That's not my X-Force

Action Ash
What the hell are Marvel doing?

Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost did a great job with re-inventing X-Force as a black ops team created by Cyclops and kept secret from the rest of the X-men. The great storytelling was embellished with great art from Clayton Crain and even better art by Mike Choi. It was all going swimmingly and then at the end of Second Coming this had to happen...



Why this line up?
Deadpool does not need to be in another ongoing. It's like the 90's coming back to haunt me. Look at the size of those guns!
Why don't they just bring Liefeld back and let him ruin comics all over again?

It probably doesn't help that, the first time they choose to reveal this line up, they do it through the questionable art of Mr Land. I mean at least he's not drawing it. Ah well, nevermind. It looks like I'll be saving myself some money because that's one less series I'll be buying.

What I got and Why

Action Ash
I thought I'd do a 'what I got and why' this week, because I want to and you can't stop me.

Amazing Spider-man #637 - Loving the Grim Hunt, as everyone knows because I keep banging on about it. This has definitely got me back into Spider-man, and I can't wait to see how it ends.

Hawks of Outremer #2 - I've already read this one and enjoyed it. Not as much as I liked the first one but I could tell this ish was needed to help the story along. Also now Cormac has a companion so it will be interesting to see what kind of bloody havoc they wreak together.

Daredevil #508 - Not a regular reader of this but I wanted to follow the Shadowland storyline. The art looks nice and I'll probably follow it at least until Shadowland is over.

Conan #22 - The second Howard inspired title this week. Been following this since issue 0. It got a bit boring a little while back but now it's picking up again. This is the start of a new story arc.

X-Men Second Coming #2 - Final part of Second Coming. It's been a fun ride but now it's time to end.

Mystery Society #2 - The art in the first one was great but I wasn't sure if the story was interesting enough. So I intend to find out. Hopefully it's good.

X-Force: Sex and Violence #1 - The current X-Force run has yet to disappoint me so I couldn't pass up this lovely looking package.

Wolverine # 900 Review

Valhallahan

I bought Wolverine #900, because (as I said in an earlier post) Wolverine is one of my favourite fictional characters in any medium, he’s up there With Batman, Jesus, Phillip Marlowe and Jeffrey Lebowski. I also really like anthologies, due to their nature they're generally a mixed bag, like revels, some people like the coffee ones, others like the toffee ones, and everyone likes the nude Minstrels. Well this was more like a bag of Revels where there where there're a handful of nude Minstrels, but every other flavour has been replaced with small pellets of excrement, so not so much a mixed bag, as a mixed sack of crap. Appallingly the highlights are reprints from a few years ago. The Wolverine/Hulk story from Ed McGuiness (#50) and the Spider-Man and Wolverine go to a bar story (Amazing Spider-Man Extra #2) are the highlights, particularly the bar story.

The Original content however veers from the OK, (Goes drinking with a graphic designer - Honestly) to the downright insultingly bad. I can’t believe anyone would pay someone to produce the trapped-in-a-cave-with-the-Morlocks story. I can only assume that it was commissioned as filler over a decade ago (when the story is set) and was found in a drawer. The plot is dire and the art seems to be entirely traced from late 90s X-Men covers by someone who's clearly never seen a real pair of breasts in his life, if his anatomy is anything to go by. I can only assume that it’s by an editor’s nephew or some such, perhaps by someone with some incriminating photographs.

Ironically, this deeply uninspiring package is actually a good staring point for the character. It’s got a 'New-Avengers-Double-Act: Wolvie and Spidey' story, a Noir-ish story where he does some investigating for an old friend (with a shameless Yellow Claw red herring seemingly thrown in just so the artist could draw him), a (shithouse) X-Men story, a Versus the Hulk Story, a Wolverine likes hanging round with young girls story (a particularly naff one at that) and a few more t'boot. So if you’re a new reader, then this is actually a good introduction to who he is and what he do, and if you like this, wait till you read the good stories! Also there is a lot of story for your money albeit of debatable quality.

Two mouldy bone claws out of a possible six shiny Adamantium sharpies.