Welcome to my weekly comic book oriented article here at Flipside Gaming. Last week The Champions finally got a win against the Secret Empire and Spider-Man stopped telling jokes. This week we finally get to meet the 616 Miles Morales and we get to see a Venom Gwen Stacey finally! (Kinda sort of maybe) Excelsior!
Reviews
Avengers #9
The Jane Foster Thor run has continued to be among the best comics being made. Instead of this story being in Thor, it is an Avengers story and nothing changes in quality. The bond between Jane Foster and her new alien friend feels genuine in only a few panels and when things go poorly it makes the heartbreak that much more emotional. While the story has a happy-ish ending, you can tell it is going to be a struggle for Thor going forward.
Champions #10
This might be considered the first real win for the heroes in Secret Empire. All we have seen so far aside from a few cube fragments has been total domination by Hydra. The Champions are able to liberate a prison of Inhumans while searching for Ms Marvel. While the inhabitants did not want to leave at first, they were at least provided a choice where they did not have one. This might be the start to the heroes finally getting some forward momentum against Hydra.
Spider-Man/Deadpool #19
I did not expect to see a panel with Deadpool searching Slapstick’s pants for some film, let alone several panels. As serious as Spider-Man was trying to take everything after finding a battle with the Vulture caused a “death”, Slapstick was the perfect character to offset that. I have to assume this new status quo will not last very long due to Deadpool, but it was pretty amusing to see this in the short term.
X-Men Gold #7
Wow, did this book turn dark and violent quickly. At first the X-men are trying to put out the emergencies by being teleported to the Dark Dimension, but the revelation that there is a serial killer running around the mansion, shooting the students was a shock. The multiple panels of a student with a shot to the head was very jarring and put everyone on notice. The fact that we got to see the new X-cutioner in action shows that the writers are not going to let up on how serious this threat is to the new mutants in the house.
Previews
Amazing Spider Man #30
We got a glimpse of a returned Otto Octavious as the Superior Octupus. This time we are going to get a full view of what Octavious has been up to and why he has sided with Hydra. This is all going to probably go very poorly for Spider-Man as Otto tries to exact revenge on him and as well as take back Parker Industries that has seen better times.
Deadpool #33
Deadpool knows he has messed up. He thought he was siding with Captain America, the hero, but instead is in with Hydra. Plus, he must look after Ellie which makes things a lot harder for Deadpool. We did see that Deadpool is still on the side of good with him failing to reveal Hawkeye’s secret base. I think there will be a bigger part to play for Deadpool and his tie-ins have been among the best so far.
Edge of Venomverse #2
This might be the closest we get to a Spider-Gwen in this series. Last issue we got a Venom X-23 and this issue we see Gwenpool get her own symbiote. It is going to be such a weird mash-up between essentially 3 characters. There is some precedent of a Deadpool having a symbiote from the mini-series a year ago about Deadpool secretly being in Secret Wars.
Spider-Men 2 #1
Five years ago, Spider-Men concluded with Peter Parker finding out who the 616 Miles Morales was and that secret has been allowed to sit this entire time. Now we finally get to find out who he is and why it caused such an extreme reaction from Spider-Man. Aside from the main DC Rebirth storyline, I think this is my most anticipated story arc in 2017.
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to stop in any Flipside Gaming in East Greenbush to pick up or reserve your copies of these titles today!
-Stu Somers
Stu is a former M:TG Pro Tour competitor and avid comic book fan. He wants to know what you think about his article, so leave a comment below or hit him up on twitter @Ssomers55.
