Reads like an outline of a story no one asked to hear, with cool action moments taped on. The characters don't really feel like they have agendas; they're just being dragged along by the plot.

Surprised that Straczynski missed the obvious "SHUT the FRONT DOOR" joke.

Perfectly cromulant, but What If stories work better as single stories instead of being spread out over multiple issues.

No review of the content of this issue, but I guess this is how Peacemaker is from now on.

This was amazing. Reading it felt like watching a really good suspenseful movie thanks to expert pacing and layouts, and some really creepy images (which are effectively subtle, until they're not). There's a page not far from the end that actually made me gasp. Highly recommended.

"Amber?! Unit disabled! He got me!"

One problem with Gang War is a really unclear idea of what action is happening. Sometimes it seems that everyone is fighting in the streets everywhere, and it's chaos to the point where you can drop a guy off a skyscraper in the financial district and no one will notice. But here we also have a big corporate building exterior and interior where everything looks like a normal work day. I guess for a big crossover it's better not to be too specific and let writers use the situation however fits their plot.

Unintentional humor there at the end, where the baddie gives a speech about "you MAY be wondering how I figured out it was YOU" and hints that someone may have given Cage up, when it's ridiculously obvious that the mayor and wife are these new "mystery vigilantes". Too much plot hanging on a premise that doesn't hold up for a second.

Alien Vol. 1? This is at least the third Alien miniseries Marvel's released, but it's called Vol. 1, and the story has a title -- "Thaw" -- but that's nowhere in the collection title. It's as bad as the early Dark Horse days where every miniseries was just titled "Alien" or "Aliens".

Actually didn't read it but these covers! They're just a jumble of pastel colors and blacks with no depth. I get that a lot of people love Di Meo's art but I'm just not seeing the appeal.

Nobody hold back now, how do you REALLY feel about this?

Who fell TO THEIR DEATH! ?

Oh no, Mister Roper's gonna evict Tony if he finds out he "proposed" to Emma and really isn't gay! Now Tony's gonna have to set up a fake date with Northstar but it's at the same time as a date with Emma and he's gonna have to go back and forth between the two dates! Womp womp.

Why is there a smog monster in 1556?

I just flipped through this, as I'm not a huge fan of symbiote stuff. It just seems like an endless stream of new characters, new names, new colors, new permutations, all fight fight fight and teeth. Reminds me of those sites where they use AI to mash up elements of old sci-fi movies into fake movie screenshots.

Oh, it's the War Doctor.

This series might have been better if it hadn't spent so much effort on really implausible explanations about why the general public doesn't know about the spiders. Maybe it needed to just not try to explain anything and lean into the absurdity, or maybe a better explanation could have been found. I like this kind of story, but this was a bit of a disappointment.

Reads like the movie versions of the Guardians were swapped into Firefly. It might be a decent story on its own merits, but I'm not interested in Firefly starring the MCU Guardians cast.

This new test pilot direction is interesting I guess but when is Hal going to finally get back to his roots as the Spectre?

Granted it is not true in every variant Gwen, but WHY. ALWAYS. WITH. THE. F'ING. HEADBAND?!?!?

Everyone's out of character and stupid decisions are made.

Poopy.

Kind of feels like the MCU Guardians plunked down into the Firefly genre. Not bad for what it is, but it feels disconnected from the 616.

I'm really not liking this flat, heavily shadowed art style that's showing up in Marvel titles lately -- Marauders and Moon Knight being two others. The panels just look like a jumble of black shapes and action lines with no depth whatsoever, and I often find myself having to stare at them to figure out what's happening.

...doesn't Dr. Strange's body always pass out when his astral form leaves it?

I know he has a British accent in the movies but when did Thor start saying "bloody" all the time? Between that and the scruffy beard, I started hearing his voice as John Constantine. Next he'll be calling Jane 'luv'.

The final page "MORE AVENGERS!!!" certainly reads like lampshading, because this series is already suffocating under piles of one dimensional variant characters, but one gets the sense that another bucketful being dumped onto the pile is somehow supposed to crank the Awesome up to 11. It's not; it's more like when you say a word over and over, it loses meaning.

Didn't The Dukes of Hazzard do this exact story back in 1977? I remember getting really confused with all them alternate Duke Boys and wondering what happened to the 616 Boss Hogg.

Tynion's creator-owner work contains stories that are arguably deeply Lovecraftian without leaning on the usual tropes -- cosmic horror rooted in the insignificance of humanity in the face of incomprehensible alien powers. It's his skill in characterizing the people forced to confront these horrors that makes these stories hit hard.

It opens with 'this fight has been going on for 9 days', which is as absurd as saying that a full-out nuclear war would last for 9 days. Both sides have Phoenixes, after all. And it's downhill from there.

Maybe Promethea can be a member of the next Defenders team.

I don't understand why any of the villains in this are acting the way they are.

As an idea, "Batman builds a robot that can defeat anybody" would be a good fit for the goofy late '50s Batman comic. I don't think it does the character or the story any favors to treat it seriously.

I think for this series to work, you have to be more interested in "remember how these characters used to have grudges back in the day?" than "how have these characters evolved since those days when they were all about their grudges?" Norman makes a nice counterpoint to this, but it's not particularly compelling.

Random comments: Is Brandy a seize-the-day type who ignores Carol's advice to play it safe, or a play-it-safe type who takes Jane's advice to seize the day? A historical Ghost Rider who doesn't ride anything and behaves like ones of the Goon's kid sidekicks feels like a rejected idea from a What The--? comic. The nine-panel page of Brandy punching Mephisto was exactly like a Powerpuff Girls villain beat-up scene.

Spoopy.

If you're criticizing this story for being 'slow' or taking a long time to set things up, maybe you've never seen Aliens or you've forgotten how long it takes for the xenomorphs to appear in that movie.

Maybe this is a decent story on its own merits, but it has that big A.X.E. logo on the cover and is a tie-in to that event, and on that level it fails. It's normal for tie-ins to be inconsequential to the main event, but this one doesn't even appear to be happening in the same universe. It's a red-sky Crisis tie-in without the red skies or Crisis.

This was pretty good but it needs about 33% more wokery.

Satisfying end to the story, although as some have pointed out, the supporting cast isn't very well developed. Still, good to see all the 'wokery'!

THE LEGS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE LEGS

Can't fault Howard for ambition, but this was just a messy outline of the story she wanted to tell.

I'm not giving this a score because I just don't understand it. Was anyone demanding The Story About All The Character's Alternate Versions, starring Gwen Stacy wearing different Marvel super-hero identities like skins in a video game? Who is psyched to see Wolverine But It's Gwen Stacy (or is it Gwen Stacy But It's Wolverine?) run out on stage for a few pages, as shallow as a character can be? I guess this just wasn't made for me.

