Time for another go at trying to portray the comics we’ve read in one singular panel. I was asked to go with the last page of Secret Warriors, which is great in its own right, but a little too weird out of context.
Amazing Spider-Man #622
Fred Van Lente, Joe Quinones, Greg Weisman and Luke Ross
Batman and Robin #9
Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart
It’s a pretty big week for this installment. How big? This one’s all me. Ow, my wallet.
Authority: The Lost Year #6
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, Brian Stelfreeze and Joel Gomez
Avengers vs. Atlas #2
Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman, Scott Kurtz and Zach Howard
A fine set of comics this week. Ah, it’s good to have Batman & Robin and Frankencastle Punisher around.
Batman and Robin #7
Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart
Captain America Reborn #6
Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch
–Chad Nevett on the intro
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music
-Review show! We haven’t done one of these in a while.
-Joe Casey and Ardian Syaf’s Superman/Batman #68
-Ed Brubaker and Luke Ross’s Captain America #602 & Sean McKeever and David Baldeon’s Nomad backup
-Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner’s Power Girl #8
-Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy’s Joe the Barbarian #1
-Sholly Fisch, Robert Pope, and Scott McRae’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold #13
-Art Baltazar and Franco’s Tiny Titans #24
-And out!
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Welcome to this week’s edition of This Week in Agents of Atlas. We have a lot of Agents of Atlas this time around, so let’s get to the Agents of Atlas!
(Not shown: the Agents of Atlas backup story in Incredible Hercules)
Amazing Spider-Man #618
Dan Slott and Marcos Martin
Authority: The Lost Year #5
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen and Jonathan Wayshak
It’s a special Christmas edition of TWiP! I’m not just talking about Guy Gardner’s festive new Lantern color scheme, but at the end of this week’s entry, we have a little extra surprise from guest panel guy David Uzumeri!
Anti-Venom New Ways to Live #3
Zeb Wells, Paulo Siqueira and Marco Checchetto
Authority: The Lost Year #4
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen and Darick Robertson
I love Ed Brubaker and I love his work with Captain America. Believe me, I really do. But am I the only one who feels kind of disinterested in Captain America Reborn? Brubaker’s run with the character has shown that mysteries with obvious answers aren’t so bad when the storytelling is excellent.
It looked like they were bringing Bucky back and, lo and behold, they did. It looked like they were going to turn Bucky into Captain America and, low and behold, they did. The stories were obvious based on the hints and how natural they felt, but Marvel still acted like they were mysteries.
It’s not working this time, honestly. We knew from issue one that Cap would be coming back. The first issue was a basic explanation as to how he would be coming back. Everything else has felt like filler. Even worse, we’ve been given some scenes of Steve Rogers alive and well after this, so there’s no real drama to look at.
New Avengers Annual #3 shows Steve surprising everyone by showing up on the last page in his chainmail tights. The latest issue of Iron Man has both Caps there to share their shield. Before either of those is Dark Avengers Annual, ending with Steve in a more SHIELD-like outfit hanging out with Bucky Cap on their hunt for allies against Osborn.
Aha! The plot thickens. Since it was official that Steve was coming back, there had been lots of speculation that he was going to be taking over the Fury/Hill/Stark/Osborn spot as king of the superhero/government relations mountain. This would allow Bucky to remain as Captain America for at least a little while longer. This will probably be covered in part next week as Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield? is released. This isn’t to be confused with Captain America: All Those Who Chose to Oppose his Shield Must Yield.
Time for another installment of TWiP. Or should we call it ThWiP? That makes it a comic pun. Whatever. Reader Solenna had us include a panel of Psylocke #1 to show that according to her, the comic can be summed up with “sphere boobs”.
Batman Confidential #36
Royal McGraw and Marcos Marz
The Boys #36
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson
Yesterday, Jean Grey forced Magneto to see Nick Fury’s memories, which caused Magneto to repent all of his wrongdoing. Then Cyclops acted like a total hero by exploding the head of an old man who was no longer a threat. Good going, guy.
In the actual comic, Fury really showed Magneto how mutants were man-made in a laboratory, as part of Ultimate Origins. I’m still not totally sure why this caused Magneto to change his ways completely. Magneto’s war stopped being humans vs. mutants a while ago, what with him not only killing mutants by the score, but the fact that he was killing his own underlings for the hell of it. And yet this little snippet of information puts him into, “What have I done?!” mode.
Let us move forward.
I blame ManiacClown for that Burma Shave gag and the Wonder Pets thing. Give the guy a break on the latter one. He’s a father. It’s his business to watch that show.
We’ll continue with the X-Men insanity tomorrow, plus a little trip to Latveria.
