This Week in Panels: Week 63
December 5th, 2010 by Gavok | Tags: Batman, chaos war, deadpool, panels, she-hulk, taskmaster, undertaker, what if, wwe heroesWe got a lot of good panels from me and David and Was Taters and Space Jawa. Shockingly, not one of us included a single panel from Shadowland/Daredevil. That’s too bad.
Great week for me, though. For one, there’s more WWE Heroes insanity. Taskmaster has concluded, finalizing that it’s a depressingly great miniseries. Then there’s a mundane What If issue featuring an amazing backup story that I’ve included for its own panel. Even still, there are three more parts to it!
Oh, and Taters was late in reading last week’s pile, so there’s a Thor: The Mighty Avenger in there.
Action Comics Annual #13
Paul Cornell, Marco Rudy and Ed Benes
Ant-Man & Wasp #2
Tim Seeley
Batman 80-Page Giant 2010
Paul Tobin, Ryan Kelly and various others
Batman Orphans #1
Eddie Berganza and Carlo Barberi
Boys #49
Garth Ennis and Russ Braun
Chaos War: God Squad
Marc Sumerak and Dan Panosian
Heroes For Hire #1
Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Brad Walker
Iron Man/Thor: God Complex #2
Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Scot Eaton
King City #12
Brandon Graham
Ozma of Oz #2
Eric Shanower and Skottie Young
Secret Six #28
Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore
She-Hulks #2
Harrison Wilcox and Ryan Stegman
Taskmaster #4
Fred Van Lente and Jefte Palo
Thor: The Mighty Avenger #6
Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee
What If: Iron Man: Demon in an Armor
David Michelinie, Bob Layton and Graham Nolan
What If the Venom Symbiote Possessed Deadpool Part 1 (Backup)
Rick Remender and Shawn Moll
WWE Heroes: The Undertaker #1
Keith Champagne and Tom Nguyen
Really. Taskmaster. Read it. Is good. The Ant-Man and She-Hulk books are fun stuff too.
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Other than the part where it negates the entirety of Simone/Udon’s Taskmaster, it is a decent read. Except for that city full of Hitler’s. That’s just weird shit there.
Didn’t get to look through What If? Why is Iron Man’s armor green? Is it St. Patrick’s Day? Did he swap colors with Vic?
Personally, I didn’t bother with Taskmaster at all. I got excited when it was first announced, but then lost all interest when I learned that the plot behind it was a giant retcon where Taskmaster’s old memories are gone because his brain is full and they’ve been deleted to make room for the moves he’s learned. Which sounded stupid enough to me and came across as taking something away from the character I came to enjoy so much in Avengers: Initiative that I just couldn’t bother with the book, in part because I felt like purchasing it would be akin to me saying I’m all fine with the retcon. And I just can’t get behind supporting something like that, no matter how good the actual book is.
And as far as a lack of Shadowland or Daredevil, I wonder if that says anything as to the quality or enthusiasm the crossover had left as it came to the finishline.
@ Jason – Doom switched bodies with Stark when they were in college, so the change in color is because Doom has been living as Stark while Tony has been forced to live as Doom.
@Capo Del Bandito: Simone didn’t write that miniseries. Ken Siu-Chong did.
@Space Jawa: Then you’re missing out. The comic does retcon stuff, but nothing truly important to the character. Is it really that important that they got rid of his ability to remember every single moment of his life that they only mentioned once? The man has never had an interesting pre-adventure backstory other than that one anecdote about how he learned how to dive before he learned how to swim and almost died.
The rest of the retcon is elaboration, much like the “SHIELD was secretly a front for Hydra” reveal in Secret Warriors #1. He still has the same personality that he’s ever had. He’s still been a teacher and a criminal. Hell, the comic is the best explanation for why Taskmaster has completely cut ties with Sandra, Alex and Outlaw while going back to his original costume. The miniseries adds more meat to his backstory, who he really is and the true explanation of his powers. Besides, the old explanation never worked for me. They’ve gone out to say that he’s definitely not a mutant, yet that’s the way they wrote his origin. The new one gives far more storytelling potential.
It also makes his friendship with Ant-Man more interesting in retrospect.
Maybe I did overreact. It’s just that the explanation they gave sounded stupid and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, if Taskmaster doesn’t have enough room in his brain for both his memories and the moves he’s picked up, then I don’t understand why the same wouldn’t apply to numerous other characters in the Marvel universe who are suppose to be full of information. Like Pym, for example – the guy has grown into an omnidiciplinarian who’s suppose to be one of the smartest guys on Earth, but his memories are still intact (granted, he’s kind of lacking in the department of common sense, so maybe that’s where his mind is taking the hit). Or Dr. Doom – the guy is suppose to be a master of science, sorcery, and all these other things that allow him to be one of the worst villains on Earth, but we don’t hear anything about him suffering memory losses on account of his brain running out of space.
Maybe I’ll think it over, give it another look, and see if I can look past my initial reaction when they get ready to release the TPB… :-
The difference is that Pym and Doom are just smart dudes who learn a lot. Taskmaster’s photogenic reflexes are unnatural and the memory thing is an unfortunate side-effect. I would say that wiping his memories completely is a bad definition for what’s happened with him. It’s more that learning more and more body movement information jumbles and buries his personal memories. Like his brain is a snowglobe and watching someone like Iron Fist fight while remembering all the moves is like shaking that snowglobe.
I wish they hadn’t changed Ant-Man’s costume to a “classic” inspired design.
Not using the “Save me, Lord Mephisto!” panel from the What If? back-up strip was just wrong, man.
@Chad Nevett: Yeah, I felt bad about it too. Sad that Galactus with MODOK grafted to his butt couldn’t make it either.
@Gavok
Yeah but Simone introduced us to that version of Taskmaster, as well as made him a bit more than a thug, no? The Udon folks did make him high class, well mannered, and an all around badass merc, which is what I loved.
The psuedo-science they used to explain his reflexes is sorta cheesy, but acceptable.
But I really, REALLY, fucking hate giant ‘they were always on our side’ retcons. I can forgive a retcon when it’s just one event. But when it’s on the level of ‘Jason Todd was alive the WHOLE time and Talia and Ra’s NEVER mentioned him and the same Batman who figured out he was mindwiped NEVER figured out his second protege was around st ill’, it’s just goofy. It’s like when a mini-series has a ‘super masterful behind the scenes mover and shaker’ like on “Identity Disk”, we’re just supposed to buy EVERYTHING fell into place just right and perfectly and that’s why we never had an inkling.
I much prefer Geoff Johns style retcons to those. Except for ‘punching reality’. That was just crap.
Dammit comics, the Undertaker’s neck tattoo says “SARA”, not “KRAK”.