Let’s go ahead and dish out The Revolution’s weekly awards.
The nominees for the Che for the best read of the week:
Detective Comics #843
Project Super Powers #2
The Winner: Project Super Powers #2
This week was very light on truly quality reads. I really had to stretch it to nominate Detective Comics #843 just to prevent Project Super Powers #2 from running away and hiding with the Che due to a complete and total lack of competition this week.
I had to give the Che for the best read of the week to Project Super Powers #2. This was the only read this week that I found to be anything special. Krueger continues to impress me with his hard work on this title. This is a finely crafted story that is deep and thick enough to give the reader plenty to chew on while at the same time has enough action and adventure to keep the reader entertained.
And now the nominees for the Sequential Methadone Award for the worst read of the week:
Action Comics #863
Amazing Spider-Man #555
Cable #2
Countdown to Final Crisis #4
Nightwing #143
The Twelve #4
Trials of Shazam #12
Young X-Men #1
The Winner: The Twelve #4
This is by far the most nominees for the Sequential Methadone Award of the week. Maybe I am just more of a cranky bastard than usual this week, but I found so many of the reads this week to be dull and unimpressive.
Once again, Amazing Spider-Man continues to be an anemic read that offers up a boring all-ages version of Spider-Man. This Brand New Day story has been a complete and total miss with me. And on top of it all, I had to suffer through the visual slop known as Chris Bachalo’s art.
Action Comics #863 ended this plodding and dry Legion of Super Heroes story arc with a complete and total whimper. I may be in the minority, but as a maniacal Legion fan I was summarily unimpressed with Johns’ lukewarm effort that he gave to his version of the Legion. This story arc only served to make me appreciate the effort that Shooter is giving us over on the Legion of Super Heroes.
Cable #2 was a monotonous read that lacked much in the way of substance.
Countdown to Final Crisis #4 has already been sufficiently hammered in my review. Of course, I have never been averse to piling on a title and kicking someone when they are down. The handling of Mary Marvel’s character continues to be atrocious. This title is barely able to drag its rotting and stinking corpse across the finish line with these final issues.
Nightwing #143 was unable to do anything other than elicit a half-bored yawn from me at the conclusion of this issue. This issue was nothing more than an average super hero story. It had a run-of-the-mill feel to it. This title lacks an identity as DC continues to have no idea what to do with Dick Grayson’s character.
Trials of Shazam #12 was so bad that it made me throw up a little bit into my mouth while reading it. It is practically mind numbing how completely rancid Winick’s re-making of Captain Marvel’s world of magic has been. The only nice thing I can say is that this title has mercifully come to an end and that we can only hope that Morrison uses Final Crisis to erase this completely ridiculous and laughably bad version of Captain Marvel.
Young X-Men #1 is another of the new titles to spin out of the aftermath of the Messiah Complex. This title takes the place of the New X-Men. At first I wondered what was the need for the name change and then it dawned on me. Young Avengers. Young X-Men. Aww, how nauseatingly cute. Dust, Rockslide, Wolf Cub and Blindfold are old Xavier students who are joined by two new characters in Greymaklin and Ink. I already absolutely despise Ink after having to put up with him saying the irritating word “cuz” about a million times in just a couple of pages. Kill this character and do it now.
I gave Young X-Men #1 5 out of 10 Night Girls for the story and 6 out of 10 Night Girls for the art. Marc Guggenheim delivers such an underwhelming debut issue. This is nothing more than your average standard issue super hero story. The story has a generic and cookie cutter feel to it. There is an alarming lack of energy and creativity on this first issue.
After finishing this issue, I came away with the feeling that Marvel is simply just trying to flood the market with yet another X-title rather than Marvel creating this title because they had an actual story to tell. Maybe I’m just not the target demographic with this title. There are so many quality reads on the market that I see no reason to recommend people wasting their money on such an ordinary title like Young X-Men.
However, even in a week full of pathetic reads, I still had to give the Sequential Methadone Award of the week to The Twelve #4. JMS continues to amaze me by cranking out one truly horrid read after another on this title. The Twelve #4 delivers yet another dull, plodding and directionless read. JMS continues to re-hash the same tired material. There appears to be no purpose to this title other than to serve as a platform for JMS to go off on some weird tangential sermons. The Twelve truly serves as an excellent example of what Sequential Methadone stands for.
So congrats to Project Super Powers #2 for winning the Che for the week and congrats to The Twelve #4 for winning the Sequential Methadone Award for the week.
4 thoughts on “Weekly Awards For The Comic Books From April 2, 2008”
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Wow, that’s quite a list of “worst issue” nominees.
Regarding Young X-Men, there’s pretty much always been a junior title since 1983, so I suppose it’s not surprising that there is one; now, I was a big fan of the previous iteration, and I’m really not sure what to make of this one yet.
On a sort-of-related matter, have you seen any episodes of the new Spectacular Spider-Man animated series? I think it’s pretty good so far (and it has the creator of Gargoyles involved, which is always a good thing).
On the subject of Young X-men, i dont think that marvel could have put out a worse comic, not only does it replace a rather good comic, (new x-men) it completely destroys several characters in the process, cannonball is one of my favorite x-men, and now hes in the brotherhood? The only thing that i liked about this comic was the reference to the dominant species arc in austens run (which i actually quite enjoyed as opposed to the rest of austens run) The characters in this comic are just charicatures of their former selves, and they didnt even pick the more interesting members of ‘new x-men’… dissapointing…
-hobosk8er
Regarding the Brotherhood in YXM, I don’t think we’re meant to take that at face value even for a second. There’s something we aren’t being told, and, as I see it, it almost certainly involves Cyclops:
1) He’s the only X-Man who appears here.
2) He’s already got a special ops team in X-Force, and the standard X-Men, even, since the Hellfire Club aren’t exactly secret foes.
3) He’s basically telling the kids that they’re the only X-Men out there (why else send them to deal with the more experienced New Mutants?).
4) He’s basing them in the ruins of the X-Mansion, when everybody else is in San Francisco.
5) He’s sending them after the former New Mutants, who are rather obviously not evil.
Cyclops isn’t Cyclops; there’s been a lot of speculation as to who, but I think that most likely theory is that it’s Sebastian Shaw in disguise. He explicitly mentions Sunspot’s position as the Hellfire Club’s Lord Imperial, and we know from the initial flashforward that they also end up fighting Donald Pierce, who is another of Shaw’s rivals. If this theory is correct, then he’s manipulating the kids to launch a coup to retake control of the Hellfire Club.
Islandliberal:
Thats a good theory, that cyclops is not really cyclops… if that turns out to be the case then i will be more than pleased. The only thing is that i have read the preview pages for the first divided we stand one shot and it shows cannonball as a much darker character. Frankly, i cannot wait until uncanny 500, i love greg lands art and having brubaker AND fracton on that comic is gonna be insane. too bad they neutered the creative team on iron fist, but if losing a great iron fist comic will give me a great uncanny x-men comic then i would chalk that one up as a win in my books.
-hobosk8er