I survived last week's deep freeze, and however many inches of snow that came with it, and so did my car battery. It did not enjoy trying to start on some of those sub-zero mornings, but it always did. Hopefully that's the last of the really crappy winter weather. I managed to find two of the three comics from the previous couple of weeks. Apparently, Marvel handed down some edict everybody has to use Taskmaster this month.
Danny speaks with the Mother of Mercy in the Heart of Heaven, who tells him he's gotta save the dragons to preserve everything or else the Hidden City will emerge. But he and the remaining Immortal Weapons won't be enough, so he has to use the portals to bring the Heavenly Cities to Earth, then get Earth's heroes to help. Fooh's already got the portal machine ready (which I feel Danny should be more concerned about), but then he activates it before they've even tried alerting the Avengers or anyone. So when the Hidden City manifests, Danny, his friends, and the other three Immortal Weapons have to go charging in themselves. Meanwhile, the Wakandans are not too stoked about this city appearing out of nowhere on their border, complete with a dragon. And the gate Danny has to keep closed is already trying to open.
Once again, Hama is wasting no time. No pages spent on a difficult trip to reach the Mother of Mercy, or on collecting items to construct the portal. They're already at the Heart of Heaven when the issue begins, and Foon's been building the machine. Which actually seems ominous, like Danny's being rushed into this, but maybe I'm just too accustomed to decompression. Hama's Bride of the Nine Spiders is also much chattier than I remember her being. But Fraction and Brubaker mostly just had her do a creepy laugh, not a lot to judge by. He also pulls out an, I think, old Shang-Chi villain, Midnight Sun. Wears a fedora and a cape over a spandex. Sure, why not?
Wachter might need to ease off on the cross-hatching around Danny's jawline. There's panels it looks like Danny's trying for a scruffy hipster look to impress Misty Knight, while at the same time his jaw just sort of disappears into his neck. More noticeable from the front than in profile. So I think in general he might want to reduce the shading and extra lines a bit, but the design for Fooh's gate is cool enough, and I like the massive door they've got to keep shut. The dragons look imposing and gigantic. Which still makes me wonder how the hell Taskmaster managed to kill one.
The kids are generating power as part of Agent Aether, and they aren't in trouble with the stupid authorities, so that's good. Then they see Taskmaster blowing something up and try to fight him. But their powers are barely functioning. Uh-oh. Still, Julie tricks Taskmaster into trying to show off so Katie can taze him through a fence and they win. Oh, the humiliation. In comparison, dumping a bucket of blood over his head is probably a good day. Leon even draws Tasky in the some position after his crash-and-burn that he drew Julie in when she goaded him by trying the move and failing. Nice touch.
The kids go see their mentor, who feigns concern and starts talking about giving some of the energy they generated back. Which Julie notes is not how that works at all. I honestly didn't know she was supposed to be this smart. But I didn't know Alex was smart enough to be in the Future Foundation either, so why not? All teen superheroes are geniuses! The kids are trapped, the Wizard drops the disguise and prepares to blow them up, Julie manages to break out of her cage and puts herself in the line of fire.
Credit to North for having the Wizard mention that hacking into the government's database to add "Agent Aether" as an approved mentor was easy because it was built by the lowest bidder. Although if my experience is anything to go by, the lowest bidder didn't even do it. They worked up a proposal, and then the agency had their extremely overworked IT people do it themselves. So it's even shittier quality than he implies! Capitalism!
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