So, What comics did you buy this week?

[Tom Foolery]

The “Marvel” books. Well, most of them. Haven’t read some of the newer stuff like Snapshots and Marvels X because they’re still coming out.

Marvel Comics 1000. An ambitious oneshot that celebrated 80 years of Marvel Comics by having a different writer and artist do each page of an 80 page story. Each page corresponded to a year and each page had something roughly to do with a character that debuted that year, or something significant that happened publishing wise. The ambitious part is that the entire thing is still telling one narrative story of a secret ongoing conflict between a group of nefarious scientists and the wielder of a magic mask called the Infinity Mask worn by different heroes thru time. Pretty cool, actually.
It was so well received, there was a sequel issue;

Marvel Comics 1001. Which seemed to be comprised of pages that didn’t make the final cut for the first issue, but Marvel was loathe to not share with its readers for an additional $5. It was a mixed bag.

Marvel Comics Presents 1-9. Marvel attempted another relaunch of their anthology title, but it didn’t even make it a year. Each issue had three stories in it. The first story was a chapter serial starring Wolverine chasing down a demon released during WWII and stopping it from invading our reality every ten years with the aid of a Family of Witches whose descendants are responsible for keeping the demon at bay. Eventually one of the Witches turns out to be Logan’s daughter who hasn’t really shown up in anything else.
The second story in each book was a take on “The World Outside our Window” maxim that Stan Lee proclaimed. So stories told about real world events that didn’t get told the first time around. For example, Namor dealing with Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII in issue 1, Reed Richards and the Cold War space race in issue 2, Nightcrawler at the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tony Stark during the 2000’s recession etc.
The third story focused on a character that debuted in the decade in Marvel’s history corresponding to that issue. Issue 1, the 40s;Captain America, issue 2, the 50s; Gorilla-Man, issue 3; 60’s Spidey, 70’s Moon Knight, 80’s Venom, 90’s Dan Ketch Ghost Rider etc.
unfortunately, the book was supposed to go at least 12 issue and only made it to 9, so they had to truncate the Wolverine story and wrap up 4 issues worth of storytelling into one issue. But the thematic idea of the series itself was kinda cool. New EiC CB Cebulski trying new things.

Marvel Knights 1-6. The 20th Anniversay of the MK imprint when Quesada and Jemas got to play with underselling toys and eventually earned them the EiC and President roles that turned the company around. The premise of this series is that Heroes of the world are all waking up and they are living normal lives in a world with no superheroes or villains. But something is off and Bruce Banner is approaching “former” heroes like Frank Castle and Matt Murdock and ‘waking’ them so they can figure out how the entire world has been bamboozled. They recruit MK mainstays Elektra, Black Widow, T’Challa etc to get to the root of the mystery. It turns out they used the Forgetty Machine that Reed Richards used to make everyone forget the Sentry when he was first introduced, so the heroes destroy the machine and everything goes back to normal, but then they’re all like ‘Wait is this better....?’

Marvel Rising 1-5. The second Rising miniseries. The Young Heroes Marvel is promoting with this brand (Ms Marvel, Squirrel Girl, America Chavez, Spider-Gwen, Miles, etc) team up to fight Morgan LeFay when she gets trapped in our time and uses her magic to make the trash in the Hudson River come alive and attack everyone. It was an alright read, but not very memorable. Except the cover to issue 4. See above.

Marvel Team-Up 1-6. Another revival attempt. This one only lasted six issues. The first three had Ms Marvel and Spidey team up to fight the Jackal, who’s trying to steal a machine that can copy peoples personalities and download them into new bodies. The machine explodes and Kamala and Peter get body swapped in the process. Hilarity ensues as they try to stop the bad guy while using each other’s powers and living their secret IDs lives for each other.
The second three issues had Ms Marvel and Captain Marvel teaming up to stop the Kree from trying to klll Dr Walter Lawson, the ‘dead’ guy that the original Mar-Vell stole his identity when he originally came to earth.

Marvel Voices. A oneshot that gives minority creators a chance to tell stories featuring a variety of Marvel Characters. Most of the “stories” were only two pages long, so it was difficult to gage whether they were any good at actual storytelling. Honestly, it was a chore to slog thru, but I respect the intent Marvel was going for in the attempt.

Next up, Spider-Geddon! And possibly a bunch of other Spider-related stuff. There’s been a lot of Spidey mini series in the last couple years.

