks go to save his existence…and will Jamie be willing to destroy Maddocks’ life in order to be whole once more?

In lieu of my traditional Meaningless Awards of the Week, this week I’m singling out one man for his contributions to comics as of late. No one has done more to influence my love comics in the past five years than the current Marvel editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada. And for that, I’m not only presenting him this distinguished award, but naming it after him as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you for the first time ever:

The Joe Quesada Award
For distinction in diminishing stories you had nothing to do with

Aunt May’s death in last Wednesday’s Amazing Spider-Man #538 was surely one of the most devastating moments in Peter’s life. As a lifelong reader of Spider-Man comics, I should have been devastated as well.

But all I could think as I turned to the last page of the issue was “Hooray! Mary Jane’s not dead!”

For years now, Joe Quesada has used every opportunity at his disposable to talk about how much he hates the marriage between Peter and Mary Jane. According to him, it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to the Spider-Man. According to him, a married Spider-Man limits the story possibilities for the character and makes him less accessible to readers. On numerous occasions he’s said that he wished there was someway to undo the marriage. Simply put, Joe Quesada wanted Mary Jane out of the picture.

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Well the dust has settled (sort of) and we here at the Legion of Doom have had our say on Civil War. While opinions have varied as time passed from issue 1 to issue 7, four of us have chimed in over the past week on how the series wrapped up.

Jean-Claude Van Doom wasn’t a fan, summing up the final issue by saying “…we get a truly fitting book end: an issue that’s all over the place, never quite sure where it’s headed and never transcending to the level of hype, much less approaching it.” Doom DeLuise felt it was “pretty good,” pointing out “DC advertised that Infinite Crisis would change everything. Civil War actually has.” I was somewhat disappointed with the book itself, but pretty pleased with the conclusions, while Fin Fang Doom referred to it “The Ending that Sucked,”providing a laundry list of problems and declaring the book “…didn’t really have any chance to be good.”

So while each of us have our own quite different opinions (some moreso than others), there’s one thing that really can’t be argued with - the sales patterns.
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Civil War #7 was not good. Here’s why:

1) The final fight was disappointing. It didn’t seem like a major battle. It had its moments, and there was certainly some cool art, but for the most part it didn’t live up to the hype. You want specifics?

a) I recognized everybody. If the Superhuman Registration Act was such a big deal that every superhero was forced to choose a side, there should be plenty of obscure characters I’ve never seen before. That’s part of the reason Infinite Crisis seemed so huge. Even earlier in Civil War, obscure characters like Ultragirl were shown fighting along with the anti-registration movement. So where are they now?

b) Namor shows up for one panel, yells “Imperius Rex!” and then leaves. Yep, the Avenging Son isn’t in a single panel other than the splash page he first shows up in.

c) Captain Marvel shows up and does nothing. Also not in a single panel other than the one he first showed up in. You’d think there’d at least be a moment when he questioned why Captain America and half the Avengers are suddenly his enemies. But no. He doesn’t even throw a punch or have a single line. Good thing they brought him back from the dead.

d) The Thing shows up and tips over a bus. Notice a pattern here? Why include these characters if they serve no purpose? What do Namor, Captain Marvel and Thing gain from being here? The ability to say, “I was there?” It’d probably be better for character development if they weren’t there, because then they could at least have the, “I should have been there” regrets. Instead, all three now know that they were wholly unimportant.

e) Reed Richards acts like a five-year-old. How many times has Mr. Fantastic seen Spider-Man fight? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? So why does he suddenly think Spider-Man doing exactly what he always does is, “amazing?” Then Spider-Man says, “spectacular.” Get it? Because two of his books have those adjectives! Ahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa! Oh wait, that hasn’t been funny since the first time someone made that joke. I’m still waiting for someone to yell out, “web of!”

f) Villains run amok. Why would Iron Man let a group of homicidal lunatics run wild in this fight? Did he think that they wouldn’t try to murder everyone in sight? Cap would be dead were it not for the timely intervention of Namor. So would Sue Storm if Reed hadn’t sacrificed himself.

g) It ended too early. No one but Clor and Mr. Fantastic was down for the count when the fight ended. Stature, Hawkingbird, and Patriot were all show prominently in the, “That’s an order” splash. If the fight hasn’t even taken either side to the point where the non-super-powered, under-trained Young Avengers are still standing, it hasn’t been a very tough fight.

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This week’s issue “concludes” the Ralph Dibny/Helm of Fate storyline. Other than that, Renee Montoya sees her reflection sans a face. But, really, the main thing we’re here for is Dibny’s story, and it doesn’t disappoint. Much.

Y’see, I’m somewhat torn over this conclusion. Having Felix Faust be the villain behind this entire Helmet of Fate rouse is pretty cool. That’s not my complaint. I’ll tell you my only complaint about this issue at the very end of my post. So keep reading!

First, let’s talk about how cool this is. For the past forty weeks, we’ve watched Ralph Dibny slowly descend into alcohol fueled depression. We’ve been dealing with a man at the end of the road, desperate to resurrect his wife Sue, who died at the hands of Jean Loring way back in Identity Crisis. As Fate would have it, though, Ralph’s been playing along with the Helm this entire time, and after casting the spell of binding, he reveals that Faust has been behind the whole scheme, hoping to escape Hell by giving Neron the soul of Ralph Dibny in exchange for his freedom. Ralph also reveals that he’s been kicking back on Gingold these past few weeks, and he delivers a long-needed Grade-A ass-whoopin’ to Faust. At this point, Neron, DC’s resident devil, shows up and tells Ralph to go away, as he’s taking Faust and heading back to Hell. Ralph objects, Neron shoots Ralph through the heart with his own wedding ring, only to come to the realization that that was part of Ralph’s plan all along. Since Dibny’s no longer alive to undo the spell of binding, Neron and Faust are stuck in the Tower of Fate for the rest of eternity.

