Marvel's FREE comics - 08/24/09

Here is this weeks five free digital comics from Marvel Digital, with some quite recent releases. Just click the link to view the comic of your choice.

PUNISHER (2001) #25
NEW AVENGERS #51
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #550
SQUADRON SUPREME (2006) #7
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #31

Marvel Previews Day!

The usual weekly preview from CBR for next weeks Marvel titles can be found below. There’s a huge amount here which is great. I’m really looking forward to reading the work of the new creative team on Incredible Hulk #601, as well as the next chapter to one of my favourite new series; X-Men Forever.

What are you guys looking forward to from Marvel next week?

Click the links below to be taken to the preview of your choice.

"Anita Blake, The Laughing Corpse: Necromancer" #4
"Avengers: The Initiative" #27
"Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter" #3
"Dark Avengers" #8
"Dark Reign: Elektra" #5
"Dark Reign: The Sinister Spider-Man" #3
"Dark Wolverine" #77
"Dark X-Men: The Beginning" #3
"Deadpool" #14
"Fantastic Four" #570
"HALO: Helljumper" #2
"Hulk" #14
"Incredible Hercules" #133
"Incredible Hulk" #601
"Marvel Adventures Spider-Man" #54
"Ms. Marvel" #44
"New Avengers" #56
"New Mutants" #4
"Nova" #28
"Runaways" #13
"Secret Warriors" #7
"Skrull Kill Krew" #4
"Son of Hulk" #14
"Timestorm 2009/2099" #4
"X-Force" #18
"X-Men Forever" #6

Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 - Review

Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 - Review

Story by
Mark Millar

Art by
Carlos Pacheco, Danny Miki

From the start I’ve never been a fan of the Ultimate Universe, I’m not sure why but the idea just never appealed to me, and even though I’m a fan of most of Mark Millar’s work, I thought his and Bryan Hitch’s Ultimate’s Vol. 1 & 2 were a bit over rated. After the critically panned Ultimate’s Vol. 3 and Ultimatum (both by J. Loeb) the whole line was to get a reboot and I thought I should give the line another go.

Leading up to this relaunch all the things I was hearing about Ultimate Comics: Avengers really grabbed my attention. Firstly Millar was this time being joined by fantastic artist Carlos Pacheco, secondly this was to be a stripped down Ultimate Avengers, focusing on the Ultimate’s Nick Fury, Iron Man, Hawkeye & Captain America, with the lead story focusing on Cap’s world being turned up side down by a big reveal at the end of the first issue. So I had to pick this issue up.

(SPOILERS ON!)

We start a few weeks after Ultimatum. Fury is asked to rejoin the Ultimate’s by S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Carol Danvers and Hawkeye for a Black Ops mission to bring in an AWOL Captain America. We then flash back to find out the reason Caps gone missing; Hawkeye and Cap are on a mission to stop A.I.M breaking into the Baxter Building, the action that ensures is great, Cap and Hawkeye engage a couple of A.I.M Helicopter as the villains try to escape, the banter between our heroes is written really well by Millar and the splash pages of art make this feel like a big action movie (think True Lies, only a lot cooler). Both our heroes come across as no non-sense, military bad-asses, and it suits the feel of the book and the action perfectly.

After taking out the first chopper, Cap leaps to the second, only to be confronted by Ultimate Red Skull, a fight ensures and Steve gets taken out bad by the new villain, and is thrown to certain death only to rescued by Hawkeye at the last minute who leaps to aid Steve by pulling his parachute open just before they crash land. The last page reveals the shocking truth that Red Skull had revealed to Cap on the Helicopter, that Ultimate Red Skull is in fact Ultimate Cap’s son! Fucking awesome.

All round this is a great read and a really good looking book, lots of action with great characters and an awesome last page reveal to keep me coming back for more. The only negative comment I will say is that with all the splash pages the book reads a bit too fast for my liking and for a $3.99 price tag, bet hey, I definitely recommend this book, and if you are interested in the new Ultimate Universe, this is a great place to start.

Hex's score: 4 out of 5

Whoah! That's a lot of previews!

