I’m hooked on X-Men: Second Coming just like I was on Messiah Complex and only one issue has been released.  I just finished reading it and my brain is already counting down to next Wednesday.  Yes, I read other books today including Blackest Night #8.  Yes, it was a great series, but the Marvel Universe (particular the X-Men’s corner) is where I live and this is a weekly series. Other books just can’t compete with that for my attention. I am going to spoil things here, but I do it out of joy and because I know many readers here aren’t likely to pick the book up directly (although maybe I’ll change your mind).

Read more of this article »

Duane Swierczynski’s Cable series is exactly what it needed to be.  Coming out of Messiah Complex, the latest volume of Cable followed the title character and his efforts to protect the first mutant born since the M-day event during House of M.  It involves one of my favorite characters, time travel, dystopian futures, and chase scenes with interesting takes on all of them.

Read more of this article »

If you haven’t read Uncanny X-Men #522 or had it spoiled for you (the big story of this issue was leaked months ago) please don’t read on.  Unless of course you don’t care about such things.

In a wonderful act of kindness, Matt Fraction, writer of Marvel’s Uncanny X-Men, returned Kitty Pryde to planet Earth in the issue that shipped this week.  It was a nice way to commemorate my birthday, so I thank him.  Kitty had been trapped inside a giant bullet hurtling through space since the end of Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men (I am fully aware of how ridiculous this is, but it’s what I like).  After being lost in space for “however long it’s been” in comics’ time (nearly two years for readers), it’s nice to have her back in the book.

How did this happen? Magneto has returned, repowered by the High Evolutionary, and joined the X-Men’s community on Utopia.  Tiring of the justified mistrust directed toward him, he has used every ounce of his regained abilities to redirect the space bullet and rescue the X-Men’s missing teammate: doing himself great physical harm in the process.  The long-term impact of whose hand she was returned by should be fantastic to see.

Another interesting element of her return is that when she reached out to embrace her longtime love Piotr Rasputin (Colossus), she passed right through him, suggesting that the amount of time she spent phasing the bullet has left her in a perpetually phased state.  It’s likely that this means nothing can touch her, but it might have been a fun twist if she were only unable to touch Colossus, since it was indicated that the “strange” metal the space bullet was composed of is similar to Colossus’ organic steel body.

A great back up story by Fraction and artist Phil Jimenez was also included that addressed the issue of what effect a giant bullet flying through space has had on other planets in it’s path.  Kitty was able to use her mutant phasing power to allow it to harmlessly pass through the Earth, and managed to maintain that state through the duration of her voyage, but the reaction of an alien planet that couldn’t have known this made for a great story.

As much as I enjoyed this issue, I have to mention that the excitement just continues for me with the start of X-Men: Second Coming.  Marvel was kind enough to send another gift today in the form of a free preview available now at Comic Book Resources.

After writing my earlier post, it occurred to me that I’m not even that big of an Avengers fan and Marvel has been releasing teasers for weeks for an event that I’m far more interested in. The third chapter in the X-Men: Messiah Trilogy hits this April with Second Coming.
Read more of this article »

This snow is really starting to cause problems. Apparently Diamond Comic Distributors, who ship the majority of new books on Wednesdays, had no power and no phone as of Monday due to the weekend storm. A recent update says that this outage shouldn’t cause any shipping delays. However, considering the new storm that’s crushing us today, there’s a good chance we won’t see books before next week at this point. Without any books hot off the presses, it’s nice that Marvel has given us some teasers of what’s coming a few months down the line to focus on.
Read more of this article »