Only, that’s not true. If this is the end of Ralph Dibny’s story, then the rest of his appearances in 52 were a big waste of time. This is the type of thing that’ll make me sour to the series as a whole, if this is the last we see of him. Because, hey, guess what? Neron and Felix Faust are no longer in the Tower of Fate OYL. That’s right! Faust shows up in JLA, and Neron shows up in Teen Titans.

So, as cool as this issue could’ve been, it can’t be the end for Dibny.

If it is, well, then it’s really stupid.

See ya in seven.

It’s Saturday and that means it’s Book of Doom time. This week it was The Brave and the Bold #1 by Mark Waid and George Perez.

To be honest, I picked this book because nothing else looked worth picking. It was a week that did not lend itself to experimentation in my mind. I was not particularly excited because as I have pointed out too many times to be worth linking to, I am sick and tired of out of continuity superhero tales.

I wasn’t even looking forward to reading this. I flipped through it and let it sit on my stack until the very end. And then I let the stack sit for a couple days.

But man, I loved it. In spite of my whining about extra-continuity business running wild, I just thought “What a fun story.” There are no bigtime implications, there are no potentially earth-shattering conclusions - it’s just a cool superhero team-up story. I love how it seamlessly hands the baton off to next issue with a different team up. How cool, I thought to myself.

Not that I should expect anything less from the likes of Waid and Perez. And not that this is flaunting its existence outside of current DC space and time; this could be in-continuity just as much as it could be out. What’s nice about it is that it doesn’t matter. Just as you don’t have to fit it in with what’s going on now, you don’t have to suspend your current perception of the DC status quo to make it work.

The one thing that I was curious about - I thought Batman was pretty secretive about his Bruce Wayne identity, and that only a few heroes knew. Am I wrong about that? Or is Hal Jordan just one of the folks in the know? Not enough to bother me - it was just something that caught my attention for a second.

Let’s see what the rest of the Legion had to say…
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Hello, my little rectangular friends with white dots, and welcome to this week’s Doomino Effect. I don’t think I did one last week, and I would look for my stack of last week’s comics if that ship hadn’t already sailed. But we are now on a new ship - a ship called this week - so let’s roll around on those waves of words we call The Rest of the Blog Entry.

52 is up to week 42 now, and it was time for the big reveal of what’s going on between Fate’s helmet and Ralph Dibny. I was a little underwhelmed that Faust was behind it, but it was still great for Ralph to be in control like that. I can’t say I really understood the complexities of intertwining, counter-acting and conflicting spells that made it all turn out the way it did, nor can I say that I feel like trapping two goons in Fate’s tower was really worth the sacrifice of Ralph Dibny’s life, but Ralph died with a smile on his face, and that’s good enough for me. One side note - I hate Darick Robertson’s art. That guy gets fanboy pats on the back from working on Transmetropolitan, but I can’t stand his art. For one thing, it looks like he inks with a crayola marker. I believe “muddy” would be a good word. But overall, a satisfying issue, and I’ll leave it at that for our good man Doom DeLuise, whenever he decides to do his regular 52 review.

Which leads me to The Brave and the Bold #1, which is our Legion of Doom Book of Doom this week. I’ll save most of my thoughts for that, but for now, I’ll just say that I really enjoy a good superhero adventure.

And speaking of good superhero adventures, that leads me to The New Avengers: Illuminati #2 in which the Illuminati complete Reed Richards’ secret task of reassembling the Infinity Gauntlet. Under the pretense that they are doing it so that it doesn’t fall into the hands of someone naughty, this quite perfectly reflects the elitism and arrogance of the Illuminati, who have granted themselves the authority to make decisions for the good of all mankind. I like how this series has become these little side adventures that have a reason to be previously unknown to the rest of the Marvel Universe - because they’re done in secret. My only problem with this was that good guys reassembling the Infinity Gauntlet with noble intentions could have very well been an interesting mega-event of its own - a nice twist on Thanos for the cynical new millenium - but instead, it was all done in one issue. I’m guessing from the glance we got on Professor X’s face that we’ll be seeing more of the Infinity Gems, but in the meantime, I’m pleased with this further character development of Marvel’s “good guys.”
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thanks to DVD Dude for the tip on this.

Looks like Warner Brothers is planning Justice League: The Movie, according to Variety. While the article mentions the potential complications with the current relaunches of Batman and Superman on the big screen, it doesn’t answer the questions of whether or not the new film (which already has writers hired) will tie in to the Nolan and Singer versions of the big two or if it will just exist alongside those worlds. Personally I think it would be pretty cool to see Christian Bale and Brandon Routh meet up on-screen. I imagine that’s the closest that folks in this era will ever get to the excitement of seeing Batman and Superman meet in the comics for the first time.

Ain’t It Cool offers up a few extra thoughts and a few clips from the hilarious pilot episode of the CBS Justice League television show. Watch the clips and you’ll understand why it never saw the light of day. I would love to see the whole episode, though.