Comic Three-In-One

Amazing Spider-man: Unintended Consequences

Spider-man is so squeaky-clean he's basically the Mickey Mouse of superheroes, except that everybody he knows or cares about dies terribly because of him.

RATING: 70%





New X-Men Vol. 6: Planet X

In one of the greatest X-men storylines of all time, Xorn turns out to be Magneto, takes over Xavier's school, incapacitates the X-men, conquers New York, kills Jean Grey, and gets decapitated. Don't worry, these aren't spoilers; every one of these actions was retconned out of existence 5 issues later.

RATING: 75%



Squadron Supreme: Power To The People

NO.

RATING: 1%

Comic Three-In-One

X-Statix Vol. 1: Good Omens

I guess Marvel wanted the X-Force name to stick around for an actual X-Force team, so by the third volume of Milligan and Allred's X-Force, they switched the name to X-Statix. Anyway, it's good I suppose.

RATING: 68%



Squadron Supreme Vol. 1: The Pre-War Years

A Squadron Supreme is just like a regular squadron, but with sour cream.

RATING: 70%





Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 1: The Fantastic

Jesus, these kids are whiny. Takes the 20 page origin story of the real Fantastic Four and balloons it into 90 pages. That's progress maybe?

RATING: 65%

Comic Three-In-One

Supreme Power: Hyperion

I dunno, I guess you can just imagine that the alternate future presented here where Hyperion has taken over Earth represents the conclusion of the Supreme Power series, since it never actually gets resolved.

RATING: 62%


Ultimate X-Men Vol. 8: New Mutants

Boring, endless Bendis-talk, although there is a great single issue here where Logan is sent to deal with a kid whose powers are just to kill everybody around him accidentally.

RATING: 67%


Sandman Vol. VI: Fables & Reflections

A collection of standalone issues, with the retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice being the strongest. I guess only half of my Sandman trades move the story forward, but whatevs, it's still great writing.

RATING: 71%

Supreme Power: Nighthawk

This miniseries is dedicated to Nightawk, the Supreme Power universe's analog of Batman, except he hates white people and also doesn't have the "no killing" clause. Also, I guess since Supreme Power was leaving Marvel's "Adult Label" to go PG-13, they decided to go out in... uh, style? In Batman comics, Joker might poison a bunch of people. and maybe we'll see some cleaned up corpses or whatever, but mainly it's gloves-on carnage. Here, an insane serial killer dressed up as a clown kills drug addicts, babies and kids with poison, who all vomit up blood, spasm, or shoot themselves in great detail. I don't really know if I can recommend it, but luckily I dodged the bullet since it was never collected in trade paperback and tracking down issues would probably be a real bitch unless you ask me to borrow them.

RATING:79% I guess.

Comic Three-In-One

Batman: Contagion

Batman must put a stop to an Ebola outbreak in Gotham, but shouldn't that be the CDC's job? I mean, what next, he's got to stop a snowstorm?

RATING: 22%




Darkhawk: Return to Forever

This is the point at which Darkhawk jumped the shark, or should I say the point at which Darkhawk jumped the Evilhawk.

RATING: 35%





Supreme Power Vol. 3: High Command

This collection is more stellar writing and art, but unfortunately it will be the last time the heroes' origin as an alien invasion force will ever be referenced (boo), and also the last time we'll see boobs in this comic.

RATING: 79%

Comic Three-In-One

Another triple set of comics that I didn't feel like reviewing individually.

Transformers Generation 1 Volume 1

I guess it's interesting that terrorists stole Megatron, but that's about it.

RATING: 31%




Sleepwalker Comics (1991-1994)

A hundred times less derivative than Darkhawk, and a hundred times less interesting.

RATING: 40%


Supreme Power Vol. 2: Powers And Principalities

Shit gets crazy, boobs, explosions, general awesomeness.

RATING: 83%

Supreme Power Vol. 1: Contact

The plot of Supreme Power is tough to explain, but I'll try to sum it up: basically, it's analogs of DC's Justice League set in a more realistic world, and all the people who get powers get them from dubious (alien) origins. It's dark, and this first volume in the series is a great set up to our main characters. Here's my problem, and I know some of you don't like this line of thinking (Tim): part of what made these first six issues great was the promise of a story that could slowly unfold, a world that J. Michael Straczynski could take his time ripping apart. But after the series was mandated to move from Marvel's adult line, MAX, to its regular line, and then had an incomprehensible crossover with the Ultimate Universe, and is now a series being written by Howard Chaykin who clearly has no intention on resolving anything JMS set up, I know that those initial promises will never be fulfilled. So while I still get some of the same thrill reading this volume, mostly it's just a reminder of the disappointment I've ultimately had with this series that could have had so much potential. Ahh, but volume 1, 2, 3 and the Nighthawk limited series were great, so maybe we can all just pretend everything worked out?

RATING: 79%

Ultimate Power

(Warning: This review won't make any sense to any non comic nerd, so you might just want to skip to the next review, whatever that ends up being.)

This is a nine issue series in which the Supreme Power Universe's Squadron Supreme comes into the Ultimate Universe in order to get revenge on the Fantastic Four. So they kidnap Reed Richards, and then the Ultimates, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spider-man and SHIELD all have to go through dimensions to the Supreme Power Universe in what turns out to be a seven issue fight also during which the original Squadron Supreme Universe's Squadron Supreme come through. Make sense? Of course not. This could have been done in like three issues, but Greg Land's traces apparently need a splash page every other panel. This Ultimate Sucked.

RATING: 36%