If you judged this book by its cover, you'd be absolutely right: it kicks ass.

For the last few months, Marvel has released a series of one shots, collectively called “The List,” in which Norman Osborn enacts devious plots against various heroes in the Marvel Universe. Each issue has been a self-contained story, and for the most part, they have all been rather enjoyable. This week saw the release of the best one to date, which stars Wolverine.

As novel an idea as it may be for Wolverine to star in a comic </sarcasm>, I was more intrigued by the guest stars of this issue: Noh-Varr and Fantomex. Both characters were created by Grant Morrison, and have either been mishandled or ignored completely since Morrison left for DC a few years ago. It’s good to see writer Jason Aaron take these characters (as well as other concepts from Morrison’s X-Men run) and use them to craft one of the most fun comics I’ve read in a long time. This comic has tons of action and is funny as hell. All of the characters get some great lines, particularly Osborn.

Not only does this comic contain a great story, but like a good DVD, it has plenty of bonus features, including Marvel Universe entries for Fantomex and Marvel Boy, and a short Wolverine story written by Aaron earlier in his career.

Highly recommended. You get a lot of bang for your 4 bucks here.

More info on what’s reviewed after the jump!
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More info on what’s reviewed after the jump!
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Bullseye gets a Hawkeye mini, and Ms. Marvel’s title has been taken over by Moonstone. Ares is conquering various books and has his own three issue Dark Avengers tie-in on the way. Hell, even Wolverine Jr is series-jacking one of his old man’s titles.

the sinister spider-crotch

In all these offshoots, the titular hero saves the mission, if not the day, and makes the other Dark Avengers who show up in that scene look like chumps.

But what about poor ol’ Mac Gargan, aka Venom? He doesn’t have any beef with the jerks he works with; all he wants to do is punch who he’s told to punch and maybe do a little good in the world. Sure, maybe get the girl. Maybe show some people that you can’t keep a good Gargan down.

Maybe eat your face.

I’ve been too busy getting bingo on my celebrity death pools to watch the recent solicits, so Sinister Spider-Man #1 was a welcome surprise. Chris Bachalo’s cover really does drag your face in and nibble on it quit a bit. Once inside, it’s mean and fun mean and whispers creepy promises of fast, modern, pulpy goodness.

The first issue delivers the goods while still setting us up for the rest of the four-issue run. This oh-so-Sinister Spider-Man has all the set pieces of his Amazing counterpart – JJJ, Osborn, Six goons who are fairly Sinister in their own right, and lots and lots of girls.

Well, ok, skanks and whores. This is Mac Gargan, after all.
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I don’t know what the hell Marvel is doing with Wolverine, but whatever. We’re waiting on Old Man Logan, which is Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s god-send-child about Wolverine in the future that has been extremely delayed for reasons I couldn’t even tell you and all of a sudden Marvel decides they’re going to simply stop with that series, sum it all up in one issue, #72 has to be the last issue even though it’s part 7 of 8, and just jump into this new Wolverine story that appears to be a one shot in two issues but will somehow transition us into Dark Wolverine.

Let me take a deep breath quickly.

Wolverine #73 was a good pair of mini-stories which begins what appears to be the last two arcs of the Wolverine title before it is taken over by Dark Wolverine. After the break, I’ll divulge my feelings over it all.

