Amazing Spider-Man #500 - A Review

Written by: J Michael Straczynski
Penciled by: John Romita Jr. & John Romita Sr.
Inked by: Scott Hanna
Colored by: Avalon
Lettered by: Randy Gentile
Editor: Axel Alonso
Publisher: Marvel Comics


SCENE: The Void Between Realities

(Peter jumps and finds himself in a cemetery. He sees himself as an older man.)

Old Peter: Aunt May, I’m sorry. I’ll make you proud, I promise. Top of the world, Ma!

(The cops move in on Old Peter as Peter looks the other way)

Peter: What the-

(We see a Younger Peter Parker. Young Peter is standing at the back of a crowd… as a familiar glowing spider crawls down from the ceiling)

Peter: What the…. Yes, I know. It is my destiny to change into the spider that bit me, thus performing a loop in time that can never be broken, thus preventing that future I just saw from happening.

(Peter tries… and fails to become a spider)

Peter: Shoot… wait a second, that’s Barry Allen… not me.

(Old Peter looks back at the tombstone)

Old Peter: Don’t try to save me. This is the end. Besides, if you got killed saving your future self, it would kinda defeat the point. And we have enough paradoxes to deal with in our past as is.

Peter: Well, yeah. Any advice you can give me to avoid this happening?

Old Peter: Nah, not really. Besides, as countless X-Men stories have shown us, trying to alter the future based on what you see in a vision or what some time traveler tells you is just asking for trouble. And everyone will forget about me as soon as a new writer takes over the book. Just remember to treat MJ right, tell her that you love her and do right by our son.

Peter: Our son? No daughter?

Old Peter: Nope. Chew on that, Spider-Girl fans!

Peter: Huh. Oh well. Maybe I can stop all that from happening by stopping the spider from biting my past self! Of course that in itself will cause a paradox because if I don’t become Spider-Man, I will never have wound up here in the void to stop myself from being bit. On the other hand, think of all the innocents who will die if I’m not Spider-Man. But on the other hand, if I don’t become Spider-Man, Uncle Ben will have never died. Or Gwen. Or Ned Leeds. Or…

Dr. Strange’s Voice: Are you done guilting out yet?

Peter: Well, I did have a little bit of angsting left….

Dr. Strange’s Voice: There will be time enough for that later. Right now, I need you to embrace the Spell of Becoming.

Peter: Becoming what?

Dr. Strange’s Voice: Becoming a frog if you don’t stop being whining. Now, this spell will slowly bring you forward in time along your own lifeline, forcing you to relive a number of important events from your own life.

Peter: Oooh! Like Quantum Leap.

Dr. Strange: Yes, except without so much coherence or the drag jokes.

Peter: Groovy. Well, thank goodness I’m already past puberty at this point.

(Peter wanders through super-villain fight after super-villain fight; a gigantic montage and tribute to the early works of Stan Lee; all available for your reading pleasure in the “Essential Spider-Man Volumes 1-5” Trade Paperback Collection.)

Peter: Geez, that was a gratuitous plug.


CUT TO: The Office of “Starman” Matt Morrison

Starman: What? It’s a good series!


CUT TO: The Brooklyn Bridge

Peter: Wait a minute…I thought it was the George Washington Bridge?

Green Goblin: It depends on which printing you have. Not that it matters because your girlfriend is falling off of it!

Peter: What? Gwen? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(Peter jumps and tries to save Gwen. He goes back into the void before he can shoot a web)

Dr. Strange’s Voice: Follow my voice.

Peter: No!

Dr. Strange’s Voice: Follow my voice.

Peter: NO!

Penelope Cruz: Open your eyes.

Peter: What?

Dr. Strange’s Voice: Ignore her… and follow my voice.

Peter: No! I can’t do this anymore… I can’t look at all the things I’ve done…everything that happened and… it’s just nonstop fighting and violence and madness… like a Chuck Dixon comic.

Dr. Strange’s Voice: Do you know what the greatest gift that anyone can receive in his lifetime is?

Peter: Yes, but I can’t talk about that in a PSR-rated book.

