Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four #60

60 issues? Thats it? Man, even the manga ver­sion of Sab­rina the Teenage Witch man­aged to hit 100 issues before it bowed out.

Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four started out with a strong idea. Four teenagers — trans­formed into vaguely ele­men­tal forms through a mishap with an exper­i­men­tal trans­porter — team up to have adven­tures through time and space. It should’ve been fun as hell, and it was for the most part, until Mike Carey came on board and things began to go wrong.

Start­ing with his reg­u­lar run all the technical/scifi stuff (stacked uni­verses, time travel) was pushed to one side — replaced with some ridicu­lously con­vo­luted Space Opera. Really, what the hell was that Seed Nine­teen stuff about anyway?

With Carey gone I’d hoped they’d be able to bring the title back around, make it fun and excit­ing again, but this was not meant to be. As near as I can tell the new writer was brought on solely to pro­vide filler for Jeph Loeb’s Ulti­ma­tum. The remain­ing two main char­ac­ters team up with two ene­mies to head to Atlantis, a place they’ve already been despite what they say, to use a macguf­fin that makes no sense what­so­ever. All this was eas­ily explained when I dis­cov­ered the writer’s main source of income was writ­ing episodes of Heroes, the scifi equiv­a­lent of eat­ing paste.

Because this is just an Ulti­ma­tum book mas­querad­ing as an Ulti­mate FF title it doesn’t even get it’s own finale. There’s a quicky rev­e­la­tion and then a ‘to be con­cluded in Ulti­ma­tum and Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four: Requiem’.

Two books? If this is an indi­ca­tion of how the Ulti­mate uni­verse will work once the line is rebooted after Ulti­ma­tum, with the sto­ries bleed­ing between titles and into one-shots, then count me out. I get enough of that with the real Mar­vel Universe.

X-Factor #40

Like last issue this book starts off with a note from Peter David that we don’t spoil any of the con­tent in this issue. And there’s a lot of impor­tant stuff hap­pen­ing here.

The bulk of this story con­sists of a meet­ing between Jamie Madrox and one of his last inde­pen­dent dupes, Pas­tor John Mad­docks (last seen back in issue #16). While for the most part it’s just two iden­ti­cal talk­ing heads hav­ing a theo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion it’s writ­ten (and drawn) well enough that it’s never bor­ing. Madrox has a lot on his mind after the events of the last issue. Its refresh­ing to see a comic book char­ac­ter work through things in a real­is­tic, human way rather than brush­ing them aside and switch­ing to “punch every­thing” mode.

There’s a series of small reveals that cul­mi­nate in one huge reveal that, if you’ve been fol­low­ing X-Factor from the begin­ning like me, should put a huge grin on your face.

Com­plete List

Adven­ture Comics #0
Trin­ity #38
Dark Avengers #2
Ulti­mate Fan­tas­tic Four #60
Uncanny X-Men #506
X-Factor #40
X-Men Legacy #221

Green Lantern Corps #33

Know what I really, really liked about this issue? The inclu­sion of a smack-talking, Steve Buscemi look-alike called ‘Imec­sub’. It was a nice call­back to Geoff Johns cre­ated Isamot (Tomasi back­wards) and a cool way for Tomasi to ‘pass it on’.

The rest of the issue is a period of down­time. Giv­ing the main char­ac­ters a quick breather before plung­ing into more ‘Black­est Night’ fun times. Kyle Raynor and Guy Gard­ner share a beer; Raynor and Natu, a kiss; Sarnek(?) and Vio­let Lantern Miri, words. It’s obvi­ous that Peter Tomasi is hav­ing a lot of fun with this. Espe­cially in the scenes where Raynor and Gar­dener involve the rest of the Corps into help­ing paint a mural on Oa.

There’s no eye­balls rain­ing from the sky, babies being cut out of wombs or other hor­ros. This comic is the dreaded f word. It’s FUN.

The backup Ori­gins and Omens story focuses on Kyle’s recent his­tory and teases that we’ll see a Black Lantern Jade in the upcom­ing Black­est Night. Despite her phys­i­cal body being blown to space dust way back in Infi­nite Crisis.

Incog­nito #2

When I reviewed the first issue I kinda bitched about how the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters weren’t exactly multi-dimensional. Well I take that all back.

I thought it’d be a lot longer — we’re talk­ing issue 4 or 5 — before the Zack’s boss, the Black Death showed up, but I’m glad to be proven wrong. I’m still unsure about what sort of threat he poses to the gen­eral pop­u­lace (apart from tele­path­i­cally talk­ing to peo­ple in black, evil look­ing thought bal­loons). But it’s something.

The story keeps flow­ing from pulp to noir fairly seam­lessly and at a decent clip. Scenes like Zack’s mad sci­en­tist cre­ator lit­er­ally pick­ing the brain of a pre­cog­ni­tive guy awe­somely called Max Gazer shoring up the pulp, almost EC Comics side. While Zack spends some qual­ity night time with a girl with seri­ous damsel-in-distress issues, who barely acknowl­edges him in his day­time civil­ian identity.