Maybe I just need to let the "One Million BC" thing go. Maybe if it had been simply "Prehistoric Avengers" instead, it wouldn't bug me so much. But I just can't get past the idea that Odin and Laufey are over a million years old. Or that Thor is old enough that he was born during the lifetime of human characters (the Dr. Strange, Iron Fist, and Black Panther stand-ins) who were around in one million BC. But even beyond that, I don't even recognize this "I love everyone so much and I need to protect them" Phoenix. Or the "every character is in every era" succession of Phoenix hosts throughout history over in the main title. I think they're all Doombots and if I ever get to make a retcon to the MU, it's going to be that. Doombots.

No.

A story taking place in the margins of a bigger story tends to follow the same formula of near-misses and consequence-free incidents. It can be good if the bigger story was written with the marginal one in mind and leaves hooks and questions that the marginal one can be built upon. It can be enjoyable if the bigger story is still fresh in the reader's mind. But here, neither applies. No shade on the creators, but this was not a great idea from the start.

Just did a flip-through. Is there anyone left who gets excited by "here's a new version of THIS character" any more, or has a reaction other than "oh god, ANOTHER new version of a character"? It's like Wife: Have you got anything without new alternate character versions? Waitress: Well, there's new alternate character versions egg sausage and new alternate character versions, that's not got much new alternate character versions in it. Wife: I don't want ANY new alternate character versions!

It's like someone playing with a giant set of Marvel Colorforms. Why not just draw Miles heads over the heads of all the characters in Secret Wars and sell that as a story?

I'm enjoying Orlando's dense writing on this more than I have on his work for DC because I actually get most of his obscure continuity references (and have Paul O'Brien's annotations on House To Astonish to fill me in on the rest). It's still a slow read but I'm learning to appreciate that. I wish the art were clearer in some places, but Carlini's Cassandra Nova really shines.

"I don't know yet if reading Justice League: Road to Dark Crisis #1 is crucial to understanding the main event." - ten-star critic review here I mean, it obviously isn't.

Nighthawk beating up the entire Serpent Society by himself off-panel is deeply uninteresting.

I usually like Russell's work and don't disagree with his viewpoint, but this felt like a real misstep from the high concept of the series. The Wrong Earth is powered by the contrast between Earths Alpha and Omega; they should be polar opposites, but here Russell is adding shades of grey to Alpha, and that just doesn't work as well as when he does the same to a cheery concept from the past like the Flintstones.

Perfectly cromulant.

Geez, you can just say, "I don't like the queer stuff"; you don't need to pretend that you're giving it a 1 or a 2 because it has bad pacing or the plotting is weak. We already know just looking at the score (or your username) that it's because of the queer stuff (or the progressive/political stuff).

That is a cover that really makes you want to read the issue.

"I! AMM! YUU!"

Hm, an empty, over-the-top violence fest is followed the very next week by a brilliant new direction full of intrigue and possibilities... Feels like July 2019 again. I enjoyed this as much as (if not more than) Hickman's first issue of House of X. Gillen is a master of characterization, and I have a lot of faith in his ability to wrap up his plots satisfyingly. This is going to be a great era.

I really don't know what Hickman's plans were for Moira, but I doubt this mess was it.

Banshee Skinsuit Moira deserves to go down in X-Men "worst moments" history with Austin's exploding communion wafers and Professor X's unspoken love for Jean.

Bafflegab.

I'm just exhausted with alternate mashup versions of characters. DC's multiple reboot versions, pre-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint, new 52, etc. etc. just wore me down over time to the point where I just didn't care, and now Marvel's getting me to the same point with this stuff. What if Tony Stark were Ant-Man? What if the Hulk had the Starbrand but lived in one million BC? What if there were new versions of Ghost Rider every 50 years? bleh

When you keep your amps turned up to 11 all the time, it all starts to sounds like one big nonstop wall of noise. Turning them up to 12 doesn't correct this.

This new direction is like Banner getting stabbed in the chest so hard with a giant piece of Cates that his previous personality goes flying out of his head.

In volcanic ocean, shark jumps YOU.

Solid emotional story beats for everyone! Zub made me feel sad for... Nanny? Great conclusion to the best Hickman era series.

I love seeing obscure characters from different corners of Marvel continuity, but Aaron's writing on this title reminds me of nothing so much as Mad Libs. "_______ goes back in time and runs into ________ (who in a different universe is a servant of ________), and ends up teaming up with _______." I prefer a little more attention to making things seem like naturally unfolding events and a bit less randomness.

Um, wut?

Woke woke wokety woke?

I mean, Ewing kind of whiffed the swing by not finding room for classic villain Goldbug, but here's a 10 anyway.

"THE BIG GUN IS BACK" indeed. What's Breakworld doing in this story? Oh, Ewing's using elements from Whedon's Astonishing run and leading up to a fairly audacious resolution to the Dormammu problem. Might have too much early Cable/X-Force nostalgia for most people, based on the reviews, but the plot and its use of past continuity is solid.

Fails on every level. Everyone acts out of character and makes baffling choices. None of the corporate skullduggery makes any sense. The plot contradicts itself from issue to issue (remember that bit where Monet disappeared through a hole in the ceiling last issue?) And worst of all, it's just plain boring. This series runs a close second to Fallen Angels for the Krakoa era worst title, only because the art is better.

As far back as the first Nomad stories, Captain America has never hated America, but has always been willing to criticize those who would twist its ideals in service to hate and division. Englehart, Gruenwald, and DeMatteis all wrote Cap as someone with ideals that would be considered 'progressive' today.

Let's see. Blade remembers the previous world because he's supernatural, Coulson is a sociopath who always hated the Avengers, Power Princess can kill Phoenixes, Mephisto can hand out Cosmic Cubes, the Phoenix has protected the Earth for eons, have I got that all right? And the cube that can rewrite reality is only good for shooting zappy blasts in a fight? And at the end the Squadron (including Power Princess, who's more powerful than the Phoenix) are locked up by... the government? For doing nothing wrong in a crossover event no one remembers? Mmm-hmm.

Terrible plan, terrible crisis, terrible resolution.

I don't understand what this book it about or what the motives of the characters are. I like Angel and Monet as the leaders of this organization but not a single other character is playing a role that feels natural.

I read this series in one go, and it was perfectly cromulant. Good art, characters with interesting powers, a few twists, some fight scenes... If this had come out as a miniseries in the 80s, it would probably have been received better. Some of critics seem to be taking it to task just for being a miniseries, or (ironically for something that started out as an event tie-in) for not having much of a point in the larger universe. But I liked it just fine.

Not a review (except to say that the vampire thing is past its due date), but seeing LOUISE in all-caps in the solicitation made me immediately picture a Bob's Burgers crossover.

This is exactly what I wanted in the Krakoa era -- smartly defined characters bouncing in unpredictable but logical ways against the concept.

"Every act of mercy saves the world for somebody. And sometimes, in showing mercy to others -- we save ourselves as well." What kind of fucking loser wrote such vile, hateful garbage?

Feels pretty empty, much like the Vault itself.

STOP PICKING ON THE REAL LIFE PERSON WHO ACTS LIKE THE CHARACTER IN THIS! THEY ARE NOTHING ALIKE!