Dr. Strange’s Voice: No. I refer to the one thing that makes your life worth living. (holds his fingers apart) This.

Peter: You SURE you aren’t talking about…

Dr. Strange’s Voice: (sighs) Why do I bother?

Peter: I dunno, but I really liked this talk better when Jack Palance did it.

Dr. Strange: Indeed. But now… follow my voice!

(Peter turns and fights his way across a splash page of nearly every costumed bad guy he ever fought)

Peter: Mmm…. Romita.

(Suddenly, Peter is back in the present. Or twenty minutes before it at any rate.)

Peter: What? Mindless ones? I think…. You there lad, what day is this?

Urchin: Me, sir? Why it’s doomsday!

Peter: Yes! I’m back! There’s still time to change!

(Peter hops up to the roof as the urchin is squished like a grape)

Reed Richards: So all you have to do is channel your energies into the flux capacitor and…

Peter: Wait! I come from a distant future… well, 20 minutes in the future anyway with a warning from my guardian angel, Clarence. If you use the ray thing to close the portals, that big flame-headed evil guy Dr. Strange fights all the time will come back here and loads of bad stuff will happen.

Iron Man: I dunno… it sounds pretty unlikely.

Reed: Well, I suppose it IS possible my meddling with forces I only pretend to understand COULD cause such a thing to happen…

Thor: I sense truth in him though Trickery doth wear many faces. I recall the time that my brother Loki did wear the face of a giant lizard being when we were both youths, and he did convince me that he would eat me were I not to give him all my cookies.

Peter: Yeah… uh… so let’s just kick butt until the Doc gets here to fix things.

Thor: Verily I say then… LET US BRING IT!

(Much more superheroic ass-whooping takes place until Dr. Strange shows up and closes the portal. Sometime later, Dr. Strange and Peter discuss what happened)

Dr. Strange: So my past self sent you back in time and then brought you back here to provide a warning of something that might happen.

Peter: Yeah. And he was still in the future when he did it. So is he still there? Or…

Dr. Strange: It doesn’t matter. Just be thankful that you came through this without your son from the future or an alternate version of him showing up and then getting his own inexplicably popular series.

Scott Summers: (in the background) Tell me about it!

Dr. Strange: Oh, one more thing. Don’t ask me how, but this wound up in my pocket. I believe it is for you. (hands Peter a box)

Peter: Holy snikes! I almost forgot that today is my birthday! Or… wait, it was a few days in the future when I left that it was my birthday… or was it?

Dr. Strange: Time is fluid… especially in our universe. Consider how even now Magneto is enslaving the entire island of Manhattan as years in the future the Asgardians rule the Earth. And in a distant past, Captain American has returned home in 1964 to a world where the Nazis won World War II….

Peter: Uh-huh. Well, I’ll just read the summary later. See ya!

Dr. Strange: Indeed.

(Suddenly Dr. Strange is trapped in a magical bubble)

Dr. Strange: What the-

(ENTER Baron Mordo)

Baron Mordo: Congratulations. Your tampering with the timelines has now allowed me to trap you. Now I shall send you back as you did Spider-Man, arranging things so that you will become much weaker and easier to destroy.

Dr. Strange: If you trapped me so easily, why don’t you just destroy me now?

Baron Mordo: Because then we could not make mention of the upcoming Dr. Strange mini-series!

Dr. Strange: Hold on… I was supposed to get one of those the LAST time I made an appearance in this book…. I couldn’t help Spider-Man because I had an appointment with Death….

Baron Mordo: Don’t hurt yourself thinking about it. Now, onto the past!

(Meanwhile, Peter is web-swinging home. As he crawls through the window..)

Aunt May and MJ: Surprise! Happy Birthday!

Peter: But… when I left, it was late… we were getting ready for bed… and you were… and we were about to… did time warp somehow? Or did-

MJ: Hush. Don’t worry about it! There will be plenty of time for that later, Tiger. And I’ll even wear the heels you like.

Peter: (ponders this) Okay.


THE END

Fans Who Read The Issue Already: What? Hey, you left out the best part of the book in your humorous summary!

