Another Amazon Order

More parcels in the post!

Received;

Captain America: Red Menace Vol. 2
Princess Alice and the Broken Arrow by Magnum.

As the Magnum CD is brand new and only released last Monday, I'll give it a few plays through and then do a review. Most of my music is old and familiar stuff which is difficult to "review" properly. I'll try with this CD in a week or so.

Awful England

Being a football fan means that you have to endure bad times to appreciate the good.

Well England are certainly going through some bad times at the moment. The last two performances have been terrible (even worse than Crewe last Saturday) and it has been very difficult to get excited about watching the national team.

The disappointment of last summer's World Cup and particularly the way we performed has not gone away. In fact things look worse even when we win. I have never before had so little confidence in the team.

Back In Black

Amazing Spider-man #539 by J. Michael Straczynski and Ron Garney

Although already featured in recent issues of Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man the Black in Black storyline officially starts here with Pete deciding to don the black costume to send the message that he's different now and he's not to be messed with. At the end of the issue he states that he's going to kill whoever was responsible for shooting Aunt May.

I have a couple of problems with all this. One, I remember him getting rid of the black costume because it freaked MJ who had been kidnapped by Venom. He wouldn't keep it webbed up and hidden underneath some gargoyle atop a skyscraper "just in case". I'll have to look up what happened in my back issues.

More importantly, I don't believe that he would say that he will kill whoever is responsible. Yes he's changed etc and been through a lot, but he couldn't bring himself to kill Norman Osbourn, the Green Goblin, after he killed Gwen. A more mature Pete would certainly be angry and I like the black costume as a symbol of his new attitude following the events in Civil War and his unmasking - but I can't see him wanting to kill somebody in revenge.

These points aside, it's a good issue. Garney's art is fine without being flashy and JMS moves the story on quickly. Shame that as Aunt May has already died once (don't ask) her condition has lost some impact.

Rating 7/10

Civil War: The Confession One-shot was another disappointment by Bendis. What's going on? After the poor Civil War:The Initiative this was yet another waste of time and money. The book was split into two halves - which for some reason were in reverse timeline order.

In part one, Iron Man sits weeping over the dead body of Cap saying that he saw it coming after meeting King Arthur (Iron Man #150 if my memory serves me right). WTF? He can see the future now? This part finishes with Iron Man saying that his victory wasn't worth it.

But in the next part, Iron Man faces Cap in his cell and tells him that he's a sore loser. Nice and mature.

The crying scene would have been better following this showing that Stark had come to realise that winning isn't everything.

Nice art by Alex Maleev though.

Rating 4/10

New Avengers #28 was a better Bendis issue with art by Leinil Yu.

There was some nice touches of dialogue and the story of Ronin (aka Echo) is good. Not sure that Yu is right for this book (as I've said I'd love Alan Davis to be drawing this) but it does have a certain quirkiness to it. Not sure that I'll still appreciate that after a year though.

Rating 6.5/10

Wolverine Origins #12 by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon is just more of the same. Yet again the villain comes from Wolvies past and the inevitable clash with his long lost son draws ever closer.

Dillon's art keeps me on the title and the story, for what it is, is well told. I just wonder how come Wolverine can be in so many places (read comics) at once without them ever connecting. I mean, he was in Japan in New Avengers above and Germany in Origins. In Wolverine main title he was fighting Sabretooth back at the mansion in New York. Finally, he's gallivanting off to the Breakworld in Astonishing X-Men. And that's just the one's I know about.

He sure gets about....

Issue rating 7.5/10

Safety at least

Crewe Alex reached 52 points this season yesterday which is generally considered to be enough to ensure that they don't get relegated by beating Rotherham 1-0 at Gresty Road.

It was poor game and the cold wind made for a fairly miserable afternoon in South Cheshire. Got to look on the positive side that we won but I'm hoping the team can relax a little now and play some attractive football from now until the end of the season.

Fantastic Four: The End

I must say that I was disappointed with this 6 issue mini-series by Alan Davis.

The art, of course, was lovely and I would love to see Davis take on a regular assignment of a monthly book. The Avengers or FF would be perfect.

However, Davis' story here is very weak. It is set in the future where, by some miracle of Reed's science, all the heroes are living longer. However, Reed and Sue's children died in a final, fateful battle with Doom and the FF have gone their separate ways.

