Dark Avengers #9

Ares* is one of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers. His 10-year-old son Phobos** is in superspy training with Nick Fury's Secret Warriors, unbeknownst to his father until now. In Dark Avengers #9 (Brian Michael Bendis), Ares finally follows his son to the Warriors' base, and has the confrontation with Fury that readers have been waiting for ever since the Secret Warriors were introduced in the pages of Bendis' Mighty Avengers.

Except there's no fight. The fetching cover at the top of this post is just a cover. After bashing his way through the base defenses and b*tch-slapping another of the Warriors, Ares engages Fury in a remarkably level-headed discussion. He asks the spymaster what the Warriors have been up to, what Fury has been doing with his son. Fury explains. Ares the God stands there, head hung low, actually ashamed - a powerful image, and clearly one that resonates with his big-eyed son.

Ares admits that he doesn't really know how to be a dad - it turns out Zeus wasn't such a hot role model - and doesn't know how to help his son deal with and make use of his emerging powers. And so long as Phobos is happy with the Warriors, Ares gives Fury his blessing to train the boy (while of course promising vengeance should any harm come to his son).

It's a wonderfully unexpected done-in-one tale. Who'd'a thunk Ares would worry about being a good father? Bendis makes it work, reminding us that sometimes admitting his weakness is the strongest thing a father can do.

- JC

* The Greek God of War.

** The Greek God of Fear, though I don't believe it's yet been established if he's an ancient deity in a 10-year-old's body, or a 10-year-old-child with the same powers as some older or purely mythical Phobos. He mostly acts like a kid.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Requiem Part 1

[When he emailed me this post, JC was careful to say, "Don't read this until you read the comic!" I think he's learned something about how much I hate spoilers. Pardon me while I go read Ultimate Spider-Man: Requiem Part 1. - RD]

[Okay, I'm back. That was rad. - RD]

Spider-Man: Requiem Part 1 of 2 (Brian Michael Bendis) serves both as an epilogue to the disaster-movie "Ultimatum" storyline that ended the first volume of Ultimate Spider-Man and a love letter to the series as a whole.

Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson has returned to the shattered ruins of New York, along with editor Robbie Robertson and reporter Ben Urich. Jameson, as we saw in "Ultimatum," has accepted at last that Spider-Man was a hero all along. This is a different Jonah than we've seen in any Spider-Man before. He's mature. He's quiet. And it lends a special poignancy to the issue, that what may be Spider-Man's last story will be told not by Aunt May or Mary Jane, not by someone who loved him from the start, but instead by this man. Watching Jameson sit there in the wreck that was his office, finally trying to understand the young man he so loudly and incessantly judged, allows the story to be both epic and intimate all at once.

As Jonah works, digging through old pro-Spider-Man stories he'd never allowed Urich to share, we're treated to a flashback, an untold adventure of Spider-Man and Iron Man. It's a nice nod to Bendis and Spidey's brief but glorious Ultimate Marvel Team-Up spin-off series. We see Tony Stark interviewed by Mary Jane, grappling with big questions of heroism, terrorism, and what it means to be a violent role model in the world. It's the kind of philosophical dialogue at which Bendis really shines, bringing to the surface questions that have always been implicit in the superhero genre. And Tony's particular perspective seats him neatly in the Arthurian tradition, a man who believes that as human nature will always beget violence, so there must always be those willing to defend those who can't defend themselves. This is how Iron Man has always worked best: a modern knight, Round Table style; a noble man and a nobleman.

It's also great to have both of Ultimate Spider-Man's regular artists sharing this issue, with the modern-day segments drawn by Stuart Immonen and the flashbacks by original series artist Mark Bagley. Their styles are very different, yet both pack so much life and motion into their lines, and its a treat to see them side by side. Bagley's softer, more rounded characters evoke the innocence of younger days, an effective contrast against Immonen's sharper, wearier newspapermen of the present.

- JC

House of M

I've just read House of M (Brian Michael Bendis) for the third time, and I'm still not sure what I think of it.

