Freebies & Previews

General Mills Presents: Justice League #1 "Unstoppable Forces"
From a box of delicious Reece's Puffs comes this mini freebie featuring a Justice League lineup of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and Aquaman, all classic costumes, from writer Scott Beatty and artist Christian Duce. The story features Shaggy Man (I believe last seen in Grant Morrison's JLA, shaved), and isn't completely terrible, just a tad simplistic (why the team would drop a mountain on an enemy and assume that'd be the end of it is never really explained). By "isn't completely terrible," I do mean it's amusing, a nice little promo for kids (and people deliberately buying delicious cereal like Reece's Puffs, possibly for the express purpose of getting this comic or its three brothers) who might then get the idea to start reading comics.

Avenging Spider-Man Daily Bugle #1
Eleven pages pulled directly from the actual comic, plus four pages of pencil art and an extended note from Stephen Wacker. It should be noted that the writer for this series is Zeb Wells, one of the "Brand New Day" writers on Amazing Spider-Man, plus the artist is Joe Madureira, who was a huge deal during the 1990s. Personally, I think he might've been surpassed in his style by Rafael Albuquerque (Blue Beetle, American Vampire), and that the central gimmick of this book, that Spidey somehow has time between his ASM adventures and Avengers (hence the title), which is brought up in the script itself, might be something of a stretch to hang a whole new book on, but it's still nice that Marvel put this preview together (yay!).

Defenders/Avengers: X-Sanction Preview Book
Matt Fraction and Terry Dodson's Defenders is another team book for Marvel, which has been swimming in Avengers books (not to mention X-Men) for years now. Fraction's main task here is to sell the necessity for another team book, and so his focus is on selling the individual members and his passion for writing them. On that score, he actually does pretty good, except the actual preview of the book, which runs four pages, doesn't actually feature any of them, instead focusing on The Hulk...Sooo, a little confused on that score.

Avengers: X-Sanction/Defenders Preview Book
Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness reunite, and the story is much the same as the flipbook, with five preview pages that barely seem to be aware that it's Cable and not the Avengers who is the main character. The difference is that I'm more familiar with Loeb than Fraction, so there's a greater chance of me trusting that Loeb will eventually do what he says he will in this dealie, which sounds extremely intriguing, given that so few Marvel books seem interested in actually delivering a payoff to a great setup (in this case Cable's origins and his recent X-Men arc as Hope's guardian; the only other instance where something like this has happened is Avengers - Children's Crusade, which finally continues what House of M began).