We’re at the tail end of Original Sin as an event. I think we just have that last issue of the Thor/Loki tie-in and we’re done and we can move on to Axis. Axis can go either way, but when it comes to Original Sin, I’m of the opinion that it may be the best Marvel/DC event story in at least the last decade.

The miniseries itself was strong. It wasn’t the best ever, but it’s a good standalone story, which I can’t say the same about Infinity. Don’t get me wrong, I thought Infinity was amazing, but that’s only because I’ve been reading Avengers and New Avengers from the beginning and if you don’t do that, you’re kind of lost. Original Sin just felt like a remake of Identity Crisis that tried to be over-the-top instead of mopey. Instead of a sudden, out-of-nowhere ending where “THAT LADY BE CRAZY!” we got something more interesting. In fact, the events surrounding it are still rather ambiguous and the moral debate between the characters of Fury and Uatu are quarantined to the mini itself. It’s not like Civil War where every single comic for nearly a year is arguing one point against another.

Also, there’s the tie-ins. Sometimes events can be murder with tie-ins because we’ll get the same crap over and over again. Secret Invasion, World War Hulk and Blackest Night were stories where the tie-ins felt like the same thing over and over again. You read one, you read them all. Original Sin had a gimmick of heroes discovering shocking secrets, but they didn’t go the easy way out and make it create a rift in every single relationship. Instead, we only get Captain America’s current hate-on with Iron Man, which honestly has very little to do with Original Sin anyway and was going to happen regardless. Even the Hulk tie-in where it’s suggested that Iron Man created the Hulk out of spite ended with a sweet ending that highlighted the movie-mandated friendship between Stark and Banner.

For real, Stark emotionally yelling at Banner and bitching him out for thinking everyone would be better off if he was dead was such an awesome scene.

“Never say that! Never say that, you $#(@ !$#%!”

“Don’t make me angry.”

“Then don’t make ME angry, Bruce! You always make me so damn angry!”

Another awesome tie-in came in the form of this week’s Deadpool #34. I wrote a review of it here, but the gist is that it’s a soul-crushing issue that goes into one of the more messed up moments of Deadpool’s past. It’s one of the darkest moments in the character’s history. Luckily, being a Deadpool comic and also a Brian Posehn/Gerry Duggan Deadpool comic, it’s also hilarious otherwise.

The gimmick is that it takes place during the early 90’s. Scott Koblish proceeds to make it 90’s as fuck, doing his best Liefeld impression. The characters look right, but one of the best subtle running gags comes with a piece of missing anatomy that we’ve all come to recognize Liefeld for.

Spot the missing feet.

During this entire flashback sequence – which is all but three pages of the full issue – we never see a single foot. As great as that is, the real punchline comes from the ending, where we return to the present and a regular art style. Behold.

Of COURSE that’s the first thing we focus on.

I got nominated for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. What can I do?

http://www.alsa.org/

Seriously, I was not going to ruin that gem of a shirt. Sorry about your retinas.

Last weekend, I took a trip to New York City to watch a CHIKARA show. Between that and the Boston show that followed, CHIKARA has done six shows since their return announcement at February’s National Pro Wrestling Day. CHIKARA likes to focus on overarching storylines every season and in this one, it’s about CHIKARA vs. a massive villain group called the Flood. Wrestling has had many, many good stable vs. evil stable storylines – CHIKARA specially – but there are two things that make this specific one unique.

First, the Flood isn’t just a stable. It’s a super stable made up of other stables like Devastator from Transformers. Or, to keep the nerd references going, it’s like the Secret Society of Supervillains from DC Comics circa Infinite Crisis. It’s several dozen bad guys from CHIKARA’s past banded together under one banner. I don’t even know if there were this many members of the nWo at any single point.

Second, this war actually has a body count. Going with the comic book nature of CHIKARA’s storytelling, they’re actually killing off wrestlers like it was an event comic. Kind of. For the most part, they aren’t outright saying “dead,” but they are heavily insinuating it.

That’s pretty cool to me because as much as I love a cool stable angle, once it starts going it can be really hard to figure out a satisfying ending. It usually just peters out, the heel team turns against each other, or they do some kind of, “If they lose, they have to break up forever,” stipulation. Even the popular BDK storyline only came to an end because two members burned their bridges with the company, one member got signed by WWE, one left wrestling in general, one turned face, one was written off for health reasons and one wasn’t local enough for the full-time schedule.

The big story from mid-2013 to mid-2014 was that CHIKARA was simply kaput. The corrupt owners Titor Conglomerate ended the company and the workers headed off into a handful of far-less-popular offshoots. CHIKARA guy Icarus started a grassroots campaign to get Titor to sell the rights off while the offshoot promotions were systematically crushed by old heel factions out to destroy what was left of the company until Icarus united the CHIKARA faithful against the Flood at National Pro Wrestling Day and announced the return of CHIKARA.

