I continue to get more biased in favor of Alex Paknadel's writing. I *know* it's objectively too wordy, but *I love so many of the words*! All that talking and narrating doesn't slow the pace, and the art is superb. We get plenty of plot development along with some real insight into Miles's state of mind. Even the backup strips are pretty good.

Even though I'd scoff at the idea of calling Carnage one of my favorite characters, I sure do end up loving a lot of Carnage comics. The ones that are crafted well tend to be intensely creepy in the best way. This is certainly one of those.
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There are moments of true greatness here, in the ideas, the art, and the prose. There are no bad moments--really nothing that's even as far down as "average".

Yet I hold back from an all-great rating because the tone is just a little inconsistent. Darcy pulls it too far into comic relief too fast at the end.

I may be splitting hairs. Even if I hesitate to call the whole issue great, I certainly won't call it less than very good.
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Storm is trying to patch up the Quiet Council in the aftermath of Sins of Sinister, mainly with harsh words and frowny faces (and some judiciously-applied lightning, too). It's fascinating stuff, and the storytelling is top notch--plenty of sharp words and cool panels (and so much big big hair).

But it is a *lot* of wheeling and dealing to swallow. It's interesting and future issues will doubtless prove its importance, but this issue is jammed with so much content that it falls a little shy of greatness.
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Dylan Brock puts in an enjoyable and productive turn as Moon Knight's guest star. What a pity that his own piece of his own title is kinda stalled out!

This issue features evenly-balanced servings of smart ideas, cool insights, exciting action, dynamic visuals, and an ample amount of plot development. While I'm rating it just shy of greatness, it's a testament to the volume's high standards that this extremely good issue is par for the course.
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The art is yet another flavor of gorgeous, continuing this title's winning streak in the artist lottery. It's great to look at.

It's a pretty fun read, too. Wanda's day-to-day life and her dedication to her principles are enthralling. Agatha's combative approach lends an air of excitement and some cool, wide-ranging combat.

To me, it's a good comic, but not a great one. I find the tone uneven, which is becoming a recurring problem. Much as I love Darcy being Darcy, her comic relief moments tend to throw me off.

And there's the bigger problem: This annual barely moves Wanda's story forward at all. It's more a prologue for Agatha's Big Dumb Summer Event. I wasn't much of a fan the last time Steve Orlando tackled the Darkhold in a quasi-anthology format. Though he's done a formidable job with the Scarlet Witch series, this first chapter lowers my expectations for Contest of Chaos.
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It's a prettily-drawn and pretty eventful wrap-up for Legion of X. A good comic--but there just aren't enough pages to make it a great one.

The sheer number of plot threads to tie up, questions to answer, and bits of foreshadowing to do make it feel rushed and make some of the individual cases unsatisfying. Exactly how Mother Righteous's faith/debt magic works is the example that frustrates me most, but I don't think it's the only vague point.

I want to avoid being overly critical: I'm mainly frustrated because I want all of these ideas to get more space for in-depth exploration. Ideally, I'd rather have another 3 issues of Legion of X instead of this single too-fast-to-be-great wrap-up.

Also, big picture: This really should have been coordinated a little better with Immortal #11. Together, they imply an enormous shift in the balance of power on the Quiet Council, and that should really have been lampshaded in the later issue (Immortal).
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The plot draws once too often from the "water + electricity = bad" well, but otherwise this full-issue fight is a fine-tuned machine for setting up and paying off big laughs and big hits. It's still shallow, but boy is it fun. Well-crafted art is a big part of the package; the author leaves it up to the artist to land some of the most important points and he does so with panache.

I was just saying (over on Cult of Carnage: Misery #1) that good storytelling can overcome my subjective distaste for a premise. And that's exactly what happens here. I'm sick unto death of Spider-Variant anthologies--but a longer look at Spider-Rex puts a solid hook in my enthusiasm.

Spider-Rex is my kind of stupid. I don't enjoy bad puns quite as much as Karla Pacheco, but I love to see more ridiculous dinosaur variants of classic Spidey characters. Reuniting Ms. Pacheco with her Spider-Woman partner Pere Pérez is a good thing, too.

Unfortunately, the B strip damped my ardor back down. I can appreciate what the creators were aiming for, and they do a great job of establishing a creepy atmosphere. But in just 10 pages, they don't have enough space to flesh out their characters and their world, and that undercuts the lovely menacing tone.
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Everything comes to a looping, imaginative end, where past storylines bleed through into the present and the line between "thematically similar" and "magically co-existent" gets blurry.