[Tom Foolery]

As promised, Spider-Geddon! The Spider-Event sequel to the Spider-Verse event from a couple years ago.

Edge of Spider-Geddon 1-4. Prequel series follows the adventures of 4 Spiders who will play a part in the upcoming event. The first two issues follow Spider-Punk and Sp//dyr Peni Parker on what they’ve been up to in between the two events. The third issue follows Spider Ben and Petey(what if both Uncle Ben and Peter had gotten spider powers?) and the fourth issue follows a Norman Osborn who is the Spider-Man on his world.

Superior Octopus oneshot. After the events of the Clone Conspiracy and Secret Empire, the cloned Otto is trying to turn over a new leaf as the premier hero of San Francisco. But he’s using the Inheritors cloning tech and it’s allowed them a backdoor to escape the radiated world they were trapped on at the end of Spider-Verse.

Spider-Geddon 0. Technically this story takes place between issues 2 and 3 of the main series, but Marvel wanted to promote their new Sony Spider-Man game and this is the first comic appearance of that Spidey as Otto recruits him into the Spider army.

Spider-Geddon 1-5. The main event! The Inheritors use Otto’s stolen clone tech to duplicate themselves out of the radiation prison they were trapped in. Morlun immediately sets off to find 616 Peter(I read those issues of Spectacular Spidey like three years ago). The rest of the Inheritors attack the gathered Spideys and kill Spider UK and Spider Noir before escaping. Verna heads back to Loomworld and kills her brother Karn. The remaining Spiders split into two camps, one led by Otto advocating killing the Inheritors. The other led by Miles arguing against killing. They go off and we get a couple mini-series tie-ins...

Spider-Force 1-3. Kaine, Jessica Drew and a few other Spiders go back to the radiated world to find/destroy the crystal housing the Inheritor’s father Solus before they can retrieve it and bring him back to life. Jessica inadvertently brings it right to them.

Spider-Girls 1-3. This mini is a sort of coda to the Renew Your Vows ongoing, as Mayday Parker and Anya Corazon head to the RYV alt universe and recruit Spidey, MJ, and Annie. They also discover that Annie is the “Patternmaker” the fourth totem(after the Bride, Scion, and Other from the first event) and eventually return for the main final battle.

Vault of Spider 1-2. An anthology book of short stories featuring different Spideys from various timelines. old west Spidey, Aunt May Spidey, etc.

in the grand finale, the two Spidey camps compromise and join together, Miles gets the Captain Universe powers and uses Supaiderman’s Leopardon giant mech suit and its victory sword to destroy the reincarnated Solus and Otto re-clones all the Inheritors in infant bodies so they can grow up normal without their father’s influence. But Loomworld and the Web of Destiny is destroyed so no one can jump between dimensions anymore except...

Spider-Gwen:Ghost Spider 1-10. In the initial battle, Spider-Gwen sacrifices herself so the other Spidey’s can escape, but she gets shunted to an alternate universe where Harry was Spider-Man and Gwen became the Green Goblin, so she needs to help that world’s Peter and MJ save Gwen so Gwen can build her new dimension hopping Webwatch. After Spider-Geddon, Gwen is the only one who can dimension hop, so she has to arrange all the funerals of the Spideys who died.
Issues 6-10 are Gwen trying to slip back into her normal life after she did prison time and her secret identity is now public knowledge. By the end of the series she decides she’s going back to school in the 616 where her identity is still secret.

There was also a subplot in Spider-Geddon where the Norman Osborn Spider-Man from Edge 4 was going to become a bigger problem now that he knew the multiverse existed, and for one panel it was revealed that Mayday’s father was “The Other” for this cycle and he had returned to life. But that’ll be in Spider-Verse 3 or whatever it’s called when it comes out.

Oh also, there was a Spider-Geddon Handbook oneshot that accompanied the event with entries on all the various Spider-Men, Inheritors, Web Warriors, etc. And pages and pages and pages of alt universe Spideys. Like, holy shit, there’ve been A LOT of Spider-Men.

So, next up, gonna keep reading Spider-Man. The next Spider-Gwen ongoing, Otto’s ongoing, and the Friendly Neighborhood ongoing. All three were short runs.

[jjreason]

And I though Spider-Verse was confusing - that movie only lasted about 90 minutes.

[Tom Foolery]

More Spidey stuff!

