Heyo! Nice cornucopia of stuff this week, brought to you by myself, Matlock, Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. Deadpool may be my comic of the week, although Afterlife with Archie is still — no pun intended — killing it. If anything, that comic has the best incentive to read it. Sure, we’re reading about the hopeful survival of our main cast, but we’re also waiting for the other shoe to drop on Reggie getting torn apart by the undead. Finally, giving the readers what they want!

The main Avengers book was pretty rad too. Instead of responding to mindwiping with paranoia and passive-aggressiveness, Captain America simply cuts to the chase and punches Tony Stark in his stupid fucking face. Batman, you can learn a thing or two from that man.

Action Comics #31
Greg Pak, Aaron Kuder, Rafa Sandoval and Cameron Stewart

Afterlife with Archie #5
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla

All-New Ghost Rider #3 (Gavin’s pick)
Filipe Smith and Tradd Moore

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Welcome to the 238th edition of This Week in Panels, the Deadpool Wedding Spectacular. The latest issue featured a bunch of backup stories by all sorts of writers from the character’s past, so I figured I’d give each one of them the ThWiP treatment for the hell of it.

My panel posse is made up of Gaijin Dan, Matlock and Space Jawa. Notably missing this week is Invincible, as I’ve finally decided to drop that series. I’m done with constant, “Oh man, how shocking is THIS?!” moments. It’s been a long time coming, but this week’s installment broke the camel’s back.

In other news, I’ve been trying DDP Yoga. It’s too early for results, but I’m definitely feeling it.

All-New Ghost Rider #2 (Gavin’s pick)
Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore

All-New Ghost Rider #2 (Matlock’s pick)
Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore

All-New Ultimates #1
Michel Fiffe and Amilcar Pinna

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Very DC-centric week this time around, mainly because Was Taters contributed more panels than even me. Not that she’s only into the DC stuff. For instance, she also reads Thor: The Mighty Avenger and that’s Marve–DAMN IT, that’s canceled, isn’t it. Anyway, thanks to her as well as David Brothers and the man known only as luis.

I’m certainly going to need the help of any interested readers for next week because I have an entire three comics I plan on picking up (Green Lantern Corps, Avengers Academy and Deadpool MAX). So if there’s something you’ve been reading that you want represented, by all means. Now on with the chlorophyll.

Batgirl #17
Bryan Q. Miller and Pere Perez

Batman and Robin #19
Paul Cornell and Scott McDaniel

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Welcome to a very special Too Much Goddamn Deadpool Edition of ThWiP. Why too much? Even though I didn’t even read Wade Wilson’s War this time around? Simply put, Deadpool #1000 has way too much going for it for me to choose a single panel, so I figured I’d give a spot to all eleven of its stories. Adding that to an already stacked week and we have a hefty set.

Avengers Prime #2
Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis

Avengers: The Origin #5
Joe Casey and Phil Noto

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I don’t know why it took so long for this to pop in my head, considering I read Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire months ago and the song wasn’t even stuck in my head, but this is what boredom does to you.

Ah, Orb. You’re the worst character ever and I love you for it.

Ah, what a world we live in where Booster Gold himself (well, Keith Giffen too, I guess) is the one carrying DC these days. Let’s get with the panels.

Avengers Academy #1
Christos Gage and Mike McKone

Batman #700
Grant Morrison, Tony Daniel, Frank Quitely, Scott Kolins, Andy Kubert and David Finch

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Well, it’s Sunday night and we’re ready to strike!
Our special forces are in for a fight!
With heroes in the air and zombies on the ground!
This Week in Panels is takin’ over the town!
We gotta get ready! We gotta get right!
There’s gonna be some comic art at 4th Letter tonight!

So get ready…
I MEAN, get ready…
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME PANELS?!
A COMIC BOOK INVASION!

This week I’m going against my rule of never using a final, or even last-page, panel for this. Why? Because that Deadpool Team-Up panel completely sums up the entirety of that issue and why Stuart Moore wrote it in the first place.

Batman Confidential #41
Sam Kieth

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3
Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott

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More meat than last week. Also features Deadpool’s new black glove fingernails. hermanos pointed them out to me and I can’t not notice them throughout that issue. Why does Deadpool now have black glove fingernails? Why?

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2
Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Eduardo Pansica

Deadpool Team-Up #897
Adam Glass and Chris Staggs

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We took the plunge and recorded the inaugural 4thletter! Fourcast! this weekend. Esther and I sat down in my apartment and talked about comics for a while, and our gift to you is thirty-four minutes and five seconds of good stuff. I’m not 100% happy with the mix, as there are a few audio peaks spread throughout, but we can work those out as we go along.

We’re looking at a biweekly schedule for now, and bringing in a few surprise guest stars down the line. We also need to rope Gavin into the mix, but that’s a problem for another day.

We begin the first of many Fourcasts with a talk about Batman: Battle for the Cowl, Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance starring the Super Young Team, and what character really hooked us into comics.

If you want to subscribe, hit up the podcast-specific RSS feed or grab the normal one. Tell your friends, give us an iTunes review or three, and drop us some comments. If you want to subscribe on iTunes, click here! If you have suggestions or want to donate some music… drop me an email.

Previously in the Venom series, our anti-hero got in a dumb adventure with Wolverine that ended with Venom saving the life of a government guy by the name of Agent Daryll Smith. As you’re about to see, Smith would be a major part of Venom’s latter day good guy exploits.

There are only 11 months of his series left. The sad truth is, Venom has nothing to do as a character at this moment. He left San Francisco behind, his ex-wife has walked away from her supporting role and he doesn’t have any real long-standing villains to build up against. He’s just hanging out in New York City, dealing with whatever comes after him. Even the Hunger made a point of how monotonous it’s getting.

What Venom needs is direction.

On Trial (Venom #50-52) is again by Larry Hama, with Josh Hood doing art. It’s always interesting to see the change in the Marvel landscape through this series. If you look back, you see so much change in the previous four years. We saw Peter Parker’s fake parents, Scarlet Spider, Spider-Ben and now we’re back to a story with regular, old fashioned Spider-Man. Not only that, but we have several namedrops of the whole Heroes Reborn garbage.

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