We’re at the tail end of Original Sin as an event. I think we just have that last issue of the Thor/Loki tie-in and we’re done and we can move on to Axis. Axis can go either way, but when it comes to Original Sin, I’m of the opinion that it may be the best Marvel/DC event story in at least the last decade.

The miniseries itself was strong. It wasn’t the best ever, but it’s a good standalone story, which I can’t say the same about Infinity. Don’t get me wrong, I thought Infinity was amazing, but that’s only because I’ve been reading Avengers and New Avengers from the beginning and if you don’t do that, you’re kind of lost. Original Sin just felt like a remake of Identity Crisis that tried to be over-the-top instead of mopey. Instead of a sudden, out-of-nowhere ending where “THAT LADY BE CRAZY!” we got something more interesting. In fact, the events surrounding it are still rather ambiguous and the moral debate between the characters of Fury and Uatu are quarantined to the mini itself. It’s not like Civil War where every single comic for nearly a year is arguing one point against another.

Also, there’s the tie-ins. Sometimes events can be murder with tie-ins because we’ll get the same crap over and over again. Secret Invasion, World War Hulk and Blackest Night were stories where the tie-ins felt like the same thing over and over again. You read one, you read them all. Original Sin had a gimmick of heroes discovering shocking secrets, but they didn’t go the easy way out and make it create a rift in every single relationship. Instead, we only get Captain America’s current hate-on with Iron Man, which honestly has very little to do with Original Sin anyway and was going to happen regardless. Even the Hulk tie-in where it’s suggested that Iron Man created the Hulk out of spite ended with a sweet ending that highlighted the movie-mandated friendship between Stark and Banner.

For real, Stark emotionally yelling at Banner and bitching him out for thinking everyone would be better off if he was dead was such an awesome scene.

“Never say that! Never say that, you $#(@ !$#%!”

“Don’t make me angry.”

“Then don’t make ME angry, Bruce! You always make me so damn angry!”

Another awesome tie-in came in the form of this week’s Deadpool #34. I wrote a review of it here, but the gist is that it’s a soul-crushing issue that goes into one of the more messed up moments of Deadpool’s past. It’s one of the darkest moments in the character’s history. Luckily, being a Deadpool comic and also a Brian Posehn/Gerry Duggan Deadpool comic, it’s also hilarious otherwise.

The gimmick is that it takes place during the early 90’s. Scott Koblish proceeds to make it 90’s as fuck, doing his best Liefeld impression. The characters look right, but one of the best subtle running gags comes with a piece of missing anatomy that we’ve all come to recognize Liefeld for.

Spot the missing feet.

During this entire flashback sequence – which is all but three pages of the full issue – we never see a single foot. As great as that is, the real punchline comes from the ending, where we return to the present and a regular art style. Behold.

Of COURSE that’s the first thing we focus on.

It’s time for another edition of This Week in Panels (Belated Version)! This week I’m joined by Gaijin Dan, Matlock, TheAnarChris, and Gavok.

Gavok and Matlock decided to have a fun time with Black Widow and Punisher this week. As best I can figure, the two comics are telling the same story, and so the panels from those two comics show the same thing but from different angles drawn by different artists. It’s fascinatingly fun.

I also picked up Superior Spider-Man for the first time ever this week, though I saw it less as purchasing an issue of Superior Spider-Man and more as purchasing a prologue to the upcoming Edge of Spider-Verse because that’s what it was pretty much billed as. They weren’t kidding, either. I don’t know how critical the issue will be when the ball gets rolling for real, but it definitely feels like this is where the event kicks off.

But enough of my yammering, let’s see some panels!

Action Comics Annual #3

(Greg Pak, Ken Lashley, Aaron Kude, Jack Herbert, Cliff Richards, Julius Gopez, Will Conrad, and Pascal Alixe)

Angry Birds Comics #5

(Paul Tobin, Corrado Mastuntuono and Dian Fayolle)

Aquaman and the Others #5

(Dan Jurgens and Lan Medina)

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Gavok: BTW, after Week 250, I’m taking a break from Week in Panels. I have a lot of real world responsibilities now and don’t have time for it.

Space Jawa: What would it take for someone to take over for you?

Gavok: Why, you want to?

Space Jawa: Yeah.

Gavok: Sure, have at it.

And that’s the abridged version of how I became the new host of This Week In Panels.

Oh, and then Gavok went out, bought a cigar, lit it, and then reached through the internet so he could put it out in my face. I think because he was trying to make a tradition out of it or something? I don’t know.

Jerk.

Anyway, joining me this week are Gaijin Dan, Matlock, TheAnarCHris, and Gavok himself. Gavok, Matlock, and I are all in agreement that the art on She-Hulk continues to be terrible, though I’m the only one who managed to get all the way through it. I’ll probably hold off on further issues until they get someone better, though. Because as it stands, I’m feeling inclined to think that I could do a better job.

Believe me when I say that I don’t make such statements lightly.

But let’s get to some panels, shall we?

Avengers World #9 (Matlock’s Pick)

(Nick Spencer & Stefano Caselli)

Avengers World #9 (Gavok’s Pick)

(Nick Spencer & Stefano Caselli)

Batman ’66 Meets the Green Hornet #5

(Kevin Smith, Ralph Garman, & Ty Templeton)

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(After some unintended delay…) THIS! Is Week in Panels!

Greetings, and welcome to a brand new edition of This Week in Panels, where brevity is the soul of comic reviews. And NOW(!), it’s time to kick things off with this brand NU reboot-that’s-totally-not-a-reboot edition.