The miniseries picks up more or less where Bendis' Avengers Disassembled arc left off. Wanda Maximoff (the Avenger Scarlet Witch, and daughter of X-Men arch-foe Magneto) has been driven mad by her reality-altering mutant powers. Several of her Avengers teammates have died because of her breakdown, and the remaining Avengers and X-Men are no longer sure they can help her. Just as the two teams come together to decide what can be done for their friend, the world goes white, and suddenly everyone's living in Magneto's world. The war Magneto foresaw between men and mutants has apparently come and gone, and now the Earth is one big shiny-happy mutant-friendly society run by the "House of M" - Magneto and his children.

The heroes of the Marvel universe have all been given the lives they've always dreamed about: Peter Parker is married to Gwen Stacy and his Uncle Ben is still around, Captain America never got frozen in the ice and got to grow old with his own generation, Wolverine is a top S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and now remembers his entire life. Yet this also makes Wolverine one of the few who remembers the real Marvel universe, and realizes that he's starring on Extreme Makeover: Planetary Edition. He hooks up with a human underground movement - it turns out not everyone's happy with Magneto's leadership after all - and together they set out to wake up the heroes, find the Unwicked Witch of the Crazy, and Put Things Right.

Every time I've read this story, I've found it gripping. It begins and ends with a surprisingly down-to-Earth family drama. Beneath the capes and masks, it's a story about a family coming together in despair, struggling to cope with a loved one's mental illness. The issues in the middle, in the world Wanda creates, are on the surface a fairly standard heroes-trapped-in-fake-reality adventure, the kind we've seen in any number of comics as well as on Star Trek and in movies like The Matrix or Dark City. Yet it's also a story about Wanda's response to her family's and friends' grief and her attempt to repair the pain she has caused them all and give them the world they deserve. The dialogue is clever but heartfelt (it's Bendis); the action is big, brassy and exciting.

But House of M raises several huge, intriguing questions, and I find myself wanting more, or different, answers than Bendis gives us. Upon realizing reality has been changed, the heroes have only one short debate about whether or not they should try to change it back. Kitty Pryde and Jessica Drew ask why it isn't just as wrong to unmake this reality, to take away these lives people are living - why, in a world of fantastic superhuman powers, this change couldn't be something that's supposed to happen - and are immediately shot down by Wolverine and the rest on sheer principle. No one talks about how life is worse for some in this reality, or about the racism of mutant rule, or about the people who are dead in this world but alive in the other (or vice versa). It's just taken as a given that when someone magically changes the world, it's your job to change it right back. And maybe that is a given - in America, at least. In our democratic society, we tend to hold free will above all other virtues. The idea that one single man, or family, could enforce a whole new reality on the world, even a reality that made most people's lives better, is anathema to most of us.

Yet Wanda didn't impose her own ideas on the world, or even her father's. Supposedly she linked with Charles Xavier's mind and got him to tap into everyone's dreams and hopes and wishes, and used that to give people the lives they all wanted. It's a brilliant storytelling device, exploring the characters in the regular Marvel reality by seeing the lives they would have chosen to live in this one. It was great fodder for other Marvel writers, too, who followed these lives in tie-in stories. But like Jessica Drew asks, if everyone got what they wanted, not just Magneto, than why is it necessarily wrong to just let it go?

Of course, not quite everyone got what they wanted: while some of the dead have risen again in this new world, others alive in the regular Marvel U are deceased here. Was it because people like Charles Xavier and Reed and Sue Richards would've figured out the truth too quickly? Or were some people's dreams were granted primacy over others, meaning that Magneto and Doctor Doom really don't see the world as big enough for themselves and their superhero nemeses?

It also seems as though Wanda plays favorites - or at least I prefer to think so rather than suggesting that Bendis' own power couple Luke Cage and Jessica Jones got separated in this new reality because of some relationship angst from one or both of them. It's implied that Jessica Jones is with Ant-Man Scott Lang in the M-verse. Scott was one of the Avengers killed during Wanda's Disassembled breakdown, so I think giving Scott back his ex was Wanda's gift to him.