What I most like about this issue is that every­body has their own dark agenda. Not just the bad guys, but the “damsel” and even Zack’s new best friend. Zack is try­ing (not very hard) to be the hero, but the world has decided that he’s bad guy. It’ll be fun to see if he can push past that peer pres­sure and be the bet­ter man.

Com­plete List

Hell­boy: The Wild Hunt #3 (of 8)
Booster Gold #17
Green Lantern Corps #33
Trin­ity #37
Incog­nito #2
Angel #17

[09:34] Damien: I won­der if there are any mul­ti­player missions

[09:34] Damien: where you walk the streets as a gang

[09:34] Trav: kinda

[09:34] Trav: we were just play­ing deathmatch

[09:34] Damien: cool

[09:34] Damien: The Evil Mooses!

[09:36] Trav: heheh

[09:38] Damien: we will all have to dress as 50’s greasers and click our fin­gers as we walk in per­fect unison

[09:41] Trav: lol

[09:41] Trav: it’s not west side story

[09:41] Damien: I know. It’s moos­eside story

[09:41] Trav: hahaha

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #22

So, they’re really run­ning with that whole “vam­pires aren’t that bad” thing? It’s not some crazed fever dream? Brave move that.

This is yet another ‘done in one’ that puts the focus on one mem­ber of the Buffy­verse, this time Satsu, only the sec­ond per­son to share “spe­cial hugs” with Buffy and not die a hor­ri­ble death.

There’s not a lot of plot here: Kennedy is sent to Japan to eval­u­ate Satsu’s per­for­mance as leader of the Japan­ese slayer expan­sion (that seems to solely con­sist of Satsu her­self). When not fight­ing demonic Hello Kitty-esque toys, they engage in a lot of back and forth ban­ter to bed-in that they’re real hon­est to good­ness les­bians just like you see on TV. And then there’s that end­ing that involves a flare, a giant Voltron-style mon­ster, a secret weapon that almost, almost makes up for the bor­ing bits in the pre­ced­ing 20 pages.

There’s a lot of retread­ing here. Reit­er­at­ing things estab­lished long ago in the Buffy­verse. Yes, Satsu likes Buffy (Sea­son 8) Yes, she’s a les­bian (sea­son 8). Yes, Kennedy is too (sea­son 7). Yes, vam­pires are now the ‘in thing’ (last issue!)

This sea­son has to be fin­ish­ing up some­time soon. I do wish they’d hurry up and build on the Twi­light threat already.

Final Cri­sis: Legion Of Three Worlds #3 (of 5)

If you’re going to do a story that fea­tures three times as many char­ac­ters as nor­mal then you’d bet­ter lock George Perez down. And if you’re going to fea­ture Superboy-Prime as the main antag­o­nist then you’d bet­ter lock down Geoff Johns. Lucky for us DC have done just that.

Now they’ve also marked this as a Final Cri­sis tie-in (even though the main story fin­ished last week, but hey, time travel!) it’s more of a the­matic sequel to the Sine­stro Corps War and Light­ning Saga with a bit of Infi­nite Cri­sis thrown in for good mea­sure. So basi­cally all the major ‘events’ that Geoff Johns has been work­ing on for the last five or so years.

So maybe thats the hook into Final Cri­sis? Geoff John’s exam­i­na­tion of the last five years of his career, matched up with Grant Morrison’s exam­i­na­tion of the last ten years of his.

But I could just be clutch­ing at straws.

George Perez does some amaz­ing work here. Fill­ing every panel, every page to burst­ing point with heroes, vil­lains and plenty of action. Last issue ended with the Legion­naires fac­ing off against their ana­logues in the Legion of Super-Villains, while Brainiac 5 sum­moned two alter­nate uni­verse ver­sions of the Legion to assist in the bat­tle. This issue opens with the bat­tle still rag­ing and the Legion get­ting beaten back to their head­quar­ters. The alter­nate Legions — minus every Light­ning Lad, XS and one Light Lass — fly out to join the bat­tle in an incred­i­ble Perez splash page. Brainiac 5 uses those remain­ing to bring back the one char­ac­ter every­one knew was com­ing (telegraphed way back in Light­ning Saga). But that doesn’t make it less impres­sive when they do arrive.

It’s pure, dumb fun. The only down­side is that we now have to wait seven weeks until #4. really DC, thats the best you could do?

Com­plete List

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #22
Final Cri­sis: Legion Of Three Worlds #3 (of 5)
Secret Six #6
Trin­ity #36
Secret War­riors #1

[11:55] Trav: when i last played i called up the fire depart­ment, got them to deliver a fire truck, stole the truck and drove around hos­ing peo­ple down.

[11:56] Damien: hehe

[11:56] Trav: then i drove up onto the board­walk and down on to the beach and hosed down hobos as they warmed up next to bar­rel fires

[11:56] Damien: lol

[11:56] Trav: FIRE HAZARD! *whoooosh*

[11:56] Trav: then i crashed the truck into the ocean

[11:57] Damien: as you do

[11:58] Trav: i thought maybe it needed fill­ing up. i’d been hos­ing down hobos for a while

[12:00] Damien: hehehehe