As always, for those who are Nu-ly joining us, This Week in Panels works as following: The contributors take all the comics they’ve read for the week, and then pick out the one panel from each of those issues that best summarizes that comic. The two major rules being 1) No Splash Pages, and 2) Don’t pick a panel from the first or last page of the issue.

Other than that, it’s pretty much fair game!

Contributing this week as I take over from Gavok are “Marvelous” Matlock, “Dandy’” Gaijin Dan, “Grinnin’” Gavok himself, and myself, your new host, “Smilin’” Space Jawa.

And NOW!, let’s get to some panels!

Provided I can avoid making any (more) first-time mistakes…

All-New Invaders #7

James Robinson & Mark Laming

The Amazing Spider-Man #1.3

Dan Slott & Ramon Perez

Angry Birds Comics #3

Jeff Parker & Paco Rodriquez

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It’s time for This Week in Panels! The weekly segment where my wonderful contributors and I all take the comics we’ve read over the course of this week and cut them down into one panel. One representative panel that tries to explain the issue. We’ve only been doing this for… oh shit, 250?! Christ.

Yes, it’s Week 250. For nearly five years I’ve been doing this series. I started this back when Old Man Logan and Blackest Night were still going on. I originally got the idea during the short time I was writing at Pop Culture Shock. I did a bunch of one-paragraph comic reviews every week and I hated it. How many times can you write the same review of Ed Brubaker’s Captain America?

A few years before that, one comic site I can’t remember (probably Newsarama) had a preview of an upcoming issue of Civil War. Rather than show several pages, it just showed a handful of panels without context. I found the whole thing more intriguing than if we got the regular style of preview and I guess that just stayed with me. Another thing that stuck with me was when people would talk about the first Agents of Atlas series. One thing I’ve read once or twice was that it didn’t matter what you had to say about the comic in terms of opinion. Just show the panel of a 1950’s robot running down a hallway carrying a talking gorilla while said gorilla shoots four guns via both hand and both feet. That says everything.

I figured that I read a bunch of comics on a weekly basis, but nobody really had any interest in my opinions. Why would they? I’m just some guy on the internet. Worse than that, I’m a guy whose favorite character is an alien-wearing journalist-turned-hobo with delusions of grandeur recognized for being one of the poster boys of everything wrong with the 90’s. My opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. Why talk about what I read when I could just show you in its purest form and let you decide for yourself? I suggested the This Week in Panels idea to David and he put a cigar out on my face. I took that to mean, “Yes, go ahead.”

ThWiP has been very good to me and I was happy to see that it got enough regular readers and regular contributors. Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa especially, who never missed a beat when it came to sending me their stuff. I’m glad to see my idea was vindicated and it kept enough people interested.

With a heavy heart, I’m announcing that after 250 wonderful weeks, I’m stepping down from This Week in Panels. It sucks, but I need to move on. One of the things about starting ThWiP was that I wanted to do a weekly series for the sake of proving to myself that I could hit a regular deadline. And I did. Unless there was a hurricane or some kind of power-destroying storm, I hit the update every Sunday. Then I got my position at Den of Geek US, which has responsibilities beyond just writing articles. Plus my main job has been keeping me busier and busier. ThWiP updates went from regularly happening over the course of Sunday night to late Monday night or even early Tuesday morning. Simply put, I actually have real deal deadlines to deal with now.

Hell, I haven’t written a non-ThWiP update for 4thletter! since WrestleMania happened. I kind of need to rectify that and I have only so many hours in the day.

ThWiP isn’t done-done, at least. Space Jawa, otherwise known as Michael Stangeland (or as I keep accidentally typing, “Strangeland”) will be taking up the mantle. Personally, I can’t wait to see what he’s capable of.

Anyway, I still have this 250th update to do. We got me, Gaijin Dan, Matlock, Space Jawa, Was Taters, AnarChris and Dickeye. Let’s go down the road one more time.

Action Comics #33
Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift, Pt 2
Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

Batman ’66 Meets the Green Hornet #4
Kevin Smith, Ralph Garman and Ty Templeton

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Once again we find ourselves looking at the stuff we’ve read over the past week, reduced to one representative image. It’s This Week in Panels. “We” includes myself, Matlock, Space Jawa, Gaijin Dan and AnarChris. We’re like the Planeteers, only we’re all heart.

Elsewhere, I wrote this big piece on the history of Mortal Kombat comics. Years ago, I went over the Malibu series in detail here, but in this article, I go more in-depth on the many comics that acted as official preludes to the games. I was also asked by my editor to write a quick thing about John Cena being on the cover of WWE 2K15, and so I did.

Now, then. It’s paneling time! Seriously, it’s a big one this week.

All-New Ghost Rider #4 (Gavin’s pick)
Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore

All-New Ghost Rider #4 (Matlock’s pick)
Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore

All-New Ultimates #4
Michel Fiffe and Amilcar Pinna

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Gaijin Dan is off this week, meaning there’s not much going on in the black and white/right-to-left side of ThWiP stuff. Instead, it’s me and Matlock and Space Jawa. We all read She-Hulk, which I suppose should tell you something about the quality of that book.

I wrote stuff! The other day I did a review of Box Brown’s Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, a biographical graphic novel about the 8th Wonder of the World. Then I did a review for Ashes of CHIKARA, a movie released based on CHIKARA being “closed down” for eight months. One of them I really liked. The other, not so much.

And now on to the super late panels.

Amazing Spider-Man #1.1
Dan Slott and Ramon Perez

Aquaman and the Others #2
Dan Jurgens and Lan Medina

Batwing #31
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Eduardo Pansica

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