It's big-time symbolic stuff, is what I'm trying to say. The art can handle it. The prose…not so much.

The drab words don't *hurt* the book, but they hold it back. Imagine how high it could fly if there were a little more poetry to go along with the visuals.
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The Avengers' trip home is packed to the gills with continuity nods, and these deliver a heartwarming rush of familiarity (especially if you're a big enough nerd to get all the references). But the good feelings and the great art don't quite make up for the fact that the climactic battle with Kang was a pretty unsatisfying affair.

It's a fun finale to a fun miniseries, but this story never really came within shouting distance of "meaningful." For "read all Marvel" obsessives like me, this is a fun treat, but I wouldn't call it essential or unmissable.
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It's a remarkably self-contained and well-told story, considering the variant mess it spun out of. It looks good and it rolls along smoothly.

The characters' choices are awfully silly, though. Like Silver Age silly--and Spider-Boy nibbling around the edges and hanging a few lampshades on the silliness doesn't help matters.

It's a direct sequel to the author's Exodus miniseries. While it's more promising than Exodus (so far), I can't go so far as to call it "good."

It's not as scattershot as the previous series, but I wouldn't say it's really focused. It doesn't rely on continuity links to decades-old comics I haven't read, which is a plus. And it handles the world-building job of defining class conflict in 2099 pretty well.

But it *does* demand that the reader is familiar with Exodus. While Dark Genesis hasn't jumped the rails, it's not yet engaging enough to justify trundling through the often-disappointing prequel.

Jusitn Mason's chunky, dynamic art is a big positive, though. The clarity of the visuals frees the reader up to concentrate on parsing the just-a-little-too-busy script.
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If you have a yen to see every last character in the Osborn family symbiotized, this will fit the bill. Personally, I don't find the idea at all appealing.

While the storytellers execute on their premise with perfectly adequate skill, I wouldn't say they went beyond adequacy at any point. Good writing and/or good art can often win me over to a subjectively unappealing premise--that didn't happen here.
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A hidden gem that pits Cap against torn-from-the-headlines conservative terrorists. It's written and drawn with remarkable skill. The politics are unabashed and will land poisonous with some readers--but to others, they'll be catnip.

It's indisputably drawn and written well. But the storytelling craft isn't the main attraction here; it's the *absolutely crazy* changes the event makes to the status quo.

I was thoroughly satisfied while reading the resolution of the "bad future" segment. But the return to the present has me positively champing at the bit to find out what comes next.

This is a wonderfully-crafted one-shot adventure. The sharp dialogue illuminates character relationships, and the art is gorgeous. The visuals in the dream dimension are impressive, backed with all the wild imagination a magic story demands.

And the cherry on top is that this isn't really a one-shot at all. Though it doesn't tie directly to the plot threads established in #1, it's clearly running in parallel. It's all one big story, and it's shaping up as a fascinating one.
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Most of the time, "deep" is the good thing I'm looking for in a comic and "shallow" is the bad alternative.

But this issue is so aggressively, shamelessly, and entertainingly shallow that it works.

It's pure sitcom nonsense--and because it *is* pure about its cheesiness, it becomes a thing of beauty.

It helps that the art shift is a real best-case scenario. Javier Pina's style is distinctive, but the quality level doesn't drop at all and the visual tone remains the same. Best of all, there's no change in the character models--a real risk when you hand a new character like Valentine off to another artist.
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It's a satisfying ending and it's illustrated well. The dialogue sounds solid. The content's pretty sappy and in the hands of lesser creators, this might have veered way too saccharine. But it comes out just sweet enough.

A small strategic point: I appreciate that this series is only four issues, even though that seems to be an inconvenient size for trade-ification. Four issues was the right length for this.
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It's a rock-solid finale that brings the characters to rest with some real drama. The art goes out in a (literal and metaphorical) blaze of glory.

Taken individually, this issue's plot and character developments are pretty familiar. They're combined in a way that's rational, compelling, and tension-building, though.

As with the entire series (and its predecessor), strong engagement with the student characters is the magic glue that binds the parts of this story into something special. The creators clearly care about these kids and what happens to them, and they did a superb job convincing me to care as well.
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Above all else, it's just as much of a gnarly, nasty feast for the eyes as the last issue.