During that time off, the promotion Wrestling is Fun had a ten-man tag match featuring future Flood members Oleg the Usurper, Max Smashmaster, Blaster McMassive, Flex Rumblecrunch and Jaka. Their opponents were no match for them, but what nobody saw coming was what Oleg did to fan-favorite Dragon Dragon.

My God! That’s barbaric!

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The nice thing about being a blogger is that it’s like a tax write-off on buying terrible shit. It’s great when you read a great comic, see an awesome movie, or something like that, but if you pay for something lame, you can always twist it into an article. It’s really one of the best perks.

I can’t not read WWE comics and I’ve filled up big chunks of this site proving that. The latest attempt at a WWE series is WWE Superstars by Papercutz. It’s been written by wrestling legend Mick Foley and Shane Riches. I imagine Shane Riches wrote most of it. Anyway, the first four issues were just released in a trade under the name Money in the Bank. I reviewed it here. The arc was about reimagining WWE wrestlers as characters in an overly-casted crime noir story. A cool idea that wore out its welcome.

The art was mostly done by Alitha Martinez, who did an all right job. Most of the time, wrestlers looked like who they were supposed to and some pieces looked really nice. Other times, the pencils were rushed, as was the need to get through the story, meaning fight scenes all had an unnatural flow to them. Then in the fourth issue, Martinez was replaced for four pages by an artist named Puste and oh boy was it noticeable. Lifeless, awkward, incoherent and ripe with inconsistency, it was a complete trip.

For some reason, Papercutz decided to have Puste be the main artist on the current arc, which has the wrestlers actually being wrestlers. It’s a weird storyline called Haze of Glory that features Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Rey Mysterio and Hornswoggle with a wicked hangover due to some spiked punch. The backstage area is in ruins, everyone blames them and they don’t know what in the hell happened. All they know is that they’ve been set up.

And yes, CM Punk is still a main character despite having been gone from the company since January.

I really can’t judge the wacky story on its own merits because the art is so distracting. Issue #6 alone has so many moments that make me shake my head that I’m able to make an actual top ten list out of it.

Let’s get started!

10) THE ATTEMPTED F5

Well. Lot of stuff going on here. Brock Lesnar is trying to F5 CM Punk and Goldust saves Punk with a kick to the nuts. Looks awkward, but okay.

Hornswoggle is bald here and that might make sense at first glance. After all, he recently lost a mask vs. hair match and for the past couple months he’s been bald in real life. Except in every single other panel he shows up in, he’s got a full head of hair. Remember, this comic is out of date enough that Jack Swagger calls Cesaro “Antonio” and CM Punk is there.

Puste seems to have a thing against drawing backgrounds most of the time, so for some reason the 4th of July is going off behind them. I don’t know.

9) CM PUNK CHOKES OUT MARK HENRY

A zombie CM Punk goes for Mark Henry’s brains and Henry seems almost happy about it.

He took out Cena too! You’ll… You’ll just have to take his word for it, okay? Punk certainly applies the sleeper an awful lot like the Anaconda Vise. Hm.

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It’s time for This Week in Panels! The weekly segment where my wonderful contributors and I all take the comics we’ve read over the course of this week and cut them down into one panel. One representative panel that tries to explain the issue. We’ve only been doing this for… oh shit, 250?! Christ.

Yes, it’s Week 250. For nearly five years I’ve been doing this series. I started this back when Old Man Logan and Blackest Night were still going on. I originally got the idea during the short time I was writing at Pop Culture Shock. I did a bunch of one-paragraph comic reviews every week and I hated it. How many times can you write the same review of Ed Brubaker’s Captain America?

A few years before that, one comic site I can’t remember (probably Newsarama) had a preview of an upcoming issue of Civil War. Rather than show several pages, it just showed a handful of panels without context. I found the whole thing more intriguing than if we got the regular style of preview and I guess that just stayed with me. Another thing that stuck with me was when people would talk about the first Agents of Atlas series. One thing I’ve read once or twice was that it didn’t matter what you had to say about the comic in terms of opinion. Just show the panel of a 1950’s robot running down a hallway carrying a talking gorilla while said gorilla shoots four guns via both hand and both feet. That says everything.

I figured that I read a bunch of comics on a weekly basis, but nobody really had any interest in my opinions. Why would they? I’m just some guy on the internet. Worse than that, I’m a guy whose favorite character is an alien-wearing journalist-turned-hobo with delusions of grandeur recognized for being one of the poster boys of everything wrong with the 90’s. My opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. Why talk about what I read when I could just show you in its purest form and let you decide for yourself? I suggested the This Week in Panels idea to David and he put a cigar out on my face. I took that to mean, “Yes, go ahead.”

ThWiP has been very good to me and I was happy to see that it got enough regular readers and regular contributors. Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa especially, who never missed a beat when it came to sending me their stuff. I’m glad to see my idea was vindicated and it kept enough people interested.

