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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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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Hey, ThWiPsters. We’re getting closer and closer to the big 250th week landmark with panels from myself, Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and AnarChris. Original Sin continues to be Marvel’s more entertaining and less rapey version of Identity Crisis and I’ve been very happy with that. The two TMNT comics were also fantastic this week.

Helluva lot of Frank Castle stuff this week.

Elsewhere, I’ve written a review of the first arc of the WWE Superstars comic, as well as a look at various storyline aspects I expect to see in the next Mortal Kombat game.

Avengers #31 (Matlock’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

Avengers #31 (Gavin’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

Avengers World #8 (Gavin’s pick)
Nick Spencer and Marco Checchetto

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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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First off, it pains me to say that after forty-plus issues, Venom is cancelled. I’m bummed, not just for the obvious, but because I wanted to see if it could have outlasted the 90’s solo series, which went a full 60 issues. I can’t say I’m too surprised. The whole demon subplot (which is still a dangling thread) really hurt the momentum and the symbiote’s been tossed to the sidelines as a character, always being drugged up and being a mental non-factor. It’s a weapon rather than being a creature.

They did just give him a teenage girl sidekick and that had potential. Ah well. Chances are he’s going to be killed in the big upcoming Spider-Man crossover when Doc Ock Spider-Man goes too far or something. You know, regular Spider-Man never did blow a gasket over Venom being a government agent and member of the Avengers. You’d think he would have had a passionate opinion about that, but all he ever did was make a joke about the Punisher and tell Venom to please not kill Carnage.

Whether Venom’s set to die or not, he currently has another series to call home in Thunderbolts. Recently, Thunderbolts was pretty bad, mainly because it was written by Daniel Way, who wrote 11 issues of… I’m not really sure. It was a bunch of twists and turns and I found myself not caring for a lot of it. Frank Castle strapping a landmine to his chest and jumping onto a guy was pretty sweet, though. That and it gave me one of my favorite Deadpool quotes with, “You may kill me first, but I fucking guarantee I’ll kill you last.”

Charles Soule took over as of issue #12 and already it’s felt like a breath of fresh air. #12 was a Punisher-centric story that turned his “banging on the side” relationship with Elektra into something more dramatic as she’s given him reason to kill her down the line. Then #13 was kind of average because it was an attempt to clean up Way’s mess by explaining who the hell Mercy is and why she’s on the team when she’s yet to do anything of note or interact with anyone other than Red Leader. For any of you who haven’t been paying attention, Leader has been resurrected and he’s red. He’s currently the intelligence of the team, although he’s given limited intellect to work with to keep him from remembering who he was. Right now he’s just a timid follower of General Ross, retaining his personality from before he became an insane supervillain.

The big problem with the series has been that it hasn’t delivered a hook. Sure, I get that it’s taken the Thunderbolts name because of General Ross’ nickname and how they’re a bunch of dark heroes with blood on their hands, but why are they together? The first issue had Ross recruit everyone and it gave the idea that they were going to be a non-mutant version of X-Force. Even though it took fourteen issues, this week’s issue FINALLY gives us an idea of what the series is really all about.

And it’s a pretty awesome idea.

Right there! Why couldn’t they make this clear from the very first issue? Hell, the second issue or even sixth? Why did we have to wait that long to get this great hook for a series about a group of heroic killers working together? I mean, you’re the fucking Thunderbolts! You know what the original Thunderbolts were known for? Telling us why we should be reading it from the end of the first issue! Imagine if Citizen V unmasked in the middle of the 14th issue.

“The Selfish Avengers.” All members of the team (outside of Red Leader and Mercy) get a chance to lead the team into a mission of their choosing. If Deadpool wants them to kill Sabretooth, they will all go off together to kill Sabretooth, go back home and ask Elektra who she wants iced. It kind of has a low-rent Illuminati feel to it.

So far the first choice has gone to Castle, leading to this exchange.

I hate it when comics get so obsessed with decompression that by the time they get to the point, people have stopped reading and it dies. That’s what happened with Chaykin’s Squadron Supreme and I have a feeling it’s going to happen here. I don’t have too much experience reading Soule’s stuff, but so far he’s turned Red Lanterns around and he’s been doing good work on Swamp Thing.

All that I’m saying is to give Thunderbolts a chance. Which is really the opposite of giving peace of a chance.

Pfft. Jeff Parker. Who did he ever beat?

Ah, nothing like the first day of vacation. Before I get into the panels, just a quick plug. Next Sunday at 4pm, I’m going to be doing an improv show at the UCBeast in the East Village in New York. If you’re local, come check it out. It’s one of three shows I’ll be doing as part of being in UCB’s Improv 401 class.

To make my mood even better, Marvel just announced that they’re bringing back What If! Fuck yes! My bread and butter!

Got the usual crew this week. Gaijin Dan, Jody, Space Jawa and the photographer of the above picture Was Taters. Let’s get to it!

All-Star Western #17
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Staz Johnson

Aquaman #17
Geoff Johns and Paul Pelletier

Batman Incorporated #8 (Gavin and Taters’ pick)
Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham and Jason Masters

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Okay, okay. So my writing has been a little lax lately. I’ve been a bit busy, what with jury duty, a sketch writing class at UCB, the Royal Rumble, the Superbowl and work kicking my ass. But I promise I’ll get back to actually writing about comics again real soon! Scout’s honor!

I was never a scout, but I’m pretty sure I can keep that promise.

My superfriends are, as always, Gaijin Dan, Was Taters, Jody and Space Jawa.

All-Star Western #16
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Moritat and Phil Winslade

Aquaman #16
Geoff Johns and Paul Pelletier

Avengers #4
Jonathan Hickman and Adam Kubert

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Yo. I have to get up early tomorrow for jury duty, which I think means I have to put on battle armor and hunt down Venom, so I’m just going to rush this update. It’s me, Jody, Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. Was Taters is currently flailing around in a pit of quicksand.

Action Comics #16
Grant Morrison, Brad Walker, Rags Morales, Sholly Fisch and Chris Sprouse

Age of Apocalypse #11
David Lapham and Roberto de la Torre

Animal Man #16
Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh and Timothy Green II

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This week I’m just flanked by Jody and Gaijin Dan, but that’s okay, since they both read a lot of stuff. Lot of great books came out this week, such as Action Comics, Avengers, Deadpool, Minute Men, Hawkeye and that Hellboy thing (so I hear).

Panels, away!

Action Comics #15
Grant Morrison, Brad Walker, Rags Morales, Sholly Fisch and Chris Sprouse

All-New X-Men #3
Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

Animal Man #15 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh and Timothy Green II

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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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