Ghost-Spider 1-8, Annual 1. Spider-Gwen officially adopts her new codename(but retains the Legacy numbering from her three previous series, so issue 51). Gwen is going to college in the 616-verse, but living in her regular dimension where her identity is now public after she went to prison. How exactly do the credits transfer between dimensions? Anyway, she gets noticed by Miles Warren in the 616 because he is teaching under an assumed name at Empire State University( and apparently nobody recognizes him for the creepy super villain that he is) and as you all remember, Warren has an unhealthy obsession with Gwen. So he follows her back to her dimension and teams up with his doppelgänger there, but then he backstabs and kills his alt-twin before Gwen’s bffs show up and help defeat him. The second arc started with the Storm Twins, who were ‘influencers’ in her world came back after being missing for five years after a trip to Latveria. But the series got Covid-canceled (there might be an issue 9 floating around digitally.)
The Annual might have actually dropped in between the end of the last series and the start of this one. Gwen gets stuck in a booby-trapped Murderworld building that Arcade set for the real Spider-Man, and she has to escape.

FCBD 2019 Spider-Man. A short Venom story that sets up the Carnage Unleashed event from last fall. And a backup story where Peter and Miles team up to defeat Shocker, but also argue about the best pizza joint in NYC.

Spider-Man Annual 1. Not sure which series this is an annual for. It’s pretty much just a Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham oneshot.

Superior Spider-Man 1-12. Otto has set up shop in San Francisco at the new Horizons Lab under his new pseudonym and is protecting SF as the new Spider-Man. But his ex, Anna Marie Marconi, who works at Horizon figures him out like halfway thru the first issue. At first she’s going to turn him in, but after he saves the city from TerraX the Tamer, she reluctantly gives him the benny and starts helping him fight crime. Then he teams up with Dr Strange to fight Master Pandemonium for a couple issues, then teams up with the West Coast Avengers to tie-in with War of the Realms for a couple issues. In the final arc, the evil Norman Osborn Spider-Man from Spider-geddon attacks, threatening to destroy everything Otto cares about. He feels like the shared morality he got from Peter while they shared a body is holding him back, so he goes to Mephisto and makes a deal to get his own body and personality back. Classic Otto easily defeats Osborn, but the Superior Spider-Man is finished. Doc Ock has returned.

Friendly Neighborhood Spidey 1-14. Tom Taylor started a second Spidey ongoing that focused mainly on Spidey’s ‘neighborhood’ and introduced a bunch of characters living in his apartment building. Including an old lady who was a 40’s era super hero called The Rumor, but still fights crime and The exiled princess of secret city at the core of the Planet called Under York and her two children. There was also an ongoing subplot about Aunt May getting breast cancer and going to chemo throughout the series. Mary Jane got her own issue. The Prowler and the Fantastic Four guest starred. Over all, it was a pretty solid short ongoing series.

I was gong to read Miles’ current ongoing series, but as it’s still ongoing, I might wait. I might read it up until the current ‘Outlawed’ story break, but first I’m going to dive into all the Spidey minis from the past couple years. The Gamer-Verse, a couple of Symbiote era minis written by Peter David, one about Spidey’s history happening in real time, each issue was a “decade” of Spidey aging in real time from the 60’s to the present, and some others.

[jjreason]

I recently read what I had from Absolute Carnage including that FCBD issue & it didn't do much for me. I sold everything I had from the current volume (including JJAbrams never to be finished limited series).

[Tom Foolery]

Pffft. It’s not even JJAbrams. It’s his kid writing it, but they threw his name on there to sell more issues.

[jjreason]

Yeah, I lost interest. I did keep my #1 with this cover though.

[Diabolical]

I was wondering if I missed some issues.
Good to know I didn't, I guess.

[jjreason]

Looks like Sept 23 is the most recent date for issue 4. Any guess is as good as another for the last issue.

[Tom Foolery]

Back with more Spidey books!

Spider-Man:City at War 1-6. The first “Gamerverse” mini is pretty much a straight adaptation of the main story arc of Sony’s Spidey game. There were some minimal changes, like a brief battle with Swarm that was sort of mentioned in the background dialogue during one of JJ’s radio rants, and they may have fleshed out Miles’ story a little more. I had forgotten May dies at the end. Holy shit, that was emotional.

Spider-Man:Velocity 1-4. The Gamerverse sequel where Spidey is fighting a new villain with super speed and designs a new costume to help combat her. And, uh, this was a five issue series and I somehow missed the fifth issue. Whoops!