Cover to Deadpool #13, gotta be a contender for cover of the week

Over at CBR we have the following Marvel previews for comics on sale 12 August.
Click the links below to be taken to the preview of your choice.

Cable #13
Captain America Theater Of War: To Soldier On One Shot
Deadpool #13
Dominic Fortune #1
Incredible Hercules #132
Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers #4
Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #14
Marvel Divas #2
Ms. Marvel #43
Pride & Prejudice #5
The Marvels Project #1
Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1
Uncanny X-Men #514
Uncanny X-Men: First Class #2
X-Men Forever #5

Ultimate Avengers #1 preview can be found over at IGN here.

I’m looking forward to this. I haven’t liked any of the previous Ultimate titles that much but the art looks great and I’m a fan of Millar’s writing, most of the time. Plus the story sounds good (spoilers on!). From what I know Cap goes AWOL after finding out the Red Skull is his son! The rest of the Avengers then have to hunt him down. Sounds really cool to me, and I love the Red Skull twist.

IGN also has a nice 8 page preview of Daredevil #500. Including a back up story with art by David Aja, as seen above! That makes me very happy. Check out the full preview here.


Over at Newsarama they have a preview (art only) for the upcoming mini-series NOMAD: GIRL WITHOUT A WORLD #1 here. I know Flips the Page will be dying to see that if he hasn’t already.

Finally over at DC’s The Source you get a preview of Batman #689 here. Great cover by Andy Kubert as always. It’s a shame he’s not doing the pencils instead of Mark Bagley.

You also get a preview of Red Robin #3 here.

I’m not a fan of the artwork on this title so I was please to also find out at the Source that “Starting in November with RED ROBIN #6, Marcus To (Aspen’s Soulfire) will step in as the new ongoing artist on RED ROBIN, taking over for Ramon Bachs, who steps over to launch AZRAEL with writer Fabian Nicieza.”

So the good news is that Red Robin gets a new artist, the bad news is that Bachs steps over to Azrael, a series I’m looking forward to. Hopefully I’ll prefer his work on that title.

That’s wraps up previews day I think. Thanks for all your comments this week, they’ve been great. Seems I’m getting around 300 hits a week on my site and that is fantastic. I’m really glad people like to keep coming back to my little blog and I love chatting with you all and reading your comments.

Please also check out the other site I write for; A Comic Book Blog if you get a chance. There are lots of great writers and articles over there and is definitely worth a look.

Have a great weekend guys. What will you be up to? I’ll be reading loads. I've got the Ghost World tpb to read, I’ve also bought lots of old Detective Comics issues really cheap this week. Ones written by Alan Grant, who is one of my fav Batman writers, so I look forward to reading them and trying to catch up with my other huge stack of comics I haven’t got round to reading yet, all the while trying to avoid doing work in the garden that my girlfriend wants me to do!

-Hex

Avengers Assemble! Movie line-up revealed

Website io9 have posted an interview they had with Producer Kevin Feige about the up-coming Avengers movie.

While it appears the plot and story are very much in the works it seems that the core Avengers team has been decided upon. Feige says “I think it’s going to be Iron Man and Thor, Captain America and Nick Fury. I think it’s safe to assume that there will be some members of the Hulk universe in the film as well. In terms of the additional I think Black Widow, sure. The SHIELD organization for sure.”

No confirmation on the actual Hulk appearing though.

So what do you guys think of that line-up? Sounds pretty good to me. I wouldn’t mind an Ultimate style Hawkeye making an appearance though; I think that would be cool. Who else would you guys like to see?

Read the full interview HERE.

MARVEL NEWS! NEWS! NEWS! From Comic Cons

Well this weekend there has been a tone of Marvel news released at Comic Cons so I’m just gonna do a quick round up with some links to what interested me and what might hopefully interest you guys:

-Dark Reign: The List

A series of one-shots starting in September, and featuring Osborn taking on the heroes from the “Iron Patriot Acts” teaser image. The eight specials announced at Heroes Con and simultaneously at Wizard World: Philly are:

Avengers - by Brian Bendis and Marko Djurdjevic

Uncanny X-Men - by Matt Fraction and Alan Davis

Secret Warriors - by Jonathan Hickman and Ed McGuniness

Punisher - by Rick Remender and John Romita Jr.