I guess I should put down some set-up first. This is from Avengers/JLA #4, written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by George Perez. It came out a little bit before Marvel and DC made some of their bigger modern changes. The team rosters were still more classic than in recent years, still before the days of Disassembled and Crisis of Conscience. Hal Jordan was still the Spectre.
I won’t go too deep into the story, but it involves Krona making a bet with the Grandmaster that puts the two super-teams on opposing sides. Not that that needs too much extra effort, though, as Captain America and Superman seem to have it in for each other. Superman sees mutant hatred, Dr. Doom, the Hulk and the Punisher running wild and considers the Avengers a bunch of failures. Captain America sees how the people in the DC world worship the Justice League to the point of museums and monuments and considers them little better than world conquerors. This leads into more than one throwdown, including a fight where Superman beats up Thor.
Fast-forward a bit. To save reality from Krona, the Grandmaster has been pushing the two worlds closer together. Reality rewrites itself again and again. The Avengers and Justice League go from being from two distant alternate realities to neighboring realities. Then they go from two teams that visit each other’s worlds on a regular basis to two teams that co-exist in the same world. Few are able to see through the lies.
Finally, the two teams find the Grandmaster, who wants the heroes to go stop Krona from destroying both their worlds. Due to reality being rewritten over and over, the teams are both down to their more base, classic rosters and identities and want to know exactly what they’re fighting for. Using the last of his powers, Grandmaster shows them a series of screens that broadcasts their histories. Despite all their victories, it focuses mainly on these heroes watching the losses that are meant to be. Tony Stark’s alcoholism, Aquaman’s loss of hand, Bane breaking Batman’s back, Doomsday killing Superman, Captain America losing his abilities and failing in his attempt to rely on armor tech, Odin’s death, Jason Todd’s death, and so on. The more important ones here are that Barry Allen sees that he’s going to die, Scarlet Witch and Vision see that their children will be creations from Wanda’s own madness, Giant Man sees the smack that he will never live down and Hal Jordan sees his descent into becoming Parallax.
And yet, in the end, the two sides decide that it is not up to them to judge the realities they are saving. They band together and plot against Krona. Superman suggests Captain America lead them, which he agrees to.
I swear, when I was intending to write this article, I thought these pages were more than two. Three, maybe four. They’re just so dense with dialogue that it’s bursting at the seams. That’s George Perez for you, I guess.
All five of those different conversations are aces, especially when you notice the segues. Notice how each conversation ends with another character in the shot. It took me forever to see Captain America in the background window. What I really loved about this scene is the stuff with Hal and Barry.
How messed up it has to be for these two. Barry knows that win or lose, he’s going to be dead within hours. It’s depressing, but not nearly as bad as what Hal has to be going through. Barry goes out honorably. Hal knows that not only is he going to die, but first he’s going to go crazy and take out a bunch of his friends before becoming the Darth Vader of the DC Universe. And he’s fighting to preserve that! It’s fucked.
Maybe it’s just me, but you can read the weight of it in Hal’s oath. The way he seems so less enthused compared to all the other times. Is it defeat? Sadness? Intent to do his best one last time? Shame? Bitterness? Is it that he realizes that the very oath he’s reciting has been proven to be nothing more than a lie?
But there they are, Hal and Barry, supporting each other. Just by the mutual reassurance, the two doomed friends are all but removed of that weight. It’s a nice, bittersweet scene, but sadly loses something thanks to their later resurrections.
I think I decided about including these pages for this installment because of all of that going on these days. Personally, I feel totally fine with Hal coming back (Green Lantern is more of a job position than identity, allowing Kyle to thrive on his own, though admittedly to a lesser extent). I can’t bring myself to care about Barry Allen’s return, outside of a couple choice moments in Final Crisis. Unless Steve Rogers stays away from the Captain America mantle and becomes the new leader of SHIELD/HAMMER for an extended period of time, I feel like his death could have lasted another three years. And Bart Allen… shit, I don’t know. That poor guy got messed up so much since Geoff Johns got his hands on him that I can’t say what’s best for him at this point.
Bottom line: I guess I feel like in scenes like this, the finality of one fictional character’s death strengthens the quality of life. But that’s me.
Back to the Avengers/JLA comic, there was one panel I’ve always loved for a stupid reason.
Look at Captain America. That’s the moment I realized that Steve Rogers has balls made of vibranium. He goes on to threaten Superman with such confidence that even now, my brain is trying to come up with ways for that outcome to be a possibility. I’ll get back to you on that. Cool as that is, that’s not why I bring it up.
I don’t know if this was a subtle way to intentionally foreshadow Avengers: Disassembled, but let’s see what happens when we remove the guys on the right.
Hey, now!
By the way, I still miss Hal’s kickass white hair tufts.
