Thunderbolts #144 This issue signifies a new beginning to the team once again. I stopped getting the Thunderbolts book about 16 to 18 months ago right after Secret Invasion ended. I did not like the direction the book was taking and decided to focus on Spider-Man and Deadpool for a while. This book picks up as they are about to reform a new Thunderbolts team with Luke Cage in charge this time around. This issue brought some familiar faces to the comic as guards in the maximum security island for people with super powers in the Marvel Universe. These included MACH V (who got an upgrade in technology once he was released) and Songbird, who got shafted by the artist in the looks department. Hank Pym was also there for some reason that I am not too sure about. I'll probably have to go through and re-read the whole book again because I was so excited to have this issue. The familiar faces to the new team include; Ghost (from the previous incarnation of the team led by Norman Osborn against the likes of Thor and other Asgardians. There's also a hold out from the Baron Zemo Thunderbolts, Moonstone. As well as newcomers to the team Juggernaut, Crossbones and for a really cool reason, Man-Thing. Professor Xavier made a personal (telepathic) case for Juggernaut to be on the team. Crossbones was included in the team because they wanted someone to run counter to Luke Cage and not be someone for the others to rally around. Man-Thing was included on the team because they needed a way to get to where they needed to go and since Hank Pym did not want to update any of the teams older vehicles, he did some research on Man-Thing's abilities and found that they could use its network of teleportation gateways to get around. The cool part was that Man-Thing and Luke Cage shook hands and Power Man's hands did not burn. It appears that Daredevil is not the only one that knows no fear. I've got to admit that Man-Thing would make a good addition to any team if you can control it. The art is by the guy who did the latest incarnations of the Marvel Zombies books and when he's not doing zombie work he can actually do some good art. The writing was good and caught the essence of the bad guy characters that want to try to go good. Although I think Crossbones is not going to go good on this team with the reputation that he has built up. This issue was an introductory issue to get all the readers on the same page so we could start the story in the next issue and what a next issue that will be. I'd give this issue four stars. It would have gotten five if the artist had not decided to change Songbird's look. Thunderbolts #145 Thunderbolts 145 picks up moments after the events in 144 in which we had the return of a former Thunderbolts leader. After some wrangling we find out that the former leader is not who he says he is and is in fact, The Fixer. It was a loyalty test to see if they would still follow him as well as to test the new nanites they had put into the prisoners. Juggernaut saw this test as his chance to escape The Raft and dove into the water, but ever since his possession by Captain Universe (in Amazing Spider-Man 629) his powers have been somewhat weakened and he had to be picked up by MACH 5. Cut to a few minutes later with Luke Cage and Fixer walking to the Infirmary to get Cage checked out from the battle earlier, and we get to meet the new warden of The Raft, the former US Agent, John Walker. We learn that after the battle for Asgard, he was given an assignment that someone in his condition could handle. We also learn that Mister Walker could have advanced Cybernetic replacements for all the limbs he had lost, but he says to Fixer that he's not going to be a Cyborg like the slime that made him that way. The final part of the book covers the teams first mission in that they are going after some enemies of the Asgard called Trolls that were being held when the city fell into Oklahoma. Three had survived and were causing havoc. This draws out Juggernaut's funny side when he asks if they are going to go after fairies and elves too. Followed by the line "Fine, I'll stomp your Hobbits." They go down to meet Man-Thing and then they teleport to where they need to go. From there the Trolls pop out of the ground and the hunt is on. After a few pages of trying to nail them down, Moonstone manages to get two thirds of them pinned under a collapsed tree and the Juggernaut comes in and ruins the whole thing. There's some kind of explosion and then we cut to Ghost who comes under attack and his suit is damaged when he is hit by an axe of the third Troll and the big reveal is made. Kev Walker does a good job with the art, and does not seem to make any egregious art errors. Everyone looks like how they should look, although Juggernaut's size seems kind of inconsistent. He's supposed to be this towering lumbering hulk of a man and sometimes he's drawn as the same height as Crossbones and other times he's taller. That is the only thing that sticks out to me. The writing is good with Jeff Parker at the helm. I've been impressed with the way that they are handling this new version of the team, and may keep this book on my list a good long while. I have an odd feeling that the slime that put US Agent in a wheelchair is going to be a threat to the team down the line. Overall it is worth the $3 cover price. Captain America #606 I picked this up because I wanted to try something new and I heard it had something to do with the return of the Big Bad we saw in Thunderbolts. I liked