I also really wanted to know - or wanted a character to ask - why Magneto's world had to turn out like it did. Wanda blames her father near the end, suggesting that his petty and cruel nature made a petty and cruel world, even when he ruled it. But is Magneto so petty and so cruel? I've always thought that Magneto believed he had to be a harsh man in a harsh world, but that did not mean he would choose it. I've always believed he wanted the same world of harmony and cooperation Charles Xavier wants; Magneto simply didn't believe it was a realistic goal. If Wanda is reaching into her father's head and remaking the world for him, why couldn't she create the kinder, gentler Xavier version of reality? Do her powers, or her madness even, demand a certain amount of logic and consistency, a world the inhabitants can still believe is real? Does this mean that she changed only history, not human nature, and that Wanda couldn't believe in Xavier's dream any more than Magneto could?

I could answer all these questions myself. I could spend days answering them, really. (I have a BA in English Lit, I'm marrying a woman with a BA in Philosophy, we write this blog, hi!). But I wanted the characters to put a few more of them on the table themselves before they rushed into their big fight scene. Yes, great drama sets up a debate and lets the audience answer, but if the characters don't ask enough of the questions for themselves, then they start to feel a little too much like plot devices rather than people. It's a very tricky tightrope to walk, and I don't think Bendis got it quite right with House of M. Still, there's a lot to be said for any story that lives so vividly in my head for days after a third reading.

- JC

Mighty Avengers: Secret Invasion

Mighty Avengers: Secret Invasion Book 2 (Brian Michael Bendis) collects issues #16-20 of Mighty Avengers, five single-issue stories each serving to illuminate a character or situation from Secret Invasion.

It's an uneven collection. Three of the stories are quick character sketches, heavy on swordfights or explosions but light on plot. One issue shows how Elektra was captured by the Skrulls and her doppleganger took control of the Hand ninja clan. Two very similar issues depict Skrull sleeper agents becoming overly influenced by the personalities they're attempting to replicate, and ultimately getting cut down by their own kind. Reading these vignettes, one can't help but wonder if Bendis stretched himself just a little too thin between the main Secret Invasion mini, his pair of Avengers titles (and the Dark in development), Powers, etc. There are some fascinating moments here, and snatches of typically Bendis dialogue (which I love), but they read a little like official Secret Invasion fanfic. They're drabbles.

The Nick Fury issue is stronger, another preview story for the new Secret Warriors. We learn what it's like to be a super-powered teenager in training with the world's oldest, grumpiest master spy. It made me wish that the actual Secret Warriors book was written this tightly and hope that it will be, once Jonathan Hickman has a little more time to settle into the concept.

But it's the final story that makes the whole book worth the price of admission. Hank Pym (a.k.a. Ant Man a.k.a. Giant Man a.k.a. Goliath a.k.a. Yellowjacket, soon to be the new Wasp [MPD much? - RD]) returns from Skrull captivity to face a radically new Marvel universe. He wasn't there for House of M or Civil War or World War Hulk, and even the Secret Invasion was over when he finally stepped out of that Skrull spaceship.

His friends have turned on each other, torn the superhero community apart, and his wife (Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp) is dead. Of course it's at the funeral that he finally breaks down, lashes out inevitably and inappropriately. His grief, coupled with the way in which Thor steps in for his friend, quite literally put tears in my eyes. Granted, anyone who knows me will attest that's not entirely rare, but even so, it's an outstanding and moving story. Plus, we get to see Clint Barton drop the F-bomb (okay, technically the "*$#%!"-bomb) on Norman Osborn in a church. What's not to love about that?

- JC

Secret Invasion: Front Line

Who says this isn't the Marvel Age of Disaster Movies? First Bendis gave us that angle on Ultimatum in Ultimate Spider-Man, and now I find Brian Reed has done the same for Bendis' own Secret Invasion. And like in most disaster movies, the story's impact comes from who lives and who dies.

Secret Invasion: Front Line follows reporter Ben Urich as he makes his way through the chaos of Manhattan during the Skrull invasion, hooking up with other non-super powered citizens and fighting just to get out of the way of the war.

Back in the 90s, you'd watch a movie like Jurassic Park or Volcano and you'd more or less know ahead of time who was going to die, brutally and Darwinistically - the old and weak perished while the young, pretty, and witty survived. More recent examples of the genre have gleefully turned the formula on its head, keeping a plucky old guy alive and killing someone younger and stronger for the surprise. SI: Front Line works that way too, but Brian Reed manages to deliver a new twist to the game in its last few pages.