OK so far, but the various tangents that the story subsequently split into were uninspired and drawn out. There were too many guest stars, not enough concentration was placed on the FF and it never felt like this was the final story. Even at the conclusion you could basically say that nothing had changed. There was a distinct lack of drama.

In my opinion, Early efforts by Alan Davis at writing stories were really good but recently they have failed to excite. Particularly this and "Another Nail" for DC.

Rating 5/10 - for the fantastic art.

More new purchases Dept: Received Captain America Red Menace Vol. 1 via Amazon Marketplace yesterday. Vol 2 is on order and I'll soon be able to catch up with Brubaker's Cap before reading the "landmark" issue 25.

More new Stuff

I took the day off work to get some jobs done. One of those was to sort out my comic boxes and do some re-arranging etc. After doing that I decided to take the opportunity to go yet again to Forbidden Planet ( twice in one week!) and pick up more bags and boards. While I was there, I picked up the comics that I collect which came in on Thursday this week.

Only 2

Amazing Spider-man #539
Ms. Marvel #13.

Speaking of new stuff, I received yet another old favourite album on CD via Amazon yesterday. Nelson's "After the Rain". Another AOR classic. It was only £2.63 incl. postage as well! So much cheapness.

2007 is turning out to be a good year for finally getting all my favourite albums on CD.

On my TV this week....

Up-to-date on all my TV as I've managed to watch a bit each night this week.

Battlestar Galactica episode 12 was a conclusion to a two-parter. Some major events happen. The way to earth is made clearer, a Cylon model gets taken out of commission and more clues are given as to the identity of the final five "human" Cylon models.

What I can't understand and would like to see explained a little bit more is why the other cylons don't know what the final five look like? This begs the question - how were these models manufactured? Hopefully this will be addressed soon.

On the whole it was a good episode as usual. Over halfway through the season now. Weep.

But more good news as Sci-Fi channel has announced that Season 4 will be 22 episodes not just just 13 as originally commissioned. See here. Yay!! Something to look forward to in 2008.

LOST episode 12 was also a good episode. I seem to enjoy all the episodes without Jack although strangely Claire was starting to bug me and now I know why. Kath did well to spot the link before it was revealed.

I'm also enjoying the tension between Sahid and Locke as both want to be in charge. Still want more answers though.

Heroes episode 6 wasn't quite as good as episode 5 but it was still good. Hiro still gets all the best bits but at least this week Niki's story finally got interesting with the arrival of her super powered husband.

I also watched the last episode of the first series of Primeval which was considerably better than previous efforts. This was because the monster was interesting and the "consequences" of time-travel are starting to be developed and integrated into the storyline. A nice plot twist and cliffhanger at the end with everybody but Cutter forgetting about Claudia. Silly but in a good way.

I guess I'll be back for series 2 then....

New Stuff

I've picked up some new comics today and also have received more goodies via Amazon in the past couple of days too.

The comics that I got (together with more boxes!)

Civil War: The Confession 1
New Avengers 28
Wolverine (2003) 51
Wolverine:Origins 12
Captain America (2005) 25

Notice Cap #25 - Forbidden Planet had just got their restocks. Yay! I pity those poor souls who splashed out more than £3 for this. I read stories of some expensive purchases on ebay for this.

I was a bit desperate for the boxes as things were getting a little tight in the existing ones. This gives me a little more space to re-organise. However, there's no more room for any more boxes so I may have to rationalise (throw away/sell some comics) eventually.

I got Powers Vol 7. and X-Files season 8 dvd box-set from Amazon as well. That completes my Powers collection and just one more season of X-Files to go. That's one for next month.

Currently reading Fantastic Four: The End - review to follow when completed.

Civil War: Epilogue

The new Marvel Universe World Order has arrived.


Most of these comic reviews concern comics which focus on the deployment of the registered superheroes in the Initiative.

In "Civil War: The Initiative" Bendis and Silvestri introduce us to some of the characters in this new era. We see Iron Man, Omega Flight and Ms. Marvel.

It's a 38 page issue, cost about £3 and is virtually a total waste of money, paper and time. The only things I learnt were Iron Man's armour is now part of him and pours out of his skin. Say what? and eeew! Also Caps not dead according to Ms. Marvel (!) and the Thunderbolts are one weird team.

I could have speed read this in the shop and not missed anything really. I think Silvestri's art is over-rated as well. It's OK.... but not my favourite style.

Quite like the cover though. Rating 4/10.

