I don’t think the Ultimate Universe really needed an origin story based on a few lines of dialogue that Brian Michael Bendis cooked up for Bruce Banner back in the third issue of “Ultimate Marvel Team-Up.”  Yet here we are anyway.  At first, it’s pretty boring as we’re shown the initial test of the super-soldier […]

And that’s a wrap.  This is Warren Ellis’ last “Astonishing” arc and with it, it’s safe to say that not only has he done better creator-owned work, but better work with Marvel’s superheroes as well.  Though his arcs had ideas and his considerable wit behind them, they were either badly paced or felt stretched out […]

Believe it or not, I’m still going through the comics I’ve bought at Comic-Con.  Blame it on a mix of having games to play (like “Xenoblade” which is excellent and worth importing and modding your Wii), more new comics to read, and other stuff.  I can’t say that I wish I had gotten to this […]

As I said last time, I’m expecting great things from Kieron Gillen’s tenure on “Uncanny X-Men.”  Everything he has done so far at Marvel has been worth reading if not outright excellent.  That said, the series is currently in a transitional period as the new direction for the franchise is being laid out in “Schism.”  […]

When asked “What do you say to people who think that ‘Groo’ is a one-joke comic?” artist/creator Sergio Aragones responded, “They probably wouldn’t get the joke anyway.”  I believe the exchange can be found in the “Groo 25th Anniversary Special” and it underlines the series core concept:  Having the title character be dumber than any […]

If nothing else, I think this has the best title of anything I’ve read this year.  Think about it, “Wolverine Goes To Hell.”  There’s a beautiful simplicity to it that tells you exactly what you’re going to get inside.  Now I can understand that you might be concerned that this might be a bait-and-switch on […]

It’s not an “X-Men” spinoff but a new project from Matz and Luc Jacamon, writer and artist respectively of “The Killer.”  It’s the year 2054 and the U.N. has finally decided to farm out peacekeeping operations to private security companies such as Multicorps Security, Inc.  This isn’t an original idea but the twist they’ve given […]

Picking up right after the end of “The Thanos Imperative,” the latest Cosmic Marvel story from writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning has the title team, made up of Quasar, Gladiator, Beta Ray Bill, the Silver Surfer and Ronan the Accuser, having their individual assess handed to them by Ikon of the Spaceknights.  It’s probably […]

A while back, Matt Fraction wrote some great Thor stories that were collected as “Ages of Thunder.”  I don’t know my Norse mythology as well as I should, but you got the feeling that he was trying to tell stories about the character that tied in more strongly with his mythological origins than his Marvel […]

Given Asgard’s primary role in this crossover, it should come as no surprise that the events of the tie-in issues from “Thor” are more relevant than you’d expect from such things.  In fact, you could argue that a lot of this stuff should’ve been in the crossover proper.  Heimdall’s “absence” in the beginning of the […]