The Doomino Effect for May 9, 2007
Stop missing me, dears, and dry those tears for The Doomino Effect has returned! After a one week hiatus brought upon by caring for Fiance Doom’s wisdom teeth extraction, Jim Doom is back and sort of ready to return to form in the only column I know of that sounds like “Dew minnow a fecked.” I say “sort of ready” because I’m in the process of dooming to a new house – no wait, that one doesn’t really work – I’m moving to a new doominion – and all my stuff is either in boxes or scattered around, so I’m not sure if I have last week’s comics sitting before me or not, but it’s definitely a pile of books I haven’t doominoed about.
Up first, it’s Green Arrow #74! This is one of my favorite monthly books and I’ve heard it’s stopping at #75, and it looks like the setup for that finale is that there’s going to be such a huge fight with Deathstroke that the book stops! Not much to say about this book. I think you either like the bow-and-arrow action with the snappy Judd Winick dialogue or you don’t; you either like the action infused with politics or you don’t; you either like the extended 47-page peeky love scene with the Canary being shot by the Arrow or you don’t.
And speaking of love scenes and The Comic Nudity, that leads me to Astonishing X-Men #21, in which we comics geeks finally get to see Kitty Pryde’s exposed upper right buttock! Other stuff happened too while the X-Men were on the Breakworld, like things about that prophecy and Colossus and whatnot. For several months now, I haven’t been able to tell if this book is suffering in quality or if I’m just getting less interested in it for other reasons. I’m really starting to think it’s the former. Cerebra is the antagonist, and Emma turned on Scott to reveal that she’s truly evil. Haven’t those things basically been happening every other issue or so for the past year? I guess it just took some of the oomph out of the surprise ending.
And speaking of oomphy surprise endings, that leads me to Avengers: The Initiative #2, where the cliffhanger stops a step short of Astonishing X-Men because Beast (who hurried back from the Breakworld) doesn’t quite reveal who Trauma’s private tutor is. This was our Book of Doom a while back, and I thought I’d give issue #2 a try. It starts off pretty quickly with Vance Astro delivering his qualms about “New Warriors” being a slur, saying that it’s just not right and that they were heroes. Nice thought, but didn’t he give that speech last issue? I’m guessing that has to be a yes, because there’s no way my deja vu can be blamed upon me thinking about Vance Astro and the New Warriors in my spare time. I’m curious about who the tutor is, but even if it’s someone I think is cool, it’s still like Daredevil joining Bright Eyes, so the context just doesn’t cut it for me.
Speaking of seeing characters I like in context that really blows, check out this week’s Book of Doom – Marvel Zombie’s Dead Days. I hated it! Every last little bit of it! Stupid zombies.
But speaking of zombies, that leads me to Ghost Rider #11, a book which has actually included zombies the past few months, but done it in a darkly humorous way, that – perhaps unintentionally, but to no discredit of writer Daniel Way – subtly mocks the current zombie trend. Ghost Rider is still in Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, hot on the trail of Satan’s reanimation of the recently deceased Jack O’Lantern. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I love the premise of this series – that Satan has split himself up into 666 pieces, reanimating 666 corpses, and to send him back to Hell, Ghost Rider wants to take them all down. The problem being that with each defeat, the devil becomes a little more whole and thus a little more powerful. Johnny Blaze is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, and what better book for that scenario than Ghost Rider, where he’s already damned. That’s double the damned.
And speaking of damn, that leads me to New Avengers #30, in which the book continues to be awesome. I thought New Avengers got off to kind of a slow start, with all that business about the Sentry and then how it tried to tie in with House of M. But ever since Civil War, when the book became a sequence of solo stories involving New Avengers involved in the war, and has since been the adventures of the rebel side, it has quickly become one of my most anticipated purchases. We find out who Ronin is, which won’t be a surprise to a lot of people, but not everybody writes everything to be a surprise; we get more of the parallel drama between the New Avengers in the USA and in Japan; and Doctor Strange takes a blade through the gut.
He does magic and stuff so I’m sure he’ll be fine, but hot diggity dog, I like this book. It reminds me of the experience of watching Lost – it doesn’t matter if certain things are obviously coming; theres not a lot of point in anticipating other things because some are going to be completely out of the blue; the joy is in how we’re going to get there. Oh and Leinil Yu continues to rule.
Okay, you’ve actually got me — gasp! — interested in giving New Avengers a try. We’ll see.
And if you’re using “Fiance Doom,” I’m going to refer to the missus as the Bride of Doom.
So Wikipedia’s telling me the new Ronin is Hawkeye. Ugh. Keep your filthy hands off of him Bendis. You already screwed him up twice.
Twice?
I can only assume the second time had something to do with House of M (or perhaps his more recent appearance after Civil War? Something to do with a tie-in, either way).
I’m pretty much with Jim on New Avengers. I’m didn’t enjoy it much before, but since the New/Mighty split I’ve really been digging it.
I’ve got to say I’m not quite so down with the whole parallel stories bit, simply because it seems like Bendis does that kind of stuff way too much.
-M
I too am curious how Bendis “screwed him up twice.” I never cared a bit about Hawkeye until his sendoff in Avengers Disassembled, his return in House of M (which might have happened in one of the side books) and his solo story in New Avengers. The guy was written like a badass hero. At least two if not all three of those were written by The Loathed Bald One.
I’m pretty sure that Bendis has penned every Clint Barton appearance since his death.
-M
Anyone else read the latest Fallen Son? I don’t understand how Clint is masquerading as Ronin and Cap. Also, it seems strange that both Clint and Frank Castle are masquerading as Cap. Maybe I’m missing something.
Clint was just Cap that one time. At the end of Fallen Son he told Tony he wasn’t the man to fill Cap’s shoes. That was Hawkeye done well.
And the “twice” I was referring to was Disassembled and House of M. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on whether he was a “badass hero” or “nothing at all like the charcater I’d grown to love in such titles as Avengers and Thunderbolts.”