Starman: Yeah… well, I couldn’t bring myself to make fun of that. All kidding aside, I LOVED this two-part story! Besides, you have to leave SOME surprises.

Looking To The Stars: Of Cons And Continuity

Recently, Judd Winick came under fire by many critics (including yours truly) for his portrayal of certain characters during his tenure on Green Arrow. This criticism became an item of news this past week when Tony Isabella, the creator of Black Lightning, took a vocal place among those same critics.

For those of you who haven’t read the offending issues, Winick’s “Straight Shooter” mini-series introduced us to Jefferson Pierce’s niece, Joanna. Joanna was a lawyer investigating the crimes of a large multi-national corporation who was killed in Green Arrow #30 by an assassin working for that same corporation. The CEO of said corporation, untouchable by any direct proof, was later killed by a bolt of lightning. And while nothing was confirmed directly, the words at the end of Green Arrow #31 as Oliver Queen and Jefferson Pierce talked confirmed that Black Lightning was responsible for the man’s death.

Winick’s run on the book, particularly the last issue has inspired much wailing and gnashing of teeth among fans, critics and comic historians alike.

• Oliver Queen fans were ill-pleased to see the flirtatious, but never a cheat Oliver Queen (who was ready to propose to Dinah Lance not a few issues earlier!) having a one night stand with the niece of a close friend. Indeed, some wonder how Pierce and Queen became such close friends since their one recorded meeting resulted in the former yelling at the later for nominating him for JLA membership only because of his race.
• Connor Hawke fans were upset to see the calm, rational and for the most part, pacifist ex-monk using lethal force (in so far as blowing up your own home is lethal force) against a metahuman opponent whose only demonstrated ability was super reflexes.
• Jefferson Pierce has always been portrayed as a man of unbendable ethics and strong moral values. Indeed, his first solo comic book series ended as Black Lightning retired himself after his powers accidentally caused the death of an innocent bystander. It would be several years before he would return to action at the side of an equally ethical hero with strong qualms about killing; Batman.

Black Lightning has been another sticking point for fans in another Winick book; Outsiders. In that book, one of the new team members is Jefferson Pierce’s daughter, “Thunder”. The problem is that Jefferson Pierce has always been shown as a bachelor and considering what we know of his daughter’s age, she would have been in her early teens, at least, when her father first put on his costume and became Black Lightning – something the ever-responsible Jefferson Pierce as written by Isabella. This begging the question of where did Thunder come from, who was her mom and why did the ever moral Black Lightning find himself as a single father?

Of course this is far from the only argument regarding character portrayal taking place this week. The X-Men fan community, who were already up in arms over just about everything Chuck Austen has done on Uncanny X-Men, REALLY began to wax wroth over the most recent issue, which revealed that…

• Angel really is an angel.
• Nightcrawler is really a demon, not a mutant.
• Nightcrawler’s pappy is none other than Satan himself.

I have little time, space or inclination to quote every single “why this is so wrong” story I have heard about this past issue. Doubtlessly you could search the many X-Men discussion forms on the Internet and find countless complaints with full annotations that could pick apart the entirety of the Austen Uncanny run, if you are so inclined. I will however make mention of two points; one general and one very specific.

• I am far from an X-Men fan, but I remember stories where Nightcrawler was going bar hopping with the other X-Men. If he was born 20 years ago, as Austen’s first issue of “The Draco” would have us believe, then either there’s been some time warping or someone screwed up what is, a fairly easily researched point.
• My friend Tanner, who is perhaps the greatest living resource on Nightcrawler lore in this reality, told me about an issue of Excalibur where the team was fighting vampires alongside Dr. Strange. After accidentally being locked up by another vampire hunter (He has fangs!), Dr. Strange used his magic and determined “there is nothing supernatural about (Nightcrawler).

All of this arguing points at one very basic argument between two forces, who for lack of better names, I will call continuity and accessibility. Continuity is the belief in adherence to the traditional portrayal and history of a character. Accessibility is the belief that history can be sacrificed in the name of telling a good story.

