Week of February 10, 2015:
In which this week is all Wolverines, all the time; the All-New titles are all awesome; you should go watch “I Will Steal Your Heart” RIGHT NOW; and we love all of our listeners equally.
(Incidentally, we do in fact hang the fan art you physically mail us on our refrigerator.)
REVIEWED:
- All-New Wolverine #5 (00:24)
- All-New X-Men #4 (03:58)
- Old Man Logan #2 (09:31)
Pick of the Week: “I Will Steal Your Heart,” ft. Lila Cheney (13:29)
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All-New Wolverine is great. I love Wasp in this issue. She’s right about Strange, he’s a jerk, how could he not call ahead? But yeah, it’s a fun story, and then gets really emotional at the end. My favourite panel of the issue is the little bit of blood leaping at Mooney. It’s a great bit.
All-New X-Men is good. But. Hopeless writes Laura really wrong. He writes her as reckless. She lets herself get hurt without real purpose. That’s an Old Wolverine thing to do. Laura is a very strategic fighter, and Hopeless doesn’t show that. And it really bothers me. Other than that, it’s a good comic, well-written, and with Bagley art (which is never not fantastic).
I get where you’re coming from with Laura’s heroism tying into her past self-harm. But it doesn’t feel at all accurate to her character arc over the past decade. So I’m not at all sold on Hopeless’ take on Laura.
Old Man Logan is good. I love the Sorrentino/Maiolo art. It’s gorgeous stuff.
The video is definitely a lot of fun. And it’s a solid musical performance.
Interesting observation about Laura in ANXM. I haven’t read many comics with Laura in them, so I didn’t know she was previously a strategic fighter. She seemed like the opposite of that in this issue. It’s a pity — I feel like Hopeless is giving her more attention as a character than Bendis did in the previous run of ANXM — but if he’s not writing her in a way that’s consistent with her established personality, that’s disappointing.
I dunno, strategy wise, isn’t it a good strategy for the one who can heal from anything to take the brunt of the damage? I mean, I see her holding back as something of a solo thing – she’s on a team of, basically, teenagers. I don’t think I’m inaccurate in saying that she’s been a hero longer than anyone else in her team, has been through the most, and if I was to hazard a guess, I would say the oldest? In any case, DEFINITELY the most experienced. I sort of see her as a team leader, or at least team supervisor, there to make sure these other more inexperience-at-superheroing-superheroes don’t get hurt.
Sure, it makes sense for her to bear the brunt of the danger. But that’s not quite what’s going on. Look at the scene where she attacks that gang. She just stands there and lets them shoot her. That’s a very Logan thing to do. It is not a Laura thing to do – not without a very good reason. Her thing would be to tear through them quickly, avoiding their shots and slicing their guns.
Or, worse, look at her attack on the Blob. She announced her attack. That is piss-poor strategy against any opponent. Blob’s hamstrings should have been cut before he knew anyone was there.
Hopeless writes her the way a lot of people wrote Logan: An idiot who leads with their face and taking totally unnecessary hits in order to look badass. It was always a poor way of writing Logan, frankly, and it’s an even worse way of writing Laura.
The problem is Laura isn’t indestructible like Logan. Only her claws are adamantium, which means she’s much more easily disabled by broken or severed limbs. Yeah, she can heal, but a shot to the head is going to put her down (see All-New Wolverine #1).
Hopeless’ All-New X-Men has to be the absolute WORST Laura has ever been written. She’s just appallingly out of character, and he’s ACTUALLY making me miss Bendis.
Ambar, is that you?!
ANW is the best X-solo for ANAD. It may be the only solo for a good while but at least we are getting the good stuff out of it.
ANXM. I do like it but 2 issues have kept me from going gaga for it. The Evil Cyclops non answer for the past 4 issues. As a Cyke fan, so much as happened that’s kinda embittered me to the Older Cyclops’s treatment. Second is the Laura characterization just keeps knocking off points.
OML is quite good. Lemire has become a new favorite of mine thanks to Green Arrow, Sweeth Tooth, and Animal man.
So yeah, despite a couple of points off ANXM, its been a good treat.