But the script is oh-so-slightly weaker. We learn a lot about the antagonist. While there are still mysteries that could complicate him, what we've seen so far looks pretty by-the-numbers.

While I appreciate the humor of Ben using a "talk fancy" gadget, said gadget seems to be leaking far beyond the scene where Ben's using it. This issue has a lot of over-complicated language. There's also plenty of more authentic dialogue, but the contrast between the two isn't a good thing.
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The creators bring it in for a smooth landing, leaving the tray tables and seat-backs in the upright and locked position. It gets the job done; it's satisfying and fun.

It wasn't exactly the most inventive flight plan in the world, though. I'm a big fan, but not so big that I won't bring up the nasty adjective "predictable."

If this is how the story *had* to play out (and I'm betting the spider-editors very much insisted on it), this is as well as it could be handled.

Give the creators some extra credit for coordinating their Mary Jane work with ASM. This miniseries didn't reveal much about her recent adventures--but if you're reading ASM along with this, in publication order, you've already got a delicious hint of MJ's timey-wimey complications.
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This grim tragedy looks terrific. The words are decent, and the script has an excellent structure and pace.

But in terms of content, this issue falls short of greatness. Matt's anguish feels authentic, but not novel. And the process of stripping away his allies leaves him turning to Goldy and his deus ex machina powers. This volume's new ideas aren't all hits, and I'm afraid Goldy is one of the misses.
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Though it's not one for the history books, this story wraps up in a neat, satisfying package. This issue gets solid art and some of Mr. Ottley's better writing--more tense and less verbose than past issues.

I appreciate the dangling threads left for future investigation, which also tie back to Immortal Hulk in a way that's subtle and respectful, not crass or derivative.

After reading Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #3, it's clear that the author Tini Howard has fallen into a predictable pattern of "Monster of the Week" storytelling, with Morgan Le Fay continuously coming up with foolish plans that inevitably fail in the end. This leaves the reader feeling disconnected from the overall storyline as there appears to be no apparent connection between the previous and upcoming issues. Unfortunately, this leads to a reliance on filler moments until reaching the grand finale.

The character of Rachel is also poorly written, considering her 40-year history in comics. In this issue, she is relegated to a one-dimensional role as Betsy's girlfriend/sidekick. Her character lacks any personal agency and is completely dependent on Betsy. Howard tries to convince the reader of their relationship by repeatedly having Rachel mention their romantic involvement, but it comes across as forced and not genuine.

Additionally, the plot is incredibly convenient, with Morgan constantly changing her plans and motivations, while Betsy seems unable to solve problems on her own and relies heavily on her supporting cast.

In conclusion, Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #3 fails to deliver a compelling storyline and leaves the reader feeling disconnected from the overarching plot. The characterization of Rachel falls flat and comes across as one-dimensional, while the plot feels contrived and too convenient. It's a shame, given the rich history of the characters, that the potential for a more engaging story was not fully realized. more

The plot trundles along. The script is a little too verbose, but the art looks pretty good. Betsy and Morgan settle into nice parallel tracks, particularly at the end.

It's an issue that starts average and steadily improves. By the end, I'm genuinely looking forward to #4.

And here comes the downside of using Feilong as the big bad: Tony Stark's stuck batting clean-up on the author's dangling X-Men plot threads. Oh, he gets a nibble at a bit of Iron Man backstory--but even that is compromised by mutant business and some crass MCU cribbing.

Obviously, I'm not a fan of the content. But I'm satisfied with the storytelling; it's a well-written and well-drawn yarn.
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There's plenty of middle ground between obvious and obtuse; I wish Grønbekk was better at finding it. And the art is not doing such a hot job of supporting and/or enhancing the words.

The dialogue sounds pretty cool, and the art is--panel by panel--gorgeous.

But like previous issues, this one has a problem with logical story flow, and it gets worse over time. The lines go from "this makes sense if I think about it" to "this makes sense if I squint at it" to "this doesn't make sense."

The script is also relying on the art to carry most of the storytelling in the action scenes. Pretty as they are, the visuals aren't up to this challenge, making the fights confusing and unengaging.
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I must have been in the right mood for a retro popcorn comic when I read this, because it went down a lot better than I expected.

The non-stop pace certainly helped, whisking me from one well-rendered fight to another without giving me time to obsess over the corny dialogue or the questionable plotting.

By #2 in a miniseries like this, it's usually clear what the creators are trying to do. In this case, they get on with doing it and meet the heck out of my modest expectations.
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