"The Mighty Avengers" #1 by Bendis and Cho was much, much better. Good dialogue and great art by Frank Cho. Ms. Marvel was interesting in this title which will make it easier to drop her own in a couple of months.

I like the new team as it's a good mix of well known and new(ish) heroes. I'm looking forward to seeing what Bendis will do with Wonderman. I've always found him quite boring uptill now.

A neat and surprising ending as well. Rating 7.5/10

Fantastic Four #543 was a giant sized 45th anniversary issue. The main story was by Dwayne McDuffie and Mike McKone. I really liked their first issue on this title and although this was a little slow and was basically a set up to introduce the new team for next issue - it was still a good read. The signs look good so far.

Rating 7.5/10

She-Hulk #16. What more can I say about Dan Slott's writing on She-Hulk? Another great issue as Shehulkie continues to tackle all those bad guys that her cousin usually messes around with. Tonight it's the "Wen-di-go!". Wolvie joins the party but rejects her advances. Juggernauts Sloppy seconds? You what?

Top notch art by Rick Burchett by the way.

Rating 8/10

There's no doubt that the concept and storylines in "The New Avengers: Illuminati" are interesting. In issue #2 by Bendis & Reed with art by Jim Cheung Reed Richards collects the soul gems to make up the Infinity Gaunlet - just so nobody else can. This doesn't go down too well with all the other members and the divisions in the group start to widen.

I particularly like the fact that each member ends up with one of the gems. That is certainly going to cause problems and with it, some good storylines to look forward to. I liked this issue a lot.

Rating 8/10.

Heroes takes off

There's been a steady improvement as the series went on in Heroes - but this weeks episode was the best by far. The character's are now interacting and the storylines are merging. Hiro still gets all the best bits, but the Petrelli brothers both excelled in this episode.

Save the cheerleader - save the World. But the question must be be what could possibly permanently harm the cheerleader?

A Poor Day at the Office

Crewe 0 - 1 Bristol City

It's appropriate to use a football cliche to describe this match.

It wasn't a great performance from the Alex yesterday but I thought we played better football than Bristol (esp. considering our injuries). Although the BBC report said our goalie made a string of saves - I didn't get the impression that we were under a great deal of pressure. Bristol's goal was scrappy but with only 5 mins to go it didn't leave us much time to get back into the match.

Just got to hope that we play better next weekend.

More Battlestar, LOST + That Red Button

Caught up with Battlestar Galactica on Tuesday night. I watched the previous week's episode and then went straight into the current one.

The older episode, "The Passage", was a poor episode in comparison to the rest of the season so far. The plot was a little similar to a story in season 1 when the fleet was running out of water. This time it was food that was running out and the closest source was only via a radiation cloud. Although a regular character died during the episode I felt that it just wasn't as exciting or dramatic as some others.

The next episode "The Eye of Jupiter" made up for this with some major developments and a tense situation with FOUR Cylon basestars. How is Adama going to get out of this?

However, my enjoyment of this episode was spoilt a bit by THAT BLOODY RED BUTTON!

Sky decided to cover half the screen with a big logo for people to press the red button to access Stargate SG-1 multi-start. When you're watching it as broadcast you can keep pressing back-up to remove it. But it's a pain. When you watch it recorded, as I do, then it's always there bugging me and tonight it was worse by being so much bigger.

Surely anybody who turns on Sky One to watch the multi-start knows that it's available and to press the red button. Are are we all just too stupid?

This weeks LOST was an average episode. You know the usual - too much time on the backstory (which appears to tell us very little) and too little time on the island where we want some answers. Arrgh.

At least Jack didn't feature yet again!

A Mixed Bunch

Five quick reviews tonight....

Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man #17

by Peter David and Todd Nauck

Whoah! Just reading the first few pages of this comic took me back to 1985 and reading Spidey in his black costume. Issue #17 is part of the Black In Black storyline where Pete switches back to his black costume in order to prove and demonstrate that he's no longer the man he once was following the events of Civil War.

Together with #18 by the same creative team these issues make-up Parts 1 and 2 of "Sandblasted" where Spidey and the Sandman get together to find the alternative reality Uncle Ben featured in earlier issues.

The story is a bit complex and I'll have to skim read those issues to remind myself what happened but these issues were OK with a fairly original plot.

Rating 7.5 for both.

