2.220 (585) Thing vol 1 #18 ...

After liking number 19, I actually tried to buy what I could on the discount bins and naturally this was one of the easier finds.

This is an interesting tale.

Here we see Ben continuing on his journey with that leggy female warrior from the Battleworld of the Beyonder.

If you are new to this, basically, after the first Secret Wars, Ben Grimm decided not to go back to Earth with the other heroes because here he can transform from Ben to the Thing at will. So armed with a gadget from Reed that will allow him to go back to Earth any time he wants, he stayed back and before he knew it, there is a strange shadowy figure somehow tracking him and putting him through various challenges.

But not everything is bad.

On the plus side is this woman whom he came across who seemed attracted to him as both Grimm and Thing and this issue continues their journey as they come across even more crazy turns on Battleworld.

Artwork is acceptable and easy to follow not so much flash though

Ratings: 5/10

2.219 (584) Alpha Flight vol 1 #114 ...

In the first series of Alpha Flight, ever since creator Byrne moved on, it has struggled to find a captive audience and slowly but surely loses ground. Like one of the letter writers in this comic, I too struggled to 100% drop this title as the joy from Byrne's run kept me coming back to sample this well of creativity hoping to find something worth my buck

But this issue is not it

SPOILER ALERT

The storyline is average at best as they tried to push so many subplots in to the end that the book reads very disjointed with no major focal point here. Artwork is by Pat Broderick. Definitely not my cup of tea as his linework gets too chunky and clumsy frequently. Inker Bruce doesn't help unless it is
Bruce's fault that the art looks like that

So here we see the end of an adventure as the members of Alpha Flight take their down time and instead of chilling out or bonding, they decided to rip chunks out of each other because ... this comic came out during the grim n gritty era ... so we have a leader who just still dresses up in full uniform while flying around or walking around ... and the scientist Sasquatch still experimenting on his on again off again girlfriend, something he has been doing 100 issues ago ...

As if that is not enough, we see then fan favorite Puck trying to be useful but ultimately not able to contribute and Northstar being his usual angry self

Now as this is a superhero comic, there is a villain of sorts but the villain is the son of the original jackal - a Spidey villain (say what) and Heather sends Beta Flight, the junior team in training to settle him without even bothering to have one single senior to evaluate or support or guide ... way to go Heather you bitch! As can be expected, everything goes to tatters the moment they encounter the villain as no one has any idea of how to defeat the bad guy or is even prepared to meet him. They are just stumbling along, literally to get from a to b

And the comic just keeps jumping from scene to scene every couple of pages or less!

As for Wild Child, well, he is supposed to break out and go mad as per the cover. Don't hold your breath as it didn't happen in the comic itself

Ratings: 3/10

2.218 (583) Fantastic Four vol 1 #577 ...

Dale Eaglesham is on duty in this issue of Fantastic Four and you know it is just going to be detailed, smooth and a good read. Coupled with decent colouring and this book is a great opening chapter to a new epic. I say epic because this issue is indeed a game changer in two aspects - the Inhumans and the cosmic corner of the Marvel U

We start off with a quick back step into the not too distant past and then time passes ... and before you know it something gigantic comes forward to the moon. Naturally our friends the FF discovers this before anyone else. And being the intrepid explorers that they are, they journey upwards and outwards into space and the moon only to find out the truth and that truth is the true origins of the Inhumans as a race not a super hero team

SPOILER ALERT

Basically the earth spawned Inhumans have learnt that the Kree who created them eons ago had gone across the galaxy to seed other races trying to find those that are not at an evolutionary dead end to see how far their genetic structure can be developed. It is their hope that somehow with this knowledge it can help the Kree to give their own genetic structure a kick in the nuts so to speak. So aside from humanoid Inhumans, we see now that there are four other success stories and while the assembly here is "peaceful" some of the alien races have been known to be vile villains:

(a) Fin people - or those who watched GOTG movie knows, the Yondu tribe
(b) Wraithkind - for those who follow Rom these are super nasties
(c) Horsies - and for those who remembered early Power Pack from the 80s/ 90s, well here it is a reappearance by their buddy and savious
(d) Badoon - another GOTG group where this alien race wiped out and conquered huge chunks of the future

So why are they all here safe in the knowledge of their origin?

Well suffice to say this is but the opening gambit and we have to continue to find out more. With the awesome art and decent storyline albeit another retcon of sorts, this makes a must buy for the next issue

Ratings: 7/10

2.217 (582) Conan the Cimmerian 2008 #25 ...

When Dark Horse first launched its own line of Conan comics, I will admit I tried but was not a fan simply because of artist Cary Nord who by the way I loved in his run of Daredevil. Still what was good about the DH run is that once a certain part of Conan's canon (no pun intended) came to its end in terms of decent tales by its stable of creators, rather than pushing and squeezing for every little drop, DH merely chose another era and out comes another run

Issue 25 is the final issue of the Conan the Cimmerian run and what a glorious end this has been. The arc may have been 4 issues but its origins stemmed from earlier arcs even. To sum it all up, bascally Conan somehow found himself to be in the company of mercenaries and even ended up as the leader and fell into service of kings

However, not being a politically savvy chap, our Barbarian found himself played out and left for dead. So while surviving by dragging himself up inch by nasty inch and in some pages of this series, that is literal, Conan chance by surviving and running into Olivia who was once a princess then became slave before embarking on her freedom flee. The two of them crossed paths here while running away from an Empire hellbent on killing both and where should they encounter but a cursed isle whose true origins have been lost to history that was unrecorded

And on this our final tale, we see everything coming to the fore - with Conan realizing that something was wrong with the inhuman seeming statues and breaking free only to encounter the gigantic creature that had been following and tracking him and Olivia for the past issues ... while the pirates who had given him a run for his money woke up to death as the statues revealed their true identity

It is a long tale of fight fight fight as Conan shows that he is every bit as savage as any creature of the jungle but yet ultimately he can be honorable as within him beats the heart of a man's man and the brains of a human (or some such nonsense)

Hahaha

All we can say is that this is a fantastic run and worth your time to delve within

Ratings: 6/10

2.216 (581) West Coast Avengers vol 1 #62 ...

