Fearless Defenders #5!

The Fearless Defenders #5 – Where we continue the Doom Maiden story line.  We first see Moonstar Hippolyta and Valkyrie awaiting the arrival of the Doom Maidens in a remote and far away part of our world.  The Doom Maidens arrive riding dragons, one of which Hippolyta kills.  The fight is interrupted by the arrival of a large number of female super heroes – it is a rather dramatic splash page.  We now add to the battle Spider-Woman, Black Cat, Tigra, Hellcat, Elektra, She-Hulk, Storm, Thundra, Tarantula, Colleen Wing, Black Widow, Captain Marvel and Misty Knight.  While the Valkyrie traveled to the out of the way place, Misty Knight had gone recruiting supers to help in the fight.  Some are destined to be Shield Maidens (only nine actually) but apparently having a few extra heroes is not a bad thing.  We learn a number of things about Annabelle Riggs and Moonstar.  The story here remains very interesting and I cannot wait for the next issue.

A + X #8

A + X #8 stars in story one is Spider-Woman and Shadowcat (Kitty Pride) and Lockheed the dragon.  Story two has Deadpool and Hawkeye and I kind of cringe considering both these guys are wisecracking heroes.  So when Spider-Woman texts the Lockheed Dragon to go on a mission with Kitty Pride the are searching for a meteorite of an unknown metal that has been stolen and about to be sold to bad guys.  Apparently Lockheed can smell the metal and they know this because he helped Spider-Woman in outer space once.  Somehow Kitty Pride does not know this story.   There is some amusing running commentary from a civilian in the subway car with the three heroes and Spider-Woman and Shadowcat talk about all this secret S.W.O.R.D / S.H.I.E.L.D stuff knowing that no one would believe the crazy homeless guy – even though he sounds perfectly sane at the moment.  The dragon catches the meteorites sent and the next thing you see is a huge splash page of the Absorbing man fighting a mob of AIM and Hydra agents.  At this point I went from so far so good to oh wow cool.  During this fight they use their real names in front of the bad guys!  Through some very clever dialog Kitty fights and defeats the Absorbing Man singlehandedly.  The AIM and Hydra guys surrender, the meteorite is recovered.  I have to say once again that the dialog in the A + X comics can be really clever and entertaining.  It is fun to have super heroes be smart once in a while.  The Deadpool / Hawkeye story will need to be amazing to beat that story.  The second story is Deadpool and Hawkeye, Hawkeye is driving a car through Grand Central station and down some subway tracks.  Deadpool appears to be more worried than the Hawkguy about them making it to the bad guys alive.  They of course make it to the bad guys in one piece and the fight against pirates begins.  Deadpool decides to also fight with a bow and arrow with of course hilarious results.  They win after even more cleverer arrow shooting.  While entertaining this story just cannot compare to the first.

Captain Marvel #12

Captain Marvel #12 was a long drawn out full issue fight that ended up being boring and uninteresting.  The fight included a lot of taunting dialog between Captain Marvel and Deathbird.  We also see the story evolving from Captain Marvel’s doctor and another doctor consulting on her case.  The two doctors talk through the problem and figure out it seems that Captain Marvel is being poisoned.  The weakness of this issue might have something to do with this being a tie in issue with an Avengers title.  In fact Spider-Woman makes a non-speaking cameo in a few panels of the comic.  Anyway this issue was disappointing and very subpar compared to previous issues of this comic book.

Captain Marvel!

Captain Marvel #9 was a really good Day in the Life of Story.  I loved it!  The story had crazy old ladies, Spider-Woman, random people helping out and dinosaurs.  Oh and thieves or terrorists I’m not sure which or that it mattered to the story.  The story also confirms what should be obvious by now that Tony Stark is an ass.  I guess my only real complaint about this story is the art, the art suck in this issue it was horrible.  I don’t know who told the person credited as “artist” for this book (Filipe Andrade) to use this style but that person should be punished.  Characters are drawn differently in every frame of the comic it is very distracting and detracting from the story.  I really hope the powers that be see this is a bad art path to follow and just go for good solid comic book art.  Otherwise I am going to stop getting this comic and I am fairly sure I am the only one buying copies at my comic book shop.