Eternals #7 by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr completed the limited series. Whilst I enjoyed the story I must admit that none of the characters were interesting enough for me to continue with the book if it had been an on-going series. The story reached a logical conclusion and JR Jr's art was as good as it always is but there was something missing from the drama of it all.

My favourite moment actually came from Sersi's meeting with Tony Stark.

A crap cover by Rick Berry. This series deserved better in my opinion. Why have variants at all except to make money?

Rating 7/10

From a crap cover to a great one. Check out Greg Horn's cover!

Ms. Marvel #12 by Brian Reed and Roberto De La Torre.

This cover was the only thing good about this issue. I thought that issue #11 had been a slight improvement bu this was a big step back.

So I'll pick up the next 2 issues with a different artist which cover the aftermath of Civil War and Ms Marvel leading the Mighty Avengers and then I will drop this title. At least until Reed goes.

Rating 3/10. (10/10 for that cover though!)

Powers #23 by Bendis and Oeming was the best comic out of the 5 reviews tonight even though it was a bizarre issue.

Walker gets visited by the devil? He's been alive since the dawn of time? Did we know this? (I bet it was in the trade " Vol 7: Forever" that I haven't got - will rectify soon!) and Deena makes a startling discovery. As you do.

Unpredictable as ever and a great read. However my language takes a dip after reading an issue of Powers! I wonder if this affects anybody else? How many swear words can Bendis fit into one issue?

Rating 8/10.

New Comics but No Captain America

Well as I guessed Forbidden Planet had sold out of Cap #25. The guy at the shop said that they did on Wednesday in a couple of hours. Oh well, in this day and age of the trade paperbacks it isn't a great a loss has it was in the past.

What I did manage to get was.

Fantastic Four 543
Civil War: The Initiative 1
Mighty Avengers 1
Eternals 7
Squadron Supreme (2006): Hyperion vs Nighthawk 3
Fantastic Four : The End 6
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man 18
Hulk 104
Jack Staff 13

I've still a few issues to read of the comics that I bought on 23 Feb so these will get merged with them. I should have them all read in a week or so. Then I plan to go back to my old Spider-man comics for a bit.

The Fantastic Four:The End #6 was the last issue in a limited series by Alan Davis. I've not read any of them yet so I'll probably read the lot now. I'm also aware that I've not read any Hulk for a bit but I'm waiting for Planet Hulk to conclude before getting stuck into them.

Primevil

I've just watched 3 episodes of "Primevil" , including tonight's episode, back-to-back.

Part of me asks why did I bother? It's just soo silly. Nothing makes any sense whatsoever and the characters continually do stupid and illogical things.

But it is kind of fun if you don't take it too seriously. In fact, everybody running around acting like a headless chicken (or dodo in this case) doing thetheir silly things is quite funnyand part of the appeal. All of the characters are fairly likable including the terrible Government Man who is a living cliche. The special effects are good for a UK TV series though. Entertaining nonsense.

I think it's the last part next week so I might as well complete the series but it's not exactly been life changing.

Good Episodes of Heroes and Lost

This week has been a good one so far in terms of TV shows.

LOST was the best one yet of this season. It had humour and it was good to see the castaways laughing for a change. It also didn't feature Jack. Bonus!

Heroes was also good. It's still slowish but now familiarity with the characters compensates for the pace of the story. Pete's powers are revealed and Hiro uses his powers for his own gain just like Peter Parker. You can't argue with logic like that!

Nice ending too.

Sometimes You Just can't Avoid it

Spoilers!

Not just in this post - it's what this post is all about.

Today I found out about the assassination of Captain America in Cap issue #25. This is the big event post Civil War and big news in the States by all accounts. So it gets widely covered on Comic Book Resources as they obviously figure everyone will know as all the media are covering it.

I really try to avoid spoilers if I possibly can, a task made harder as I take forever to read comics and am happy to wait until reading a complete story (I'm currently doing that with Planet Hulk). But the spoiler was in the title of theses news stories so I had no hope.

Now up till now I've not been collecting Cap so it shouldn't bother me much. But as Ed Brubaker is writing it and having enjoyed his Daredevil so much I've started picking up the trades. I was planning on picking up the regular series from issue 25 but it's likely to be sold out now. Bugger.

Well I plan on visiting Forbidden Planet tomorrow so we'll see if I can get a copy.

Update: Just after posting this I saw that the story is covered on BBC website. Perhaps it is news here after all!

Bunch of new comic reviews

I've managed to read a few new comics over the last couple of days.

