That pretty well sums up this week in comics for me. Things did not proceed as I expected.
Like I said yesterday, I figured Madrox to spend a couple of issues as a HYDRA Agent, being brought out of their control by his SHIELD agent dupe being reabsorbed and overwhelming the control from within. But Peter David mowed right through that little story, and left Jamie having accomplished what he originally set out to do, but not feeling all that swell about it.
Switching gears to Doctor Strange, I full expected that his battle with the Marrakant Hellguard would rage for most of the issue, if not all of it. But Brian K. Vaughn has places to go, and confrontations to tell, so it wrapped up in around ten pages, maybe less (I'm typing this at the university, thus comics are not easily referenced). Even more than how quickly Strange dispatched that opponent, was the manner Strange did it in. I still don't want to spoil it, but it's not a method I expect him to use.
But the hits kept coming. Nicodemus West isn't out to get Strange, in fact his original intent was to help him, which just so happened to lead him to an opportunity to help even more people. Or so he thought.
I'd say the thing that surprised me the most was that the man who thanked West for not being able to preserve Strange's hands, Mr. Pavlish(?), didn' turn out to be a member of the Overlords. I thought for sure one of them looked like a Mr. Pavlish that had survived his illness and regained weight, but apparently not.
And really, that's a good thing. If Pavlish is a member of the Overlords, than one can argue that this whole thing with Strange is him trying to get revenge on Stephen, by ruining his chances to help Wong. Now, it's simply people making a business decision (and possibly a bigger decision than that, absed on what West said about the elixer). It's less personal, and more dangerous somehow. This isn't a new thing, these Overlords have been handling things like this for a while. They still aren't likely to be any match for Strange, but they can't be so easily dismissed either.
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4 comments:
It's rather nice when things aren't so predictable...that the twist really does surprise you.
sallyp: Agreed.
Where as PAD really should have given the brainwashing of over forty people at one go (Jamie's limit was fouty-ish last I checked or at least last Mr. David used him) because let's face it, you just don't send someone like that to some slap-happy parent farm without explaining to us why it works so well, I fell that Mr, Vaughn gave us just enough time with the tenticle monster. As the ISB does note with glee, being Sorcerer Supreme isn't just spells and magic. Sometimes you just have to punch a dude in the face and I like that fact that not only will Strange resort to violence, he'll also go 'Ew, ick' at the end of it.
carla: I usually cut the mental type stuff slack because I figure "hey we don't understand brains, why couldn't it work?", but it was kind of weird that his parents whipping him brought him into HYDRA's control.
And you're right: Strange getting hands on is a nice thing to see, even better when he seems so unhappy about it afterwards.
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