I've been fairly critical of this series, but I enjoyed this issue. It had good character bits and felt more connected to the rest of the X-line than most titles.

No real complaints with this issue; it was pretty good. I do wonder about having Sin-Eater use a few spider-transformed lackeys as bait for Morlun, in a story featuring an entire team of spider-totem affiliated characters, though.

Aside from the fact that everyone talks like an agitated badass, this issue continues to warp Marvel history into something Cool!!!! that makes no sense -- for example, a place where Thanos has been around for a million years without doing anything noteworthy, and the Phoenix spends so much time on Earth it should have its mailing address here. And Mephisto outdoing Apocalypse for this year's "Forget All That, This Has Been My REAL Plan All Along!" award. Can't wait until this One Million BC nonsense is history.

The story here was fine but I don't understand the critics raving over the art. It's flat and many panels are hard to decipher.

Characters with personalities interacting with one another. Refreshing.

I was patient with this re-re-retelling of the same story with a few new details back when Hickman was doing it in his Avengers run. I have no patience left for it now, especially when the story is a lot of generic fantasy tropes that are impossible to get invested in.

Recommended soundtrack for this arc: Led Zeppelin. Every album, played simultaneously. I remember back in the day, reading the classic Moon Knight run by Moench and Sienkiewicz, having trouble deciding if it would be cooler to see Moon Knight possessing the Phoenix Force, or Khonshu getting into a fistfight, but lo, it turns out you can have it all! But one question remains: if Stone Age Black Panther had Thor's hammer, is there any reason he couldn't also have Spider-Man's web-shooters?

I recall Secret Wars spending issues retelling the same backstory over and over, adding a few new details each time, and I'm not enjoying the same thing happening here. And I'm not on board with the Apocalypse retcons, which fit poorly with Age of Apocalypse. And I don't understand the love for the art here, as certain scenes like the jumping mask don't make sense upon a first read.

As others have said, this felt too casually murder-y. And I'm unimpressed by the art -- it's unclear in places, like the page where it seems that the Hulk has torn off the monster's head, and the transformation page in the jail cell was... ambitious, but silly.

It starts here! The new superstar hero of the 1000th century, Gold Lantern, in his bombastic debut! He has such an amazing story, wait till you hear it -- and it starts here! I'm psyched I can tell you, this is going to be an epic tale unfolding in coming months. Buy two copies because GL (that's Gold Lantern) could be the biggest breakout of this new Legion!

Part Four of the "Amazing Story of Gold Lantern" and it's a doozy. First, is that his knee on the cover? Later an entire panel to himself, where he plays a pivotal role in summarizing the things all the other Legionnaires have been saying! And a reference to Oa and its Elders, adding more to the rich Gold Lantern Club mythos. But wait, the action kicks into high gear a few pages later when he soars into the spotlight to catch the baddie! More secrets are revealed about the Gold Lantern Club and nothing will ever be the same! Looking forward to the next issue for more twists in the Amazing "Story of the Gold Lantern Saga"!

I mean, Galactus does have a heavily-developed history and role in the universe that this totally throws out the window. There's no denying this is cool and bombastic and epic, and I like his Venom stuff, but maybe Cates needs his own alternate Marvel Universe where he can ignore continuity all he wants.

Part Three of the Amazing Story of Gold Lantern! The details are being released at a teasingly slow pace since the story started back in issue #6, in the background of what scoffers will call an overabundance of subplots about trials and Dr. Fates and whatnot, but I can feel the threads coming together slowly and man! I can't wait!

Pretty straightforward and inconsequential.

There's a fine line between silly and sloppy and this wavers along that line.

I've been a fan of the Bros since Human Diastrophism. Gilbert's Palomar stories used to be my favorites, but the realistic human drama and relatable characters have all but vanished, along with art that doesn't look like it came from a creepy subreddit. Maybe this is all going over my headf, but I don't understand what's going on and it's frankly embarassing to read.

I really liked this issue, and this series, so I'm giving it a 9. And I didn't even have to count up how many people of what race and gender appeared in it!

Far and away the best of the new batch of titles, every issue.

Did... did Clint just flat-out murder that guy? Mark Gruenwald is turning over in his grave.

Why is Captain America wearing a headband? He doesn't have long hair.

Ewing really pays attention to the larger universe, and loves bringing in obscure elements from it.

I couldn't hang a single personality trait on most of the members of this team. Hell, I couldn't even identify a lot of them or tell you what their powers were. Art's pretty, though.

I like the art, but the whole concept for this series feels terribly shoehorned in, like the writer is reskinning a non-Marvel story about magick stuff with X-characters. Apocalypse is the worst in this regard, almost unrecognizable in his actions and motivations. The plot skips around in a way that's difficult to follow, and is full of poorly-conceived ideas like beardy druid cults living deep underground and babies being able to turn into dragons, that all might work pretty well in a separate fantasy series where all the basic assumptions about the world are more fluid. And that moon and sun chart page -- what was that?

Black black black black backgrounds black.

Superboy and the Legion of Interchangeable Characters Who Stand Around In Groups Speaking With A Single Voice. And I want to say I am baffled by the "Frichman tag" thing. Those tags are super useful for character ID in a comic with a cast this size, and it was a cute meta idea to say that they actually exist and the characters can see them. I'm totally on board with that. But then why the fuuuu would you constantly turn them around and cover them up and ruin their utility?!?

Well I haven't read a single issue of this series, but after reading the user reviews here month after month, I can confidently say that Tom King is an aberration without precedent; a fiendish amalgam of Charles Manson, Adolf Hitler, and Jim Jones whose lazy incompetence is exceeded only by his calculating dedication to debasing all that is good and worthy in the world; a cucumber-sandwich-eating pit of filth and moral decay; the very anti-life equation itself with designs on your light and hope. He personally hates each and every one of his readers like a Grinch on bath salts, each word a toxic seed of pretentiousness and bile designed to burrow into brains and fester. Hail this, the day of our deliverance!

Very satisfying ending to a great series.

I appreciate that Hickman is laying out more of the pieces of his puzzle so quickly -- Arrakko and Apocalypse's connections to it -- but I spent this entire issue wondering, why isn't this situation a bigger deal? Remember when a mysterious island full of monsters almost ate two teams of X-Men? Doesn't this deserve a bigger response than three characters in sitcom mode herpy derping around clearing brush for three hours? I loved HoXPoX because the X-Men were responding realistically and proportionally to their situation in the world. Between this and X-Force, the Krakoa team seem more bumbling than competent.

Like the frog who carried the scorpion across the river, I should have known -- I did know -- that Mephisto or time-travel clone replacement or something would eventually undo any sort of change, no matter how interesting. So this doesn't surprise me. But it makes me seriously ask myself why I am wasting my time reading superhero comics. Apologies to the creators that I can't give this an objective grade, but that's hard to do for something that kills a tiny part of my love for this genre.

Happy to see the Legion back, but... The problem of too many character has been solved by giving everyone in the Legion the same speaking voice, making them a kind of hivemind that spouts exposition. Some money could be saved on word balloon tails because it doesn't really matter who said any given line.