Ms Marvel Special #1 by Brian Reed and Guiseppe Camuncoli was terrible. It introduced a character who has the ability to change story endings. A dangerous concept so I hope we never see him again. The story was poor, the art sub-average. Nothing to recommend it really. More of this sort of stuff by Reed and I'll drop the Ms Marvel regular book as I've threatened to do be before. In fact the next couple of issues deal with the repercussions of Civil War. If they are no good then that's it until a new writer comes along. Probably an email to Marvel may be sent at the same time.

Rating 2.5/10

Astonishing X-Men #20 by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday was yet another fine installment of this story arc. As I've said before this will read better in one sitting. It's due to finish with issue 24. My plan now is to just collect the last few issues over the months and then read all in a couple of sittings. For me that's normally the best way.

In this issue the X-Men crash land on the Breakworld and the story begins the countdown to the climax.

Rating 7.5/10

New Avengers #27 by Bendis and Yu highlights Ronin and her mission to Japan. Unfortunately she runs into Elektra and news to call in help. The New Avengers turn up so that's a result. This is the new Avengers post Civil War as well. Spider-woman, Cage, Iron Fist, Doc Strange, Wolvie and black costumed Spidey. And some other dude in a similar costume to Ronin. A mystery to solve!

An enjoyable issue anyway. Rating 8/10

Wolverine Origins #11 by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon starts a new story arc but continues the same old thing really. More on Wolvie's son but also a new character, Milo, has been introduced. I wonder if Day dreamt-up this character for Dillon as he seems a typical Dillon character. What his connection to Wolvie is yet to be revealed. Dillon's art still rocks

Rating 7/10.

Grudge match on BSG

Episode 9 of Battlestar Galactica was entitled "Unfinished Business".

The crew of Galactica get to let off steam via a boxing tournament where old grudges can be settled. Chief among them is Apollo and Starbuck. These guys have deep grudges.

The whole boxing tournament thing is just a device to cleverly look back at what happened on new Caprica before the cylons showed up. (Interestingly - Boomer/Sharon/ was the only cylon to feature tonight).

The flashbacks were very revealing and went a long way to explain one or two things.

Difficult to say much more without giving too much of the plot away. It was a bloody episode which held the attention even if it wasn't as exciting as earlier episodes.

And I don't feel sorry for Dee either. After her treatment of Billy in Season 2 - she's got this comin'!

Broken toe

I didn't post a blog concerning the Alex's latest match which I went to see last Saturday.

Crewe drew with Brighton 1-1.

It's not because we only got a draw when we really should have beaten Brighton. It wasn't because we were hanging on for long periods of the game and were playing poorly.

It was just a very poor game.

And today I've just read that Luke Varney, topscorer this season with 25 goals, is out for 4 weeks with a broken toe. That's not good news. In fact it's crap news.

We will struggle over the next few weeks without him.

Runaways Vol 2.

I've now finished reading Runaways Vol 2. My comments on Vol. 1 are here.

Only 12 issues are reprinted in Vol 2 but still a lot happens. The Runaways meet up with more Heroes and Villains from the Marvel Universe, gain and loose members and are hunted by others who want revenge for the death of their parents.

Adrian Alphona's art has improved since the early issues of Vol 1 but really it's Brian K Vanghan's writing which carries the story. His dialogue is really good and the plots original.

Volume 3 reprinting issues 13-24 which are the last of Vaughan's run is out in April and I will certainly be getting it then.

Heroes - still a bit slow

The third episode of Heroes did little to pick up the pace really.

The plot involving Hiro is still by far the most entertaining but everything else is a little slow. The first villain, Sylar, is encountered though and this looks like it could lead to something interesting.

TV Trouble

I am getting seriously behind on my regular TV shows and with a busy weekend coming up there's not much chance to catch-up. On the other hand it is nice to have something to watch!

Still to watch - BSG, Heroes, Primeval, and 3 episodes of the Dresden Files.

Did manage to watch LOST (season 3 episode 9) last night though.

It was an OK episode but it focused on Jack who, as I've said before, is not one of my favourite characters. In fact, this episode showed him to be more of a knob than usual.

Usually the back story helps to move the plot along to some degree and with the last couple of episodes that has been especially true. The main reason for this back story seemed to me to explain Jack's tattoos. NOT helpful!

If the rumours are true and viewing figures are down in the States I hope this prompts the writers to start the final arc and explain what the hell is going on!