Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas

It's Christmas Eve at the X-Mansion. Cyclops and Rogue are trimming the tree. Jean and Gambit are in the kitchen preparing a big Christmas Eve dinner. Beast is in his lab. And Professor X is hovering by the Fire. Everyone is in good spirits. Everyone, except for Wolverine. To escape the cheeriness, Wolverine agrees to help Storm and Jubilee with some last minute shopping. Later, at an approximation of Rockefeller Center, their ice skating session is interrupted by a runaway ambulance. Our heroes discover that some Morlocks have stolen the ambulance in order to get medical supplies for Leech, a young Morlock in trouble. The X-Men follow the Morlocks into the sewer to see if they can help. Will Leech recover or will this be the saddest X-Mas yet? Spoiler alert: he recovers.

Rating: Teddy Bear%

Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight!

Loki's thirst for power sends him on a quest to steal the magical abilities of Jolnir, a figure of legend also known as Santa Claus. Can a handful of Earth's mightiest defenders stop Loki in time and save Santa before Christmas is ruined? You can probably guess. Frost Fight! is definitely aimed at younger viewers with all its bloodless violence and the inclusion of a younger hero-in-training, Reptil, accompanying our marquee heroes on their quest. Most of the heroes are based on their MCU versions, though they make Hulk chattier and they throw in a Carol Danvers Captain Marvel to prevent it from being a total sausage fest. I wouldn't call this special a hidden gem or anything, but if you wanted Rocket Raccoon to sound more like Brad Dourif then you are in luck.

Rating: Gingerbread men%

(Image from IMDB)

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy - "Liberty"

Issue 2

On vacay in Australia the women from Omega Squad point out how sexist Vulcan is while getting in a huge barfight. Meanwhile Nog opens his roommate's mint condition 1960s comics to read but get real, if anybody had a 400 year old comic book still in mint condition they'd be king of planet earth.

RATING: 57%

(Where to place: DS9 season four, between For The Cause and To The Death.)

Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 5: Crossover

This is it! The Ultimate Fantastic Four finally get to travel to the main Marvel Universe and meet their counterparts. Just kidding, Mark Millar invents the Marvel Zombies universe instead. I guess it's fine, even if Greg Land's art looks like he traced a bunch of pornography.

RATING: 68%

Blade II

Blade II is the story of a vampire-hating half-vampire named Blade, who spends most of his time mercilessly killing any vampire he can find. Basically Blade is a super badass type who has all the powers of vampires except he can actually go out in the sun and eat pizza with garlic sauce. Anyway, in this movie the vampires ask Blade for help because there is a new, more evil breed of vampires out there with SIDEWAYS MOUTHS! Yikes! It sounds dumb and is dumb, but it's also a lot of fun and the action scenes are pretty good, so I think this goes in the top half of Marvel comic movie adaptations.

RATING: 66%

Comic Three-In-One

Fantastic Four: Nobody Gets Out Alive

Mr. Fantastic is dead, so Ant Man takes his place, and not even the good Ant Man.

RATING: 22%



Universe X Volume 2

This is better than Volume 1, with a really satisfying conclusion, but it's just so dense that it doesn't have much rereadability.

RATING: 71%


Ultimate X-Men Volume 4: Hellfire And Brimstone

Kitty Pride joins the school, and Jean starts to Phoenix out in a story that's kind of directionless if you ask me and I think you did.

RATING: 73%

Universe X Vol. 1

Universe X is the sequel to the pretty good alternate-future-of-the-marvel-universe book Earth X. I wish they had just stopped with Earth X though. This one is fine I guess but it's way too dense, and the novelty of seeing alternate designs of characters we love has worn off. I guess if you really love the Marvel Universe and all its history you might as well buy it, but fair warning this is only half the story and it's $25.

RATING: 62%

Marvel 1985

This limited comic series just ended a couple months ago, so that makes this like the newest comic I've ever reviewed here or some such nonsense. The plot involves a kid in a small town in "our world" in 1985 whose parents are divorced. He collects comics, I guess to escape (who am I, Freud?), and then one day all of the Marvel supervillains come into his universe and start wreaking havoc on his town. Mark Millar writes a pretty convincing kid, and a lot of the tone of this book feels similar to 1980s era kids movies, so it's fun and also dark. I have complaints about Millar's composition that can probably be applied to every book he writes - he uses way too many splash panels. I mean, any six issue arc he does could be done by any other writer in three or four issues, tops. Other than that, it's a good book, and Tommy Lee Edwards' has a neat, choppy art style I liked so if you want you can come over and borrow it sometime yours truly Glenn.

RATING: 70%

The Infinity Gauntlet

The Infinity Gauntlet was a comic book miniseries from the early 90s, and the first "event" book I ever got into. The plot involves this crazy dude Thanos who gets all this power from the titular glove so that Lady Death will go out with him on a date or something. To impress her he kills half of all life in the universe, usually I just say a joke or put my coat on a puddle but whatever. Anyway, spoilers, lots of superheroes die like Spider-man and Iron Man and Captain America Man, but it turns out to be a glorified What If? book when at the end this one broad undoes everything Thanos did the whole story long. In conclusion it is fun and the art is pretty but probably not worth $25 for the trade paperback.

RATING: 58%

What If...? Comics

What If... used to be a comic series published by Marvel in which various elements of comic history would be rearranged, like "What If Punisher Had Killed Daredevil," or "What If Spider-man Had Joined The Fantastic Four." It was basically an excuse to kill heroes in gruesome ways. As a kid, I bought the second volume of this comic for a while, the one published in the early 90s. In the 13 or 14 issues I have, Dr. Doom shows up in 9 of them. But I guess that was ok because Dr. Doom is awesome. Anyway, to answer all of the "What If" questions posed in every issue of this book: "The comics wouldn't have sold as well the end."

RATING: 59%

Earth X

This is a comic that takes place in an alternate future of the Marvel Comics Universe. Most of you stopped reading at "comic," I know. Anyway, it's a kind of apocalyptic sort of vision, and it's very much like Kingdom Come in that it's a nasty future with art and character design by Alex Ross, but I like this way better. Maybe because it seems more inclusive of the whole universe, or maybe because I like Marvel better, who knows but scientists or something? It's really dense, and if you're not a huge Marvel zombie you won't understand anything or care, but if your name is Bryan and I didn't already lend this to you then check it out already.

RATING: 77%