695. New Mutants vol 1 #86 ... #newmutants ... #mutants ... #vulture ... #cable ...

[This is reviewed and posted on 5th Feb 2018]

Hi all - the real significance of this issue is the fact that this is where the Image crowd, Rob came onboard fully as artist for cover and interiors as the issue before was merely cover although even then, his cover was awesome because it has Todd McFarlane on inks and this issue interior is so good

But the highlights are not just merely the artist. Regardless of whether he has input in plotting or the fact that the writer felt a second wave of energy with the introduction of an awesome new penciller, this book is filled to the brim with new ideas

We see the conclusion of the Asgard adventure in which the bulk of the Mutants are back on the road to recovery after finally putting an end to the villains' plans in the last issue and while they prepare to journey back to Earth aka Midgard, we are shown the developments with other recent potentital/ already New Mutant members namely the ever pathetic Skid and Rusty (force field for the former and fire for the latter)

And here in this instance as per the cover, the villain of the piece is Toomes aka Vulture who is back on the track of being free from prison only to engage in silly nonsense and running into the mutants who at first was surprised by his dastardly behavior but in the short moments of a few panels, the mutants have put an end to his resurgence. You have to wonder, eh?

On other fronts, we are shown the new characters especially the coming of Cable, a side panel on Stryfe and members of the Mutant Liberation Front ... all characters that survived until now and have been in many a major storyline and crossover!

Ratings: 6/10

694. The Invincible Iron Man vol 1 #694 ... #avengers ... #ironman ...

[This issue is reviewed and posted on 7th Feb 2018]

This is the final issue before Stark's ultimate confrontation with Obadiah Stane, the man who has been responsible for tearing his Empire and wealth away from him in addition to making him go through mental torture until potentially seeking solace in the bottle. And Stane is also the villain from the Iron Man movies. So does it hold up?

Well, honestly, for us, the art by Herb Trimpe and Akin and Garvey lack spark. It is workmanlike and does do the story telling adequately but that's it. The lines are very clean. If it had more of a Ron Lim sparkle like when he does Silver Surfer for the Iron Man armour and villains, it would have been better

That said, the story shows that Stane is still going about tearing down Stark's supporting cast and in this issue, it is Mrs Arbogast. However, by now, Jim is back to normal and able to don the armour without splitting migraines. He has also finally came to his senses and no longer hates Stark. So he goes out to try and find and rescue those in trouble and as he attempts to save one, the bad guys went after another - Happy Hogan

However, all came to a boil and a boom (literally) in the final pages as the comic actually does something that will affect the direction of this book for the next few years SPOILER ALERT and that is to show that Stark's villains mean business when they send a bomb in a box to his current office where his support team is resident and literally bombed them to death!

Ratings: 6/10

693. Psylock 2009 #3 ... #mutants ...

[This is reviewed and posted on 21st Feb 2018]

Yup almost a year later we filled in this slot and first up artist Harvey Talibao someone we have never followed turns in an astounding piece of work on the interiors. Every panel is chock full of details and yet not overwhelming to the point of difficult to read. With bright colours and right amount of shadow, this is traditional comic art at one of its best

So unfortunately this series opens with a poor start - in the sense that while it is a four issue limited series dealing with one specific topic - Matsuo from Japan who was responsible for Psylocke transforming from British to Japanese many years ago - and what Wolverine did as well - there is not enough back ground detail at the opening pages especially since it starts off at a tangent where we see some new/ junior X-Men already in deep shit fighting a villain that is potentially powerful until in steps Psylocke and Dazzler to give them a hand

And then things move from there to Psylocke realizing she has unresolved issues and would like time off to follow up on them. However, isn't it odd that she never changes out of costume (that must be one stinky costume) ... and worse yet as she decided to go to Japan, in hops Logan as he said he has personal business there ... and both of them shows us that as long as you have powers, you do not need to give a damn about international laws and such including landing your plane wherever you want in Japan, don't care about passport, and use your mental powers to abuse the authorities to get what you want

We are sorry but those are really super arrogant and dangerous to portray in a comic especially if younger readers are buying it in ...  so Chris Yost, writer and Daniel Ketchum, Editor ... we are looking at you

Anyway by the end of this issue, after Psylocke's abusing of everyone who is normal and without superpowers, she got into a bad ass fight with ninjas (and in American comics ninjas are cannon fodder) ... and proudly announces it is time to confront Matsuo ...

