Wait, what about Angel: Revelations ?
I can't be arsed actually reading Giant Size Astonishing X-Men (lost interest after the first story arc), so does anyone want to spoil me for the shocking twist?
@Katherine
Sure. Spoilers ahoy.
Kitty can't escape the bullet due to its weird alien metal composition. The heroes on Earth unite to stop the bullet. Dr. Strange does some MAGIC that actually backfires and makes every single hero dream that they alone stop the bullet. Drooling ensues.
Spider-Man, who's being written here like he hasn't been in years, actually wakes up and tries to awake the heroes, but in the end nobody can do a thing. Kitty pulls all her energies to dematerialize the planet-sized thing making it pass through Earth harmlessly, thus sacrificing any chance of escaping it.
Meanwhile, Piotr resolves the situation in the Breakworld and Ord (who was the villain for most of Astonishing) sacrifices himself to save his home.
Now all this looks somewhat silly, but told by Whedon and Cassidy it was magnificent. Really, the only thing that damaged the story was knowing the outcome beforehand.
Except, um...if you're going to bring in all the heroes of the Marvel Universe...then actually do something with them. Even if it's a token effort.
Not this "oh...they tried to use magic, but it...backfired...for some reason, and now they're all drooly."
Because that reflects poorly on the villains of the story as having a terribly thought out plan. You're telling me if it wasn't for Dr. Strange being there, trying to use magic, and it failing in just the right way that it incapacitates the others, then the Marvel Universe heroes would have been able to stop the bullet. Really?
The evil Breakworlder plan is "hope Dr. Strange inadvertantly does our work for us?"
Well, I for one read the story as a Silver Age tribute and didn't really bother with the plot holes, but if you want to take it seriously, imagine that Dr. Strange doesn't screw up: what then?
Would Reed Richards be able to take off to space in time with a gigantic Negative Zone portal? Would Storm -- like Spider-Man put it-- be able to breeze the bullet away?
With all the angst going on, the drooling silliness actually made me chuckle instead of spending the whole issue yelling "Goddamn you Whedon and your orgasming for dead women!"
For me though, I don't see it so much as a plot hole as again, making the villains look foolish, like they haven't really planned things out.
I can't tell you if Reed Richards would have been able to save the planet "in time," because thinking about it makes my head hurt a little with the "how is a bullet travelling across galaxies this quickly?" problem.
I do agree that the scenes added some much-needed levity to the issue. But there are ways to inject levity into many different types of scenes. Especially when you've got a well-written Spider-Man hanging around.
I guess what I'm saying in a long-winded way is that the explanation Whedon chose to use as for why the other heroes were ineffectual, for me, only served to unnecessarily underline how ridiculous the Breakworld guys were. And they seemed pretty ridiculous to start with.
A good point, though I don't think anyone took the Breakworld seriously to being with, especially since that "we have no word for Hospitals" scene. The Breakworld was certainly the low (low) point of the whole run.
*dittoes the Angel: Revelations question*
> Well, I for one read the story as a Silver Age tribute and didn't really bother with the plot holes, but if you want to take it seriously, imagine that Dr. Strange doesn't screw up: what then?
> Would Reed Richards be able to take off to space in time with a gigantic Negative Zone portal?
I think this falls under the same category as Rick Jones keeping a parachute to hand just in case he needs to jump out an exploding Skrull spaceship at any point. Given that it's the MU, keeping a failsafe for an utterly ridiculous possibility to hand is completely logical.
Really? Lower than Xavier's master plan of driving Danger into live power lines with a truck when a) he didn't have use of his legs at the time, and b)it had clearly been stated at the time that, for whatever reason, no forms of modern technology worked on Genosha?
Ahhh, man. This discussion is making me remember how much I WANTED to love Astonishing. And certainly Whedon has a gift for dialogue that makes his work easy reading. Too bad it doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
On Giant Size Astonishing X-Men:
"It doesn't help, of course, that the ending of the story was essentially blown in Uncanny X-Men a few months ago (though if you were paying attention, it was blindingly obvious that the character in question had stopped showing up in other titles months ago)."