West Coast Avengers - one of the newly launched series in the 80s for new collectors of that era (me that is) who can actually afford it from issue 1 and thus I collected this for quite a long run before giving it up when the artwork became inconsistent (muddy)

Here in 62 we see Paul Ryan at the helm and while his work is never show offy ala the Image founders club, he gets the job done and does it quite well. We see in this issue the end of another story arc. And this is not just an ordinary arc. If you are to believe the threads, basically this tale is going back years to the early stages of the existence of the Scarlet Witch and the early plans of Immortus

What are we talking about?

SPOILER ALERT

Basically, we finally found out that Immortus is but a student/ pawn/ employee of a future all powerful trio called Time Keepers. His task was to have control over 7000 years and to find a being who can be nexus to an all powerful force that can keep the timelines from diverging. This means that if no divergence, then the Time Keepers own future is preserved. Naturally we are not told why they worry that it will diverge

All we know is that Immortus chose the Scarlet Witch to be such a nexus because of her potential. As she is lacking in raw power, apparently he is the cause of her power increasing over the years and of late, also causing her to lose control by breaking her will apart through the loss of the Vision and her magically enhanced and created twin boys!

Our Avengers charged into Limbo to confront Immortus only to discover that all their brute might is insufficient to the task and what it took was  Agatha Harkness, the old lady of wizardry in the Marvel realms, whose astral form somehow managed to reach out to Wanda and reminded her of who she was and who are her friends who truly love her and would give their all for her. With that, she finally broke free and manages to turn tables on Immortus!

Ratings: 5/10

2.215 (580) Warlock and the Infinity Watch #21 ...

There was time, a while ago, when Jim Starlin launch the Infinity Gauntlet mini series and it was just plain awesome gathering the world's and universe's heroes and entities against Thanos as the power mad Titan finally assembled all the Infinity Gems thus giving him mastery over all elements of time, space, power, soul, mind etc which means he is almost like a demi-god

Naturally with such a series and its consequent success, Marvel had to try for round two with the Infinity War ... and as the momentum fades ... instead of giving it a rest Marvel pushed for one more round the Infinity Crusade ... where Adam Warlock's good side that was cast out of him had taken the form of a female and she calls herself the Goddess ... with the intention of bringing universal rapture to one and all by force if necessary

And so this issue is one of those that are part and parcel of the bigger series. Where this particular has the opportunity to shine is that it is one big slugfest I kid you not. We started with Hulk and Drax encountering Thor in space where Thor is on the side of the Goddess but at this point in his career, he was already having mental issues. And so we see Hulk floating back to planet side when knocked away leaving Drax and his power gem slugging it out with Thor

There are a few pages of dialogue with Moondragon trying to get Thor back to Earth through a mental/ astral projection but aside from that it is one long drawn out fight between two powerhouses. So what could go wrong here?

The artwork

I am not sure if this is because of artist Tom Grindberg's style or Bob Almond inker but the characters seemed to bloat everywhere in different parts of their body from panel to panel and page to page with some tiny heads and some fat thighs not muscular. It is so painful to view this. You can say that perhaps they are trying to do a Mike Mignola? But failed? Sorry guys so not for our palate

Ratings: 3/10 (could have been nil if not for so many fight panels)

2.214 (579) Weapon X (2012) #18 ... #marvel #mutants #wolverine

And so it ends, this new arc for what is (as of this review) the longest running series bearing the title of Weapon X. Yup, Weapon X - supposedly the codename for Wolverine when he was undergoing some sort of wacky experiment that gave him all his nastiness

Anyway, for what it's worth while the artwork is decent and so is the storyline, decent just doesn't cut it anymore. And that's why we knew the series was definitely heading for the chopping boards and chopped it was before the third year's run was over

What's this particular storyline about?

In terms of backstory, all you need to know is that the Director of the old Weapon X program is back and started a new facility with some mysterious funders for cross purposes. To get the program its teeth and to hook in us readers, the first two arcs showed a recruitment drive and some "heroics" or rather drama about the heroes all the while having a human agent named Jackson undermining his authority and ultimately kicking him out of the number one spot

At this point, right up until this arc, we are never sure why Jackson wanted the job. It is neither power nor limelight and definitely not for the cash

Be it as it may, here, we find that the X-Men has figured out something is indeed going on and needed a mole. SPOILER ALERT. So they decided that the young and angry mutant Jonothan Starsmore, the Brit guy whose face and chest were blown apart when his power came into play way back when ... is the perfect candidate and they set him up well

And as part of his recruitment drive, Agent Jackson decided that Chamber/ Starsmore must prove himself by killing SPOILER ALERT Sublime, the head of a company that is harvesting mutant genes and splicing them onto willing buyers. Barbaric, eh?

Does Chamber pass this initiation test? Well, it took a good several issues worth of storytelling but YES. And that's basically it. As to what comes next, we have to wait and see. Was it worth it? Honestly? No - too long winded to get to this point and we still didn't see the X-Men tackling the bad guys and we still do not know why Jackson is doing what he is doing. Sigh!

Ratings: 2/10