Probably an accurate preview of Bendis's upcoming Legion series -- a huge team of beloved iconic characters standing around as background props for whatever meandering narrative involving minor Bendis stand-in characters dominates the foreground. Occasionally the roster will change.

Pretty good but I never want to see fake profanity like "#$%#$@" coming out of Doom's mouth again.

I am interested in these characters, so I enjoyed it.

This sort of special is often an excuse to dust off old characters and move them through relatively generic lesson-of-the-week stories, but this one dove pretty deep into their backstories. It probably works best for long-time readers who like hefty continuity.

"This epic story spans the course of 1,000 years and, for the very first time, connects all of DC's future timelines!" First, I am certain that past writers have connected all of the future DC timelines. Second, this issue does not connect these timelines; it simply shows some of them. What *is* the connection between Kamandi's world and Tommy Tomorrow's, beyond "one happened first"? That would have been more interesting.

I didn't have much interest in the Warps concept, but this is a completely gonzo parody of it that wouldn't feel out of place in Mad Magazine. You probably need to be a long-time Marvel reader to really appreciate it, though... Learning from a glossary that a certain character has elements of someone from DP7(!) can't possibly be as satisfying as picking up on it right away. I do think this is about as far as the concept needs to be taken, although I would read a Doctor Hyperjustice series based just on the name.

Somebody give Teen Cable a copy of Days of Future past. Doing things in your own time to prevent an outcome someone from the future tells you about is NOT "changing time to suit {your} own needs." Rachel, you're standing right there, tell him! It's literally your reason for even existing as a character! So, no, Teen Cable and this whole interstitial Stryfe plot is all just one time travel knot too far.

Like much of Rosenberg's work, this feels like very big plot ideas draped in ill-fitting storytelling. I can see what he's getting at and what the story is he's trying to tell, but what's on the page often doesn't really feel like it connects to that. Big moments feel like bullet points in a plot outline rather than logical dramatic culminations. It's too bad, because his love for the franchise and its continuity really shines through.

"Weapon XXX"

One of the best ghost stories I've ever read. Punches me in the feels every time I read it.

Brings a lot of plots together and rewards readers who have been following the series.

Beautiful art but terribly disjointed story. I guess we're not even pretending that the central limited series can be read on its own and tell a complete story any more.

I liked the art style, which reminded me of Matt Wagner, but the panel-to-panel storytelling was so awkward that I kept stopping to try to figure out what the story was trying to convey. The writing has to share the blame on that point; it jumps around, never offers enough hints to make its meaning penetrable, and sometimes almost feels like sentences have been sprinkled into the panels like a cut-ups project. It's a very confusing debut issue.

Fine on its own merits, if a bit wordy. I can't get too worked up over another grand valiant sacrifice in battle by an Asgardian, though. They never stick, and they always play out the same way, going all the way back to Skurge in Simonson's run and probably even farther. And the Kid Odin sequence really throws shade on the "One Million BC" Avengers nonsense. Even if "eons ago" is just exaggeration, this is just a reminder that Bor's reign would have been before the invention of fire. Aaron is a terrific writer but seems to have a blind spot for his own bombast.

It’s pointless to say how badly conceived this death was, because death in the X-Men universe long ago lost any significance. But even so, it was a bad story badly told.

I think with some punching-up, this would have made a fine entry into the movie series. The art on the series as a whole was good in parts but lacking in others, making several of the big moments puzzling (what was going on with Fox at the end?)

I just don't understand why anything here is interesting enough to merit an entire miniseries. It's a bad fit with both the current War of the Realms event and the new X-Men status quo.

This still feels like a series so determined to roll around in obscure continuity that it lacks a strong central storyline (don't get me wrong, I love the obscure continuity). I am not a fan of the art, though. Larroca does fine individual panels, but his story flow has a lot of room for improvement, and there is a perfect example in this issue. Page 8(?), last panel, Cyclops is clobbered from behind by Forearm (who was not behind him in the prior panel). Next page, Forearm is a good 20 feet in front of Cyclops. It fails as sequential art on a basic level.

This series was a little wobbly at first, but I feel like it's hit its stride. There are jokes here -- specifically the running Totino's gag -- that land better because they're already been set up, and having the framework of the series established gives all the riffing something comfortable to hang from.

They actually did all that in an issue.

At the risk of unfairly focusing on one detail, Cassie one-punching Despero (who I seem to recall posed a threat to the entire Justice League a few times) does neither of them a favor. Bendis obviously wanted a big-name JLA villain for her to take down, so he spun the wheel and it landed on “Despero”. Because, you could literally put any baddie capable of being punched in there (I think of this as the random action figure school of plotting). And Bendis is a writer who likes to use the “big Silver Age villain is just a schlub (or as Priest liked to say, a ‘tuna sandwich’)” trope. But making Despero a weird clown who sounds scary but goes down after one punch doesn’t really make Cassie impressive. But I quibble.

I love the way this series has swerved back into the doom that it seemed to have avoided back at the end of Hell on Earth.

The first segment is such a pitch perfect example of the classic Tales From the Crypt genre that the issue’s mutation into something more complex caught me entirely off-guard.

Cates seems to be another excellent indie writer who's a bad fit for shared universe work. He may have a good idea for a story here, but like Death of the Inhumans it's awkwardly jammed into existing continuity. In an indie series, you can write a story in which it's reasonable to kill a bunch of the most powerful beings in the universe to prevent a cosmic tyrant from reincarnating in their bodies, and create a character who'd be likely to suggest it, but the MU is not a place where that makes sense, and Starfox is not a character who'd make that suggestion. (He's so far out of character here that I wonder if he's supposed to be Thanos... But all the other attendees are pretty dumb not to pick up on it.) Minor quibbles: I guess "Groot is a sullen teenager" has leaked in from the movies; I suppose next issue Hela will be referred to as Thor's sister. And WTAF is Howard the Duck doing at the meeting?

I liked: - The art was pretty good all around. - Seeing some seriously obscure old X-Men members (even if there was no time to give the spotlight to more than a few characters, or even name all the cameos). I didn't like: - The ending. I don't see how "spin the random crossover generator twice and then die" accomplishes any of Nate's plans. "I see so clearly what I have to do." Well, I don't. - I did enjoy the popcorn movie scale of the conflict, but it seemed very by-the-numbers and flat. - The last two pages rushed into a status quo that feels unearned. The present MU has some anti-mutant bigots, but hardly feels like a place where mutants would be erased from history books and widespread anti-mutant vaccination would be mandated. I guess this stuff is important for the next stories, but it comes out of nowhere.

2018 attitude, 1965 characterization. I grew up on Silver Age stories like this, where Stan Lee had to write everyone as hair-trigger aggros in order to work in a fight scene, and that was ok because no one was particularly devloped as a character. I guess that’s what Aaron is going for here, what with Namor acting like Silver Age Namor again and all. Just feels kind of shallow today.