Many writers claim accessibility as a reason for why their stories ignore previous stories. In this case, it is harder for the new readers to get into a new title when too much emphasis on what happened before and there is only so much that the “See #242 – Stan!” box can do to help this. The problem with this is that many writers use accessibility to ignore everything that came before them to tell “their” stories, even this requires the characters under their control to do things totally out of character for them or indeed, for the character to change completely.

This is not to say that strict adherence to continuity is any better for a book or its’ characters. There are far too many writers, in comics and other genres, who have made a comfortable living telling the same stories with the same unchanging characters over and over. A little change is needed at times to keep a character fresh and interesting. But this change should come as slowly and naturally as possible.

Still, the question remains; how strict should we be in the treatment of our past history? Some have argued that Tony Isabella has no right to criticize how the character he created is used since DC owns it and that they have no need to ask him how the character is used. Technically, that is correct. However, DC has a history of allowing their creators to have some say over what is done with their creations when they are being used in another book. Neil Gaiman, for example, has been consulted on all the appearances of The Endless and other characters he created for “The Sandman”, such as Dream’s appearance in JLA #23. Also, DC has respected writer James Robinson’s desire to have Jack Knight “retired” in the wake of Starman #80.

Why the disparity? Because Sandman and Starman have very devoted fan bases and any misuse of the characters would inspire irritation not only in their creators but also in that fan base. Black Lighting, while undoubtedly the first major black superhero that DC ever had, has never had the same high level of name recognition or the huge following. Hence, there was no apparent danger in several creators using Pierce as a background character (don’t forget that he became Secretary of Education under President Luthor in the Superman books) and attempting to add something to the mythos to flesh him out. As DC has found out, however, there is apparently enough of a Black Lightning fan base out there to raise a big stink over the man who once retired rather than risk lives striking a man down in anger.

Still, it is my firm belief that the best course lies somewhere in the middle. Yes, it can be a pain to keep up with every little thing that happened in a character’s past but it is ultimately necessary to keep track of certain basic details, like a character’s rough age, (Are they able to drink legally? Are they of the age of consent?), marital status and number of children. It is not, however, necessary to write angry letters to Marvel over Janet Pym’s complaining of her husband’s tacky yellow costume when she was the one who made him the purple costume in the first place back in AntMan #233 or some such. (Incidentally, I am just making this example up…)

Contrary to the belief of some writers, past continuity can be taken into consideration and be used to enhance stories in ways beyond providing “I am so smart” points for the devoted fans. Consider the entire run of Geoff John’s JSA. Consider Mark Waid’s run on Fantastic Four. Consider even this past week’s Amazing Spider-Man #500, which recanted a number of past Spider-Man moments and very few of them major events. All of these books have taken the past mythologies created by other writers and used them to enhance the present stories rather than dismissing the past as irrelevant and unimportant.

In the end though, it is all a matter of making the fans happy. The dollars and cents you spend on each book are a vote of sorts, letting the publishers know what books you think are worth your trouble. So if you have an issue with a writer and what they are doing, don’t just piss and moan about it on a message board - Just stop buying the book. You’ll be much happier in the long run, trust me.

Tune in next week. Same Matt Time. Same Matt Website.

Hawkeye #1 - A Review

Written by: Fabian Nicieza
Penciled by: Stefano Raffaele
Inked by: Stefano Raffaele
Colored by: Ben Dimagmaliw
Lettered by: Dave Sharpe
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics

I have a confession to make here. I’ve never read that many Hawkeye stories, thinking him the poor man’s Green Arrow. I must admit though, this is hardly a fair comparison as the characters do have some major differences. Sure, both of them have a bad boy image and openly questioned the leaders of their respective teams… but Hawkeye had once operated as a criminal whereas Oliver Queen had always been an abider of the law, if not particularly ethical in regards to his love affairs. Oliver Queen made-do without trick arrows for a number of years whereas Clint Barton always seemed dependent on them to remain on an even keel with the heroes around him Hawkeye lead his own team whereas Green Arrow has shown little interest in leading anyone and indeed had to be wrestled into team-ups and crossovers through most of his career.