You mean excluding the three alternate versions of the character currently running around in starring or regular supporting roles in First Class, the Ultimate books, and Exiles, right? I wish I could have been more moved by one of my favorite characters being somewhat killed off, but it isn't easy when I can pick up two other titles this week alone where the character in question is alive and kickig.
ANGEL: REVELATIONS evidently falls under the category of "Didn't ship to my store." It'll probably show up next week.
OK, I know you said you weren't going to bother with Final Crisis and I understand you not wanting to spend money on something you probably won't enjoy. However, I hope you consider reading a friend's copy. After your reaction to DC Universe #0 I think a Final Crisis review could potentially top your review of Wolverine #55 (the conclusion of Jeph Loeb's infamous Evolution arc). Tell the truth, isn't it fun writing reviews of awful comics?
The only bits of X-Force #4 that stood out were those I'd seen done before in books that I enjoyed more. I really wish that Choi wasn't leaving Uncanny for this book. Sure, it's nice to have an artist who gives the characters actual expressions, but does this book really need it?
Have you read the New Warriors series at all, Paul? I'd be interested in your thoughts on it.
Its somewhat an X-Book!
God as much as I'd like to I really can't get into x-men legacy. It has no supporting cast. It's just professor xavier. There is no plot. How much more could they possibly add to his backstory that isn't going to feel tacked on and ignored by every other writer? I seriously hope the big reveal isn't just that Sinister tinkered with Xavier's genetics as a child. It adds nothing to either character. I'm not quite sure why X-men legacy gets a free pass for relying too much on nostalgia while x-force does not. Not that X-force deserves any free passes, but at least it's not all cryptic, unexplained flashbacks.
Billy: At this stage, I wouldn't read a DC event comic unless I could charge them for my time.
Fay: I've mentioned NEW WARRIORS in the capsules occasionally. Basically, I think there's a half-decent idea in there, but the execution is lousy - the characters are interchangeable and often literally indistinguishable, and the script fails to name them or even to make clear which secret identity matches up with which character. So while it could have been decent, in practice it's pretty awful. I can't understand why the editors haven't fixed some of these glaring faults.
Angel Revelations is lacking Cameron "remember me?" Hodge, and the bulemic art style doesn't quite fit it. Has Adam Pollina even been a regular artist since his X-Force days?
I'm actually rather enjoying X-Men: Legacy as a casual reader. I started reading the title when Carey started writing it, and I've read a couple of things from before then.
I think I've been familiar with just over half of the flashbacks so far, but it's never that hard to find more details.
But I guess continuity is one of the main reasons I read (superhero) comics, and I enjoy it even when I don't quite follow. That's probably just me...
Secret War, by ushering in the age of megacrossovers and "event comics"
For Marvel, that is. DC had ushered it in the years before 
Blair: Final Crisis isn't really comparable to DC Universe 0 (in the sense that a movie isn't the same as a trailer). It's a good book, and I wish a lot of the people slagging it off were as honest as Paul's "I'm not interested in DC Continuity per se".
PS: Secret Wars =/= Secret War. One was the 1980s Beyonder thing, one was the Bendis thing where everyone wore purple versions of their costumes for no good reason.
The Breakworld was certainly the low (low) point of the whole run.
No. That would have been the absurdly awful "Danger" arc.
"Oh, I'm being attacked by a big metal monster and the only person around who could help me is my friend with the magnetic powers. What shall I do? Oh I know, I'll find the world's only truck with a handheld accelerator and drive the metal monster into a power station that is inexplicably still working when the rest of the country has been knocked back to the dark ages."
In the writer's defense, he did have Xavier explicitly say that he didn't want Magneto's help, and furthermore, its difficult to blame anyone for not wanting to read Exalibur carefully enough to realize that technology is meant to be arbitrarily useless.
