It’s time again for This Week Panels. It’s time again to take every new comic that Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and I read over the last week and cut them down into a panel that best represents the issue. Sounds like fun? Great! Join in if you’re ever interested. My email’s on the side.

I’m posting two Bleach panels this time around, mainly because I forgot to post one last week. Sorry, Dan.

Awesome comics this week. Afterlife with Archie was absolutely astounding and I can’t recommend it enough. The whole thing was heartbreaking, other than the interlude about how the Blossom siblings are totally incestual. That’s not me joking. That’s an actual plot point. In an Archie comic. The guy who wrote it is now in charge of the company. No fooling.

Magneto is cool because someone at Marvel realized that the best part of X-Men: First Class was the stuff near the beginning about Magneto being a super-powered Inglorius Basterd. It’s like that, only in the present and he’s bald.

Burn the Orphanage was really strange this week and not exactly in a good way. Easily the weakest of the trilogy.

Afterlife with Archie #4
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla

All You Need Is Kill #7
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift Part 1
Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

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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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Ahoy! In what Mother Nature will surely insist is my last post for a little while, here’s this week’s taste of comics read. I have my usual crew in Jody, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and Was Taters.

Interesting week in that we reached the end of many great Marvel runs due to the big Marvel NOW! changeover. Considering how fantastic the enders are for Journey Into Mystery, Incredible Hulk, Captain America and FF, I can’t help but notice how Marvel is flat-out making DC look incompetent in regards to the New 52. Everyone’s getting their own true sendoff without seeming rushed and pointless.

Though apparently Daniel Way’s final issue of Deadpool shit the bed, so we’ll ignore that one.

A-Babies vs. X-Babies (Jawa’s pick)
Skottie Young and Gurihiru

A-Babies vs. X-Babies (Jody’s pick)
Skottie Young and Gurihiru

All-Star Western #13
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Phil Winslade

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Welp. As I said a few days ago, ThWiP was delayed due to me being out of town. Luckily, Was Taters, Jody, Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa already had their panel stuff waiting for me. What a great bunch of guys… and girl.

Frankenstein #0 is really weird in that it’s almost exactly how Jason Aaron’s Incredible Hulk run starts. You’d think they’d try to move it in a slightly different direction.

Avengers vs. X-Men #11
Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman and Olivier Coipel

Avenging Spider-Man #12
Kevin Shinick and Aaron Kuder

Barrage #14
Kouhei Horikoshi

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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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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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Yesterday gave us the brief reunion of Thor and his undead squeeze Valkyrie, whose wings will make putting on shirts a total chore. With everything taken care of, threat-wise, we still have the epilogue to work through. Shanna, Ka-Zar and Black Panther have moved on to greener pastures. They aren’t the only ones leaving.

ManiacClown insisted I namedrop “Twinkies” somewhere in there. The dude just can’t let it go, but whatever. I like the challenge. As for what Zarda’s talking about, the Supreme Power: Hyperion miniseries from a few years ago showed a dark future where Hyperion, Zarda and a lot of superheroes rule over the world with Nighthawk being the only remaining opposition. Like with the end of Howard Chaykin’s Squadron Supreme series, Loeb’s exit from Ultimate stuff calls for a moment of, “Crap, we have to force things back to the status quo so that future stuff can happen.”

Tomorrow is about putting an end to this for good and also tying up that one loose end that really should have had a bigger impact on the story.

Day Seven!

Yesterday showed the two powerhouses of the Ultimates Thor and Zarda duke it out over the streets of New York City as the 9,281st lightning bolt goes off right behind them. I’m wondering how any of these superheroes even hear each other over all the deafening thunder that must be filling the area. As the two slug it out, Iron Man appears in his special Hulkbuster armor out of nowhere. It seems enough to take Thor down and he has been trying to talk some sense into him. That brings us to this.

Thanks to ManiacClown for the help. Tomorrow the not-quite-Christmas story continues.

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!

Hey, folks. First off, check out this awesome interview the 4L monarch David Brothers has done at the Comics Reporter. It’ll take you about three days to read, but it’s a good one.

So while I have the usual suspects in David, Space Jawa (is there any other kind of Jawa?) and Was Taters (is there any other kind of Taters?), I also got one from aggressively horny ducks (are there any… um…). He sent it to David, who found it buried in his spam because it came from a guy named aggressively horny ducks. That’ll happen. Why I obviously have What If #200 taken care of, our foul and fowl reader sent in his own panel because, “I don’t care a lot about continuity but this is just foolish.”

True enough, though if any panel from that issue raises my eyebrow, it’s the one of Namor punching Bullseye while saying — not yelling — “Imperious $#%^.” Imperious what? Imperious cock? Imperious fuck? Did he drop the n-bomb? What?

Sadly, to everyone’s dismay I’m sure, I totally misplaced my copy of Carnage #2. Still, we must carry on.

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #4
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #4
Warren Ellis and Kaare Andrews

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