And I’m sure I’m not the only fan disappointed to see that the latest Avengers/JLA issue really didn’t settle the issue of who the better archer is- indeed, they seemed to rub our nose in the fact that it WOULDN’T be shown, even as we get to watch Wonder Woman wrestle Hercules and Superman battle Thor. But I digress… I mention Green Arrow, not just for the basis of comparison, but because in an odd way Hawkeye #1 reminds me of the kind of stories Mike Grell used to tell back in his legendary eight-year run on the character.

This is a good simple story about a guy with a talent, trying to help people out simply because it is the right decent thing to do; the kind of man who will step in and deal with an abusive boyfriend even as he is waiting for his hotter-than-hell Chili to be delivered. (Hmm… I wonder what that reminds me of ol’ Ollie) The plot unfolds more or less from the above scene; Clint drives across the country to try the chili at a dive and gets involved after seeing a woman being harassed by a larger man. After tracking the woman down and proving himself no mean detective (and spouting one of the funniest lines I’ve read recently), Clint sets about trying to figure out who is responsible for the woman’s problems.

I haven’t seen any work by Stefano Raffael before, but I like most of what I see here. He draws good characters in close-up, those his pencils do get a bit sloppy and indistinct in far shots. He also has a heavy-shadow inking style that looks wonderful in the early scenes taking place at night but is sorely out of place in the later scenes taking place in broad daylight. Still, most of the art looks good and I love the coloring on the night scenes where everything is blue tinted yet oddly lifelike. Some panels, in fact, look like Tony Harris’ work on Starman.

Overall, this book has me hooked. I’m not crazy about the art in some places, but Nicieza’s writing more than makes up for it, giving Clint a dry humor and likeable presence. I may even give the new Thunderbolts book a look-see, though I stopped reading the original long before Hawkeye ever became the team leader. Maybe that just goes to show that, like Hawkeye and Green Arrow, I can occasionally miss the mark.

Looking To The Stars: Quick Reviews

Once in a while, some books are written that I don’t get a chance to write about during the course of the regular weekly review schedule. When this happens, I use my column to let you, the readers of this magazine, know what I thought about some of the fine periodicals of the day.

And why do I think you people want to know what I think? I know this simply because more people write to tell me how much they like my writing than no.

Incidentally, a quick note to all of my non-fans; the reason I didn’t have a column out last week was due to my being busy with mid-terms and had nothing to do with me being fired. The management would like for me to apologize for getting your hopes up….

but I’m not going to. Honestly, why do you keep reading my work if you don’t like it?

There. On with the reviews!

1602 #3

Shaping up to be the classic you’d expect anything by Neil Gaiman to be. I’m not a big fan of Kubert’s artwork, but he does a good job here and the digital painting technique used on his pencils gives the whole thing the look of a storybook or a stylized woodcut. And yes, it has DOOM!

Agent X #15

The good news is Gail Simone and UDON still have it. The bad news is that #15 is the last issue. The great news is that the door has been left open for more Agency X madness in the future, with all of the old gang together again. And a classic hero (?) thought dead is returned to bring us more ultra-violent buffoonery in the future.

Daredevil #53

Good stuff, but I wish this had been done as an Echo mini-series rather than a part of the regular series. It seems a bit anti-climactic after the epic battle in issue 50 to devote five issues toward a secondary character trying to find a new place for herself in the world. That said, I applaud David Mack’s efforts to develop Echo as a character and must say he has done a great job in making her stand out from the many other women that Matt Murdock has had a disastrous relationship with.

Dr. Fate #3

I’ve been loving this new series, though this was the weakest issue so far. And this weakness came more from some excellently illustrated fight scenes rather than the good dialogue and interesting characters that Golden exposed us to in the first two issues. Still, I plan to stick around for another two issues at least. So far, this book proves to be something magical.

Green Arrow #31

Judd Winnick shows his strength for writing good comedic dialogue, if not keeping his characters consistent with their past portrayals. Consider how Connor Hawke, who has spend years living away from technology in an ashram is now e-mailing and file-swapping with the best of them.

