wolverine and the outsiders

Play it again Stan. Looks like X-Force is coming back. And it looks like they're bringing all the black vinyl left over from Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men. And apparently all the ideas from Justice League Elite and Stormwatch: Black (see The Authority) and Batman and the Outsiders and Baywatch: Nights. Yes, it looks as though Marvel is working on its own superhero group to handle the missions too dark for the clean-faced heroes of the better selling titles. Missions too dangerous. Missions too extreme. Missions too violent. Missions toooooo......... HUH? What? Oh shit, sorry, I must've fallen into a Convention-Hype coma. Anyway, according to X-Men editor Axel Alonso, this title is supposed to help usher in a "...new status quo for the X-Men. If indeed there is an X-Men." Indeed.

But before it seems as though I am just eating my hatertots all over Marvel, the Iron Man teaser trailer was also released yesterday, and I'm having an apprehensive nerdgasm about it. The dialogue seems too clever by half, but Robert Downey Jr. might be able to sell it. And the way the suit shakes while he is flying looks undeniably bright. Check out the gun that only needs to fire once.

wrathchilde triumphant?

Got the urge to look through some back issues this weekend so I rolled by the capitol "J" junk store in Williamsburg on Sunday in a double-bloody-mary haze somewhere between contentment and heatstroke. Had it not been for my brunchheadedness I probably wouldn't have bothered since I've rifled through the same filthy and incomplete runs of Extreme Justice and ripped Underworld Unleashed crossover issues enough times to start thinking I should get some outsized shoulder pads for myself. But to eschew the esoteric references, I found some fun gems in there this time. Namely, Death's Head II #4, a comic that I took only because I was amazed at the succinct collection of every terrible 90's comic book trend together on one cover. I couldn't find a picture of this piece of crap on the internet, and neon-violence-tits-cacophony-silly-Wrathchilde didn't bring back any hits on Google images, so here is the cover to the series' first issue:



Now look at that, add 2 more generic jumblefreak characters and one of the whoreish X-men (who doesn't even speak in the issue) and imagine that the artist and colorist gave up after the above cover. If you can't imagine it, you are probably close to how insanely headache inducing the actual image is. Also, there is some standard Jim-Lee-wannabe art from Liam Sharp (read Testament!), and some grit teeth and posturing or something. I might moan about current trends in comics but after perusing this foamy dump I am inclined to cut the recent trends some slack.

Speaking of recent trends, in a previous post, I'd whined at length about the transformation of Speedball into the spiky little bundle of sorrow, PENANCE. In the Junk Store I also found a comic from over ten years ago that realized the darkening of the character was a bad idea:


As a happy coincidence, this issue wasn't that bad. Despite the perfunctory crossover with the Infinity War, it was a neat little story about Speedball having to deliver pizzas for the bigger heroes before running into his ill-advised doppelganger. Just a done-in-one with early art by Darick Robertson. A rare delight from a generally tapped out location.