Yes, that’s right folks – you’re joining us for one more week full of panels, and one that’s the last Week In Panels for the foreseeable future.

Sad news is I got an email from Gavok earlier this week telling me he and David Brothers decided it was time to put 4^th Letter out to pasture. Expect to see a farewell article from DB up in the very near future with details. Between This Week In Panels being a 4^th Letter thing and not having a suitable blog of my own to fall back on, this means the end of ThWIP for the foreseeable future, too.

On the bright side, I’m joined for one last session of out-of-context images by Gaijin Dan, Matlock, and of course Gavok. Amusingly, Gaijin Dan’s panels also see the last of the long-running Naruto, which has me jokingly blaming the end of that series for the end of This Week In Panels.

Shall we get to some panels, then? Yes, let’s get to some panels.

One more time into the breach we go!

All-New Captain America #1

(Rick Remender and Stuart Immonen)

Avengers & X-Men: AXIS #5 [Gavok’s Pick]

(Rick Remender and Terry Dodson)

Avengers & X-Men: AXIS #5 [Matlock’s Pick]

(Rick Remender and Terry Dodson)

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Okay, well, maybe “mediocre” is going too far. Superior Carnage had a really good first four issues, but then the last one put all the interesting toys back in the box.

MASSIVE week of panels this time around with 40+ images. I read a lot, but so did Matlock, who is still keeping up with DC’s big event for whatever reason. Though I guess Bane dressed as Batman riding a horse isn’t the worst reason. Flanking us as usual are Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa.

Though, I’m wondering. Should I fail them?

All-New Invaders #2 (Gavin’s pick)
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All-New Invaders #2 (Matlock’s pick)
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All You Need is Kill #3
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

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Welcome to This Week in Panels. This week, we see the return of Matlock, who has sent a bunch of Marvel panels. This includes Mighty Avengers, which frustrates me. Not only is it supposedly really well-written and fun, but the latest issue just brought back Luke Cage’s old sidekick DW Griffith. I would LOVE to go read it, but… Greg Land is drawing it. Damn it.

Also with us are Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. Jawa pointed out to me this video of Lego Venom going on a rampage and God bless him for that.

At Den of Geek US, I did an article on 10 Marvel What If Concepts That Actually Happened. Unfortunately, I totally forgot about Sentinel until after the fact.

Oh, and this week’s Batman ’66 is pretty interesting. It’s a King Tut storyline, but it’s also an origin of a Batman villain who never got a chance to be on that show. That little insignia should be a big hint.

Avengers A.I. #7
Sam Humphries and Andre Lima Araujo

Avengers Plus X-Men #15
Jai Nitz, Gerry Duggan, Greg Smallwood, David Yardin and Cam Smith

Batman #26
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

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Howdy. I didn’t read too much this week (though I did pick up the Street Fighter Origins: Akuma comic, which was neat), but Matlock went the distance. Goddamn. He’s flanked by Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. Normally, I’d follow up this update with This Year in Panels, but next week is closer to the actual ThWiP anniversary, so I’ll do it then.

Which is a reminder that if you want to contribute to the second attempt at This Character in Panels, you’re more than welcome. I’ll be doing that update on Friday the 27th.

Apologies for the low level of updates here. It’s been busy times for me. I’m working full hours at my job, I’m doing the Den of Geek thing and I have assignments to do for my sketch writing class. Once that last part is finished with, I’m sure I’ll be a bit more prolific here. In the meantime, I have two new Den of Geek articles up. One for the 10 Most Uplifting Moments in Professional Wrestling and another in the form of a guide to the current TMNT storyline City Fall.

Now this is the part of Sprockets where we show panels.

Action Comics #23.2
Greg Pak and Ken Lashley

Aquaman #23.1 (Gavin’s pick)
Geoff Johns, Tony Bedard and Claude St. Aubin

Aquaman #23.1 (Matlock’s pick)
Geoff Johns, Tony Bedard and Claude St. Aubin

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A fairly late edition of ThWiP, but that couldn’t be helped. I haven’t even had a moment to write a single paragraph of an article over the past week. Plus thanks to crazy holiday retail hours, I got home at 2:30am. So I’m just gonna post this thing and go sleep because closing early for Christmas Eve means waking up earlier for the start of the shift.

Got Jody, Was Taters, Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa backing me up.

All-New X-Men #4
Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

Avengers #2 (Jody’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena

Avengers #2 (Gavin’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena

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The whole 4 Elements article concept is David’s baby. The four ties into the four in 4thletter and 4thletter comes from David’s name because he’s an egomaniac, an Eggo maniac and possibly a Lego maniac. You can also say that the four comes from there literally being four elements, but I’m pretty sure there are like a hundred of those things, so that’s definitely wrong.