While I don’t think it impossible for Connor to have become a little more techno-savy, I do have some issue with the “all life is sacred” Buddhist cavalierly attacking even a metahuman opponent with intent to kill, going so far as to blow up a building to hurt an assailant whose only apparent power is heightened reflexes. Apparently, someone hasn’t noted that while Oliver Queen has no qualms about killing villains under desperate circumstances, those have to be VERY desperate circumstances. And Connor has always been one to honor life over getting the bad guy. And the issue of Oliver Queen’s casually cheating on Dinah Lance is easily side-stepped as the woman involved in the affair is killed off and forgotten as quickly as she was introduced.

Come back Kevin Smith! All the missed deadlines are forgiven!

Hulk Grey #1

If you like The Hulk or enjoyed Spider-Man: Blue, Daredevil: Yellow or indeed anything that Jeph Loeb or Tim Sale have ever done, then you will love this series. ‘Nuff said!

Knights of the Dinner Table Illustrated #27

One of the funniest issues of this series in recent memory. Misfit adventuring team, The Black Hands, finds themselves having to find a new fourth member after the barbarian Kraggin dies a most messy death in the arena. Sadly, none of their new recruits seem to be making the cut… or are cut down by the assassin Rasputin after only a few hours of questing. A funny book whether or not you are a gamer, all fans of Sojourn, Scion and other fantasy quest comics will greatly enjoy this look at the less-than noble side of adventuring.

Spectacular Spider-Man #5

“The Hunger” has easily proven to be the best Venom story written in the last fifteen years and Paul Jenkins deserved our highest thanks for having given some serious motivation to a character who has often times been written with little of it besides “I want to eat your brains.” While I didn’t like Humberto Ramos’s artwork much in the past, he has grown on me the past few issues and I can’t wait to see this team tackle my favorite Spider-Man villain, Doctor Octopus, in their next major story arc.

Superman/Batman #3

Superman and Batman fight a whole army of super-villains. Simple. To the point. And fun as all get out to watch. I especially liked the “Butch Cassidy/Sundance” moment…

Batman: I think we can take them. Do you think we can take them?

Superman: You always think we can take them.

Batman: Yes I do.

Honestly, I pity you if you aren’t reading this book. World’s Finest, indeed.

Ultimate Spider-Man #48

Few are the writers can pull off a scene that has double-meanings to the action. And triple meanings are rarer still. And yet Brian Michael Bendis creates such a scene here, with apparent ease in Spider-Man’s assault on the Kingpin’s tower.

Angered by how the media has turned against him, even as Wilson Fisk walks free despite being caught on tape, Peter Parker swings with his best feet forward, intent on confronting Fisk face to face. It is a scene we’ve seen many times before- Spider-Man crashes through the glass window to arrive just in time, like a streak of light. But technology has caught up with the comic book industry and Peter bounces off the reinforced window to Fisk’s office like a bug off a windshield.

And here we have the three elements. First, the humor in that the unexpected has happened and our hero looks foolish because of it. Second, the sheer drama and anger as Peter swears at an impassive Wilson Fisk through the window. Finally, there is the symbolism of the window as the shield that prevents Fisk from being touched by anyone… especially Spider-Man.

Tune in next week. Same Matt Time. Same Matt Website.

X-Treme X-Men #32 - A Review

Written by: Chris Claremont
Penciled by: Igor Kordey
Inked by: Scott Hanna
Colored by: Liquid!
Lettered by: Rus Wooton
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Marvel Comics


Somewhere in Texas, during mid-term week…

*RING RING*

Starman: (tired, but angry) WHAT?!

Daron: Minion, you dare to address your Overlord in such an impudent-

Starman: Oh, it’s you. Listen…this isn’t a great time…

Daron: I know. That is why I called. We have noticed a direct correlation between your enjoyment of a comic and our hits on the website.

Starman: And that is?

Daron: The more you insult a book and its creator, the more hits we get!

Starman: Uh-huh… big news flash.

Daron: Seriously! It is like your spewing of bile attracts readers.

Starman: You sure it isn’t because every time I read a bad comic, my mind rebels against it and creates sarcastic commentary as a defense mechanism in a worst case scenario and people find that amusing?

Daron: No, I’m sure people just like reading you rant about stuff you don’t like and throw insults at it. That is why, because I know you hate it so much, I am going to have you read the new New X-Men.