it, but I feel kind of hamstrung because I came in in the middle of things. The former Bucky is now the new Captain America and he's working with The Falcon which I think is the coolest thing ever. The whole tortured soul thing has been done to death in comics, but I kind of want to see what they do in this one. They did kind of spend most of the issue talking about how Captain America is trying to hurt himself, and I kind of got sick of reading about it by the end of the issue. There's the B arc in the book that has to do with the return of the big bad and I, much like the tortured soul aspect, want to see where this is going. Big Bad has at least two former teammates on his side. There's also a back-up story in the book (that's why it's $4 instead of $3.) about the new Nomad. I was a big fan of the old Nomad when I was younger and I don't think this new one is going to do the old one justice. She's a high school aged girl. The only thing that will keep me reading this is if the new Nomad is revealed to be the baby that the old Nomad was taking care of in his series. Overall it was not a bad issue. Amazing Spider-Man #633 Amazing Spider-Man #634 I broke down purchased these two, sat down and read them last night and I don't like the way this series is going. There was some pretty disturbing stuff in the Shed storyline issues; Curt Conners killing his own son as the Lizard in part three, and with this new storyline they are doing (starting with #634) with the Kravenoff family that included human sacrifice in the issue I'm not sure how long they are going to keep me as a reader. It's like Joe Q. is trying to make the book more edgy and not really succeeding. This is supposed to be a rated A book (according to Marvel's rating system) and they have those elements in the book. I'd hate to be the parent that gives these books to their child and has to answer the questions about what the Kravenoffs are doing. Overall I had more fun reading the issues of Deadpool that I needed to catch up on than these two issues of Spider-Man. Amazing Spider-Man #635 This issue is the second in the Grim Hunt storyline. Like I mentioned last week, I would be dropping this book if there was another sacrifice. Guess what, there was. I'm going ahead and dropping this book and definitely going to trades on this one. There's one thing that bothers me, Spider-Man/Peter Parker has the flu in this storyline and I hate for it to all be revealed as a fever dream. Knowing Marvel they might just do that to readers given what Joe Q has done in the past. I really do not like the format they are going to on this book. It's now $4 an issue and has two back-up stories. I could really care less about Kraven the Hunter's backstory and all the bull that had been going on before he became Kraven the Hunter. That is what the Web of Spider-Man title is for, not the main book. The art is okay. Nothing special to write home about and as always, covers can be very deceptive as this scene kind of takes place, and kind of does not. The writing on the book seems to be very cryptic and really does not tell a lot of the story. Kraven's blonde daughter seems to have this obsession with poetry that makes no sense other than that she is bat-poop crazy and keeps quoting her version of The Tyger only she calls it The Spyder. Personally Joe Kelly needs therapy if he thinks that this is a good storyline. Sacrificing supers to raise Kraven from the dead when Kraven accomplished everything he set out to do by "killing" Spider-Man and then taking his own life. Why bring him back from the dead with the blood sacrifice of Spider-Man when Spider-Man is going to be dead when Kraven is brought back from the dead? He's up there on my bad writer scale with Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison as writers that owe me money for the time I spent reading their books that made no sense.   Whatever a Spider-Can Review

Many months ago I promised you a review of the three part Deadpool storyline, Whatever a Spider-Can. I finally got around to reading and writing about them and here's my review: Issues nineteen through twenty-one of the Deadpool comic came out a few months ago and introduced us to this badass assassin that is an actual monkey. Do these three issues introduce him in any positive light or are they just another way to get you to spend three bucks an issue to introduce a new character that is going no-where fast? Issue nineteen starts off with Deadpool blowing into town and Peter Parker noticing. As Spider-Man is out doing routine patrols that night, he stops into a local convenience store to get some milk and bananas and when the owner does not respond he kicks open the door to the back of the store and finds a bloody mass shooting scene. Spider-Man then goes looking for Deadpool and finds him. After a brief fist fight in which Deadpool does not fight back the two of them decide to go to the crime scene and see what Deadpool and discern. They get there and he says that it was Hit Monkey. Hit Monkey is a legend in the assassination community because nobody really knows if he's real or not. Spider-Man does not believe Deadpool that a monkey hit man could have done all the carnage in the room. Deadpool also reveals that the Hit-Monkey does not just blow into town and kill one person; instead he comes to do multiple jobs at once. After Deadpool asks a question of Spidey, he comes to realize that the Hit-Monkey is after him (Deadpool) too. Issue twenty picks up where nineteen left off and has