On the level of 'What Happened', I kinda get it but I don't like it -- another silly alternate universe with more pointless alternate character versions, a vague new direction for Loki that's bound to be ignored by the overabundance of writers who'll be using him in the future, and something about the stones getting souls. On the level of 'Why These Things Happened', I'm sure it all makes sense in Duggan's mind, but for me, nearly every page contained things happening without any sense of cause and effect or story logic. I can't really say this event was bad, but just... baffling.

When the twist was revealed last issue, I had hopes that this series might redeem itself, but this final issue nailed that coffin shut. Flat characterization -- none of these characters are individuals. Sloppy plotting -- how could a Vox be using Crystal or Lockjaw's powers *before* capturing them? And a sharp turn back into the wholesale slaughter the title promised (but looked like it might be off the table) -- Black Bolt didn't even seem to try to do anything but rush into fulfilling the series remit. And not a name or face to any of the dead, nothing to connect to or feel emotion for. Just "and the rest". This was miserable and I had expected more from Cates.

As the full picture of what's going on slowly comes into focus, it seems that this is not the massacre it appeared, so points for that. However, it's still a grim fake massacre that's otherwise light on story and character. The writer's decision to ignore Ewing's recent excellent Inhumans backstory still gripes, especially when weird stuff gets shoveled in from left field like the Beta Ray/Lockjaw pairing.

Ouch.

The story is all over the place, the dialogue is too movie-quippy, Kirby's entire Celestial/Eternal mythology has been uprooted in favor of a giant robot punch-up, and having 1,000,000 BC versions of most of that team makes no goddamn sense at all. Why not just go all-out and have a "Captain America of 1,000,000 BC", inspiring cavemen with speeches about the Stars and Stripes? Jeezus.

I totally don't understand the website critic who gave this a 4.0. If you're a fan of the series, you'll want this issue as it contains seriously crucial backstory. Plus it's just as good and funny as a regular issue.

Del Mundo's art just isn't growing on me. The colors are gorgeous but it's so incredibly flat and lacking in depth that it takes active effort to separate out all the elements of a given panel. Combined with Aaron's wordiness, this has made these four issues a slog to get through even as the overall storyline has been good.

The best Pathfinder series so far, both in terms of art and story.

This is appalling. Just when the Inhumans have had two outstanding series that developed the characters and moved the mythology along (Al Ewing's Royals and Saladin Ahmed's Black Bolt) here's a story that ignores all of that in favor of an artless massacre. There was a lot of interesting potential for future stories set up in those series, but it doesn't even seem that Cates has even read them. It's not just disregard for continuity that rankles, but the nullification of good stories for a cheap killfest with a poorly-developed set-up and a horror movie's disinterest in anything but getting from one death to the next. I was never much of a fan of the Inhumans, but this is just terrible.

Actually I give this an 8, but +1.5 to balance out the bad review by someone whose delicate political sensibilities were wounded by Kieron's backmatter.

While I like the larger story being developed here as Mothervine is coming into focus, the execution is a mess, with too many characters (3 entire teams of super-villains!) and art that sometimes makes the action hard to follow.

It just lacks spark. And I can't help but think that the existence of a densely-populated "mutants-only" prison has better story potential for an X-Men comic than a generic "good guys in prison" retread. It's like the writer wanted to do a generic prison story and never considered the implications of such a prison for human/mutant relations, Kitty's reaction to learning about it, etc. Magneto for one would see certain parallels in a prison for people of a particular race...

Great conclusion to the story and a great capstone to Jessica Jones' character arc under Bendis.

Every page is packed with so many weird dialog choices, non sequiturs, and inexplicable happenings that reading this issue was a chore. A certain amount of mystery is good, but I had to stop and wonder 'what is happening here?' 'who is this person?' and 'what is that character even saying?' with almost every panel. Baffling.

If you want to see an example of characters getting their individuality subverted by a writer's preset templates, the Hobgoblin/Red Hulk scene would be a pretty good example. Why would you pass on the opportunity to write some fun General Maverick dialogue, just to do generic tough guy talk? And don't get me started on the reduction of Roderick Kingsley to buffoonery. Ah well.

Page after page of shooting, shooting, shooting at characters who shrug off bullet wounds = extended bloody pillow fight.

A straightforward issue that gets right to the point (which is action). I'm baffled by the decision to reveal Iron Spider's identity in an earlier issue, as this would have been -- and is structured like -- a great last-page reveal for the reader as well as for Miles. Oh well.

Plenty of problems with the story already outlined by other reviewers, and as for the art -- just stare at those massive prunes Nightcrawler has for thighs on the cover for a few seconds.

Pretty amazing, Kirby-level stuff. Marvel, make Ewing one of your main universe architects ASAP (if he isn't already).

Tense and satisfying payoff to some long-running plots.

The original Amy Racecar stories were interesting as a reflection/reinterpretation of Virginia Applejack's experiences via her in-story fiction. Now that these are basically just "Stray Bullet Babies", they feel self-indulgent and slow down the ongoing plot. They're the vegetables you hate to eat in an otherwise appetizing meal.

Does a bit more telling than showing.

Well, it's basically a Murderworld plot, meaning the heroes vs. whatever random thing the writer wants to throw at them, repeated over and over until one of them breaks the cycle somehow. Since there's no logic or pattern to the succession of threats, there's no buildup of suspense and no investment in any of the battles. Art's nice, though.

Agreeing with Multiversity that we needed to see more resolution for the characters and plotlines. Still, a great conclusion to a standout series.

Given the amount of cutting back and forth into established and ongoing subplots, isn't it about time Dark Horse started numbering this according to the "in a series" number on the credits page? The abrupt segues into scenes with Bruttenholm and Sandhu make no sense as part of a "first issue".

For all intents and purposes, an issue-long dream sequence leading to a foregone conclusion.

I'm usually pretty focused on plot, so it says a lot that with only one more issue to go, the character work in this issue was the highlight for me, easily mitigating my usual concerns about getting a satisfying conclusion. (Maybe I just have extra faith in Tynion's storytelling after the brilliant Memetic and Cognetic.) The jumps through Ben's history may seem like unnecessary padding to some critics, but the character evolution they highlight is what gives this series an epic feel. I'm excited to see the conclusion next month, but I'll miss these characters.

New Rule: If your character is entirely made of tropes, don't spend more than one page per trope explaining his origin. By that measure this should have taken two pages.

Almost feels like the writer taking an extra issue to explain what he was getting at -- the point of the story that got buried under questionable marketing, pointless controversy, and a grueling slog through a story that simultaneously felt overstuffed and underdeveloped. The conversation between the Caps in this issue doesn't redeem the flaws of the series, but it's interesting on its own merits. Some reviewers said that the surprise election of Trump made this storyline inappropriate, but (possibly allowing for some course correction on Spencer's part) it may have just made the message even more relevant.

This series has the ongoing problem that events happen, and people act, in ways that don't follow what came before in any meaningful way.