Conclusion while a nice read predominantly because of the art, there is not enough here to make this an awesome piece to collect

Ratings: 6/10

692. X-Men vs Agents of Atlas (2009) #1 ... #atlas ...

[This is reviewed and posted on 21st Feb 2018]

Right. Most people would know about the X-Men but as for the Agents of Atlas, it is a new group that Marvel created and has some success because they have been having a few limited series over the years. The members consist of regular guy leader, Woo; a talking man-monkey; a destructive robot from the past; an Atlantean; a Siren; and an Alien-humanoid

Somewhere along the line from retro days of maybe the 50s (we cannot recall clearly and obviously too lazy to research hahaha), they got together to combat the nasties like Yellow Claw (Communism) and finally utilizing wealth found to establish their own little foundation except many think they are the bad guys

So cue today's world when one of their own, Siren is kidnapped and they are trying hard to track her down except their own telepath, Marvel Boy aka alien-humanoid couldn't do it as his powers are limited. Therefore their conclusion is to raid Cerebra from the X-Men's old stronghold and use it/ borrow it/ steal it

Unfortunately their timing sucks because at that moment, Forge is prepping some stuff and the X-Men from Utopia are coming to relief him and also to finish the work and "disappear" back to Utopia. Hence the X-Men only remembers the Atlas as bad guys and thinking that they want to steal the merchandise, combat ensues

So yes, it is your typical misunderstanding and fight and it will continue until next issue before all is made clear. Sigh! Not much for story but nice pictures though and we like the Atlas crew like the Robot (and his encounter with Wolverine), the gorilla and the weird Marvel Boy

Ratings: 7/10

691. X-Factor vol 1 #200 ... #mutants ... #maddrox ... #monet ...

[This is reviewed and posted on 23rd Feb 2018]

Yes, this should be part of volume three if we are not mistaken. But somewhere along the line Marvel decided to renumber back to original series. Hence for us, we are going with the word volume 1. Anyhow, what is amazing about this book is the character development for Multiple Man. When he first started out, we always see him as a filler-type of character assisting Moira in her lab in Scotland. His abilities are to use physical impact and create a duplicate of himself but hey if the duplicate has same strength and abilities as him, then it's just another regular bloke, right?

Well apparently somewhere in the running of this series, Maddrox aka the Multiple Man has decided that since he is indecisive about where his life should be taken, he has created duplicates and send each of them out to the greater world to learn about it and to do different things so that when the time comes, when he absorbs them back, he has their additional skills and knowledge. Basically, he is living multiple lifetimes simultaneously. Awesome, right?

This issue starts a new story arc and at this point, the X-Factor team is kinda split in two but still functioning whenever they are required. So there is Guido, Monet, Darwin, Maddrox, Siryn, Wolfsbane, Rictor and bf, Shatterstar (more or less) and as the opening pages show, the team they are going to have to deal with is the Fantastic Four. Reed shows up doing something supernasty

But XFactor only knows about it is because Valeria and Franklin came to them looking for help since they are a PI firm and their mommy is missing. Obviously being small kids, regardless of how intelligent and annoying Val may be, people tend to gravitate towards trusting papa Richard. And that is how the entire mess started because papa shows up and says there are issues with his wife and she is taking a short break away. Normal right?

But then things get progressively worse when the Thing throws his two-cents and being the brainless thuggish one in the entire issue, he smashes and to our surprise, Shatterstar finally shows what he is capable of by actually defeating the Thing! This for us is the real highlight of the entire issue. While we have always like the design and potential, here Shatterstar shows his true colours and just WOW!

Obviously once X-Factor departs, matters got progressively worse as there is something seriously wrong with Reed and we see him trying to ensure the kids tow the line while Ben aka Thing decides to trek back to X-Factor HQ as he is not satisfied being shown the floor literally by Shatz

Meanwhile on other fronts, we see Monet going to look for some of her teammates including Longshot (you have to read this scene to find the funny twist) because apparently her dad is being kidnapped and she needs urgent assistance and an angry Money is not a pretty picture although the artwork does make her look hot!

So all in all, a good read, good storyline to pique anyone's interest, smart dialogue and decent artwork with enough action thrown in for the casual reader to consider coming back for the next issue!

Ratings: 8/10