Starman: But I like New X-Men!

Daron: Ah, beg all you want to but- WHAT?!

Starman: I like new X-Men. Grant Morrison is one of my favorite writers.

Daron: … really?

Starman: Yeah. I think he’s been doing good stuff with the title. Really pushing the X-Men in new directions instead of repeating the SOS every month.

Daron: Blast! Very well… you shall review the new Uncanny X-Men!

Starman: But there’s not a new one this week…

Daron: Damnation! Then you shall read the new X-Treme X-Men.

Starman: Already done.

Daron: Yes, quail in- you did?!

Starman: Yeah. It wasn’t bad.

Daron: It wasn’t?!?!

Starman: Well, it wasn’t that great… but most of my problems with it came from the fact that the whole thing was kinda anti-climactic…

Daron: How do you mean?

Starman: Well, it’s like you walk in on the middle of a action movie without knowing what is going on. There isn’t any effort made to introduce you to what is going on. I mean, practically all the other Marvel Comics fill you in, if not through a one page summary than through a quick summary at the start.

Daron: Yes, but this is X-Men; and X-Fans are notorious for keeping up on their titles and not needing such summaries.

Starman: Yeah, but it’s a pain for those of us who are just getting into things and haven’t been keeping up on twenty-years of Claremont’s character history. And then there’s the big deal about the return of Rogue and Gambit…

Daron: What about it?

Starman: Well, nothing is happening with it! I mean, Gambit is getting some action trying to break into the Bush family ranch with Storm and finding out how Dubya is apparently planning to bring the Sentinels back on-line or do something else decidedly anti-mutant….doing the master thief/superspy thing… but all we see of Rogue is that she got a tattoo, is working as a mechanic and her trying to talk sense into an anti-mutant terrorist named Marie.

Daron: I thought Rogue’s real name was Marie?

Starman: So did I! But apparently she’s going by Anna now.

Daron: Wait a second….Anna? As in-

Starman: Yeah, I read the issue before and she has a “The Piano” poster in her apartment.

Daron: That’s a bit cheesy.

Starman: You think that’s bad, Storm disguises herself as Halle Berry.

Daron: So what’s with this other Marie?

Starman: Same old story… her family got hurt by mutants and yet another anti-mutant terrorist group recruited her. Only interesting part is that apparently some mutant group is trying to segregate themselves away from humans and prompted her going as far over the edge as she did… but its not really that interesting. I mean, they make such a big deal about bringing back one of the favorite couples of mutant-kind and they are barely a part of the story. And the coolest image in the whole book and it is barely examined, but we spend way too long looking at the rise of yet another anti-mutant terrorist group.

Daron: What scene is this?

Starman: Storm makes a tornado and tries to kill the President.

Daron: (writing this down in his journal of world domination ideas) Really? That is most… unheroic.

Starman: Yeah, but… it wasn’t really her. Or she was just trying to scare all the world leader’s straight on trying to kill mutants… or something- which is weird considering that Storm and Gambit are using the same unethical means being used by the mutants who threatened Marie and her family after the attack if that’s the case.

Daron: To the X-Treme, in other words… is the art any good?

Starman: Okay, I guess. A lot of Igor Kordey’s female characters have similar faces. It took me a second, even with the eyepatch and hair-streaks to tell Rogue and “Marie” apart, since I thought Marie WAS Rogue at the start of this issue. But the scene with the attack on Crawford is VERY well illustrated.

Daron: Very well. I think that will suffice for the review. Your words shall be recorded upon the honor roll.

Starman: You mean the website?

Daron: Indeed. Anything further to report?

Starman: Only that I got mail from some crank saying I should knock off the comedic reviews and just report the facts directly rather than subjecting the public to more bad satires and fictional conversations with the editorial staff.

Daron: And do you think this rather lackluster and humorless review has proven the point that you should stick to your comedic works?

Starman: Uh… Overlord, this WAS one of the funny ones. I wasn’t trying to be serious to prove a point this time…

Daron: (long silence) Why on earth are we paying you 0 million dollars, again?