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The Pull List: Action Comics, Avengers, Eternity Girl, Infidel, Judas, Marvel Two-in-One, Vampironica, & more!

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The Pull List was slightly lighter this week than the past three, partially due to me not managing to pick up any additional ongoings from Marvel or DC. I made a heroic effort to catch all the way up with Doctor Strange, but fell an arc short.

This week’s comics felt a little ho-hum for me, with even typical standouts like Flash and Paradiso falling flat. However, it also brought not one but two near-perfect comics, plus one unexpectedly great debut.

Here’s The Pull List for the 14th of March, 2018. New adds to the pull list are marked with *; dropped titles are marked with #.

Artwork from Infidel #1 cover by Aaron Campbell & José Villarrubia

  • DC Comics
    • Action Comics (2016) #999
    • Batgirl and The Birds of Prey (2016) #20
    • Detective Comics (2016) #976
    • *Eternity Girl (2018) #1
    • The Flash (2016) #42
    • Mister Miracle (2017) #7
    • Sideways (2018) #2
    • Suicide Squad (2016) #37
    • Titans (2016) #21
    • Trinity (2016) #19
    • Wonder Woman (2016) #42
  • Image Comics
    • Bonehead (2018) #3
    • *#Dry County (2018) #1
    • *Infidel (2018) #1
    • Paradiso (2017) #4
    • #Sleepless (2017) #4
    • Slots (2017) #6
    • VS (2018) #2
  • Marvel Comics
    • All-New Wolverine (2016) #32
    • Astonishing X-Men (2017) #9
    • Avengers (2017) #684
    • Marvel Two-in-One (2018) #4
    • New Mutants – Dead Souls (2018) #1
    • Old Man Logan (2016) #36
    • Weapon X (2017) #15
    • X-Men: Blue (2017) #23
  • Smaller Publishers: Aftershock Comics, Archie Comics, Black Mask Studios, & Boom! Studios
    • Judas (2017) #4, Boom! Studios
    • *Come Into Me (2018) #1, Black Mask Studios
    • *Vampironica (2018) #1, Archie Comics
    • *Betrothed (2018) #1, Aftershock Comics

Before we begin, a reminder that 2.5 stars on my rating scale is an average comic book and my bell curve distribution peaks at 3/5 stars! Don’t freak out and assume a comic book is terrible because it has 2 stars. That means it’s just a hair below average (and there are a lot of those this week)

Picks of the Pull

Big Two (Marvel/DC) Pick of the Week:
Action Comics (2016) #999, DC Comics

Dan Jurgens leaves us with a truly perfect, contemplative issue of Superman that puts a wrap on his stellar Rebirth run but also addresses his writing from over 25 years ago, as beautifully rendered by artist Will Conrad and colorist Ivan Nunes.

In Metropolis, Lois is newly reunited with her estranged Army General father after saving him from execution in the last arc. It’s his first time meeting Jon (sort of), but General Lane isn’t in on the Superman secret, so he thinks Jon is a regular kid. That makes it even more tense as Lois and her father square off across the dinner table about the philosophy of Superman. Jon has never been exposed to this kind of hatred and xenophobia about his father before – which is also, by extension, aimed at him.

Meanwhile, Superman is in space dealing with a routine chore of breaking up an asteroid that will stray a bit too close to Earth for STAR Labs liking. Superman is thinking about fathers – General Lane, his own father Jor-El, as well as Zod – all of whom were tangled in the cross-time plot he just wrapped with Booster Gold.

Superman can see the errors in the ways of each of those parents and they in turn reflect his errors back upon him. Clark Kent is good-natured to a fault, but he’s not always right. General Lane isn’t entirely wrong about him – sometimes his absolute power corrupts him, both in how he metes out justice and in how he isn’t accustomed to apologizing for his actions.

As a result, Superman decides to put right two wrongs. One is with Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman, who he currently has imprisoned in the Phantom Zone. The other, eventually is General Lane. [Read more…] about The Pull List: Action Comics, Avengers, Eternity Girl, Infidel, Judas, Marvel Two-in-One, Vampironica, & more!

Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001)

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X-Men is one of the most popular comics franchises in history, and in the 90s it rode the crest of the speculator wave to over half a dozen ongoing series and at least twice that many crossover events.

