Look at that. Header image. It’s been long enough.
My Angels for this week are Was Taters, Gaijin Dan, Jody and Space Jawa. Jody, Taters and I all chose the same panel for Hawkeye #3 initially, but Taters and I decided to choose others for the sake of showing off how excellent this comic is. Bro.
Before Watchmen: Minutemen #4
Darwyn Cooke and John Higgins
Bleach #509
Tite Kubo
Cross Manage #3
KAITO
Ahoy! I was going to name this ThWiP #0, but that would involve going into the origin of this nearly 3-year-old weekly segment. Ah, what the hell, here’s the origin:
“Hey, David. I have an idea for a weekly bit every Sunday. I’d call it Panels of the Week and I’d–”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Do whatever. I’m BUSY with writing for Comics Alliance and sleeping with all these models so I don’t care about what you do with your time.”
“Oh. Thanks. …Can I maybe have–”
“No. Get your own.”
“Shucks.”
My helpers are Jody, Gaijin Dan, Was Taters and Space Jawa.
Action Comics #0
Grant Morrison, Ben Oliver, Sholly Fisch and CAFU
Age of Apocalypse #7
David Lapham and Renato Arlem
Animal Man #0
Jeff Lemire and Steve Pugh
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
When we last left our sorta heroes, Hawkeye stepped into the room to alert the Thunderbolts to his presence… and to let them know that he clogged the toilet. Thunderbolts #21 follows up on that with the team making a joint effort in trying to take Hawkeye down. Much like any given Garth Ennis protagonist, the guy with no powers proceeds to clown everyone. Not just with his trick arrows, but with his ability to make the Thunderbolts trip over each other.
The deal is that if he could last five minutes, the team would have to hear his pitch. And what a pitch! He’s talked it over with Henry Gyrich and the government bigwigs and wants to lead the Thunderbolts. Sure, he was annoyed by the whole Masters of Evil façade, but was he really all that different before joining the Avengers? Suddenly the Black Widow flashback story from the first year seems like less of a throwaway issue as it’s really there to seep Hawkeye into our reader consciousness.
The team is open to this idea, except for Songbird. She desperately screams that this is all a trick and flies off. MACH offers to go talk to her and it’s a good thing, since she’s having a very public tantrum that’s brought the National Guard into this. He gets her away from the battle, but his shoddy armor starts to fall apart and they crash into a condemned building. Songbird makes a sound-based shield to keep the authorities out and MACH finally mans up and talks to her about her recent personality shift.
Songbird goes into her life. Between her parents, her first love, the Grapplers, the Masters of Evil, her relationship with Angar the Screamer and the emotional twisting that came from Zemo’s Thunderbolts plan, her life has been nothing but a series of hope leading directly into soul-crushing failure and she can’t take it anymore. Hawkeye’s idea sounds nice, but she knows it’ll only kill her on the inside yet again. MACH promises that despite her attempts to push him away, he’ll always be there for her. Which is all nice, but they also have that whole National Guard situation to deal with. Luckily, Hawkeye and the rest bail them out. This does lead to there being footage of Hawkeye working with the Thunderbolts and the media isn’t so sure how to handle that.
In our last installment, Iron Man was in the middle of talking down Thor when Loki made his final play. Yes, his end game was to smack Thor upside the head with a hammer. It didn’t work and he instead got a spear thrown through his neck. Now the twice-dead Valkyrie returns and hooks up with her badass boyfriend.
So that’s it, right? Me and ManiacClown can go home now? Bad guy’s dead and… oh, what’s that? Two days of wrap-up? Fine. But I swear, if we get a final page reveal of the next big threat, I’m burning this website to the ground. I’ll do it.
Ah, Day Two. The installment where Thor wrecked everyone some more and Zarda woke up and gave him a piece of her mind. It’s mentioned that Zarda really hasn’t been pulling her weight ever since joining the team at the end of Ultimate Power. But now it is Day Three, where their brawl continues and develops. How does this relate to that Clark Kent-like exit Iron Man did just a few minutes before?
Oh, Santa Thor. ManiacClown and I are going to miss writing you.
Tomorrow, Tony will continue his crusade to get through to Thor. What role will Loki play?
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!
Yesterday started up the new week with a flashback where Thor and Loki kind of stumble upon a bunch of slaughtered dead guys like it’s just another day. Thor is still going all kill-happy and our heroes have no idea what to do.
Thanks to ManiacClown, who is the master of translating 80’s pop music into Thorspeak. We’ll be back tomorrow as the heavyweight fight continues. Then it becomes a triple threat.
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!
Welcome to the final week of Ultimate Edit. Boy, it’s been some ride, eh? It’s been just over three years with fifteen issues to its name, but it’s about time to bury it. I guess we were already “burying” it, but– you know what I mean.
So to sum up. A bunch of former D-list heroes have been amped up as villains and fight the Ultimates before being forgotten about completely. Then Loki and Enchantress come to Earth with a big troll army and wrecked stuff for a bit. Enchantress magically coaxes some of the female Ultimates to help them out and capture the staple members of the team. That way, the lesser good guys could look important by rescuing the heroes worth a damn. Valkyrie breaks free from the spell and gets herself killed by Loki, but then Thor shows up and goes on a rampage. He targets everyone and Loki’s all, “Haha! All part of the plan, beyotch!”
And now, the rest of the story…
Thanks to ManiacClown who wanted Loki and Thor to discuss how Hela looks like the ladies in mommy’s lingerie scrolls. We’ll be back tomorrow with some of those other characters nobody cares about. Don’t worry, they’ll be gone by the end of the week.
Day Two!
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!
Merry Christmas! We end our penultimate week on a day about Jesus being born, Barney getting his Pebbles, Pre-Crisis Dick Grayson laying an egg and me getting both a Spider-Man chalice and tickets to Spider-Man Musical Deathtrap 2011. God bless us, everyone!
Last we checked, Loki got run over by a reind–er, Thor. Now he appears to be at the Ultimates’ mercy… or is he?! Forgive the lack of punchlines as it’s almost entirely Loki talking here and we really needed to move the plot forward, verbally.
And another issue bites the dust. Thanks to ManiacClown for putting up with my absolutely horrible holiday retail schedule. We’ll be back soon for the conclusion of the Ultimate Holiday Wars. In the meantime, enjoy Iron Maiden doing a cover of a Gary Glitter Christmas song.
Hey, it’s Christmas Eve! Meaning we’re almost done here. For yesterday’s installment, Thor roughed up Iron Man pretty badly. Then Hela and Valkyrie hung out and left their pants at the door. Now it’s time for Thor vs. Loki.
Apologies to ManiacClown, who suggested a couple changes to me, but I kind of forgot what he said. So if this isn’t any good, it’s my fault. Tomorrow, we finish things off with a little more backstory.
