Avengers Solo #5 - Remarkably, Hawkeye convinces Iron Man to butt out. Yes, he had to shoot an arrow at him and bring up Armor Wars, but that's a pretty pleasant exchange by Marvel hero standards. Hawkeye, Trace, Emi, and Alicia use their various skills to free all the other test subjects who'd been rounded up, only to learn Dr. Forrest, rather than being some dupe or conspirator, is actually a mastermind in the whole thing. Hawkeye says the right (or wrong) thing to get Forrest's muscle to turn against him, the ship blows up, Hawkeye can't find any sign of Forrest. He did find a journal with names of all the subjects who hadn't been rounded up yet, gives it to Emi and her friends, then lies about it to his Avengers buddies. The art shifts from Roger Robinson to Declan Shalvey for the last two pages. It's a pretty severe shift, but there is a possible reason in-story for it. We'll come back to that another day.In the backup, Alkhema was a fake built by Pym as a test. That's good. It'd be pretty embarrassing for a villain who once fought off Thor, Vision, and five other Avengers to lose to Striker and Finesse. Anyway, Striker passed, Finesse, failed. She stole a piece of the CPU which she's using to design her own Ultron blueprints. Good going, Hank! Not bad enough you build your own insane murder machines (which later build other machines), now you're giving your morally suspect student a chance to do the same! Thumbs high! For some reason, Karl Kesel drew this part, after Clayton Henry drew the first four. I can't come up with a good explanation for that, other than they wanted Henry on something else and couldn't wait for him to finish five pages?
Daredevil #9 - Daredevil as the ferryman. Nice.Someone has stolen the coffin (and body) of Daredevil's father, as well as those of many other people. So Matt throws on the costume and heads down the mole hole to find Moloids. Who he pursues until they reach the Mole Man, who promptly starts ripping open coffins and dumping the remains if they don't suit him. Which pisses Matt off, and he underestimates the guy. A villain who fights the Fantastic Four probably ought to be accorded more respect by Daredevil, but he was a little stressed, so we'll let it pass. Also, Felicia has a brief debate over whether to steal the device from Matt's Adamantium (thought that stuff was expensive) safe, but it appears Murdock's prowess in bed does not count for more than a briefcase full of cash. Sorry, Matt.
Another entertaining issue of Daredevil. I like this tactic of Waid's to continuously put Matt in situations beyond his usual scope, but in a way where it makes sense for him to be involved. Also, Paolo Rivera draws the heck out of this book. He rewards the reread, as there are all these little details you don't necessarily need, but they make it more fun. There's a panel where Matt's grappling with some Moloids, one of them is simultaneously clawing DD's shoulder, and biting his billy club, and in the background we see the coffins floating away, but that part is done "radar image" style, while the Moloid is displayed regularly.
Secret Avengers #23 - Did the Beast revert back to his pre-Morrison look? The Art Adams cover says "No", but the way Hardman draws him inside says "Yes". Also, I hate this stupid movie tie-in Hawkeye costume. Sigh.I was supposed to start getting this the previous issue, but it's mostly easy to follow. The Avengers were whomped by some organic Adaptoids who kidnapped a woman and her child. Ant-Man tagged along, so the team needs to find him, the Adaptoids, and the civilians. They find them in the center of the Earth, I think. Ant-Man mentions something about it, I didn't really get that from the art, but whatever. He tries for a rescue himself, has to be saved by the lady, almost gets the kid killed, may have been killed himself. Hawkeye is strongly opposed to Venom being on his team, and is yelling at everybody. Which makes him a jerk? Because it's stupid to object to having the murderous symbiont as part of your team, I guess. Curious that Jim Hammond was talking down to Flash, too, but no one called him on that. Oh, right, he killed Hitler, which makes it OK to be smug. I'll believe he did that when I see it.
This may have been a mistake on my part. I like some of the characters (while disliking some, like Ant-Man, Venom, and Captain Britain), but I'm not certain I'm going to like how Remender writes them. I normally like Gabriel Hardman's art, but the Adaptoids did not look impressive to me. Maybe if I saw more of them in action I'd change that opinion, but they look like cobbled together, Frankstein's monster versions. What you'd get if you couldn't afford to ask AIM to build one for you, and had to go to the generic version route. A rather lukewarm response from me, all around. We'll see how it goes from here.
No comments:
Post a Comment