The Bill August 25, 2010

This week was supposed to be a big week for me: Avengers, Spider-Girl (I know), Deadpool Team Up, Secret Warriors, and Prince of Power. Lots of promising books, lots of fodder to write about, I was really excited.

And then stupid Diamond had to go have a stupid accident and be unable to deliver half the books.

Sigh.

Lucky for you though, I still got enough to review. You ready for the big show? Let's do it!




Best of the Week:
Deadpool Team Up #890
Writer: James Asmus
Artist: Micah Gunnell


I'm as surprised at this as you are.

I'll be straight up with you guys, Deadpool Team Up is a terrible book; one that I'm always suckered into buying. There's always some awesome guest star that I just can't pass up, but then am utterly disappointed by the results. Issues with FrankenCastle, Hercules, The Ghost Riders, and US Ace all seemed like they'd be awesome, but were just terrible in execution. So, it was against my better judgement that I bought this issue guest starring my favorite non-fleshy one, Machine Man.

I've never been happier at my lack of willpower.

This is what I wanted all those previous issues to be: Funny, action packed, and, most importantly, coherent. You see, most of these issues rely on the initial premise to get them by (Oh look, Deadpool is a trucker with US Ace. Funny, right? Good, because that's the only joke we have for 22 pages) and never really bother to tell a fulfilling story with that premise (Like that horrible FrankenCastle issue. I still don't know what happened). I don't know if it was just the writer (as it changes every issue), or the editorial staff getting more comfortable with the book, or if it was just a fluke, but I wish every issue could be like this.

As for the story itself, it follows Deadpool ('natch) as he's hounded by Machine Man over debts due to the Delmar Insurance Company. Deadpool catches a break when a job pops up for Delmar that will cover the cost of his debts, and hilarity ensues. It's great stuff, assuming of course that you like the Nextwave interpretation of Machine Man. For you classic Machine Man fans (all three of you. HA!) you should probably just go ahead and give this one a pass.




Defacto Worst of the Week:
Avengers #4
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: John Romita Jr


I'm gonna get a rep as a major Bendis hater if I'm not careful.

It's not that issue is bad perse, it's just not as fast as I want it to be. Similar to last month's issue, the overall story just inches forward while the majority of the issue focuses on big cool, but ultimately unsatisfying, action shots. It symptomatic of a typical mid-storyarc Bendis issue, where things just kinda percolate while he pads it out for six issues.

Like I said, this issue isn't that bad. While half the team hides from new and crazier things popping out of the time portal, the rest finally run into the supposed villains of the arc. They don't do much, other than call into question who the real villain of the story is, but hey at least something happened this issue. And really, that's the problem, nothing really happens this issue... again.

If this issue and the previous one were combined, I think it would have been great. As it is, well, I won't say I'm not going to pick up the rest of the arc, but I'm certainly not going to feel bad about not picking up the following arc.

What's that? The next arc is about the Infinity Gauntlet? Fuck. I guess I'm on through that arc too, but I'm really done after that!




Alright, that's all I got. If you want to hear me bemoan about not being able to gripe about Spider-Girl (I was so ready to bitch about it!), or hear my opinion on the latest Secret Warriors (in which the title characters haven't appeared in about six months), let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I'll be plotting ways of getting my books in case a Diamond "accident" happens again.