Daredevil - by Andy Diggle and Billy Tan

Wolverine - by Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic

Hulk - by Greg Pak and Ben Oliver

Amazing Spider-Man - by Dan Slott and Adam Kubert

These one-shots seem to be the next chapter in Dark Reign story. There are some good creative teams at work here. I’m looking forward to Adam Kuberts work. It would seem the story starts in The Avengers one-shot and will continue the story in some way through the one-shots. If these are pretty much linked up in some way, shape or form I can see me buying all of these!! Damn you Marvel!

There also might have been a little teaser from Bendis about a certain God of Thunder joining the New Avengers when at one of the panels at the Con a fan asked;

Are there chances for a Thor vs. Sentry fight? “If Thor was on one team,” Fraction said “And the Sentry was on another...” “I feel like my computer’s been hacked,” Bendis joked.

Now that would be a cool throw down! Please let that happen.

Newsarama has full notes from the panel here: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090620-heroes-dark-reign.html

& Bendis discusses Dark Reign: The List in more detail here:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/060921-Bendis-TheList.html

Tom Brevoort discusses it here: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/060922-Brevoort-List.html

IGN expand on the story here with summaries of each upcoming issue: http://uk.comics.ign.com/articles/996/996600p1.html

-Nomad: Girl without a World – Mini-Series

Looks like the ‘Girl without a world’ teaser’s we have been seeing (& shown above) is for a new Nomad mini-series featuring the female Bucky who appeared in Cap # 600. This will be written by Teen Titan’s Sean McKeever. I don’t think he is a very good writer and don’t really have any interest in this. I can see myself suffering from Captain America over exposure soon like I do with Wolverine every month.

-Spider-Man: The Clone Saga & ‘Who is Ben Reilly?’

Newsarama spoke with Howard Mackie and Tom Defalco for some inside information about The Clone Saga, the new mini series that re-visits the very controversial story line, and hopefully improves on the original. This is a good in-depth interview with the creators who discuss where they think the original story in the 90’s went wrong and how they are going to approach it this time round. This also contains some nice preview pencil pages.

Spider-Man fans should def check this interview out here:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/060918-Clone-Saga.html

Newsarama then also spoke to Marc Guggenheim about his up-coming story arc in Amazing Spider-Man. Starting in the Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36 in July, "Who Is Ben Reilly?" continues in issues #608 and #609 in October, but Marc would not give away too many Spoilers.
Again though if you are a Spider-Man fan this is def worth a read.
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090620-ben-reilly.html

I don’t know why but the whole Ben Reilly controversy appeals to me and I really like Guggenheim as a writer so I’ll probably pick this arc up to see where the story goes. Could this be the reversal of ‘One More Day’?!?!

-X-Men Legacy Annual # 1

There was not that much exciting X-Men news for me personally except the X-Men Legacy Annual coming in September, and written by Mike Carey with art by Daniel Acuna. The only reason I’m looking forward to this is because of Daniel Acuna, he is one of my favorite artists right now. After this issue the series will supposedly follow a new ‘direction’ following the adventures of Rogue, which correct me if I’m wrong, is what this book has been doing for months, and before that, followed Rogue and her team of X-Men (Carey obviously has a big hard on for that character). If Acuna continues as artist for the book it appeals to me, otherwise the story line and direction does not.

CBR interview with M Carey: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=21683

-A new Moon Knight on-going series

‘Vengeance of the Moon Knight’ will be the new on going series with the new creative team of writer Gregg Hurwitz and artist Jerome Opena. This is basically a relaunch, and the existing title will end. I’m sure this is just so Marvel can put a new $3.99 price tag on the book. Anyway, I bought a few issues of the Moon Knight series but never thought it was that great (I do think the character has big potential though) and I don’t think I have ever read anything by Gregg Hurwitz. I am always willing to give new series a go though, especially from Marvel, and this one promises to bring Moon Knight back into the centre of the Marvel U to mix thinks up with Norman, so I will check out the previews when they appear and if they look good to me I’ll prob check out issue 1.