With a heavy heart, I’m announcing that after 250 wonderful weeks, I’m stepping down from This Week in Panels. It sucks, but I need to move on. One of the things about starting ThWiP was that I wanted to do a weekly series for the sake of proving to myself that I could hit a regular deadline. And I did. Unless there was a hurricane or some kind of power-destroying storm, I hit the update every Sunday. Then I got my position at Den of Geek US, which has responsibilities beyond just writing articles. Plus my main job has been keeping me busier and busier. ThWiP updates went from regularly happening over the course of Sunday night to late Monday night or even early Tuesday morning. Simply put, I actually have real deal deadlines to deal with now.

Hell, I haven’t written a non-ThWiP update for 4thletter! since WrestleMania happened. I kind of need to rectify that and I have only so many hours in the day.

ThWiP isn’t done-done, at least. Space Jawa, otherwise known as Michael Stangeland (or as I keep accidentally typing, “Strangeland”) will be taking up the mantle. Personally, I can’t wait to see what he’s capable of.

Anyway, I still have this 250th update to do. We got me, Gaijin Dan, Matlock, Space Jawa, Was Taters, AnarChris and Dickeye. Let’s go down the road one more time.

Action Comics #33
Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift, Pt 2
Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

Batman ’66 Meets the Green Hornet #4
Kevin Smith, Ralph Garman and Ty Templeton

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Once again we find ourselves looking at the stuff we’ve read over the past week, reduced to one representative image. It’s This Week in Panels. “We” includes myself, Matlock, Space Jawa, Gaijin Dan and AnarChris. We’re like the Planeteers, only we’re all heart.

Elsewhere, I wrote this big piece on the history of Mortal Kombat comics. Years ago, I went over the Malibu series in detail here, but in this article, I go more in-depth on the many comics that acted as official preludes to the games. I was also asked by my editor to write a quick thing about John Cena being on the cover of WWE 2K15, and so I did.

Now, then. It’s paneling time! Seriously, it’s a big one this week.

All-New Ghost Rider #4 (Gavin’s pick)
Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore

All-New Ghost Rider #4 (Matlock’s pick)
Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore

All-New Ultimates #4
Michel Fiffe and Amilcar Pinna

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Hey, ThWiPsters. We’re getting closer and closer to the big 250th week landmark with panels from myself, Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and AnarChris. Original Sin continues to be Marvel’s more entertaining and less rapey version of Identity Crisis and I’ve been very happy with that. The two TMNT comics were also fantastic this week.

Helluva lot of Frank Castle stuff this week.

Elsewhere, I’ve written a review of the first arc of the WWE Superstars comic, as well as a look at various storyline aspects I expect to see in the next Mortal Kombat game.

Avengers #31 (Matlock’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

Avengers #31 (Gavin’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

Avengers World #8 (Gavin’s pick)
Nick Spencer and Marco Checchetto

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Hello, party people. It’s time for ThWiP starring myself, Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and AnarChris. Yes, a new person for once. Crazy.

The true highlight of this week is New Avengers, which is awesome mostly because of Namor. The dude absolutely owns every single panel he’s in, so it makes sense that he gets the spotlight in both choices this week.

She-Hulk and WWE Superstars both nosedive when it comes to the art this week. The stuff in She-Hulk is especially disappointing and the panel I chose is one of the better looking moments. Seriously, there’s a part where Tigra is talking about how sexy she looks while actually appearing as Lion-O in drag after a bender. It’s just not my bag.

All-New Invaders #6 (Matlock’s pick)
James Robinson and Mark Laming

All-New Invaders #6 (Gavin’s pick)
James Robinson and Mark Laming

All-New Ultimates #3
Michel Fiffe and Amilcar Pinna

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And here we are again. It’s This Week in Panels, where I am M. Bison, Matlock is Sagat, Gaijin Dan is Vega and Space Jawa is Balrog. We’ve got a shitload of panels this week, mostly with me and Matlock double-dipping. Sadly, I’m the only one reading New Warriors, which is adorable as hell. Especially this issue where Hummingbird starts falling for Speedball. Speedball, who looks like a normal, well-adjusted human being compared to her.

On the other hand, Moon Knight. Oh my God, Moon Knight. I mean, if you haven’t started reading it yet, you might as well just wait for the trade since the current creative team is only lasting a whopping six issues before splitting up. So far the series has been completely kickass and I can’t recommend it enough.

Now let’s get the show on the road.

Action Comics #32
Greg Pak and Scott Kolins

All You Need Is Kill #17
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

Aquaman and the Others #3
Dan Jurgens and Lan Medina

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Hey, now! Getting closer and closer to hitting 250. This week I did a review of Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist and… nothing. Because I’m locked in a world of getting endless overtime at work. Great for the wallet, but damn if I have zero energy to write or do my DDP Yoga.

My boys Gaijin Dan, Matlock and Space Jawa are back with me this week. Lots of Charles Soule with a couple Parker and Robinson books mixed in there. Just how I like it. I’ve mentioned before that Red Lanterns is pretty much the best book DC has right now, right? Because it totally fucking is.

All-New Invaders #5 (Gavin’s pick)
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All-New Invaders #5 (Matlock’s pick)
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All-Star Western #31
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Staz Johnson and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

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