Throughout the issue, Ben Urich talks about wanting to get home to his wife, Doris. She was in the shower when he left that morning, and he forgot to say "I love you," on the way out the door. Nothing particularly novel so far; any movie-goer would tell you that Urich's the goner, right? But what we don't learn until the very end is that Doris has been very ill, and she passed away during the day her husband spent surviving the attack. We find Ben talking to his therapist, explaining how in the final hours he was just wandering the streets, muttering notes into his tape recorder, and realizing he could have just walked back home to his wife, could have been there in time, and he wasn't. He made notes for a story he now finds he can't even write.

It's a stunning death because it happens to a character we never see and for reasons entirely unrelated to the plot. It's perfectly foreshadowed but completely unexpected, like all the best literary surprises. And it matters, because Brian Reed has made sure that whether we knew him from previous Marvel Universe appearances or met him for the first time in this book, we care about Ben Urich. Reed makes a grand, colorful sci-fi epic into a beautifully sad, down-to-earth story about the life that slips past us when we're looking at the big picture.

- JC

Ultimate Spider-Man #131

In Ultimate Spider-Man #131, Brian Michael Bendis delivers a great tie-in issue to the Ultimatum storyline (which I haven't read yet). To get a solid stand-alone that works with the overarching plot, Bendis treats Ultimatum as a really good disaster movie - you don't have to worry about exactly what Magneto's doing or what's happening elsewhere, all you know is that New York has been hit by a giant tidal wave. Large parts of the city have been destroyed and people are in danger everywhere, but Spider-Man is still muddling through. Bendis gives us the little character moments we love without having to worry about the backstory happening in other books.

The most beautiful character moment in this issue is a paradigm shift for J. Jonah Jameson. In a gorgeous two-page spread by Stuart Immonen, Jameson stares out of the Bugle office at the city underwater and sees Spider-Man diving down to save someone. He finally realizes that Spider-Man isn't a self-serving menace in tights, but a true hero even in the face of disaster. As the newspaper staff scramble to make some sense of what's happening, JJJ sits down to write his first ever pro-Spider-Man editorial.

If Ultimatum is suppose to redefine the Ultimate universe as distinct from #616, this could be a fantastic opportunity. I've seen JJJ scale back his Spidey hate in the interest of not losing Spider-Man fans as readers, but I haven't seen him actually believe in the good Spider-Man does. It would be great to see Bendis explore this new attitude and see what that does for Jameson's character.

[At this time, I would like to note that an editorial shift in the paper of record could have significant impact on how the public feels about Spider-Man and the positive effects on Peter Parker's life, but my brilliant fiance didn't even consider those things, just that Jameson as a supporting cast member has had a change of mind. So there you go. - RD]

There are several other beautiful two-page spreads throughout the issue, contributing further to the epic movie feel - the art is great, since it's Immonen, and, since it's Bendis, the pages are all focused on something about the people in the shot. We get more crossover components with the Hulk appearing briefly and Peter finding a way to make him part of the solution rather than the problem. Aunt May's first (of many, we hope) encounter with Spider-Woman is also a treat.

And chillingly, Ultimate Daredevil's death, though it may be a large part of other books, is seen from this angle as a throwaway scene. It's a sign that this disaster is so huge that heroes are dying off-camera, and the ones left behind can't spare the time to honor them - there's still too much work to do.

- JC

Secret Warriors #1

Brian Michael Bendis and Jonathan Hickman's new series Secret Warriors was advertised with the promise of "a secret that will break the internet [sic] into tiny little pieces." (via) As it turns out, the secret has a lot of possibilities for a superhero/spy comic book, but the execution is a little shaky at this point.