Deadpool asking Spider-Man whether or not they could hang out at his Spider-Cave. Deadpool admits to the voices in his head that he is scared of the hit monkey, and Spidey leaves him to fend for himself. There's an interlude where a couple of cops are looking at a crime scene. Then after some non-story points are revealed the Hit-Monkey kills the two crooked cops, and then we are back to Spidey and Deadpool. Spider-Man comes back from his night out web slinging and tells Deadpool that he believes that he did not kill the shop keeper. After an exchange of quips by the two of them Spidey realizes that the monkey hit-man followed him to where Deadpool was laying low. After a Scrubs like fantasy sequence we get back to reality and they spend time dodging the monkey's shots before the monkey accidentally shoots Spider-Man and it realizes it has done something rather rash and drops his guns. Unfortunately Deadpool does something rash and gets himself shot up. Issue twenty-one picks up when Spider-Man has taken Deadpool to the Fantastic Four to get healed by Reed Richards. After they leave the Four Freedoms Plaza they go to a hotel and get changed. Deadpool waits after Spider-Man changes into a fresh costume and goes to the restroom where he swipes Spidey's old costume and escapes out the window. The next day we learn that Spider-Man is dead and they are having a public memorial service for him. Peter Parker and a co-worker from the newspaper he works for go to the wake and find the Hit-Monkey has arrived. Parker yells "GUN!" and the police get the place emptied before Deadpool pops out of the coffin and we have a face off. The police get their backsides handed to them and then the monkey starts taking shots at Deadpool with their guns. Spider-Man manages to restrain the monkey and then Deadpool decides that the only way out of the situation is death and they both take an Uzi that Deadpool had and that Spidey had bent the barrels on and pull the trigger. Deadpool is taken to Rikers Island and is broken out by Spider-Man. Spidey says that Deadpool should get out of town and as far away as he can. We also learn something about the monkey that sets up the transition to his own series. The interior art on all three issues was done by Carlo Barberi and the cover art on all three was done by Jason Pearson. Barberi really does a good job capturing the essence of both Deadpool and Spider-Man given that both of them are wearing masks a good chunk of the time. The eyes on Spider-Man's mask in some scenes are very expressive and act almost like regular eyes. My only complaint with his art is that the women he draws come across as a little mangaish in the face and this makes them look kind of vacant and soulless. Pearson also gives a good show with the covers on the book although I must say that comics are suffering these days from bad covers. It used to be in the 80's that a cover was usually something that might happen in the book and that made you want to buy it. Now covers are just a way to show off. The cover for nineteen seems plausible after you read the issue, but twenty and twenty-one just seem to out there. On the cover of issue twenty it has an explosion and there is not an explosion in sight that entire issue. Twenty-one makes it look like they are going to have a final confrontation in some sort of dance club, when they don't. The writing, done by Daniel Way, seems okay to me. No-one is written really out of character and all the events seem kind of plausible in the Marvel Universe. There are just some jumps in logic that you have to look past, but it is a comic book and if you can't look past some of those jumps in logic then you are just a giant stick-in-the-mud and need to get out more. Deadpool #22-$2.99 Deadpool #23-$2.99 The first of these issues, 22, has Deadpool leaving town and heading into the deep south. The bus he's riding on gets robbed and after getting jolted by someone named White Lightening he wakes up and finds the radio that was left by one of the robbers. Turns out the robbers were the local Sheriff's Department. Deadpool walks into the Sheriff's Department and takes over the place after taking down the incompetent redneck at the department. The head of the department sends Deadpool off to kill some moonshiners that were the ones that robbed the bus as well. Instead of killing them they are busted by the Georgia ATF and Deadpool is let go the next day while the entire sheriff's department is locked up. Issue 23 has Deadpool going to Las Vegas to talk to a gentleman about badmouthing him on national television. Deadpool causes an incident with a portable oxygen tank and the man's security buzzer that I still can't wrap my head around. The guy running the casino has a super powered person on his side that somehow manages to capture Deadpool and then Deadpool decides to offer him more money than he's getting doing casino security to team up. We cut to a battle started by a guy in a bear suit that just happens to be a super and is robbing the casino. They fight for a while and on the last page it has Deadpool talking to Grizzly man about making a deal. These issues were much better than the previous issues with the "Hitman Monkey" storyline. I'm eagerly waiting for next month when we find out what Deadpool's plan is. Deadpool #24 Deadpool has hit the two year mark and has branched out into four or five different titles in that time. The two year issue picks up where issue 23 left off; with Deadpool in Vegas hanging out with some super