Triple 2s! Neat! And with a Two-Face comic in there also!

Huge, huge week this update, breaking forty images, which may be a ThWiP record. Helps that I have Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and Was Taters backing me up.

My time’s been eaten up by a lot of personal things, but I have some stuff coming up in the next couple days. A really nice guest article and a little something different. In the meantime, here’s a review I wrote for Den of Geek US on a comic called Rainbow in the Dark. It’s the Matrix meets Pleasantville meets They Live as a rock opera with Sam Elliot as the wise mentor character.

Animal Man #26 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Cully Hamner

Animal Man #26 (Matlock’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Cully Hamner

Avengers Assemble #22
Kelly Sue DeConnick, Warren Ellis, Matteo Buffagni and Paco Diaz

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Why, hello! Big week of panels, including Two-Face’s lame-ass New 52 origin. Because who cares about Two-Face when Tomasi needs to push his forgettable female gangster character?

I’ve shown up in a couple little features at Den of Geek US over the past couple of days based on my Comic Con experiences. Here’s me as Wreck-It Ralph photobombing people and here’s me as Wreck-It Ralph just hanging out with other cosplayers with commentary by me as Ralph.

Help comes from Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Brobe and Space Jawa. Let’s get to it.

Animal Man #24 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Rafael Albuquerque

Animal Man #24 (Matlock’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Rafael Albuquerque

Avengers #21 (Matlock’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

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This week I’m just flanked by Jody and Gaijin Dan, but that’s okay, since they both read a lot of stuff. Lot of great books came out this week, such as Action Comics, Avengers, Deadpool, Minute Men, Hawkeye and that Hellboy thing (so I hear).

Panels, away!

Action Comics #15
Grant Morrison, Brad Walker, Rags Morales, Sholly Fisch and Chris Sprouse

All-New X-Men #3
Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

Animal Man #15 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh and Timothy Green II

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ONE HUNDRED FIFTY! I need to get out more. This seems like as good a time as any to go over the mission statement:

This Week in Panels (ThWiP) is about taking every new comic my posse and I have read this week and sawing it down to its essence. If this was a commercial that was all, “This week in Age of Apocalypse!” this is the kind of thing you’d see. No final page images. No gigantic spoilers. No splash pages. Just the comics summed up in one panel. If there’s a series you like that isn’t covered on a regular basis, you’re more than welcome to email me. It’s on the sidebar.

This time I’m helped out by Was Taters, Gaijin Dan, Jody and Space Jawa. Many thanks to them and everyone else who made the past 150 weeks such a fun routine.

Action Comics #12
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, CAFU and Brad Walker

Age of Apocalypse #6
David Lapham and Renato Arlem

Animal Man #12 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire, Scott Snyder and Steve Pugh

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So just a little bit late this update, but I’ve had an incredibly busy day and I’m half-dead. I went to NYC to check out a friend’s improv show, went and saw Ted, went home to watch TNA’s Destination X PPV and then watched the last couple hours of the Evo 2012 tournaments. All that plus the Lakers beat the Supersonics. It was a good day.

Ted is very much worth checking out, even if you’re jaded by the last ten years of Family Guy. And if you do see it, chances are very good that you’ll want to watch Flash Gordon ASAP.

But enough about my exploits. I’m joined by Jody, Gaijin Dan, Was Taters, Space Jawa and VersasoVantare.

Action Comics #11
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, Brad Walker, Sholly Fisch and CAFU

Age of Apocalypse #5
David Lapham and Davide Gianfelice

Amazing Spider-Man #689
Dan Slott and Giuseppe Camuncoli

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Good day and welcome to another ThWiP. I swear, one of these days I’ll get around to doing an opening graphic or something. Maybe. Probably not.

I’m joined by Was Taters, Gaijin Dan and Jody.

The Before Watchmen panel is all me. I guess I should nip this in the bud before it melts into the comments, but I’m checking out the comics for the time being. I’m genuinely curious and I can’t bring myself to care about the situation as much as David does, as much as I dig his passion on the subject. In the end, I feel the same about the Moore situation as I do when someone tells me what a hotdog is made of. Yeah, that’s terrible and disgusting, and the JMS stuff will probably give me diarrhea later, but I’m still in the mood to chow down. David gives zero fucks and, as always, lets me do my thing. I only mention this because I don’t want people moaning about how he’s a hypocrite for allowing a panel of Before Watchmen on his site after all his open disgust. That’s all on me, a guy with a difference of opinion.

Plus it’s payback for the time he put a Jeph Loeb comic panel as a header image. That asshole.

Now for some panels.

Action Comics #10
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, Sholly Fisch and CAFU

Age of Apocalypse #4
David Lapham, Roberto de la Torre and Renato Arlem

Animal Man #10 (Jody’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Steve Pugh

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Howdy. Strong week with many thanks to Jody, Gaijin Dan and Was Taters for helping out. While Space Jawa has nothing for me in terms of this week, he did stock me up on some Free Comic Book Day panels for next week’s update. I’ve been busy the past couple days, so I haven’t been able to read too much, but I did have to chuckle at the free Avengers comic Marvel gave out.

