Quick Hits: Wolverine #313 (Marvel)

About a year ago I learned that Jeph Loeb had not only already done a Wolverine story but was soon going to be doing another one.  I have a great appreciation for Loeb's writing (most recently in the must-read Nova #1), and so figured I'd check the second one out.  For whatever reason I kept missing it.  And then it ended and the series moved on.  Thankfully some comics shops keep a deep inventory on their new release shelves, and so some of the stuff you'll find their is pretty old indeed.  This issue was published last year and is the conclusion of the Sabretooth arc in which Logan's famous foe and erstwhile brother attempts to convince him that it was Logan himself who decided to enter the Weapon X program that famously gave him his adamantium and lost him his memory.  Much like Scott Snyder in "Death of the Family," Loeb hedges his bets at the end of the story, but it's fine, because it's still Loeb and he still knows how to do character better than just about anyone.  So I'm glad that I've finally read at least some of his Wolverine.

Quick Hits: Wasteland #42 (Oni)

My favorite indy comic is Wasteland and I am happy to continue talking about it even while no one else seems to.  On the way to A-Ree-Yass-I and now separated from Michael, Abi is confronted with the limits of her powers.  All of these are immediately relevant details to the overall series, but you can appreciate most of it individually this issue, which is something Antony Johnston has been getting better at the longer the series has continued.  Which is another reason that there's absolutely no excuse not to discover Wasteland for yourself.

Quick Hits: Threshold #1 (DC)

One of the most exciting bits of news I've heard recently is that Larfleeze is getting his own ongoing series.  Larfleeze is Agent Orange, the Orange Lantern, the alien filled with avarice who is sole possessor of the orange spectrum but has populated his "corps" with enough constructs that you might be forgiven to forget that.  He's the best character Geoff Johns created in his Green Lantern run, a regular hoot and a holler, and has previously been featured in his own Christmas one-shot and as a backup in Threshold.

Oh!  This whole thing is supposed to be about Threshold!  Keith Giffen is a legend who has mostly worked at DC, and he's been waiting for a truly signature book that he hasn't had to co-write or use "bwa-ha-ha" as a signature line.  As debuted in the recent Green Lantern Corps annual, the renegade Green Lantern I've dubbed Threshold himself (but that's not really his name) is currently in the midst of a killer reality show known as The Hunted (also the subtitle of a Deathstroke arc I still mean to read some day).

But you really want to read Threshold because of Larfleeze, as proven by the recent news of his own series.  Did I say that already?  I'm feeling a little greedy.  Threshold can only be appreciated for Larfleeze!  Who, by the way, is made speechless with rage (not in a Red Lanterns kind of way, but in a clever caption-y kind of way) when someone steals from him, and not just anything but his battery.

You will read Larfleeze!  Because he collects readers, too.

Quick Hits: Think Tank Military Dossier (Top Cow)

Think Tank is like Fringe or any other TV series you can think of where eccentric individuals are brought together for some reason or another, usually crime or science or both (that would be Fringe).  it comes from the mind of Matt Hawkins, who is more usually understood as a backstage kind of guy, but has some interesting ideas of his own.  Think Tank is littered with them.  This is a profiles one-shot, and as such is a primer for anyone who isn't already familiar with the series, but is rounded out with what appears to be fairly typical backup material that covers the same kind of territorial in a more technical manner, supporting the fiction with nonfiction as it were.  All of it appears pretty interesting.

Quick Hits: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Hive #3 (IDW)

Brannon Braga's ultimate Borg adventure continues, and for the bulk of the issue things kind of happen, and only in the final pages do we finally see hope that something will amount from it other than an epic setup that finally proposes resolution for Picard's link to the Collective.  This is to say Data's role will finally come into focus in the finale.  Data was a key aspect of Star Trek: First Contact, Hive's most obvious predecessor besides "The Best of Both Worlds."

Quick Hits: Doctor Spider-Man (Marvel)

As everyone knows by now, one of the biggest comic book stories at the close of 2012 was Doctor Octopus switching minds with Peter Parker and thus becoming Spider-Man, and obnoxiously continually plugging the name of the new series that would replace the long-running Amazing Spider-Man.

All of this began in Amazing Spider-Man #698, in which the switch actually occurred.  I finally picked up a copy at Barnes & Noble, because this story for better or worse is a big deal.  It's Amazing Spider-Man #700, however, that everyone latched onto, an oversized celebration that forced Otto Octavius to relive Peter's greatest moments, the ones that helped shape his life, and therefore made Doc Ock realize what a complete joke his criminal career had been, thereby making the transition into Spider-Man not just about being his own worst enemy but a curious kind of redemption.

Avenging Spider-Man #15.1 will probably be overlooked by just about everyone forever, but it's a nice transitional meditation on the whole affair, and I'm glad it was available when I finally decided I cared and everything else wasn't.  

Superior Spider-Man #1, meanwhile, is pretty much exactly what you'd expect.  Otto isn't quite as benevolent as Peter's Wonderful Life might have led readers to believe, but most readers weren't really paying attention to the details, and neither was writer Dan Slott, who appears to be as conflicted by the whole story as his lead character.  On the one hand he's had to acknowledge for impatient and bothered readers that this is all temporary, and on the other he's had to pretend that it is.  In the meantime it's all a game of trying to exploit it to the best possible degree.  Slott calls this the biggest and best story he's ever wanted to tell, and in a lot of ways it is.  It was pretty awesome when Sylar and Nathan Petrelli did it in the fourth season of Heroes, too.  

Doctor Spider-Man really exists because of the Brand New Day era, where everything old was made new again, which somehow left dear Otto on the verge of death for years, constantly attempting one last desperate ploy after another.  Slott himself, once he launched his Big Time era, seemed to leave Otto out of his plans, and now here he is, in the middle of the biggest plan of them all.  All pretty shocking for an iconic villain who starred in the most popular of the Spider-Man movies.

Everyone knows that Peter will get his body back.  Will Otto have changed at all when he's evicted from his superior footing?  Will he even survive?  Only time will tell.  Fascinating stuff told tolerably well in the meantime...

Quick Hits: Saucer Country #10, 11, 12 (Vertigo)

Saucer Country was announced as canceled, and so these are some of the final issues.  Writer Paul Cornell has vowed to bring it back somehow somewhere, though in my experience this doesn't usually happen, although it happens most often in comics, and the only reason why I would still doubt this vow is that Cornell is known best of all for having a fairly short attention span.  He doesn't stick around any series for long.

Still Saucer Country was a favorite of mine, and Cornell is a favorite of mine, so I will savor it and both as much as I can.

The tenth issue is a lot more of the same, very serialized material that advances the basic quagmire of running an election and trying to figure out whether aliens are real or not, all the characters talking about and being frightened out of their minds that what they think isn't just a delusion.

The eleventh issue is another of those amusing digressions into conspiracy lore that Cornell spent the middle run of the series exploring.  This time, for some reason, it's about fairies, which is another layer of how the series has explored its central themes and works far better than you might think.

The twelfth issue is dominated by Professor Kidd, who has been doing most of the practical investigating for Governor Alvarado, and has been struggling the most, mostly because he's been experiencing what he's determined to be an ongoing set of delusions, like Grant Morrison's Happy! with a less happy outcome.  Or so it currently seems.