Mini Scene Theatre Presents -- Logan: "I'm good at playing cards!" -- Kitty: "You cheat." -- Logan: "Ha ha, yeah... I do." -- and scene!

Classic 'Locked in a Closet' trope with an unlikely pairing. Unexpected and amazing.

I'm surprised that Hopeless gets the voices of these characters so wrong. Mordo quipping like a character on a sitcom? Ben Urich tossing out references to Larping? Who are these people?

I don't give out 10s lightly. The end of Providence is an incredibly satisfying payoff to a story 14 years in the making -- 18 issues that tell a story that swallows the Mythos whole and extrudes it back out as a comprehensive, incredibly detailed 4-dimensional solid.

I've been a little hard on this series, but this issue felt like it was finally hitting on all cylinders.

This series is the Holy Bible of Dad Jokes. I admire Stine's ability to pack so much humor in, but "so bad it's funny" wears out its welcome fast.

I just can't feel the love for this title. The villains are generic, the heroes lack the sort of character arcs they always had in the Claremont era that's being invoked here, and each issue is packed with small wrong notes -- Rachel being vulnerable to the sentinel's injury because it's 'conscious', Kitty immediately understanding and translating 'binary', the logic gap in the final twist (is it targeting 'everyone' or just people with arbitrary medical conditions?)... Even just little stupid things like taking off in the jet before figuring out where to go, which I know is minor but it feels like the sort of handwavey thing you'd see in a cheap TV action show that's not trying very hard.

A really enjoyable story, but the numbering system continues to be questionable. There's nothing self-contained about this 3-parter; if you don't know the history of the villains from previous installments, you're in the dark. Not to mention the mess it makes of the title on this site. I guess as a shameless marketing ploy it must pay off.

This issue brings one of the biggest problems with Season 11 into focus: the protagonists' lack of agency. We've already seen one major conflict point where the gang agonizes over whether or not to submit to the government's plans, and reluctantly decides it's for the greater good to do so; here we have another. This issue also undermines the only time recently that they *have* taken initiative; all of their clever planning and action last issue is rendered moot when what they learned is simply made public knowledge. (And I'm still unsure about the logic of using detainees to manufacture the magic draining widgets, rather than anyone else in the world). Maybe it's a more nuanced threat this time around, but it's not very engaging to watch the heroes behaving so passively.

Lemire's art suits the story perfectly, and this is the best thing by Snyder that I've read.

This was a really interesting series packed full of ideas and black humor, although if Gillen hasn't been the writer I wouldn't have found it, as the Avatar art style isn't really to my taste. This final issue was a hoot and a half.

I'm thinking Guggenheim hasn't read Spencer's recent Captain America run where the Serpent Society were revamped as untouchable corporate villains, or Morrison's run that started with the death of the last Trask and involved a nano-Sentinel attack that the X-Men apparently don't remember. So this is a title that pretty much exists in a continuity vacuum, and I'd hope for better from a flagship book. But I have nothing bad to say about the X-Men using the Blackbird to fly across Manhattan AGAIN, because that's so ridiculous it's nearly camp. Like moneybags with giant dollar signs on them.

Things Jessica Jones did not need: (1) being drawn to look like Jennifer Connelly; (2) being yet another in long line of wives/girlfriends being injured as a way of hurting a male hero.

I generally only leave reviews here if I have something to say about the issue or want to balance out an unfair low review. This is the latter, although the 8.5 is genuine. Incidentally, Cyclops is a 'teenager boy'. Thank you.

I am wondering, though, has there ever been a story where a hero was genuinely brainwashed/hypnotized by Doctor Faustus or the Corruptor or Mesmero or Psycho-Man or whomever, and his friends tried to snap them out of it but eventually came to the conclusion that "oh no, they were evil ALL ALONG!"? I mean, I know that's the premise here, and big events tend to be pretty bad when it comes to everyone just sort of knowing the premise whether they should or not. But I don't buy that anyone would be treating this as "he's not brainwashed, he was always evil!" Especially not with a Cosmic Cube around.

There's nothing wrong with producing artistic and thought-provoking work that foils expectations. But deliberately raising false expectations is problematic. This is essentially a documentary about the plight of vanishing wildlife habitats in Africa that has a gorilla shooting laser beams out of its eyes on every cover.

"If you take something like Cthulhu... it is completely incomprehensible and beyond all human categorization. But in the game Call of Cthulhu, you see Cthulhu’s “strength,” “dexterity,” and so on, carefully expressed numerically. There’s something superheroically banalifying about that approach to the fantastic." - China Mieville I would argue that this storyline reduces Illyria even further, not to a set of stats, but to an entity no more alien than a TV extra in a demon suit. Points for effort, but it was misguided from the start.

Reminds me a lot of the Secret Wars series where OML bounced from one random scenario to another without any real point. No matter what happens on any stop, there's no time to get invested in it because it'll just whisk away to the next in a few minutes. Also, 1812? Should we start calling him Really Old Man Logan?

Has about as much weight and depth as a non-continuity "Marvel Adventures" title. I expect the next Jim Starlin story will include an explanation that this was just another one of those pesky one-dimensional Thanos clones that crop up from time to time. "It's Just An Action Figure, You Should Really Just Relax" award for casually ignoring the Armadillo's origin as a tragic monster, not a dude in home-made power armor.

I can't even begin to list everything wrong with the plotting, dialogue, characterization, and art in this issue. Nothing fits together; it's a jumble of non sequiturs and random events. If I had to pick a theme it's the ongoing assumption in the writing that these characters and everything they do is super cool even when it's unearned.

The social commentary is fine but the plot's getting a little blurry beneath it. Buffy voluntarily went into the camp to protect the inmates, so why is her focus now on escaping? There are hints of a sinister scheme on the part of the jailers, which conveniently gives our heroes something more tangible to fight against than 'systemic rights violations in the face of a crisis'. And magic is once again more of a metaphor for something than an actual system that makes sense -- wasn't it at one time a skill to be learned, not a power to be drained (before it was a drug, that is)?

I'm gonna miss this book. Hopefully the next person to write Jessica Drew won't kill Roger and make Gerry into a time-displaced demon spider monster.

From the monster designs to the weird modern vernacular to the simplistic central conflicts, this could easily be an episode of a Sid and Marty Krofft show from the 70s.

Nice art, but some weird non-sequitur dialogue choices in this one: "I took a new name," "Be careful Bogna. No one touches me," "Fear isn't power." I haven't had to work so hard at understanding what characters were talking about since the last thing I read by Ann Nocenti.

There's something to be said about taking an goofy old kid's show and tossing it into a cynical, ironic modern setting, but it's rarely something fresh. Did anything about this play off of the Banana Splits in particular? You could have grabbed just about any 70s Hanna-Barbera show and plugged them into this same plot and ended up with the same thing -- a predictable, by-the-numbers Robot Chicken sketch, right down to the rap show ending.

Deadpool's backup plan is a very clever use of X-Men mythology, and Rogue's (temporary) new look is pretty goddamn amazing. This should go down as a classic Rogue moment, but it will probably go unnoticed with so many X-titles and crossovers flooding the shelves.