Just had an "am I on crack?" moment - they were just reading aloud from Captain Britain and MI13 on the BBC Breakfast news. Weirdest moment of the day, hands down, and it's not even nine am.
I think what amuses me about this media coverage is that Paul Cornell's depiction of Gordon Brown seems weird, not so much because he's in a comic book fighting aliens, but because it's so POSITIVE.
Final Crisis seems like it could be fun. But I'd be shocked if DC didn't screw it up. 52, Countdown and Infinite Crisis were all difficult to follow. On the other hand, Green Lantern's Sinistero Corp War was great, so maybe they've learned their lesson.
But far more interesting to me is Morrison's Batman. It's nice to see the pieces falling into place from earlier in Morrion's run.
As for Whedon's X-Men, it was fun. Yes the Danger arc was stupid, and Breakworld itself was underdeveloped, but the characters were well written.
Eh, I don't care about the inconsistency with Excalibur(though maybe that's because I didn't read it) so much as Professor Xavier's characterization. That he would just go "lol not listening" to Danger is as out of character as Iron Man in Civil War or various other fan-maligned characterizations.
I didn't really mind the Breakworld, either, it seemed like an attempt at a 60's Star Trek-style planet and worked well enough in that respect. It's just that the whole thing felt sluggish, and the delays just accentuated the decompression.
The series in general reminds me of Millar and Hitch's Ultimates: dumb fun with gorgeous art, but nothing convinces me that it's an instant classic or that it should have taken as long as it did to complete.
Wasn't Sinestro War an unexpected success on DC's part? I vaguely recall reading that DC hadn't expected so much of it, verus their high expectation and focus on 52, Countdown, and Identity Crisis.
Paul - have you written an April sales column for the Beat? Even by their standards (since it got between four and seven days later in the month after they started appearing there exclusively), this is getting late...
I noticed the April sales column's missing too...
"Torn" was a very, very strange arc for Whedon. I just can't understand how a man so obviously good at getting a grasp on the characters could have come up with the "Professor Xavier traps a sentient creature so he can train his students" idea.
No comprendo.
If the cover to X-MEN: LEGACY #212 happened in today's world (read: America) Kitty would've killed herself or have a boob-job in a hot minute.
Now that Whedon's done on AS, please can we get some more Runaways. And kick Whedon outta Marvel. Better have a good book on time, then an epic book once a decade.
Kevin: With Xavier, a lot depends on how literally you take the Silver Age X-Men stories in which, frankly, he's a bit of a bastard. He sends barely trained teenagers into battle; he freaks them out by faking the loss of his powers; he feigns his own death for no good reason at all. Reading this stuff today, you either file it mentally as goofy "Superman is a dick" stuff which doesn't count, or you try to take it literally and accept that Xavier is, on some level, prone to "ends justify the means" rationales.
Billy: SINESTRO CORPS WAR did better than expected, in the sense that it actually boosted sales, unlike most of DC's events, which don't. Whether it exceeded DC's internal expectations, I'm not so sure.
Somebody/Adam: Marc and I have written April sales columns and no doubt they'll be up soon. Short version: SECRET INVASION #1 did really well. DC UNIVERSE ZERO probably did too, but we'll never know. CABLE #1 is inexplicably listed two months running, which must be a mistake. Nothing else of interest transpired in April.
I thought the X-Men First Class was better than you gave it credit for. It wasn't so much that Warren couldn't pass for human by disguising himself, but that in the "mysterious civilization" he didn't have to disguise himself; his wings were something wonderful instead of something that had to be covered up. Admittedly, this is true for some level for all the X-Men at this point, but as the back-up story seems to imply, Warren's identity is tied up with his ability to fly. While this may not jive with the way he's been portrayed in the First Class series, it fits pretty well with a lot of his regular MU interpretations.
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