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Hello, all. I’ve been away for some time, both due to an influx of schoolwork and just being to damn poor to support a budding comics habit. But I have been keeping up with my comic book adaptations, which in many ways is more unfortunate than suffering from a broken economy. Many Americans have flocked to the cineplexes in these hard times, as they always do, looking for a bit of escape from a harsh world. Yet when I sat through Watchmen at a midnight screening in March, I was suddenly reminded of how good I have it. Not because of the stark dystopia and the amoral wasteland it depicted, but because it so thoroughly missed the point that I was looking forward to getting back to my world of scraping together money to try to stay in school, pay the rent and feed myself, all while trying to land some sort of job. Synder’s screwed-pooch enraged me so much that, after I wrote a review for my school paper and came here to make my triumphant return with a more fleshed-out (papers have word limits, you know) takedown of why the film so completely let me down. Suffice to say: it knew the steps but not the rhythm, and so it lurched about like a wino with an inner ear infection, occasionally careening into the right tone but too often gazing at the inside of its navel by shoving its head up its ass (to mix metaphors poorly). But never mind that dismal failure, because I’m here to discuss the latest comic book extravaganza, the summer-starting X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
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It’s been a slow month here at DestroyTheCyb.org but nevertheless I wanted to get out a review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine sometime with a week of it’s release. Let me explain things in a fashion that I feel will work best: TPKC.

Theory: Going into the movie, I’d heard but not seen things from leak and I had low expectations given the few people I knew who had watched the leaked video. Of course, I’m a monster comic book fan, if you didn’t already know, so I knew my Wolverine origin from that aspect and even so, I knew that a movie couldn’t capture every line, ink, and letter of the comics. With that said, I still was going in with low expectations especially since X-Men: The Last Stand had me holding vomit in my mouth and I could only think that Fox was going to make me nearly puke once again. But I digress, I was going in thinking the movie could only be better than what I was thinking…

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So I wrote last month’s X-centric thinking, “Hey, why not?” and now I feel like I should just do this because I want to please. Is that so wrong? I love me some X-Men and there’s nothing more that I like to do outside of review the comics they are in.

Anyways, this month we’re missing an X-title from the last post: X-Force–it comes out THIS week (the 22nd)– but we still had four comics to read:

1. Uncanny X-Men #508
2. X-Men: Legacy #223
3. X-Factor #42
4. Wolverine Noir #1

Now, you may not consider that last one to be an X-title, but nevertheless, I’m throwing it in here.

Possible spoilers after the break.

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I don’t know how it happened, but Marvel has managed to put their four main X-Men books in one week: X-Men: Legacy, X-Factor, X-Force, and Uncanny X-Men. This last week, we, the readers, were given these three books and, as you would assume, each have their own style and feeling and each make me feel completely different about the X-Men. With writers Peter David (X-Factor), Mike Carey (Legacy), Christopher Yost and Craig Kyle (X-Force) and Matt Fraction (Uncanny) each book I read leaves me feeling excited, okay, blood-thirsty and strange–respectively.

I read all four of these books and have been for the last eight years or so (or however long they have been out–X-Factor, X-Force) and I’ve seen some changes, both good and bad and I think I’m going to make it my goal to comment on these four books every month from here on with a post like this–assuming they’ll keep coming out on the same week.  This month we were handed Uncanny X-Men #507, X-Force #13, X-Factor #41, and X-Men: Legacy #222…

Continue on after the break (spoilers).

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Agents Of Atlas #1 cover

So, I got this cool new idea for a way I want to review comics, specifically new comics, that I have never read: TPKC.

Theory – My idea of the comic going in and/or why I decided to read the comic
Punch – The part of the comic that “irked” me or I didn’t like.
Kick – The parts of the comic I did like
Conclusion – My overall sum up of the comic along with a rating as to if I think you should read it.

For each part of the nice little abbreviation I’ll go into an explination for the comic. And let’s begin.

Theory: I’ve seen a preview for Agents of Atlas #1 probably 30 times in the back of my Marvel comics for the last month or so and was like, “What the hell? Why is Marvel pushing this so hard down my throat?” Going in I had no idea what this comic was about and really, I was kind of sucked in by the talking Gorilla and Namora, but, nevertheless, as a Dark Reign tie-in, I figured it was worth checking out and trying for at least one issue. So I decided to check it out. I figured it was going to be something lame ala War Machine or something, but I still tried–I mean when Marvel pushes something on me, 70% of the time I assume it’s going to bad (unless it’s X-Men related).

Catch the rest after the break. (minor spoilers)

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