The Case for (Rann-Thanagar) War

The Rann-Thanagar War miniseries has been quite maligned in these parts and elsewhere, largely because of its apparent irrelevance. The only real Crisis moment came at the conclusion of the series, and seemed completely unrelated to the events of the miniseries. While recent exposition has shown that incidents leading to the war were much more…



Internal note

Many apologies to readers who’ve stopped by in the past week and found a bunch of unreadable jibberish (in place of the usual unreadable jibberish, yeah I saw that coming too). We were having some database problems, but I think and hope they’re taken care of.



Death Note is good

I don’t have a clever title for this or a clever lede, but I’ve finally found something to get me into that whole manga world. I had an irrational hatred of manga dating back to the 90s when Joe Madureira ruined the X-Men and everyone (read: Wizard, because I didn’t know any other comics readers)…



An Astonishing idea

With the release of Astonishing X-Men #13 last week, I decided to re-read the original 12-issue “season” of Joss Whedon’s take on mutantdom. I’d remembered enjoying it greatly at the time, but much had passed in the world of comics between issues 12 and 13. Most notable, as far as Marvel is concerned, was House…



Gearing up for One Year Later

In May, 1984, with no explanation, Spider-Man started wearing a black costume. The romance between Colossus and Kitty Pryde ended suddenly. The Thing was missing in action, and She-Hulk had taken his place in the Fantastic Four. It took a year of wondering and twelve issues of Secret Wars before fans finally understood why the…



Legion of Doom’s Worst of 2005- Characters

Nick Fury. He got his ass kicked all year, then disappeared. -Jean-Claude Van Doom Ronin. When Echo was revealed as the secret identity of Ronin, the comic book community let out a collective “Huh?” A super-cool mystery ninja turns out to be some deaf female Taskmaster from a dozen or so issues of Daredevil from…



When Universes Collide!

Ahh, fan fiction. There’s nothing quite as dorky as writing stories featuring pop culture icons for your own amusement. So of course, I’ve done it. What follows is the first in a series of short battles I wrote in my senior year creative writing course. If you like this, there’s plenty more where it came…



Book of the Week: Amazing Spider-Man #529

The only thing anyone’s been talking about for the last few months in regards to Spider-Man is the new costume. Most seem to hate it, although Joe Quesada would have you think otherwise. Personally, I’m not fond of it. It seemed like a change made solely to create buzz around Spider-Man, which it’s certainly succeeded…



Legion of Doom’s Worst of 2005- Single Issue

I don’t recall being apalled by anything in particular. -Jim Doom The issue of The Other in which Spider-Man decides to put Mary Jane and Aunt May into old Iron Man suits and run around Doctor Doom’s castle [Fin Fang’s note: That was Marvel Knights Spider-Man #20]. -Jean-Claude Van Doom Marvel Knights Spider-Man #20. Just…



Legion of Doom’s Worst of 2005- New Series

All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder. Has Frank Miller done anything good (other than Sin City) since he did Dark Knight Returns? Someone should tell him Batman does not terrorize children and murder cops. I can’t say anything bad about Jim Lee’s art, but I can’t say anything particularly good about it either. Two…