New Comic Day June 28

Ultimate Spider-man #96

This is the second (and last) part of the Morbius storyline. It had some cool moments such as Morbius laying the smack down on the vampires, Spidey getting bit and freaking out. However if you were considering picking up this issue, I'd recommend against it for the following reasons: (1) Morbius claims that he can save Ben Urich's life (he got bit last issue) and it looks like to do so, he has to bite him. Spider-man prevents Morbius from doing so but Morby chucks SPider-man through a wall where he fights some vampires. During this though, Morbius has fixed Urich up right good, then helps Spidey. What bugs me is that the healing takes place off panel and we get no explanation whatsoever about how Morbius can save him. (2) At the end, Peter is contemplating continuing his life as a crime-fighter and Mary Jane comes up to him all friendly asking what's wrong then ends up hugging him. That would be fine except for the fact that last issue, Peter and MJ had a pow-wow ending with her not wanting to be around him. Why the change of heart? Again no explanation.

For the two issues as a whole though it's good to see the writer, Brian Michael Bendis, tell a shorter story instead of the usual decompressed stuff he does in New Avengers and that god-awful Hobgoblin arc a year or so ago.

Invincible #33
Invincible continues to be one of my favourite comics. This issue sees Mark (aka Invincible) confronting Angstrom Levy as he threatens his mother and newly found half-brother. Angstrom wants to kill Mark because he blames Mark for his silly looking head. In order to acomplish said killing, Angstrom sends Mark through a myriad (your word of the day) of parallel universes where he fights various WMDs. This is done in the effort to weaken Mark so that Angstrom can finish Invincible off himself. The plan backfires though as Mark pounds the living tar out of Levy and ends up killing him (or so I assume - there was a HELLUVA lot of blood) while they are in another reality. I expected the Angstrom confrontation to last more than one issue and I think it might have worked better as a two-parter, but it was still good.

I enjoyed this issue because we get to see a nice turning point in Mark's character. This is the first time he's killed someone whilst in a rage so watching how he deals with that will prove interesting. As well, Mark is trapped in an alternate reality so seeing how he gets home will be fun as well.

I'm one of those comic readers who is more about the words than the art, but Invincible is always good in both departments. The facial expressions are well done and the colors are very vibrant. Top notch comic from Kirkman and crew.


Young Avengers #12

And then we have Young Avengers. Plagued by lateness, I really didn't give two shits about what happened in this issue (which is the last one). I won't bore you with a detailed plot summary, but in short: Young Avengers + Old Avengers = Kree and Skrulls getting punched ALOT. There wasn't even that much story as there were no less than 5 splash pages. The only good thing is the art by Jim Cheung. Hard to believe this comes from the same guy who wrote the excellent Wonder Woman #1.