It’s a rerelease of the .1 issue they did a year ago, which has yet to have any bearing on Marvel. Some jumping-on point. Anyway, the book featured a subplot of Spider-Woman being kidnapped by some mad scientist types and finding herself in a cell with her wrists cuffed together and her clothes missing. I mean, I guess Bendis has done that before with the full team, but having just a woman tossed into this role is asking for trouble. I don’t go around looking for fan outrage, but considering so many considered it way over-the-line when Bendis had Dr. Doom — the evil mass murderer and dictator — refer to Ms. Marvel as a cow during a rant, I can only imagine the Spider-Woman thing didn’t go over so well. In the Free Comic Book Day release, they alter all the panels from these scenes. Not only is she recolored so that she’s wearing her outfit, but they changed her dialogue so that she’s no longer yelling at the Wizard to give her back her clothes.

I imagine this is either because A) the misogyny outcry backlash, B) more kids are going to be getting these comics, so they should calm down on the cheesecake and/or C) if you want to see Jessica Drew’s skin, you’re going to pay for it, mister!

Like I said, I find the whole thing rather funny. Especially when you look closer at the panels. The Mad Thinker must have decided that Spider-Woman’s costume wings were a major danger and had them removed before putting her in her prison. And also, while her costume was always tight enough to be painted on, that doesn’t stop her feet from looking very non-bootlike. Seeing her curled, yellow toes just looks weird.

Enough about Spider-Woman’s obscured lady bits. Here are some panels.

Action Comics #9
Grant Morrison, Gene Ha, Sholly Fisch and Cully Hamner

Age of Apocalypse #3
David Lapham and Roberto de la Torre

Amazing Spider-Man #685
Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos

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So I didn’t write anything between the last ThWiP installment and this one. I’ll try not to do that again. Sorry.

I’m helped out this week by David Brothers, Space Jawa and Jody. Jody offers the Avengers vs. X-Men and Avengers vs. X-Men: Infinite panels, something I find myself staying away from. I’m rather shocked by how little I care about this event. I think part of it comes from the bluntness of the concept. The events from the past few years haven’t been perfect, but they’re all based on really solid ideas. It just so happens that all of these ideas lead to heroes vs. heroes. And I was cool with that. It’s just that when nearly every single major story is heroes vs. heroes, doing a story that is literally heroes vs. heroes in the title makes it hard for me to care. It’s self-parody and it has me rolling my eyes.

Maybe if it gets some good word of mouth I’ll check it out, but after Fear Itself burned me with its terrible pacing, I need to sit this one out.

Now to the panels.

Action Comics #8
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Brad Walker

Age of Apocalypse #2
David Lapham and Roberto de la Torre

Animal Man #8 (Jody’s pick)
Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh and Travel Foreman

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It’s time to start round 2 of this experiment. It’s the second month and we’re getting our second issues. Will the good comics continue to be good? Will I regret giving some of them another shot?

The DC comics I didn’t get this week due to dropping them a month ago are Green Arrow, Hawk and Dove and Red Lanterns. To fill the void, I figure I’ll talk briefly about the two miniseries that just started up.

First up is Action Comics by Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Brent Anderson. The wave of awesome continues and Morales eyes or not, I’m enjoying the hell out of it. The carefree Superman really is a breath of fresh air and I just wish more writers could get a handle on it more than Morrison and, from little we’ve seen so far, Johns. What I truly enjoyed was how it portrays Lex Luthor. He goes from cruel and egotistical on his quest for knowledge and dominance to a desperate coward at almost the drop of a hat. One thing I’ve always loved about Lex Luthor is his main weakness of being closed-minded. Once he believes something, it takes a lot of persuasion for him to change his mind on it. It’s much like how AI characters lose due to humans making human choices, but for Luthor, it’s about non-Luthor people making non-Luthor choices. That’s why he could never put it together that Clark and Superman were the same in older continuity. If he were Superman, he’d never have a secret identity, ergo Superman is just Superman. This leads to him acting like he has four aces when it turns out Superman has a royal flush up his sleeve. Then we get this perfect angry face.

I have a feeling the new Luthor is going to have a couple more character surprises. I can’t wait. Better believe I’m sticking.

Speaking of rad comics, Animal Man follows up on the first issue’s momentum. It’s kind of jarring, yet welcome, how similar the Baker family is to the Richards family in FF, only more suburban and a couple family members don’t have powers. It’s reached its stride in being an off-putting horror comic, but there’s just enough family togetherness to make it work. Ellen is justifiably pissy about what’s going on, but not pissy enough to make her unlikeable. Maxine’s know-it-all hold over her now powers mixed with being a naïve child make her almost as creepy as whatever the real threat is, but it’s kind of sweet how she stands up for her brother. I also find it kind of funny how when Cliff – the son of a superhero – is threatened, the very first person he calls for help is his mother. That’s a cute touch.

When it’s creepy, it’s disturbing. The hippo sequence is gross as hell and we still don’t know what we’re really up against. Just that whatever it is, it’s unsavory and downright demonic. I’m hooked. Sticking.

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blah blah blah panels blah David Brothers, Was Taters blah Space Jawa.

On with the show.

Action Comics #2
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Brent Anderson

Animal Man #2
Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman

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