2.196 (561) Civil War #1 ... Marvel ...

In view of the forthcoming Marvel movie, Capt A: Civil War; what better time than now to share with the reading world out there the actual series that was the inspiration for the movie? So without further ado, we present to you, chapter one in the limited series

SPOILER ALERT

Firstly, let's talk about Steve McNiven who has proven to us that here is his awesome capabilities where he shows that his lines are minimal and yet his skills are so great that with confidence, he lays out pages after pages, conveying layers of emotion effectively. No less so are the awesome fight scenes. The other artists that come off my mind that uses minimal lines would include Frank Quitely and Arthur Adams. Yes the latter has lots of details but within the details, he kept it sparse

Okay

As for the tale itself, Civil War starts because of reality tv ... yes you read that right. Reality TV programme was covering the New Warriors while they are out on a stake out and villain capturing mission. With someone like Speedball on the team, can you not expect it to go bad? So before they knew it, they were knee deep with several headaches that literally exploded around them and one of them was Nitro, the guy whose ability is to blow himself up and reassemble himself back together again ...

Now normally this explosive act is to break into something or get away from the heroes but here as Nitro loses it, he blows up ... kids! Yes, school going age children ... and right in front of the media

So as can be expected, a frenzy starts and paranoia steps in with those calling for potentially the end of the heroes and at this point, Stark comes in with the brain squad of Reed Richards and Hanky Pym proposing the legislation act for super humans. This is basically the old Mutie Registration Act but taking it up a notch. Stark believes that by having this, everyone who wants to use their powers for whatever reason must be evaluated to ensure that they can use it safely and responsibly and if not, training will be provided

However, as this is pushed through as law, it means revealing secret identities. While Stark assures that it will be kept with absolute secrecy, not all the heroes agree with him. Some claim it is to protect their loved ones from becoming a target while others just want to have a normal life. Whatever their reasons be, Captain America chooses to defend this group as he believes that people should be given the right to choose to disclose or not

Unfortunately, as the Act becomes law, anyone who doesn't do so then is infringing the law and becomes a criminal. And thus the action begins with Stark and SHIELD coming after those who refuse to register. The first one?

Captain America - good story, great art = awesome comic! O yeah the cover we are attaching is a variant from issue 3 ... so good is the tale that it inspires all variant artists to contribute and upped their own performance

Ratings: 9/10

2.195 (560) Fantastic Four vol 2 Heroes Reborn #5 ... Marvel ... #JimLee

To each his own ... that's what we say when it comes to the master, Mr Lee's artwork and here is an example of how good his work is that inspite of the fact that more than 2 decades have slipped by, it still looks as gorgeous as when we first read it and not the slightest bit dated

Here in the Heroes Reborn corner of the Marvel U in the mid 90s, we see that the development in terms of storyline is going ahead at breakneck speed. SPOILER ALERT First up is our friends Ben and the Torch who actually worked together throughout the issue without one silly quip after another which is refreshing as it shows them able to balance down time with serious issues. And they tackle an intruder by the name of Wyatt Wingfoot. The Wyatt in the 616 regular Marvel U is a friend of Johnny Storm's. Here he is a secret agent on the run

And so he brings our friends together to go after Mr and Ms Fantastic who as of issue 4 were headed to Wakanda to investigate an anomaly that came crashing to Earth

SPOILER ALERT Naturally as the cover indicates, everyone had been side stepped or rather kidnapped by Doom as Doom had already recovered said object crashing to Earth and that object is none other than the Silver Surfer. Doom is trying to find a way to power himself using the Surfer's own life force of cosmic energy

However, unbeknownst to Doom who thinks that he is the only ruthless manipulator and double crosser in the room, there is one more in the form of yet another Wyatt and before the issue ends, both Wyatts met and one turns out to be an alien!

What an issue! What a development!

Ratings: 8/10

2.194 (559) Blaze Legacy of Blood #1 ... Marvel ...

From one Ghost Rider series we move to another that takes place a while after that cycle of series was over and we see Johnny Blaze, bruised and scarred and disfigured. If you are not a fan like us, you will also be left confused wondering how he ended up with metal bits. But as it comes out in the 90s, we can assume that the trend was to follow people like Cable with one shiny eye hahaha!

Anyway, we see here that Blaza has once more given up the occult and
staying away from the second generation GR being himself and travelling with his carnival trying to rebuild what life he has left

Unfortunately evil being what it is will not leave him behind and this particular new evil SPOILER ALERT is a doozy of a baddie ... apparently there is someone called Ice Box Bob who is carving his way through many a body but is supposedly dead ... a child comes appealing for help and more mysterious events and individuals pop up including a stopover in a town that has even more odd characters ala typical horror movie

And so one thing leads to another and before you know it, Blaze and the Carnival were attacked by super nasty baddies that seemed able to take a hit or three from Blaze's only weapon and that is his gun that fires Hellfire bullets

The question then is what is Icebox Bob?

And the answers are definitely to keep reading ... while the story is entertaining enough, for me, the huge letdown is the interior artwork. It is super messy with lines and dashes and what not everywhere and makes you wonder if this guy works cheap or Marvel was having trouble finding qualified artists

2.193 (558) Spirits of Vengeance #1 ... Marvel ...

Waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the early 90s, at the height of the speculation boom, every publishing company was trying to churn out titles regardless of quality and everything grim n gritty was the favoured flavour of choice

So what more grim n grittier than the Ghost Rider, eh?

Except that in this series, a spin off from the regular series, we have original GR Blaze now teaming up with someone or something who is purportedly GR but minus his human host, Dan ... Dan is apparently murdered by a half-demonic being called Blackout

Got it?

