Friday, October 19, 2007

Heaps of new comics purchased yesterday!

Bought my comics yesterday! I used the 25% voucher at Classic Comics so I got a nice big fat discount. Or, the way I looked at it was like this: I didn't get a discount. I paid full price for my comics, but I received a free TPB thanks to that voucher. :D

Picked up quite a bit of stuff:

Y - The Last Man Vols.1-3 TPB (yes, I'm trying to recreate my collection here a la Preacher! It's such a great read after all)
Exiles Vols.13-15 TPB - have the first 12 volumes in Singapore and I love this series
Grimm Fairy Tales Vol.2 TPB - the first TPB is out of print! So I can't even ORDER it! NOOO...where can I get it from? Comics R Us hopefully? Amazon a last resort?
Mighty Avengers #5 - review to come soon
Marvel Zombies 2 #1 - YESSSSSSSSS! More brains for everyone!
Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man #whatever - part two of One More Day
Captain America: The Chosen #3

Would have been a bit more, had I been able to order Grimm Fairy Tales Vol.1 and if they had New Avengers/Transformers #4 in stock. Ah well...I have another 25% coupon to be used sometime over the next two weeks! I AM running out of TPBs to buy though...only the expensive HCs I'm sort of after nowadays. :(

Read all the single issues yesterday night. All really good reads! My one gripe with the Captain America: The Chosen storyline is that it's just moving so SO slow. The penciller, Mitch Breitweiser looks like he's going to be Marvel's next breakout star penciller. His pencilling reminds me of Bryan Hitch's super detailed pencils, but with a bit more grit to give his characters that rugged look. He seems to draw all the individual links in Cap's chainmail armour as well!

I'm still trying to figure out where The Chosen fits into Marvel continuity. They have Captain America half dead in some facility somewhere...is this straight after events in Civil War and Captain America #25 when he was shot? Or is this some separate incident? It's hard to tell.

And writer David Morrell has revealed that Captain America has some sort of additional powers! He is some sort of pseudo-telepath! What the !?!?!?

The story goes as such:

As we all know, the super soldier serum that Captain America took increased his physical ability immensely. What we DIDN'T know (and what David Morrell has suggested in The Chosen) is that his BRAIN was also affected by the super soldier serum.

There was a time when Captain America's body had broken down and he couldn't fight anymore. But Cap's brain was still functioning at peak capacity. Cap discovered he could visualise certain parts of the world...enemy bunkers and territory...just like a satellite could, but in more vivid detail! And Cap was a commercial artist, so he could draw up those "maps" he envisioned in his mind.

The US government conducted some experiments on Cap (with his approval) and they basically linked his brain with some computer or whatever...and it was discovered that Cap could ALSO project his likeness in certain places in the world! Cap could "telepathically" project his likeness in, say, an enemy base, and make people think that he was there.

Ugh. I'm still interested in how this series goes (because I think they might choose a NEW Captain America), but I'm hoping Marvel doesn't tinker too much with Cap's powers. It's one thing that he's a super soldier, but to give him mental abilities too? Hmmm. :(

I really enjoy Joe Quesada's pencils on this One More Day arc in the Spider-man titles. The weblines he draws are amazing...very Todd McFarlane-esque! The story seems to be really awesome as well, tugging at the core elements of Spidey-lore: things like "Spider-man does not kill" are tested and examined and how Aunt May is a centric character to Peter's world and what happens when she's taken away from him.

Unfortunately, I was really tired when reading it and I kept nodding off, so I don't quite remember what I read anymore. I think I'll have to read it again tonight.

Strangely enough, after finishing the second part of One More Day, I was awake enough again to read finish the other two issues! Mighty Avengers was brilliant again...can't get enough of Frank Cho's cheesecake art. The way he draws Ms Marvel...rrrrrrooowwwwwwwwr.

Mighty Avengers featured a knock-down drag-out fight between Sentry and the female Ultron. But the man with the power of a million exploding suns just could not put Ultron away...his punches wrecked half of Ultron's face...and all Ultron did was to reform it again, a la the T-1000 liquid metal regeneration in Terminator 2! It was revealed that Ultron was just trying to distract the Avengers while achieving the REAL goal of hacking into the computers of nuclear installations over the world.

Ares has really been elevated to being a major player in the Marvel pantheon. He devised this plan all on his own to get Hank Pym to shrink Ares down to a microscopic level, and then Ares could enter the body of Ultron and hit her with a virus. Hmmm...someone's been watching Independence Day too many times I think. When Hank Pym suggests that his ex-wife, the Wasp, would be the ideal person to plant the virus, Ares insists he be the one to do it, because Ultron has no idea what to expect from him and because Ares has the self-confidence in his own abilities to layeth the smacketh down.

Marvel Zombies 2 was last, and boy, was I really anticipating this. It's 40 years later and the core team of Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-man, Captain America, Luke Cage and Giant Man, who were imbued with the power cosmic after they defeated (and ingested) Galactus, have joined up with some other cosmic characters in Gladiator, Dark Phoenix, Thanos and Firelord. They have scoured the entire universe...and found there is nothing left to eat! They decide to head back to Earth, because Giant Man vaguely remembers a dimension-hopping device that Reed Richards and Iron Man were working on could send them to another dimension...with a lot more food.

While they're on their way back to Earth, Hulk punches Thanos' head clean off and the Marvel Zombies discover Ego, the Living Planet! It's pretty funny the way they start chomping down on Ego and when someone remarks: "A living planet! Why didn't we find this earlier?"

Back on Earth, Black Panther and his Acolytes have rebuilt some semblence of civilisation. They have not been able to repopulate the world, but they have, at least, birthed the new generation of Acolytes...who aren't too keen to adhere to Black Panther's rule as they see him as an archaic, no-action leader. The Acolytes plan to assassinate Black Panther and take over his rule.

Meanwhile, Black Panther's sun finds the head of Hawkeye and brings him back to the Panther's kingdom. It is revealed that while the Wasp is still a zombie, she no longer feels "the hunger" and it is further revealed that without eating flesh, the Marvel Zombies go through some sort of "zombie detoxification" and can live as normal again.

Black Panther gets stabbed when he sleeps and to save him from a certain death, the Wasp chomps down on his neck...rebooting "the hunger" in her and changing Black Panther into a Marvel Zombie! The two of them greedily devour the Panther's assailant and intestines, livers and spleens all fly across the room and get digested.

Oh man, I can't wait for the next issue! Are the rest of the Acolytes dead, since they're just food for Black Panther and the Wasp? What's going to happen when the power cosmic-imbued Marvel Zombies return to Earth?

Only a month's wait to find out!

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