This Week in Panels: Week 202
August 4th, 2013 by Gavok | Tags: Batman, injustice, mega man, panels, sonic the hedgehog, tmnt, wake, what if
It’s a week of endings. Grant Morrison finishes up his lengthy work with Batman by showing that, “Batman and Robin will never die!” is in actuality a form of Hell. The Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man team-up ends after its 12th issue, meaning that the Dr. Wily/Dr. Eggman bromance is gone for good. Then we got the last issue of the latest What If.
Guys, you know me. You know that I’ve read every single issue of What If. I know all of them from the great to the terrible. I can honestly say that of the 200+ entries of that series, What If: Avengers vs. X-Men is the absolute worst one. Yes, even worse than What If the Avengers Lost the Evolutionary War? At least that story was able to be bad in one issue.
I’m helped out by Gaijin Dan, Was Taters, Space Jawa, Jody and Matlock. Let the games begin.
Animal Man Annual #2
Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman
Batman ’66 #5
Jeff Parker and Ty Templeton
Batman Annual #2
Scott Snyder, Marguerite Bennett and Wes Craig
Batman Incorporated #13 (Gavin’s pick)
Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham
Batman Incorporated #13 (Taters’ pick)
Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham
Bench
Masashi Kishimoto
Daredevil #29
Mark Waid and Javier Rodriguez
Dragon Ball Z #25
Akira Toriyama
Flash Annual #2
Brian Buccellato, Sami Basri, Nicole Dubuc and Cully Hamner
Guardians of the Galaxy #5
Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli
Indestructible Hulk #11
Mark Waid and Matteo Scalera
Injustice: Gods Among Us #29 (Gavin’s pick)
Tom Taylor and Mike S. Miller
Injustice: Gods Among Us #29 (Matlock’s pick)
Tom Taylor and Mike S. Miller
Jaco the Galactic Patrolman #3
Akira Toriyama
Naruto #640
Masashi Kishimoto
Nisekoi #84
Naoshi Komi
One-Punch Man #22
ONE and Yusuke Murata
Red Lanterns #22
Charles Soule and Alessandro Vitti
Sonic the Hedgehog #251 (Gavin’s pick)
Ian Flynn and Ben Bates
Sonic the Hedgehog #251 (Jawa’s pick)
Ian Flynn and Ben Bates
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #24 (Jawa’s pick)
Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz and Mateus Santolouco
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #24 (Gavin’s pick)
Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow, Tom Waltz and Mateus Santolouco
Toriko #243
Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro
Venom #38
Cullen Bunn and Kim Jacinto
Wake #3 (Jody’s pick)
Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy
Wake #3 (Taters’ pick)
Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy
What If: Avengers vs. X-Men #4 (Gavin’s pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Jorge Molina and Gerardo Sandoval
What If: Avengers vs. X-Men #4 (Jawa’s pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Jorge Molina and Gerardo Sandoval
World Trigger #24
Daisuke Ashihara
Check in tomorrow for something I promised last week. Hey, I’ve been busy. Also, I have a pretty cool announcement to make, but I’ll wait until a little bit later in the week.
No, I’m not pregnant with David’s kid. Yet.
I’ve been listening to a lot of 8-bit remixes as I write these days. It has a strange calming influence on me. For instance…
Similar Posts:
- This Week in Panels: Week 193
- This Week in Panels: Week 215
- This Week in Panels: Week 197
- This Week in Panels: Week 173
- This Week in Panels: Week 141
Holy $#%& yeah, was AVX What If? terrible.
Not only terrible, but the end was directly swiped from an old idea Chris Claremont had years and years ago for how he’d end the entire X-Men saga. Not that it was much better then…
I haven’t read it, but did the What If?: AvX really end with Magneto obtaining the phoenix force? Holy shit that’s stupid.
As infinitely superior to Superman as the Martian Manhunter is, and as valid a root point as he’s making, that dialogue coming from a shapeshifter makes a little less than utterly no sense. Then again, neither did his death, so…..
Goddamnit Jack O’ Lantern, you remain not very cool and I’m still not sure how you haven’t been accidentally murdered given that the guy you’ve chosen to grudgedate totally loses control and eats people once every .75 issues and you’re just a toothless hillbilly pyromaniac wearing a seasonal decoration.
@Czar: It’s worse than that.
Magneto got the Phoenix Force, tried to destroy the planet and kill everyone, then Professor X ‘blinded’ him so that Hulk could fastball special Wolverine at him and kill him, at which point everyone died anyway when the planet ‘rebooted’ or what have you with Wolverine and Jean Grey as the new ‘Adam and Eve’, so to speak.
And it took them 4 issues at $4 a piece to give us that ending, too.
[…] This Week in Panels: Week 202 from 4thletter! […]
Why is that What If? are almost always so goddamn bad
@Jeremy: There’s just as many that are good. It’s that a lot of them are written by people who figure that if things didn’t go absolutely perfectly, it must mean that everyone died a horrible death. And people dying horrible deaths is like a crutch for a lot of these guys.
Palmiotti’s response to criticism for this miniseries was literally, “It’s called What If!” Like that makes it okay.
I have to admit though, most of the “modern” What If?s are pretty terrible. There’s a few exceptions, but no one’s really been able to do an exceptional one since Vol. 2 ended in the 90s.
@Mike P.: I don’t have nearly as much history with ‘What If?’s so my perspective might be skewed, but I can think of at least a few that I thought were exceptional from the past few years, the Secret Wars Dr. Doom issue (though I’d also say I think it’s as much a psychoanalysis of Dr. Doom as anything) and the Doom/Iron Man “Demon in the armor” issue among them (complete with what I’d say is an exceptional final spoken line).
I also happen to have a personal preference for the Newer Fantastic Four issue. One of my favorite one-shots of all Marvel right there.
Yeah. I’ll agree that the good-to-bad ratio has probably dipped, but there are some classics in the past few years. What If: Secret Wars, What If: Planet Hulk, What If: World War Hulk, What If: Annihilation, What If This Was the Fantastic Four and I’ve even grown to really dig What If: Civil War.
How would What If? AvX be anything other than terrible? AvX was terrible. It would take a saint to pull off that sort of miracle.
@Don Druid: Easy. What If AvX was Settled with Dodgeball?
@Don Druid: They managed to get an awesome A-Babies vs X-Babies one shot out of the deal. I’m sure that if they can manage that, they could manage a good AvX What If somehow or other.