Even if you don't, not to worry. For once, this is a new series that may start smack in the middle of a bigger storyline but still easy enough to follow. SPOILER ALERT What you need to know is as per above. Dan is current GR but got killed and for some reason the GR entity didn't disappear back to magic land. Then Blaze is now married with 2 kids and making a living with the circus

Right smack in the middle of this, we see the resurrection of the first evil of the world (more or less) in the form of demonic mother: Lilith. She has been trapped for eons and is finally freed and as an opening move, she calls back her children from the mortal world to join her in burning the mortal world completely. Some of those appeared fast enough and so the tale is set

And that's what this issue is ... the return of Lilith and to show us how the odds are stacked against Blaze who is now a family man. Everything else happens in another issue of another comic or three before coming back to here in issue 2

Ratings: 5/10

2.191 (557) Iron Man vol 2 Heroes Reborn #4 ... Marvel ...

Does anyone know where Mr Ryan Benjamin, artist is these days? Because when he took over from Whilce Portacio, it was a huge pair of shoes to fill and fill it up right he did. Not only did he bring his own style and fluidity but he maintained some of Portacio's signature looks to ensure a smoother transition and for that, it made this reader happy

In here, we see the continuing tale of a Tony Stark who has finally found his reason to live and so is trying to be less of a bastard than he had been of late. This means also trying to survive various attempts on his life. His and some of his mates that is for you see, Hydra that was the villain from the first arc is not done with Stark yet and has employed one Whirlwind to come and rip Stark apart. The costume re-design is plain awesome ...

But wait a minute ... there is so much stuff happening here that Whirl isn't even the baddie yet for his issue but next. Instead here we have the Living Lazer and we are given a quick backstory on how he came to be ... after all this is Heroes Reborn ... before the age of deconstructed storytelling

And Living Lazer while looking amazing with awesome powers SPOILER ALERT was made short work of by Tony. Ah well ...

On a more personal front, we see that Potts is back assisting Tony and his one-liners with her are just hilarious. The only person that we have yet to understand is liaison Jasper Sitwell. We are not sure if the problem is with both previous and current artists (thus making him look devious) or that they are merely conveying the truth that is to be revealed further on in this series

But whatever it is, this is still one great read

Ratings: 7/10

2.191 (556) Badrock/ Wolverine #1 ...

This came out in the mid-90s ... during the height of the comics boom ... back when departing members of Marvel's all-star artist squad finally made good their relationship with Marvel and were discussing projects like Reborn ... so artist Liefeld (famous these days for Deadpool) ... decided to team up some of his characters from his corner of the Image-verse called Extreme with the mutant teams ... and this book is one of them

As a one-shot, it's got enough action and characterization to carry the book to its end. However, if you are not a fan of Wolverine or Liefeld, you probably shouldn't bother as it will not change your mind at all. On top of that, the story, at best is average

We have Wolverine during his Adamantium-free phase popping down to the Savage Land for a little R n R (we know, we know apparently in the world of X, the Savage Land, Antartica is always nearby!) ... and Badrock was abandoned by his team because of failing school grades ... and that's for the good guys (oh yeah as it is Savage Land, naturally, loser Ka-zar will be popping up)

On the team of villains we have an alien conqueror and the savage land mutates ... characters like the four armed fellow, leader like big brain chap and of course the useless Sauron who always talks so much but delivers so little ... and what's this all about?

Alien comes here to get his machine going in order to continue his conquering path but oddly enough ... while the blurbs say he is one mighty bad ass ... here he seems to be alone and easily SPOILER ALERT run off once trouble comes ... imagine that with the mutates combined, all he could do is take prisoner Kazae ... a man in loin cloth with no special powers or weapons beyond a hunting knife! Come on! What type of conqueror are you? A planet with no sentient life conqueror? Lame lame lame

Well, for once, Wolverine practised caution similar to cop movies and called back to X-Men base for help only to have his signal conveniently transmitted due to unexplained reasons to Badrock's game set ... and being a fan, Badrock decided to investigate ... hence the reason for this team up

Pretty mundane stuff

Ratings: 3/10 (I would have dropped lower but for the bonus poster by artist Marat Mychaels who is just soooooo good ... regular artwork is by Chap Yaep who is not my cup of tea)

2.190 (555) The Avengers 2010/2011 #12.1 ... Marvel ... #avengers ...

To celebrate the awesomeness of the then forthcoming second movie of the Avengers, Marvel was building up on a storyline that involves Ultron and this issue serves as the opening arc and what an issue it is ... with awesome superstar artist Bryan Hitch and his regular inker/ colourist onboard!

At this juncture, the line up has folks like Spider Woman, Jessica; Thor; Spider Man; Wolverine; Steve Rogers; Bucky as Captain A; Luke Cage and a ton more ...

And it all opens with an investigation into something mundane SPOILER ALERT that turned out to be a hiding hole for super villains such as the Wizard; Klaw; Red Ghost and his apes and more. But is that what this is all about? The Avengers are left in the dust wondering WTF happened when their lone Avenger's signal up and died and so began the task of tracking her down and giving assistance if they can arrive in time ...

Unfortunately for them, such a big team this time, they were just not prepared to discover that the mess the villains were involved including the husk of Ultron's body. So are they in control of his resurrection or his Ultron the ultimate play maker here, stringing them along?

Whatever, you know the shit's going to hit the fan and like we said, this is merely the first notes in what is going to become one heck of a story line!

Ratings: 7/10