The story is told in a non-linear format, but basically Nick Fury, the former head of S.H.I.E.L.D, goes back to an old secret base and hacks a computer to find out that H.Y.D.R.A, long-time enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D, has apparently infiltrated and may secretly have been running S.H.I.E.L.D before it disbanded. And now H.Y.D.R.A. may be running H.A.M.M.E.R, which replaced S.H.I.E.L.D and is under control of the U.S. government. (I'm going to stop typing the dots in the acronyms now, because I feel stupid. - RD)

My question: why is Nick Fury just finding out about this now? If all he needed to access the secret database in the secret SHIELD base was his secret username and secret password, as badass and super-spy as he's supposed to be, why doesn't he know all this until after the fact? SHIELD doesn't even exist anymore. Fury's final line of the comic, "I've been working for the bad guys the whole time," is a nice cliffhanger, but unless they can give me a good reason why he didn't have access to the database, or how the HYDRA involvement was hidden even from the head of the organization, I don't buy it.

Later, Nick Fury breaks into the White House to talk with the President - presumably Obama, but kept in shadow throughout - to tell him all about these old SHIELD bases and the information and/or technology still in them. Fury then rejoins his spy kids and tells them to stake out one of the old bases. HYDRA agents are expected to appear and do their best to collect intel from the base. If HAMMER shows up, Fury says, it's proof that the administration is on the up-and-up, without HYDRA control.

I don't follow this logic. Double bluffs happen all the time in spy world. Nick Fury should expect them with his morning coffee. The President could easily send HAMMER agents as well as or in place of HYDRA agents, if in fact both agencies are run by the same people. It would actually be easier to send HAMMER in whether the good guys are corrupt or not. HAMMER has been reacquiring SHIELD technology since they took over, so they would cause far less comment if they simply moved in and set up shop. The presence of both organizations means nothing; the President, knowing that Nick Fury informed him of the SHIELD base for a reason, would assume that Fury would be watching him and send HAMMER agents regardless of HYDRA's involvement. This is Espionage 101, and I just can't believe that Fury hasn't already thought this through.

I'd like to see where it goes, and I expect a lot from this writing team. In the future, I hope the story explains itself a little better.

- JC

Dark Avengers #1

In Dark Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis essentially reinvents the original Thunderbolts with a twist.

When Kurt Busiek created the Thunderbolts, they were a team of Marvel villains pretending to be a new team of heroes. It was meant to be a Cunning Plan, Pinky & the Brain style -- only many of the villains found, for right or wrong reasons, they actually liked being heroes and the way the public reacted to them in that role. In time, the team became a legitimate and U.S. government-sanctioned avenue for villains seeking to reform and do time in public service. Not to mention villains who'd just rather be out there kicking other bad guys' butts than rotting in prison.

Norman 'Green Goblin' Osborn became a Thunderbolt during the Civil War event, and soon after maneuvered his way into command of the entire Thunderbolt program. Now, in the wake of Secret Invasion, he's been put in charge of the H.A.M.M.E.R that was S.H.I.E.L.D, giving him oversight of not just the Thunderbolts, but the Avengers Initiative as well.

So here's the twist: Norman takes some of the most vicious killers currently serving as Thunderbolts and turns them into the official Avengers for the U.S. of A. He does this by giving them the identities of established heroes that the public already knows and loves. Moonstone is Ms. Marvel. Wolverine's unhinged son Daken stands in for his dad. Venom becomes the Amazing Spider-Man. Bullseye, the psychopath who murdered two women Daredevil loved, is now Hawkeye. Up is down and black is white.

There's a fantastic two-page spread where the new Avengers are introduced to the public, with a neat trick you can really only pull off on a comic book page. As the name of each ersatz hero is called out, we see it printed in the colorful logo used on the cover of the original hero's comic. It really drives home the identity theft, the stunt that Norman Osborn is pulling on the public.

Not only do we have the old Thunderbolts questions hanging over this team -- how many truly want to be heroes? How many will discover that want over time? Can they overcome their own pasts and darker instincts? -- but we also have to wonder how long it will take the citizens of Marvel America to realize these aren't the heroes they know and love, and how they'll react when they figure it out.