This is David’s site and all, but Carnage USA is my comic. It’s a comic specifically made for ME. Me. Gavin Jasper. And since I’m Gavin, which starts with the seventh letter of the alphabet, that means I need to talk about the 7 Elements.

Carnage USA is the sequel to last year’s Carnage, both by Zeb Wells and Clayton Crain. Carnage was the story that returned Carnage from his grizzly death of being torn in half in space by the Sentry back in 2005. It acts as a loose sequel to the character’s most mainstream adventure Maximum Carnage while introducing yet another symbiote anti-hero in Scorn. By the end of the story, not only is Cletus Kasady alive and reunited with his blood-red costume, but he’s also on the loose and nobody knows where he’ll end up next. All we know is that he has something bad on the horizon.

The plot of Carnage USA has Cletus venture to Doverton, Colorado, where he goes to a slaughterhouse and kills the entire stock of cows. The symbiote grows off the meat and expands to the point that he’s able to infect and assimilate the entire town through plumbing. A handful of the Avengers (Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Hawkeye and Thing) are sent to go deal with it and find a town of frightened human puppets before Carnage takes them too. Spider-Man gets away and the government goes to plan B… while trying real hard not to move to the dire plan C, which is to blow the county to kingdom come.

This miniseries helps support the idea that in comics, there are no bad characters, but bad writers. For such a mainstream villain who got his own popular videogame back in the day, Carnage’s death was met with little backlash. For years he’s been seen as nothing more than 50% shallow Venom mixed with 50% shallow Joker. Nobody’s ever really tried to write something decent with him and whenever he got the spotlight with his own one-shot, it was usually a bunch of gory dreck that didn’t do anything for me.

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Tonight was the Royal Rumble, which means I’m in a good mood. While the show was fun as usual, I didn’t do well when it came to my friend Bob’s Royal Rumble Game. This game, which he’s been using for at least five years, goes like this: all the guests pick numbers 1-30 (40 last year) and those numbers represent us. There were ten of us tonight, so we got three each. When one of your wrestlers hits a signature move, you get one point. A finisher will get you two points. An elimination gets you three. Making the final three is worth three points, final two is four and your guy winning gets you five points. I did this last year and did a little less than average.

This year, my picks were #6, #16 and #20. That meant I got Primo, Hunico and Michael Cole. That means I was the first person in the history of the Royal Rumble Game to ever get ZERO POINTS. So I’m like the Drew McIntyre of that game. :damn:

This week I’m helped out by Was Taters, Space Jawa and luis. Let’s get it on!

All-Star Western #5 (Was Taters’ pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Moritat and Phil Winslade

All-Star Western #5 (Gavin’s pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Moritat and Phil Winslade

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Hey, it’s the first 4L post of 2012, as if that means anything! Since it’s the first of the year, I might as well go over the gist of what ThWiP is all about. Every week, me and some other guys (and you too if you’re ever up for it) take all the new comics we’ve read and sum it up in one panel. Nothing too spoilery, but something that does its best to advertise the comic and what it’s all about in one glance. It could be a hero and a villain running at each other. It could be a pretty funny line relating to the overall situation. It could be an info dump of blatant exposition. Whatever.

This week I’m joined by Space Jawa and Was Taters. David’s still on his vacation and with Esther not having posted in over a month, I appear to be running 4thletter solo. I should really do something with that, like get rid of these goddamn manga headers. I’d totally put some kickass Dr. McNinja panel in there or something with the Juggernaut, but damn if I know how to even work this site. Blast.

For this entry, we have a lot of Captain America comics.

All-Star Western #4
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Phil Winslade

Annihilators: Earthfall #4
Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Tan Eng Huat

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Before I get started, I’d just like to point out that I’ve succeeded in improving Marvel’s miniseries event Fear Itself. Behold!

I’d read the hell out of that comic. Anyway, got a gigantic set of panels this week. Not only did I read way more than can be considered healthy, but I’m joined by David, Was Taters, Space Jawa and Luis. This is a week where we’ve been blessed with Venom vs. Anti-Venom, which is a great way to distract me from the unfortunate sadness that comes from Anti-Venom’s impending death/depowering.

🙁

All-Star Western #1 (Gavin’s pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Moritat

All-Star Western #1 (Was Taters’ pick)
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Moritat

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I can’t believe I’ve been doing this crap for two years. I just did the 100th installment of This Week in Panels a month ago, so this is less of a big deal, but whatever. This Week in Panels has been about me and people who read this for whatever reason picking out panels that best represent the comics we read. What is the comic? Sell it with one panel without the context. Let the readers figure it out.

Going with what I did a year ago, I decided to do a little look back at the past 52 weeks. The challenge is to showcase a panel from each week without double-dipping on the same series. Let’s see what the last year have given us.

Amazing Spider-Man #664
Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Max Fiumara

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #5
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert

Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth #2
Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle

Batman and Robin #15
Grant Morrison and Frazer Irving

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