-Heroes for Hire join the Thunderbolts?

Newsarama have a short interview with Rick Remender where it appears that he will be taking over writing chores on Thunderbolts # 136 for a one off 48 page special issue. From this interview we gather that Iron Fist & Luke Cage will in some way be black mailed into working for Norman Osborn. We know from previous New Avengers issues that Luke Cage in no way wants to work for Norman, and if I remember rightly smacked Norman the fuck out in the Avengers Tower. I can imagine Danny Rand would feel the same as Luke, so what does Norman have on these guys? From the cool cover for that issue shown above, Danny and Luke’s eyes look rather demonic. Possessed perhaps? Hypnotized? I dunno, either way I will check this out as I’m a sucker for both Iron Fist & Luke Cage and Remender talks a good game in this interview.
The other question raised here of course is what has happened to Andy Diggle as writer of the Thunderbolts series, is this just a one off and he’ll be back or not? He has only been on the book a short while. We’ll see.

Check the link here: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090621-tbolts-136.html

Another interview at CBR here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=21680

-Planet Hulk DVD

Lastly CBR reported: There will be a direct to DVD movie based on “Planet Hulk.“

“I was pulled on as a consultant,” said Pak. “I can’t say anything more except I think it’s going to be awesome!”

Phew, that’s a lot of news! I’d love to hear your thoughts guys.

Monday Mini Reviews

I was a bit disappointed after getting through my stack this week, there was nothing that great to shout about. But here’s what I thought anyway:

Skaar: Son of Hulk 11 – 3.5 out of 5

This was probably the best issue I read this week and definitely had the best cover by TRAVIS CHAREST. (Spoilers) I like the human side to Skaar as a twist. This side is explored in this issue as the young human Skaar deals with the loss of a wolf he befriended and his struggle to keep the monster at bay due the destruction it causes. We also see a protective side as he sort of makes friends with some other kids around his own age and one of them gets injured. When the Hulk/Skaar emerges toward the end of the issue the ruthless bad ass is back, and next issue looks like the showdown between pa & son. The art by Ron Lim suits the feel of the book well. Pretty good all round.

Amazing Spider-Man 596 – 2.5 out of 5

Not as good as the previous issue unfortunately. Harry gets a tour of the Avengers tower and Peter infiltrates the Dark Avengers as Venom/ Dark Spider-Man. That’s pretty much all that happens. Hopefully it will pick up with some action next issue.

Batman & Robin 1 – 3 out of 5

This read a bit quick for me and quick for a Grant Morrison book. It’s basically a set up issue, which is fine as it’s a number 1. I like the little brat Damian as Robin; he is going to be the most entertaining character in this book. The new character Pyg was a cool edition, he is really quite evil. As for the art, it’s not really my cup of tea. Nothing wrong with it I just find Quitely’s art a bit spongy and bubbly which is not my bag. And the book was very colourful. I normally like Batman drawn a bit darker to suit the mood of the character but as this is a new Batman & Robin I will leave judgment on that to later, plus a new artist will be on board for issue 4 anyway. Enjoyable read but nothing spectacular.

Mighty Avengers 25 - 2 out of 5

I think the problem with this team so far is that none of them are likeable, that’s the way Dan Slott seems to be writing them. The premise for this issue is that the Mighty Avengers HQ (in the Pym Pocket) is in danger of being able to link with Earth. Pym has also been building some machine in the HQ that can only be contained in the Pym Pocket Universe he has created. What the machine does I don’t know. (Maybe I missed that or it was in previous issues.) So to save the HQ and the machine Pym needs another device held by the FF. Reed will not give up the device to Pym so Pym devises a plan to steal it from the FF. The problem is who cares!?!? Who cares if they have to get anew HQ and I didn’t get what the secret machine does so I do really care about the fate of that either. The big fight between the two teams will be next issue but I don’t think I’ll bother. Art was okay.