Of course, not every member of the team is a pretender. Ares and the Sentry, two former Mighty Avengers, have stayed with Osborn. Ares, the actual Roman God of War, doesn't really care who's telling him to fight or why, so long as there are battles to be fought. The Sentry is more or less Marvel's schizophrenic version of Superman, and it's hinted that Osborn is manipulating his fractured mental state in some way to keep him around. I hadn't thought about it before Bendis brought them together in this book, but really the Sentry and Osborn's Green Goblin are two sides of the same coin. Osborn has also displayed signs of a schizophrenic disorder, as well as a possible multiple personality; when he started out committing crimes as the Goblin, he supposedly didn't know he was doing it. If Osborn is at all stable or integrated now, he's achieved that mostly by giving in to his darker impulses. Can the Sentry resist such a role model? Let's hope so.

And then there's the Iron Patriot, the new amalgam of Captain America and Iron Man. I have to admit Bendis had me completely faked out on this one. After the end of New Avengers #48, I was expecting to see Luke Cage in that armor, betraying his own teammates to make good on his promise to pay Osborn any price for help in finding his kidnapped child. (For a moment or two, I even entertained the notion that the new Ms. Marvel might be Jessica Jones, stealing the sobriquet of her best friend as part of the same Faustian bargain.) But no -- the Patriot is Osborn himself, because anything Tony Stark can do, Osborn must now prove he can do better. How did I not see that coming?

Plot-wise, Dark Avengers #1 is the first twenty minutes or so of a two-hour TV pilot episode. We've got the players on the board, and hints of who they are and what they want. What happens next is the story, but so far the set-up is more than solid.

- JC

Dark Reign: New Nation

As part of the Dark Reign storyline, Marvel put out a book of five 8-page previews of new series or minis set to launch within the next few months. What's fascinating is how each of these writers handle the task of getting a comic into about a third of the normal length.

War Machine: Crossing the Line (Greg Pak) and Skrull Kill Krew: Breakfast in America (Adam Felber) are both pretty standard short stories. They're both simple and true to the premise of their respective books. In War Machine, Iron Man's friend James Rhodes goes looking for bad guys to kill because he's a soldier and has no problem with killing. For this 8-page short, he finds a bad guy and kills him. Skrull Kill Krew is pretty much the same thing, only the main dude's killing Skrulls. Again, the story is short and predictable, solid writing with a few good jokes but nothing outstanding.

In Secret Warriors: Declaration, Brian Michael Bendis and Jonathan Hickman give us a glimpse inside Nick Fury's head. Fury's new team has already been introduced through a sort of backdoor pilot in Bendis' New Avenger series, so the short just sets the tone for the ongoing book. Rather than trying to cram a story into 8 pages, this is more of a vignette - if it were fanfic, it would be a drabble. It works well for what it is; Bendis writes good dialogue, so we get to see a classic Captain America WWII speech with a Band of Brothers feel. It's also interesting to see an old soldier/spy approaching the 21st century War on Terror with his 1940s idealism intact.

Agents of Atlas: The Heist was probably my favorite story in the book. I met Gorilla Man in X-Men: First Class and was looking forward to seeing him in action with his team. Jeff Parker really used the 8-page format brilliantly, introducing a group of people I was expecting to be superheroes, yet here they are stealing all the gold from Fort Knox. The reason for the heist ties into the Dark Reign overplot, but we get a full adventure that sets the group up for what's to come. It works as a short story because the idea is so simple; we get 6 pages to see how they pull off the heist and a couple pages at the end to find out why. It's not a standard plot for a super team, and it works beautifully.

The story that actually got me to pick up the book, and the one I'll probably follow in series form, was New Avengers: The Reunion: Suspicion (Jim McCann). It's about the aftermath of Secret Invasion, with Ronin and Mockingbird reunited. I was intrigued by interviews with the writer that showed he was very excited about the relationship dynamics between these two, and, as previously blogged, I liked what I saw of Mockingbird's return from years of captivity on a Skrull homeworld. The story is a prelude of what's to come rather than a self-contained plot, and it does an interesting job of showing us Mockingbird's mental state. She's returned to a changed Earth, where some friends have died, and others have fought one another in a Civil War. Her husband is just glad she's home and ready to act like nothing happened, but she's working through some PTSD and trying to figure out who she is and what the world is now. I came into this short hoping for a great superhero love story, and I still think and hope that's where Reunion is headed, but what I got was a great psychological study. Now I'm not just excited about where Ronin and Mockingbird are headed as a couple. I'm equally invested in where Mockingbird's journey is taking her alone and how she'll balance her past and her future.

