What I Bought 6/28/2010 - Part 2

I can't think of anything to say as an introduction. I hate when that happens. More reviews.

Hawkeye and Mockingbird #1 - I suppose fondness for the old West Coast Avengers was the nudge that has me giving this a try. Our heroes stop some guys making off with a weapons shipment and run into Crossfire, who looks like a wannabe Deadshot/Bullseye. They also run into a descendant of the Phantom Rider, and she apparently holds a grudge at Mockingbird for, tarnishing her ancestor's name, I guess. Yeah, I think your ancestor did that all to himself, but she wouldn't be a villain without the ability to misplace blame, right? Just like that putz Calculator. Anyway, villain team-up looming!

I'm not sure about the whole "Bobbi Morse has been dead for 8 years" bit when Clint tried to track down Mockingbird's family. I do like Hawkeye decided to try and contact her family without her input, as that's the sort of well-meaning, but pigheaded thing he'd do. Mockingbird's goggles are kind of nifty, the fact they remind me of Catwoman's is probably due to David Lopez being the penciler. He drew Catwoman drew the Will Pfeiffer run, correct? The rest of her outfit I can pretty much take or leave, though the coat she wears during her conversation with Dominic Fortune (he's a jackass who needs an arrow taking that stupid mustache off) is nice. I think the term "boy scout" was overused in this issue. I'm sufficiently interested to keep buying it.

Power Girl #14 - Well, Winick didn't waste anytime tearing things down. Power Girl's company is broke by the end of the issue. And she didn't get Max Lord because of his stupid OMACs. I thought all those things were gone, and good riddance might I add? There's not a whole lot of other plot stuff to discuss.

OK, so first issue for the new creative team. Winick's Power Girl is definitely different. She still maintains an ability to be amused by the world around her, but she seems less mature than she did under Palmiotti and Gray. Not about the superheroing, she's intense there, but about her company, she has this attitude where she seems like she can barely care about Starrware. The dialogue says she's been in lots of meetings, but we see her trying to make her employees leave her alone when they want to talk to her. Maybe that's going to be related to Max's mind trick stuff somehow (this is me trying to give benefit of the doubt). Sami Basri's art plays into it as well, because his Power Girl looks younger than Amanda Conner's. Thinner linework is part of it, because it makes her seem more, delicate, softer to me. The colors are softer too, which mutes the impact of the art a bit. This issue didn't do anything to assuage my fears that I'll need to drop the book shortly, but I'm still prepared to give it some time.

Secret Six #22 - Great, so Roy Harper's mucking about with dead cats, and now Thomas Blake's got himself a dead rat? I assume at some point during his walk across America, Superman will be found holding a dead horse in an alley? No word on whether it will have been beaten to death.

OK, so I was wrong about who McQuarrie might be. Par for the course, as I'm now about 4 for 932 in predictions on this blog. Anyway, Blake kills the guy in the boater hat, who has electricity powers (sure, why not?), and learns why the old man did it, and then kills him. Black Alice seems to want out of the Six now, and I learned about a drawback to her power. She's not like the Parasite who gets the powers and the knowhow to use them. She just gets the powers, and has to muddle along as best she can. Which is probably not a good strategy in some cases.

Once again, Deadshot's insensitivity manages to astound me. You'd think I would learn, but nope, keep being surprised. I'm not sure I understand why the old man involved Blake in all this, if he was, as McQuarrie put it, 'unimportant'. To make a phone call, but it seems a roundabout way of doing things. As for what Blake did to Boater Hat guy, can a human mouth even open that far? Jeez, that may be the most disturbing thing I've seen in Secret Six. At the very least the most disturbing thing drawn by Calafiore in Secret Six. This month.

Thanos Imperative #1 - So beings from the Cancerverse are charging in through the Fault. They're killing the Imperial Guard, and the Inhuman Royal Family. They're also looking for beings that don't really belong, giving off weird energies, because they need the Avatar of Death. They don't know who they're looking for (psst, don't tell them it's Thanos), so they just grab anyone, including Namorita, which makes Nova do the "drop to your knees and cry out" thing. How 'bout doing the "I'm Nova Prime and I'm going to kill your many-angled asses for grabbing someone I love" thing, Rich? It's more productive. Meanwhile, Thanos (still unhappy to be alive) and some of the Guardians of the Galaxy travel into the Cancerverse to try and wreak havoc behind the lines. Except Thanos doesn't look like he'll be much help.

Well, that was fun. I do wonder if seeing the good guys fight these corrupted versions of heroes is going to get old, but if it involves Lovecraftian Puppet Iron Man getting his butt whupped, the answer is probably "No, it won't get old". I'd like to think Abnett and Lanning provide enough information as they go that even someone not following Cosmic Marvel prior to this can follow along easily enough. About the only thing I felt they didn't explain was why Namorita was one of the beings they'd be looking for, but trying to do that would have brought things to a screeching halt (unless you just say she's displaced in time. That's close enough), so probably best to just move on.

I like Miguel Sepulveda's art better here than I did in Thunderbolts. The coloring helps some, though in the fights at the Fault, there's almost too much color, all the explosions seem to be overwhelming the details, and with all the tentacle creatures, things get messy. Could be a purposeful thing, since the Cancerverse was filled to the bursting, and it's mentioned that it's pouring into the 616-reality, maybe this is supposed to be an extension of that, the energy from there overwhelming everything else (more attempting to give benefit of the doubt). Anyway, Sepulveda. I don't love the art, but it's not killing the issue like I feared. He can draw creepy looking people pretty well, and when it's a quiet moment (read: no explosions), I think the coloring helps make them more ominous, so that's nice.

OK, tomorrow the first 4 parts of a 5-part weekly series!