Moonstone as Ms. Marvel? You must be on crack.

Surprise, surprise I didn't hate everything this month, I'll try harder in March.

This was the month that MARVEL rolled out the Dark Avengers #1 and... it was pretty good.

Now, I've seen this in the past. A good idea comes rolling down the pipe all shiny and full of promise but then lingers a tad to long and is finished off with an implausible situation (Onslaught taking out all MARVEL heroes... yeah, I'm sure they'll all stay dead ) or a failed climax (sooo... the Hulk saves the Earth, not destroy it?).

I don't mean to sound cynical (yes I do) but now that the Dark Avengers are formed and costumed up... what are you going to do with them? Yeah, Bullseye as the new Hawkeye is a good fit but what are you going to have him do? Are you going to have him circumspectly killing people for shits and giggles or will there be some sort of interesting character development. I know what you're saying to yourself right now, "Character development? WTF is that?"

Lately the sad sack group of writers who have been churning out mass murder as 'cool' and random violence as 'shockingly original', have turned their eye toward the beloved Avengers. Here is how I see this going down.

Osborn in his very insulting, eye twitching, armor (which I love, although I loath it with all my heart) will setup a few situations where the new Avengers beat the ever loving tar out of superheroes. It'll be random, they'll throw as many rate B, 'shelved' characters into the mix as they can and try to build up tension to a showdown with the New Avengers in Exile. What I'm expecting is 8 books of random violence for the sake of random violence, it's HIGHLY unlikely there will be even the slightest attempt to redefine or understand these 'Dark' characters. This will be, one huge pile of eye candy that I will have completely dismissed as drivel in the long run. Which is EASY to do, because MARVEL almost ALWAYS rolls back any major changes.

Mutants are gone? Well who cares, we only followed a few dozen anyway.

Civil War split up your favorite band? Eh, well they're still good people, we won't hunt you... for now.

Secret Invasion? With some fresh paint you'll never know it happened.

Ditto for WWHulk. Shouldn't NYC be a big smoking pile of rubble at this point?

In other news, Thor is now a free agent again. I'll be interested to see where he comes down in the land of mortals. Will his story arc remain separated and secretive or will he actively seek out the New Avengers, giving them the serious muscle they need to take back the Sentry's tower? I'm hoping for the latter because Thor has been out of commission for a long time and now that he's the bearer of the Odin power, is a hundred times more powerful than before. Sentry vs. Thor? Fuck that. How about Thor taking Sentry aside to teach him what being a hero really means. I know people have a hard on for Iron Man lately but let's get serious, the original Avengers had two infallible symbols. Cap and Thor.

I actually picked up some DC mags this month, catching up on Final Crisis. Usually I'd rather scoop my eyes out with a hedgehog but there was this rumor mill about the death of Batman. Now there are two books worth reading in DC, Superman and Batman. There are like 12 batman titles and only 1/4 of them are readable but those few are worthwhile. You could put every stupid superhero and villain in the DC universe, blow it up, flush it and blow it up again and still not find an single atom of worthwhile material amongst the quarks. DC's quarks are tainted, filthy subatomic comics.

So Batman dies. Sort of. There is a bit where it looks like he may have been flung into the past... or at least a native cave somewhere in the multiverse. Nobody seems to care. Do you remember the Death of Superman? People who never read a single comic book were crying over it... the public shock... oh what will we do! Bruce dies and I at least expect to see it show up on Slashdot or BoingBoing... but no, nothing for the character that has sold the most movies out of any other superhero in existence. meh.

Well you've listened to me long enough, get out there and read something worthwhile. Demand more, for crying out loud.


Never invite Superman to play Rockstar, he friggin' wails!