- JC

Secret Invasion #2

In Issue #2 of Secret Invasion (Brian Michael Bendis), Hawkeye apparently gets his wife back. Mockingbird was killed off many years ago (in reader time, at least), but returns in the midst of the Skrull takeover. So, like anyone faced with a "Would the Real Superhero Please Stand Up?" Hawkeye asks her about something that only his real wife would know, something they never shared with anyone else. He asks his wife to remind him of the significance of October 12.

"The baby we lost, Mockingbird replies, "October 12th would have been the birthday. It... would have been a nice day."

What I found fascinating was not the fact that Hawkeye used the date as his password question, but that these people, who have been through one of the most horrible things that a couple can experience, don't talk about it as something that haunts them. They just say, "It would have been a nice day."

When I look at characterization that works, I see superheros as people that we want to be. It's not just that they have the powers and the vision that we wish we had; they find the strength to put personal tragedies in perspective. I think most people could be consumed with grief at losing a child, and though it's clear that the couple were deeply saddened by their loss, they chose to focus on how happy they would have been. It's a subtle but vast distinction.

Hawkeye and Mockingbird have been described as the Mr. and Mrs. Smith of the Marvel universe. I don't know these characters particularly well yet, but I'm really looking forward to seeing where they go from here.

And hey, it's nice to see Marvel un-kill a marriage for once.

- JC

Secret Invasion

The series is a culmination of several plot lines in recent Marvel books where the Skrulls - shape-changing aliens - have been working for a while to take over the Earth, and have been replacing various superheroes to do this. There's a really neat two-page spread where you see Times Square and all these TV screens with Skrull versions of politicians, superheroes, and TV personalities. They claim to have been observing the poverty and war on Earth for some time, and have now come to help us fix our problems.

Their announcement includes the statement, "Once we have settled in, we will begin replacing your energy sources and your borders. All areas of modern conflict will be moot." It's every invasion in human history, with the invaders trying to convince the invaded that they were being liberated. But like in our own recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Skrulls have an ulterior motive after all - their own resources are limited and they're hoping to settle some of their population to Earth. They don't have the humility to simply ask for what they need, they must bring their religion and intelligence to make the planet a better place. They're doing Earth a favor - one that humans don't necessarily want or need.

The question becomes which of the invaders truly believe they're doing the right thing, and which of them know that their population needs the resources Earth represents - and how much of either of those viewpoints justifies what they're doing.

Also, though the point isn't made overtly, the final issue seems to imply that it's actually President G.W. Bush who puts Norman Osborn in the position of power that leads to Dark Reign. As Marvel likes to reflect the current political situation, and they're about to do their Obama inauguration thing, it suggests that W. is the president who hands Norman, and by extension a cabal of supervillians, the keys to the kingdom. It's a nice bold stroke.

- JC

Marvel vs. DC

I like my stories to be, like, interesting, which is why I'm not into DC Comics.

I grew up watching classic comic movies, like Batman and Superman, but even then I was disappointed in the static characterizations they tended to have. Also, really lame "secret" identities. Bruce Wayne's chiseled jaw was pretty distinct, even under a cowl, but a pair of glasses? Really? That's all you could come up with? And then you're photographed all the time in the newspaper you work for and they STILL don't know it's you? Are they putting stupid in the Metropolis water supply? And these guys are totally badass, why are they keeping it a secret? Bruce is a billionaire; if he came out, he'd just be seen as eccentric and he'd be asked to throw benefit parties in costume. Superman is freaking SUPERMAN. What's the point of hiding?

I used to watch the X-Men after school and I really dug it. For one thing, it was easier to play on the playground - you got your Cyclops (the bossy kid) and your Jean Grey (the prissy girl) and your Wolverine (the slightly aggressive kid who grinned a lot) and your Jubilee (whoever was wearing a yellow raincoat that day). Seriously, try to play Superman and you get a lot of fights over who's Clark and who's Lois and everyone else sort of stands around shouting for help and then you get in trouble with the teachers. For another thing, they were a family. Not just a team or an ensemble, but they had relationships like we understood - Scott and Jean were a couple, Logan and Jubilee had this parent/kid thing going on, it wasn't the vague unresolved tension between Clark and Lois. And they weren't really hiding who they were. They were mutants, and sometimes they got crap for it, but everyone knew that they were different.