Spider-Man:The Black Cat Strikes 1-4. This Gamerverse mini adapts the DLC arc(which I haven’t played...yet) about a war between Black Cat and Hammerhead. This series got COVID cancelled after the third issue, but then Marvel reversed and issue 4 came out last month and issue 5 sometime soon.

Spider-Man:Life Story 1-6. Reimagines Spidey’s story if it took place in “real time” over the course of the last 60 years. Each issue is a ‘decade’ watching Peter age up. It was okay.

Spider-Man 1-3. The JJAbrams book, but not really. Abrams basically used his clout to get Marvel to hire his son to write a Spidey book and they agreed on the condition they could put his name on the cover to sell books. After MJ dies, Peter quits being Spidey, and years later his son finds out he has powers and becomes the new Spider-Man. Yawn. There’s two issues left that haven’t come out yet.

Symbiote Spider-Man 1-5. Peter David and David Land tell new stories that supposedly fit retroactively into the original continuity immediately after Peter got the Black Costume. This first series deals with Mysterio figuring out Peter’s new costume is alive.

Symbiote Spider-Man:Alien Reality 1-5. The sequel series has Spidey and Dr Strange teaming up to stop Baron Mordo who has stolen a macguffin book that can rewrite reality. Both of these series were pretty good, as Peter David has the hindsight of thirty years of continuity and is a pretty clever writer.

Next up, even more Spidey! Marvel likes putting out Spider stuff. Apparently he’s like a cash cow for them or something.

[Tom Foolery]

End of the Spider-stuff(for now)!

Spider-Man Noir 1-3. There still two more issues to go. But Spidey Noir gets roped into some pre-WWII espionage and has to head to Europe to fight Nazis and solve some mystery or something.

Spider-Man:Reptilian Rage. A oneshot set around the time Peter had just started college where he has to fight Curt Connors again. Not sure if this is supposed to be in continuity or if it was an inventory issue that Ralph Macchio wrote or what. It was mediocre.

Spider-Man:Self Improvement. The backstory for this oneshot is cooler than the actual story. Back in the 80’s a fan wrote a story pitch for Spidey getting a new black costume(before the black costume was introduced in Secret Wars). It never got past the pitch phase, but all these decades later, Peter David dusted off the pitch, reworked it into something readable and Viola! a 2019 $5 oneshot.

Spider-Man: Enter The Spider-Verse. A oneshot that came out to coincide with the Spider-Verse movie. Usually these are in their own continuity, or in the movie’s continuity, but since the nature of the narrative is the multiverse, it’s just a bunch of the multiverse Spidey’s teaming up to fight an alt-universe Sinister Six.

Spider-Verse 1-6. Sort of a half-anthology, half follow up to Spider-Geddon where Miles and Spider-Zero team up to find Annie May, who is the new Weaver/Caretaker of the Web of Destiny. They bounce around and we get new issues and stories of Peni and Sp//dr, Spidey Noir, Spidey UK etc. There was also a cool back up feature where fans contributed their own “Spidersonas” fanmade Spider-Characters, and these because the recruited Spider Army in the final issue.

Spider-Woman 1-3. The new ongoing that just started. Jessica starts a side hustle as the bodyguard for the daughter of a pharmaceutical magnate. The CEO gives Jessica an injection so she has the same disease as his daughter so that she will be forced to help him find a cure. The injection starts fucking with her powers and then they head to Wundagore Mountain where she finds out her mother is still alive, the CEO is her long lost brother, and the daughter is her niece.

and I finished up the Hawkeye:Freefall mini and the Ghost Spider ongoing that got Covid cancelled but they released the final two issues of each.

Hawkeye 5-6. After Bulleye kills Hawkeye’s Skrull sidekick and his tech sidekick guy, Clint has to accept help from Kingpin and Count Nefaria to defeat The Hood. Rosenberg can write some decent funny dialogue when he wants to.

Ghost-Spider 9-10. Gwen teams up with new super heroes Sue and Johnny Storm, who just showed up after having been missing for five years. They kill their own mother, then blackmail/bully Gwen into letting them be the new heroes of NYC and she just GOES ALONG WITH IT and that’s how the series ended. What the shit??

Hmmmm...next up, I think I’m gonna dive into Thor and War of the Realms.

[Tom Foolery]

I’ve been getting the Alex Ross “Timeless” Variant covers. Last week I got the Namor cover on Empyre Aftermath.
This week I got the Hulk, Iron Man, and Storm covers.
Didn’t get the Captain America one because my guy only orders one copy of Cap(I guess it sells poorly) so he only had one copy with the regular cover.
Now watch, now that I’m invested in getting them all, they’ll dry up and I won’t be able to find the rest of them.