Now that's something I haven't seen before.

I really missed Ryan Browne after the end of that last series he did, something about Astroturf. Now I'm enjoying devouring Carts Wars each and every issue!

Welp, not surprising to see so many extremely high and extremely low scores for this one -- it's intentionally polarizing and I think many reviews are based more on its social positions than on the content. Personally I like the concept, but it jettisons logic pretty badly about halfway through. In my mind there's nothing wrong with most of its progressive concepts, but they're so clumsily glued together that nothing here resembles either the real world or the MU. I mean, Sotomayor University? Intergalactic Revolutionary classes? It's trying so hard that it just doesn't work as a story.

I liked the concept behind the whole story, and loved the art. But in the final issue, the technobabble became so obtuse that I wasn't even sure what the stakes were supposed to be. Inverse frequency... stabilized cells... a wizard did it?

I don't know why this isn't getting more reviews. It's not a book with a status quo; every issue is a chapter in a long and finite story unfolding over several years, and it's a good one. "What happens this month" isn't some random temporary character death or heel turn -- it's built carefully on the story so far and advances toward the conclusion. I hope it gets more attention than it seems to be getting.

Politics aside, the concept for this issue has some unrealized (maybe unrealizable) potential with Gwen's fourth wall breaking. She's absolutely right, as a person familiar with Marvel Universe history, to say that this kind of real-world conflict is almost always caused in the MU by the Sons of the Serpent or Hydra or something other than the uncomfortable truths of reality. And it's very odd to see her (presumably) proven wrong for a change. It highlights the disconnect that 'serious issue' stories like last month's Champions or the recent get-out-the-vote Ms. Marvel have in super-hero land, and I'm not sure why you would want to do that. It's like a Deadpool story about accidental toddler shootings.

If you gave this a bad review after reading the previous 5 issues -- what did you expect?

The plot was a mix of overly vague and overly convenient, so it moved along to where it wanted to go without making a lot of sense. It's fine for the start of a story to raise questions, but here I'm not sure what questions I should be asking (other than, are church crypts really that casually accessible?) But I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt and a few more issues.

The early setup with Misty Knight is so plausible and convincing that it made me rethink Jessica as a sympathetic character; I was mildly disappointed by the shade this cast over her earlier series... Which made the later twist particularly satisfying. A very well constructed issue.

"If civilization is going to last… it will only be because we’ve learned to do one thing. To care for people who mean nothing to us." - Fred Flintstone. Is a quote/attribution I would never have expected to make.

If Mark Gruenwald's continuity wonkiness married Joss Whedon's balance of humor and action.

I must be the only person who's not blown away by the art. I think it would work better for me if there were more inked lines separating things... As it is, many panels look like blobs of colors running together. But to each his own.

I just wanted to say this: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being Appliance Animals."

This comic does what it sets out to do very well (goofy fun), and it probably goes without saying that if you don't like this sort of thing or were expecting something more traditional, this isn't for you.

Ewing has an amazing knowledge of deep-cut Marvel continuity and he's not afraid to use it. And he's not only acknowledging recent stories by other writers here (something that certain big event writers can't be bothered doing), but he's building on them to tell his own. I can't wait to see where this is going.

Good exploration of some of the ramifications of the supernatural mythology in the "real world", albeit a little on the nose in its reference to current events.

Going to balance out the 1.0 review troll here; the fact that the Nazis are villains in this series is too obvious to be geniunely overlooked. This issue contains several significant turning points and a long-awaited battle and is not to be missed.

This series as a whole has been a fantastic exploration of the catastrophic potential of Superman-level powers in the "real" world, the best since Moore's Kid Miracleman. The World War II setting provides plenty of opportunity for the conflicts to ramp up to an epic scale, and the attention to historical detail keeps it grounded in plausible (and horrific) reality. This issue is the last of the first volume, and it ends on a dark cliffhanger of operatic proportions. This is not a series to be missed if you're a fan of alternate history or realistic super-powered consequences, and I can't wait to start on the second volume.

I found the art difficult to follow in a few places. The page where the vampire gets thrown off the ledge, and two pages later where someone I can't identify gets knocked out by I don't know what, in a panel that fails to resolve the action in the previous panel. That page also contains one of the sillier lines of dialog I've read in a while, "We came to save you, Vampire By Night!"

Things slowly continue to happen more because they're in the plot outline than because they logically follow from the plot or character personalities. This whole event feels like a handful of shocking but unearned plot points strung together with little regard for the story in between.

I really enjoyed the art. I like the twist, even though I saw it coming; it's perfectly in character for the person behind it, and I appreciate the way it undermines the typical bombastic, heroic death scenes super-heroes usually get. But it feels like getting to the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle you've been working on for a long time, and finding that they don't fit. Maybe a page fell out explaining that the red mist killed thousands of normal people, and that's why Scott and Sunfire are so reviled. That's all it would take.

I'm probably one of the few people who likes Carrion as a villain -- his first appearance was right when I started collecting comics, and that's a point that most people remember most fondly (I guess that's why so many people like Kaine)) -- and I was disappointed that this featured a bunch of totally generic zombies instead of him. I would have liked to see Slott's take on the guy. That said, this was a perfectly cromulant tie-in to the event, maybe a little superfluous as it backtracked to answer questions I hadn't been wondering about.

Only Grant Morrison would make DMT hallucinations (google "machine elves" for more info) a foundational part of the origin of Santa Claus and still end up with a comic that could play well to the mainstream. Well played, sir.

This series is an interesting fresh approach to a franchise that's too often fallen into formula.

I am digging the story, but man, that art shift halfway through is JARRING.

The first 10 I've given here.

Doom just doesn't seem like Doom here. I did get a mild buzz mid-issue from my "Bendis Agh!" drinking game, though. (Diablo: "Agh! Doom. Agh! Agh!")

I've been pretty harsh on Bendis's super-hero comics, but this is a great return to one of the series that made me a fan originally.

Awwww.....

I finally realized what the Ulysses dilemma reminds me of. You know how Q-tips have that warning not to insert them into your ear canal, but that's just to keep idiots from jamming them all the way in and hurting themselves, so everyone knows just to be careful when they insert them? With that in mind, I have written a helpful synopsis of the first 4 issues of this series: ULYSSES: I have invented a device to clean wax out of ears -- the Q-tip. IRON MAN: That makes me uneasy. What if someone jams one of those in too far? That could injure them! CAPTAIN MARVEL: Wax buildup is a huge threat. I am going to use those Q-tips! RHODEY cleans his ear with a Q-tip, but as he throws it into the garbage, he slips and breaks his head on the bathroom floor. IRON MAN: RHODEY NOOOOOOO! Your Q-tip killed Rhodey! MARVEL MARKETING: Looks like a CIVIL WAR is brewing! ASSORTED CURRENTLY POPULAR HEROES: Looks like a CIVIL WAR is brewing! We are all randomly choosing sides! NOBODY AT ALL: Guys, you can use a Q-tip if you're careful. Just don't-- HAWKEYE jams Q-tip into Hulk's ear. ASSORTED CURRENTLY POPULAR HEROES: Looks like a CIVIL WAR has started! Everyone pose in two groups facing each other! IRON MAN: Now that I understand how Q-tips work, I am even more frightened.

