Quarter Bin 88 "Marvel's All New, All Different"

Back issues of the recent past this edition: All-New All-Different Avengers #1, the Uncanny Inhumans #2, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1, Secret Wars #5, Secret Wars Too, Spider-Woman #1, Star Wars: Darth Vader #11, and Web-Warriors #2.

All-New All-Different Avengers #1 (Marvel)
From January 2016.
The Alex Ross cover doesn't exactly scream the same "youth" as the lineup and interior of this revamped team, featuring characters from the Ms. Marvel generation.  Written by Mark Waid and drawn by Adam Kubert (the brother who worked on Action Comics with Geoff Johns, not the one who worked on Batman with Grant Morrison), this is exactly an updated version of the kind of stuff Marvel has been doing since the '60s, and hey, it seems to be working quite well for them, right? 

The Uncanny Inhumans #2 (Marvel)
From January 2016.
With the heavy role the Inhumans are playing lately, not just in Civil War II but generally speaking (Marvel is kind of desperate for them to replace the X-Men, whose movies are not currently controlled by Dr. Disney), it was kind of crucial for the comics to be good.  I knew Charles Soule had it in him, and Steve McNiven has been a heavy-hitter (collaborations with Mark Millar on the first Civil War and the original "Old Man Logan," for instance) for years, so creatively, I have nothing to complain about.  The comic is good, too, with Black Bolt falling out with his lady Medusa, and their son Ahura falling under the influence of Kang, an arc that accelerates giddily throughout this issue.  I have plenty of evidence that Soule knows how to write great comics (his Secret Wars version of Civil War, for instance, in case you thought I'd referenced that title for the last time), so it's good to see that he started out well here, too.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 (Marvel)
From March 2016.
This is stuff adapted from the TV series, which I've never particularly made a habit of watching (I'm a Flash guy, with some real effort toward DC's Legends of Tomorrow tossed in), but I knew Agent Coulson had a flying car he calls Lola.  Apparently he named it in honor of his ex-wife.

Secret Wars #5 (Marvel)
From October 2015.
As A DC guy, I tend to be amused at the way fans and creators alike treat Dr. Doom like a god.  I just never understood it.  In this entry of Jonathan Hickman's ultimate Fantastic Four (sendoff) saga, Doom literally has become a god, and the entire issue is just kind of Doom complaining about it with a lackey, because he recently offed Dr. Strange and no longer feels challenged.  You know what?  I'm not even going to talk about this issue.  Let's just move on, because Hickman's got better material in:

Secret Wars, Too (Marvel)
From January 2016.
This is literally Hickman and Marvel joking around about the whole Secret Wars concept.  Marvel has gotten to the point where it either publishes straight-out humor titles, titles obviously inspired by successful movies, or the handful of serious stuff it allows itself to do, so it's not at all surprising that something like Hickman literally laughing about his apparent inability to finish his story happens in something Marvel itself published.  Marvel has become the House Wizard Created.  All throughout the '90s, Wizard was a massive Marvel fan service, and introduced the cartoony approach to fandom that has since gone mainstream.  Hickman's piece is brilliant, in which he imagines a conversation with Dr. Doom about what the conclusion should be.  Then there's some middling stuff that's just kind of there, and then indy creators Rob Guillory (Chew) and Eric Powell (The Goon) provide some of their trademark wit.  I actually have to give Marvel props for releasing this.  In another era, this would've been a jump-the-shark moment, but this one's all about that kind of irreverence.

Spider-Woman #1 (Marvel)
From January 2016.
This one's famously the cover advance solicits spoiled as feature the pregnant Jessica Drew.  Dennis Hopeless somewhat hopefully assumes readers would be familiar with Spider-Woman's somewhat odd supporting cast (the guy who's dressed up as a porcupine), so he spends the entire issue presenting the awkward situation of superhero being unable to superhero while pregnant.  It's bold in an era where it's kind of anathema to be pregnant (or something) to have a pregnant superhero, but one wonders if this latest calculated move to corner every market didn't miscalculate.

Star Wars: Darth Vader #11 (Marvel)
From December 2015.
Kieron Gillen normally gets pretty high marks from fans, but he apparently is somewhat uninterested in featuring Darth Vader as the lead of his own comic...

Web-Warriors #2 (Marvel)
From February 2016.
This series was recently cancelled, and Mike Costa announced to be moving on with a new Venom series, which I think will be right up his alley.  I've been a vocal of supporter of Costa for years, and long for the day he'll be a major player at the Big Two (I can't believe he's gotten less than the Greg Rucka treatment).  It may be that he simply finds it hard to use his Cobra style outside of his IDW work.  Not in this issue, though.  This one reads like a straight-up Web-Warriors edition of Cobra, detailing Electro's romp through the Spider-Verse, with Spider-Gwen (this is what Marvel thinks of as witty) filling in for the good guy Costa frequently traps in his webs (phrasing it that way totally helps make sense of Marvel thinking of him as a Spider-Man guy).  Maybe I'm just as guilty as anyone else in not giving Costa's non-Cobra work a fair shot, but it's always nice to come across work that rings so true to what I know best, because Costa's best is among the all-time best.

Death of Wolverine #4 (Marvel)

writer: Charles Soule
artist: Steve McNiven

via Flickering Myth

They nailed it.

I'm not saying that because the writer is Charles Soule, who has become a favorite of mine and who soon will only be able to be found in a Marvel comic and I still need find peace with that.

Or because the artist is Steve McNiven, who also illustrated the seminal "Old Man Logan" arc.

This is the rare death (or "death") event that's absolutely relevant to the character, what's been done with him, his origin, even.  That never happens.  Never!

Except this time.

It's part of the whole narrative of Wolverine's life now, regardless of whatever Marvel does next, after that awkward period where everyone pretends it'll last forever.  

It's back to the Weapon X program.  Since Wolverine originally debuted as a character without history, there's been a lot of lucrative ground to cover in recent years, and I think that's been some of the best stuff Marvel has done, taking a unique situation and handling it brilliantly.  We found out just how old Wolverine/Logan/James Howlett really is, how long it took to reach Weapon X.  

And now we have an idea of how crazy Weapon X really was.  This is the "supersoldier serum" concept done right.  Same basic idea, but a much better explanation.  And now there's someone other than William Stryker awkwardly grafted onto it to blame for the whole mess, although like Victor Frankenstein he's almost instantly beside the point, the bogeyman behind the monster as it were.  (Ever since Universal started making monster movies, everyone thought the monster's name was Frankenstein, right?)  

That's reason enough to read this, to get a better sense of the tragic portrait of Wolverine's life, the one pivotal moment that has come to define it.  His creator doesn't even acknowledge that Wolverine was ever an X-Man, and the flourish Soule and McNiven concoct, of the memories the fans have of the character other than the history that unfolded of his origins, that's a great reminder of everything that might otherwise have been missing from the story.

You can't dismiss this one.  I have no idea how they can undo it, but if and when that happens, it can't be cheapened.  That's what's so great about it.