There’s 14 this month, and another 14 next month.

[jjreason]

I picked up Hulk & put it back because I'd be disappointed if I regularly bought the book & some fat idiot bought the only variant copy right before I came to the store. Yes, I really thought that. The Iron Man 1 variant was there as well & looked great. Another #1 apparently which is right on time because it has been well over 2 months since the last Iron Man #1.

Anyhow, my first 4 new comics in a good few weeks were X-Men & Marauders 11 & 12 respectively.

[Tom Foolery]

Not a big enough score to put in the Big Score topic. Went out of town to a wedding this weekend and popped into a couple of the LCS while I was there.

First shop I got
the Timeless variant Cap issue
DarkNights:DeathMetal 3. The Artgerm Supergirl variant.
Marauders 5. The one issue I had missed.
Spider-Man:Hypervelocity 5.
Batman/Outsiders 10. Another one I had missed.
Flash 61-63, 70. Variant covers filling the holes in my current Flash run.

The other place I got
Jessica Jones:Blindspot 6. The final issue I had missed. It was the variant cover, but oh well.
Flash 50, 52, 55. More variants to fill in the run.
Batman 51 variant cover. For some reason I was getting the variants, then switched back to the regular covers for like 10 issues, so I’m trying to track down those issues from King’s run.

[Tom Foolery]

War of the Realms!!

But since I started with Thor, I grabbed the small smattering of Thanos books directly in front of them in the box and read those also.

Thanos Legacy oneshot. This was a tie-in to the Infinity Wars prelude, but was not branded as such, otherwise it would’ve been in the ‘I’ box. It’s basically a bridge issue catching up with Thanos after the end of his last ongoing when he traveled into the future to undo his future self’s plan for universal domination. He came beck to the present, and set himself up as Warlord of the Chitauri and was planning some new nefarious shenanigans and then IW happened and he got his head chopped off by Gamora/Requiem.

Thanos 1-6. A retelling(or expansion or retcon) of the story of how Thanos recruited Gamora as a child. I’ve never actually read the original story of her origins, I’ve only ever read recaps/flashbacks in later issues, but since they added Proxima Midnight, Ebony Maw, and other characters I KNOW weren’t in the original story, I’m gonna assume there’s some liberal retconning going on here. Basically Gamora was seeing “Death” which Thanos believed made her special and started grooming her, but the entire thing was a ruse by the Magus to make Thanos look weak in front of his crew. But eventually Gamora lived up to expectations. There’s also a subplot with a child Magus that may be something from the recent/current Guardians books with Gamora being his caretaker and telling him the story as a flashback. I’m not up on current GotG series.

Thor 1-4. After Jane Foster sacrificed Mjolnir at the end of her series, Thor is back in the new ongoing. The 4th or 5th since Jason Aaron started writing Thor. Everything has been leading to the War of the Realms for the last few years. In the first arc, Thor and Loki go to Niffleheim to recruit all the dead who reside in Hel to help them defeat Malekith. Balder is currently the King of Hel and is fighting an invasion by Surtur’s daughter from Muspelheim. In order to secure the help of the undead in Hel, an arranged marriage between Balder and Hela is proposed, but the recently deceased Karnilla makes a bargain to return her beloved Balder back to the living and takes his place in the ceremony. So Karnilla and Hela get hitched.
5-6 was a two parter set in the very far future and the end of the universe. Thor fights Old Man Phoenix(Logan with the Phoenix force) then they return to Earth to stop an ancient Dr Doom rockin the Iron Fist, the Ghost Rider, the Starbrand, and the Sorcerer Supreme powers.
7 was a tale set in the past where Thor falls in love with a Viking chick.
8-9 has Thor and Valkyrie invade Heven to rescue his sister Angela and confirm that the Angels have sided with Malekith.
10-11 had the story closing in on the War of the Realms with stories focusing on Odin and Freyja, Thor’s parents.

Next up is A LOT of War of the Realms stuff. The main series, soooo many tie-ins(and I’m not even counting the tie-ins from the regular ongoing books at the same time) and one shots. Then I’ll pick up with Thor 12 until the end of that series, as well as Aaron’s final mini King Thor...but seriously, the WotR stack is like over 30 issues worth of reading. Yeesh.