But it was Spider-Man (JC forced me to correct this from "Spiderman," which is WHAT STAN LEE CALLED HIM I HAVE SEEN THE PAGE SCANS) who got me into real comics, because Bendis, as previously stated, rocks. I read Ultimate Spidey #1 through #115 in three days as JC bagged and alphabetized his collection last spring break. Peter is, above all else, a relationships man - and Bendis makes that very personal. Then I had to read some New Avengers, some Ultimate X-Men, Pulse, Runaways, Y the Last Man, Power Pack, Buffy season 8... yeah.

I haven't bothered to get into the subtleties of recent DC canon, though JC assures me they've gotten more complex, because I can't shake that childhood impression of super powers in the form of men. I like to read about men who just so happen to be super.

- RD

Ultimate Origins

The story of Captain America is that he was a scrawny kid with a gimpy leg who desperately wanted to enlist during WWII, but couldn't, so they let him test a super soldier serum so he could get big and buff and go kick Nazi ass.

In Ultimate Origins #2 (Brian Michael Bendis) there's a scene right after Steve Rogers has become Captain America where FDR comes to him and says something like, "We need you. It's not just about kicking Nazi ass; if we don't have you, we're going to have to use a bomb, a really big bomb, and cause genocide." And then Cap gets frozen in ice and even in the Marvel universe they end up using the bomb anyway.

Superheros first appeared in the 1930s, as the Nazis were coming to power. Bendis exposes the entire genre as an imaginary solution to the world wars - powerful men with moral judgment and discernment who could kick bad guy ass without damaging civilians. And he puts them in that context by comparing them to the bomb we got instead.

It's indicative of why we still find superheros important today. We see it in in Iron Man when his targeting scope picks out the bad guys so he can blast them with pinpoint shots. He's actually able to separate the terrorists from the civilians, which is something we struggle with. We want Superman rather than a smart bomb, because the smart bombs aren't smart enough.

I haven't read it, but I've been spoiled on the latest issue of Final Crisis, where Batman, the well-known hater of guns, shoots Darkseid with a gun. This seems to relate to the same idea, in that the purpose for superheros is to stand in contrast to our real-world methods of crime-fighting and war. Grant Morrison may be trying to tap into the War on Terror zeitgeist, in which people want their heroes to be willing to put personal qualms aside and pick up a gun, but it's more likely that the writer missed that essential element of superheros - they are meant to have better ways of dealing with issues. We want to see Batman winning with his wits, his batarangs, and possibly the awesome power of Legos.

- JC

Fantastic Four #562

The latest Fantastic Four (Mark Millar) has a Doctor Who reference which normally should be an automatic thumbs-up for me, but instead it's so typically Millar, a great idea at war with shaky characterization.

Reed Richards is having a conversation with his hyper- intelligent daughter Valeria, who has just created a dimensionally transcendental trailer for the Fantasticar, inspired by DW. Reed is of course impressed, but says to his daughter, Didn't we agree that Doctor Who is too scary for little girls? " and Valeria replies, "C'mon, I watch that to unwind from all the crazy stuff in our real lives."

On the one hand, I love a little girl building her own TARDIS - I certainly would if I could - and I'm amused that she finds a crazy sci-fi show a great way to relax. That part is perfectly in character. But for Reed to suggest that his children are not mature enough to handle a family show like DW makes him sound like a bit of an uptight douche.

Do I perhaps take things a little too seriously as a Whovian who plans to bring up my children the same way I was, watching DW from the first moment of their lives? Entirely possible. Still, on the whole this scene is in keeping with my previous experience with Mark Millar, that he will follow a really good idea and bend the characters as much as he needs to fit, rather than finding a way to express that idea that is truer to - at least my conception of - those characters.

As opposed to Bendis, whose every script craps rainbows. Hey, I never claimed to be objective.

- JC