Lots of head-scratching bits. What does "now the rest" mean on a splash page featuring not only mutants but some seriously anti-mutant characters? Who is the scantily-clad woman on the last page? The fight scene is nearly impossible to follow; on the page with the acid fog at the top, who is where doing what? And these new baddies are so incredibly one-dimensional, they don't even have names, or powers that can be picked up from context. Dismal.

Nice little self-contained story that would have fit perfectly in 1988's "Wild Cards: Aces Abroad" anthology.

Remember that time when a person with telepathy appeared, and all the heroes got all worked up because even though it was a useful power, it could be misused to read people's minds and punish them for things they were thinking about doing? And then all the heroes lined up and took sides and started screaming at and killing one another and then someone said the titular line, "This is like some kind of CIVIL WAR"? Yeah, me neither.

On its own, this is a perfectly fine story with a good art style. In relation to the wider universe, it's got a couple of problems... First, and this is a common one, it's set in the sort of "generic" New York crime scene where every boss and underling is always the same, always just out there doing mobster stuff, infighting, hanging out in villain bars, etc. no matter what happens in any given story. No matter who makes a bid to take over all the crime, no matter who succeeds or is killed or dramatically transformed, everything resets for the next story. I'm pretty sure the Owl and Madame Masque and Hammerhead have had different status quos in other books recently, but here they are being generic mob bosses again. But hey, that's how it goes. It's also a weird fit for Civil War II. The Kingpin's realization of how Janus's powers work only makes sense if, as is implied throughout the issue, Ulysses is predicting 100% of all criminal activity in NYC and the heroes are stopping all of it. If some crimes are slipping through, there's no reason for Fisk to think Janus is anything except lucky. That level of enforcement isn't reflected in any of the other Civil War II titles, where Ulysses and everyone else is busy with other things. Possibly the writers of these miniseries were given vague details of how the main plot works and had to fill some thing in themselves.

Bendis School of Writing: Come up with some cool scene or borrow a plot concept from a movie, then build your story backwards from that thing, without regard for characterization, continuity, or logic. This issue's flaws have been pointed out at length elsewhere, but the big three have to be: Hawkeye as a willing killer despite years of being written as the exact opposite; Banner's Hulkless status in TAH being ignored; and Carol's "plan" of bringing everyone who currently has a presence in Marvel titles (whether they belong there or not) to Banner's door in a blatantly provocative move . Awful all around. Nice art, though.

Stray Bullets at its finest: A group of well-developed and well-drawn characters, already in motion on their various trajectories, knocked into a chaotic and violent series of collisions by the introduction of a new element, with a number of tragic consequences (the worst of which is never even explicitly spelled out). Even knowing where the plot is ultimately going, it's riveting.

BPRD and Abe Sapien are often titles that have ambiguous stories where the meaning has to be carefully teased out. This arc has been the opposite -- everything is shown in the art and then explained in the word balloons, often redundantly. What's this doing in the middle of the careening Hell on Earth finale?

Mind-blowing conclusion to a series set in the most imaginative and engrossing new fantasy worlds I've seen since Perdido Street Station.

Still waiting for Tony's point of view to make a hint of sense. It's like declaring war on 911 dispatch because your cop buddy responded to a call and was killed. Absolutely nothing to do with punishing people before they do anything wrong. I guess maybe the idea is that Tony is unhinged about Rhodey and he's acting irrationally, but then why would anyone take his side?

A decently told, if somewhat cliched, origin story... For a character with no connection to the Heavenly Cities mythology. I had hoped these issues would show something of the other six cities, but only the Fat Cobra issue touched that. How did this character become the champion of Unnamed Heavenly City #3? That's the story I wanted.

The art near the end looked very rushed, like it was inked in a hurry with a Sharpie. I haven't been impressed with the visual storytelling throughout this miniseries and this issue is no exception -- I stared at the first panel on page 4 (CHOOM) for a while and I still don't know what's happening in it.

Wait. THIS is the ethical dilemma that splits the heroes? THIS? Punishing people for crimes pre-emptively is a hook that you an hang a civil war type story on (and it's already been done in Minoroty Report, but shush). And that's where this looks like it's going, until it swerves so far off the rails I can't even track the thinking behind it other than the plot dragging the characters along regardless of logic. Being alerted to Thanos's arrival has nothing to do with the ethics of pre-emptive punishment. It's like setting up a story where the ethical conflict is over abortion, and then having someone getting killed in a car crash on the way to get an abortion as the anti-abortion side's argument. It makes no sense and makes Stark look like a reactive idiot. Ugh.

OK, I get it, She-Hulk is arguing against preemptive punishment, so we know which side she's going to be on. The problem here is that the charges against the Jester aren't ever named, and Jen's defense summary specifically rules out a lot of possibilities. So we have to conclude that in order to act as a proxy for the Captain Marvel side, the court did in fact find him guilty of thought-crime. It's a minor detail, but it's typical of the way the 'high concept' of a big event crossover warps things around it to make its point. Oh, and with so little action in this issue, Bendis was only able to work in four "oh my god!"s and one "agh!". For those keeping up at home.

Poor characterization of Jarvis, and a terribly confusing and anti-climactic conflict based on ? something Kang did to the Vision? Plus half of the story is apparently in a different comic.

Even though we know where this series is going, this issue shows that there's plenty of room for surprises, and a lot of dark fun to be had revisiting familiar characters.

The first time this comic has pulled off the sort of should-have-seen-it-coming changes-everything kind of plot twist that the best seasons of the TV show achieved. My only quibble is that the ultimate villain's plan seems overly convoluted and is triggered more by happenstance than insidious plotting. There was nothing specifically set up to guarantee that Buffy would utter the right words; it might have never happened. And why not just get someone else to say them?

17 issues of meticulous build-up makes the eruption of action even more satisfying. That almost sounds sexual.

Next issue: Galactus attacks, and the Fantastic Four have tripped on a curb and knocked themselves out on the sidewalk! Can Miles win this battle and earn the respect of Peter Parker? We can only say, no one knows what effect a venom blast will have on the Great Devourer!

The last four pages were a weak ending, but the escalation of the main gag had me giggling uncontrollably.

Fans of China Mieville will love the world Spurrier's building here. It's not spoon-few and requires attention to detail, but as the series goes on, everything starts fitting together and the resulting tapestry is amazing.

Just to balance out the 4.0 review that basically said "I never read any of the previous issues so I don't understand what's going on." Well, I have read them, and it's a fine series, so here's a 9.5.

Has all the signs of a story written backwards from an intended conclusion. Nothing happening here follows logically from the stories leading into it, but it's all necessary to set up the next thing. Which is hard to care about at this point.