that is supposed to be defending the casinos. The Grizzly is still around and is taking aim at said casinos on the strip. There was nothing explained about what happened after the end of the last issue and this one so that is a minor strike in the book, but it is better than the latest issues of Amazing Spider-Man. Deadpool is engaging in trickery to get what he wants. What he wants appears to be to have this cush job to himself while removing his friend and his power armor from the equation. He tricks everyone watching the latest battle into thinking that the armor that Deadpool was wearing was the one that went crazy and stole money from the casinos while in real life they had swapped armor. So Deadpool was in his buddy's armor while his buddy was in Deadpool's armor. There's one more part to this storyline and I just don't see where they can go from here unless they are setting up some confrontation between the three of them (Deadpool, his buddy and The Grizzly) in which case I can see that happening. Otherwise it is just another bridge that has been burned. This is supposed to be part of the Heroic Age that Marvel is doing, but I see nothing heroic about it unless it is all about taking out false heroes. I just hope they have an explanation of everything that has gone in the last issue of this arc otherwise I'm going to be lost and confused. Rogues' Revenge Trade Review The Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge trade covers the three issues of the limited series of the same name as well as has back up stories from a few modern issues of The Flash. Up until now, I read this book I knew very little about The Flash's rogues gallery. Sure I knew about Pied Piper and Trickster because of what I had read in Countdown weekly series, but Captain Cold and the others I had no idea about. May I just say that I love stories about bad guys. I don't know if it is because I have read so many stories about good guys and I'm just looking for something new, or if these books were written so well that I actually wanted to see something happen with them. I ultimately think that I liked this book so much because it is about redemption. In the first issue, the Rogues have been on the run for about a year when the book starts and return to Central City looking to redeem themselves for killing The Flash. Libra (the big bad of Final Crisis) wants them under his control for some reason and they are not having any of it. Libra sends them a message that the "New" Rogues have Captain Cold's father and will kill him of they do not join Libra. Captain Cold swears that they are going to kill the "New" Rogues and then going to kill his father. You see when Captain Cold was young his father was a raging alcoholic and beat him, his sister and mother. When his mother dies he runs away and joins a gang in Central City and this is where he has his first encounter with The Flash. In the second issue the old rogues go after the "New" Rogues and kill them all. The old ones had a leg up on the new ones because they have both skill with their weapons and costumes that help them out. Cold then finds his father and has Heat Wave kill him. With the new ones all killed they are now the Rogues again and are back in action. They go up to a observatory and track Zoom and his new sidekick Inertia. Because what they planned to do all long when they came back to Central City was to kill Zoom. Libra's plan looks like it had backfired, but he had one Ace in the hole, he has Weather Wizard's young boy and will make them an offer they cannot refuse or kill the baby. The third issue has the Rogues facing off against Zoom and Inertia as well as facing Libra. Inertia breaks from Zoom and kills Weather Wizard's kid as well as helps delay Libra as Pied Piper shows up and does his best to stall Libra as well, but takes Libra's staff in the shoulder. Ultimately Inertia (now Kid Zoom) taps into the Speed Force and turns back Zoom's clock to the time he was in a wheelchair. The Rogues then remove Kid Zoom (Inertia) from the equation and after some blah-blahing with Libra they disappear and Libra is without his beloved Rogues and this is another thread that has unraveled in his plan. There are also two stories from the pages of The Flash that kind of fill in things about what was going on in the three parter. One is a story about Captain Cold getting revenge for the death of his sister, by someone who has stolen one of his cold guns, and the other is about Zoom. Both are by Geoff Johns and I really liked the Captain Cold one, and the Zoom one not so much. Geoff Johns is the writer of the three part Rogues Revenge limited series and I must say, if his other work is half as good as this work I need to read more by him. The story takes us into the mind of Captain Cold and the rest of the Rogues as they go through the whole thing with Libra and the "New" Rogues. The Rogues code of conduct is one of the things that is mentioned throughout the first issue and then they stick with it for the rest of the issues. The artist on the books is Scott Kolins and I must say that outside a random panel here and there he does a fantastic job with the art. There are panels here and there that to me just seem a little too unfinished to be in a major book in your big cross over event of the year, but you can look past that when you see how well of a job he does with the rest of the books. Overall this one is definitely worth picking up at full price.

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