 THURSDAY MORNING QB ARCHIVE |  | THURSDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK | | A water-cooler review of this week's comics | | | By The Wizard Staff | | Posted March 27. 2008 | |  | | When the new batch of weekly comics arrives at Wizard HQ, the workday stops and the fanboys and fangirls inside take over. Every week in Thursday Morning Quarterback, we discuss and debate three of the most attention-getting titles, be they good, bad or indifferent—and maybe crown one of them our Book of the Week!
Your critics this week:
WizardUniverse.com News Editor Jim Gibbons: “Cross-genre books like the sci-spy Casanova make my day, but great writing in titles from classic capes to crime capers is equally exciting.”
ToyFare Price Guide Editor Jon Gutierrez: “I enjoy fast-paced, post-modern superhero deconstructionism. Or anything with Captain Carrot in it.”
WizardUniverse.com Staff Writer Kevin Mahadeo: “For a guy who has Kal-El as his phone’s welcome message, Superman titles tend to dominate the top of my pile. But I read just about anything with a great story and good character development.”
Wizard Associate Editor Andy Serwin: “I’m into offbeat superheroes like James Robinson’s Starman or genre books like Brian Azzarello’s Loveless.”
Reviewed this week: Mighty Avengers #11, Green Lantern #29, New Avengers #39, Quick Hits out the wazoo and plenty of Extra Points! Can you dig it, fanboys and girls?!?
WARNING…SPOILERS AHEAD!
MIGHTY AVENGERS #11
Marvel Comics
Brian Michael Bendis (W)/Mark Bagley (A)
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ANDY: “So, Mighty Avengers…”
[SILENCE]
ANDY: “Is that crickets I hear?”
[LAUGHS]
KEVIN “Time travel, bitches! It’s the conclusion to the Doctor Doom arc. Doom has captured the entire team and is holding them captive. He threatens to kill them all, but at the last second, Spider-Woman frees them all somehow and crazy fights ensue. Doom overrides Tony Stark’s armor at first, but Iron Man rebounds, the Sentry steps up, and then Doom is under arrest after he gets pounded and Sentry rips off his mask.”
ANDY: “Yeah, this wraps up the Doom arc, and I’ve got to say, even though I loved the last issue, this ending didn’t pay off for me. There’s tons of action and big explosions and loads of fighting, but I come away from it and I just feel like the characters are so shallow. It’s been almost a yer since this book launched, and Tony Stark’s still ‘the brains,’ Ms. Marvel’s ‘the leader,’ Wasp is a ditz, Ares grunts and yells, and the Sentry is crazy. None of the characters have gone deeper than those surface descriptions.”
JIM “I think that’s the same discussion we had a few months ago when part one hit: Why are we doing four full-page spreads of Doombots. Why not develop the characters? There’s no subplots to speak of, there’s no subtext for the story that’s going on. It’s just very superficial.”
KEVIN “And it’s weird because the thought balloons seem like the perfect way to really get inside a character’s head and develop them, and it’s not utilized very well. What about the Doom thought bubble? There’s a scene where he’s got all the Avengers captured, and he’s going off on one of his rants, but the thought balloons give you complete insight into what he’s thinking the whole time. Take a look; that’s got to be our ‘Soliloquy of the Week.’”
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JIM “I thought it was kind of interesting, because it shows he thinks a lot more than he talks. But it’s a lot to read that has nothing to do but insult people, in this case, the Avengers.”
ANDY: “Last month I complained that there were no thought balloons for Doom, and apparently they were all saved up for this issue. The problem with it is that a few panels before, Ms. Marvel thinks, ‘Here comes the trademark Doctor Doom monologue.’ But it’s an internal monologue, and even though it’s super-dramatic and insightful to Doom’s way of the thinking, it has no impact because he doesn’t say it! No one THINKS that way! It’s designed to act as the plot recap, but it rings hollow because you know it’s only in his head. Maybe it’s also because of the way it’s juxtaposed with the actual dialogue balloons, but the whole page turns into sensory overload.”
KEVIN “I did enjoy the one sequence where he kept insulting Ms. Marvel, calling her fat and cow. I thought that was hysterical.”
JIM “I just don’t get what this Doom storyline has to do with the scope of the series and the overall Marvel Universe. I liked the last time travel issue, that was cool, and they mentioned the Skrulls and Doom was playing off that, but this was just a big fight with Doom with big explosions. And the ending only hinted at Skrull stuff when Black Widow’s looking at Spider-Woman all suspiciously after she broke out some seemingly new power.”
KEVIN “And what about the scene where Sentry rips Doom’s mask off. That was such a cool moment, but show us Doom’s face! I want to see him all effed up. You don’t get the money shot. But we do get Black Widow in a bikini, which is almost as good.”
JIM “You mean Ultimate Mary Jane? Because that’s who she looks like!”
[LAUGHS]
ANDY: “Can anyone tell me what Tony Stark and Doctor Doom’s ‘armor’ dialogue does to help the story along. The whole time this issue, the armor’s like ‘reboot, reset, 0101010111010010, blah, blah, blah’ and Doom’s armor is like, ‘Timeslide in 3 minute, 12 seconds’ or whatever. Is that something I’m supposed to follow? Does it impact the story at all? If I’m missing something, that’s because I’m not that bright, but otherwise, it’s just distracting.”
JIM “What it really does is put you in the position of what it’s like being in Tony Stark’s shoes. It’s like sometimes he’s the only character in the book; he’s the one who gets the most face time and development. I’m fine with the thought bubbles, but here, it seems like they’re only used for jokes. You’ve got a lot of compelling characters; you could be doing a lot more with them.”
ANDY: “If they’re really getting the better of Doom, I don’t buy it. Doom, in my mind, is way smarter than Tony Stark. I smell a bait and switch thing happening, but if this is a real win for the Avengers, it’s hard for me to swallow. It just doesn’t ring true for me. Something’s hinky.”
JIM “I think the thing is, the case should be the reason you defeat Doctor Doom is because you’re the greatest Avengers team ever. Instead, Doom screws up, and though he does dupe Iron Man with the time travel scheme, it comes down to Sentry being a limitlessly powerful character. There’s no teamwork, there’s no battle of wits. It’s just, ‘The Sentry saves our asses.’”
KEVIN “The thing about the Sentry, is that, ‘hey we won because Sentry happens to NOT be crazy today!’ It all comes down to him almost every time.”
JIM “It’s frustrating comparing this to New Avengers, because it feels like it doesn’t have the same level of importance and because I don’t connect with the characters the same. First it was Ultron shows up out of the blue, then Doctor Doom shows up because of an accident; it’s the most minute things tying them together with no natural progression or cohesion. It’s a tenuous thread at best. New Avengers—which we’ll discuss later—feels like a solid team with real building blocks between the stories; there’s a definite framework.”
ANDY: “My favorite stuff in this issue has to be Marko Djurdjevic’s opening and closing sequences with Doom and Morgan Le Fay. His art looks absolutely gorgeous, and that’s one very interesting relationship that I would like to see developed further.”
JIM “That’s the thing that’s most interesting to me, too, this minor subplot. If this all leads up to something like Doctor Doom helping Tony fight the Skrulls, that’d be totally worth it. But if this doesn’t develop into anything substantial, these issues will turn out to be complete throwaways for me.”
For the Thursday Morning QB review of Green Lantern, click here!
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