However, when it comes to coverage in oversize editions, you’d think that those crossover events were all there was to X-Men in the 1990s. That’s not the case, and there are hundreds of issues outside of those events that haven’t seen oversize collection – including many that have never been reprinted.

Every one of those issues is covered in this post. Why? To give you ideas for the The Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus Secret Ballot, where you vote for the comic runs you’d most like to see in an oversized format. Yesterday I covered all of X-Men from 1963 to 1991 and how it could be collected by omnibus volumes, and tomorrow I’ll be back to cover the Morrison and Whedon era of X-Men.

There are 28 potential omnibus volumes in this material! Collected Edition mapping is a trivial pursuit (in both senses of the phrase) that is up to a lot of personal interpretation, so if you have a correction or disagreement don’t hold back – sound off in the comments below!

I think of this era as everything from X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #281 in 1991 through the end of Onslaught and continuing to the beginning of Grant Morrison’s take on the X-Men in 2001. We’ve already got a number of omnibus-sized oversize hardcovers clustered at the beginning of this era, but after Age of Apocalypse things get spotty across all of the titles.

Are you ready? (I’m not sure that you could possibly be ready.)

[Read more…] about Oversize X-Men: A map of every existing omnibus, plus what’s missing (Part 2: 1991 to 2001)

Comic Book Review: Weapon X #1 by Pak, Land, Leisten, D’Armata, & Caramanga

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One of our household’s favorite movies, The Prestige, starts and ends by explaining the steps of a magic trick.

First, comes “The Pledge,” where we are shown something ordinary. Then, comes “The Turn,” when the magician takes the ordinary and makes it do something extraordinary. The best magic comes with a third step – “The Prestige” – where you bring back the ordinary, if you can.

Comic books are a lot like magic tricks, in that way. Every new series or story arc is a Pledge based on the creators and characters you can see when its announced. What happens within its issues is The Turn. And, whether or not the story returns its many pieces to where they can be used again in the future is The Prestige.

(Some fans love a good Prestige, while others see it as a cheat – but that’s a conversation for another time.)

As comic book magic goes, the Weapon X didn’t engender much excitement in readers when it was announced a few months back. Greg Pak isn’t a high-selling author on his own, penciller Greg Land is tolerated (at best) by most fans, and the title looked and sounded like another take on X-Force with its cast of Old Man Logan, Sabretooth, Lady Deathstrike, Domino, and Warpath.Weapon_X_2017_0001

Is this book more than meets the eye?

Pak has never been a creator to give us a weak Turn. This is the man behind Planet Hulk and who used Dazzler to explore a whole multiverse of X-Men in X-Treme X-Men.

Greg Land is one of the most reliable monthly artists in Marvel’s stable, always on a standout book that are rarely destined for poor sales.

And, the cast is a mysterious mix – all hunter/killers, but without an obvious through-line between them all.

There’s going to be a major Turn here. I’m sure of it.

Weapon X (2017) #1 (digital)

Written by Greg Pak with pencils by Greg Land, inks by Jay Leisten, color art by Frank D’Armata, and letters from VC’s Joe Caramanga.

CK Says: Consider it.

Weapon X #1 is a solid opener to an intriguing new mutant mystery that feels less like a superhero comic and more like a bloody game of cat and mouse.

The mice in the game are Old Man Logan – an alternate future Wolverine stuck in our present – and his longtime foe and former fellow soldier, Sabretooth. Sabretooth had been on and off the straight and narrow recently, but this issue finds him holed up in the woods hundreds of miles from civilization.

That’s not too different from Logan’s location at the start of the issue, but the story doesn’t linger on the why of their chosen isolation. Instead, author Greg Pak quickly shifts the focus to on the cats in this game of chase.

They’re an upgraded version of the traditional half-human Reavers from the late-80s portions of Claremont’s run -regular people that are undetectable to the enhanced senses of our pair of clawed mutants, but beneath their skin these pursuers are killer robots prickling with blades.

Their sudden appearance is clearly tied to a very angry Lady Deathstrike, held in captivity in a lab that’s very interested in our other cast members.

(As for how she got there, it was teased in X-Men Prime).

Why is Deathstrike held captive? Why is a secret program out to capture Wolverine and Sabretooth? And, what do two very different mutants – Domino and Warpath – have anything to do with it? [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: Weapon X #1 by Pak, Land, Leisten, D’Armata, & Caramanga