The Age of the Sentry #6

This is a near picture-perfect send-up of the old “imaginary stories” in the Silver Age “Superman” comics — from the Sentry getting his secret identity revealed to the team-up of his greatest enemies to guest appearances from almost everyone imaginable to a couple of deaths and resurrections to an unusual amount of head-trippy weirdness that may or may not be in continuity. The entire story is so wild and weird, I’m not sure any actual discussion of the plot would make a lick of sense — which isn’t a bad thing in this case, it just means you’ve really got to get on board and enjoy the ride in person, instead of having me describe it to you.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Grand, whacked-out fun. Not sure if this is the last issue or if it’s going to continue — I hope it keeps going for a while, because Jeff Parker is really bringing the awesome home with this one.

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade #4

There seems to be a Kryptonite-powered cat kidnapping everyone at Supergirl’s school. The only students left are Supergirl, her popular Bizarro clone Belinda Zee, and her best friend, Lena Thorul, who is also Lex Luthor’s little sister. And when Supergirl accidentally reveals her secret identity, both Belinda and Lena hate her. Can they all work together to save their classmates?

Verdict: Another thumbs up. I love the artwork, I love the jokes, I love just about everything about this comic. It’s irritating that it only has another two issues left before the series is over — it’s certainly deserving of being a regular ongoing series.

She-Hulk #37

The Man-Elephant is back (snicker) and he’s gotten a lot more powerful — powerful enough to knock the She-Hulk around easy. Only thing is, it’s not She-Hulk, it’s her Skrull pal Jazinda in disguise. Where’s Shulkie? She’s getting bailed out of prison by Mallory Book, her old nemesis at Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, and having happy reunions with her old friends at the law firm. And it looks like she’s going to get her law license back again, so she’s leaving the bounty hunter biz. About time, too.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This title is about to be cancelled, so they’re trying to return things to the old status-quo as quickly as possible, so this is a somewhat clumsy switcheroo. However, I still enjoyed how it was done (and the very welcome reappearance of Mallory Book makes it clear that she was too good a character to be abandoned for so long). Not sure how many issues are left, but I’m looking forward to at least one more courtroom escapade before this title goes away.

Secret Six #6

Well, Ragdoll’s sister is the extremely twisted and creepy and mutilated and naked Junior. Eww. Ewww, ewww, ewww. The Six release Bane and, for whatever reason, don’t kill Junior, though they know she’s going to be gunning for them for as long as she can. After the team leaves, Jeanette tells her story — she’s a banshee, made immortal and attuned to death when she was a servant of the notorious Erszebet Bathory, medieval serial killer and vampire. We also learn that the Mad Hatter, a former member of the Secret Six, is now plotting nastily against them. And at a roadside rest stop, Deadshot makes some very, very surprising decisions.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not sure what I think of Jeanette’s weirdo origin story, but wow, Deadshot sure does drop a big reminder that these guys are all supposed to be villains, not superheroes. Can’t wait for the next issue.

The Age of the Sentry #5

Marvel’s tribute to Silver Age lunacy continues. In our first story, we visit the distant future as Sentry and the Guardians of the Galaxy (a weird combo of Marvel’s original Guardians of the Galaxy, DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes, and a bunch of modern-day characters with a futuristic retrofit). The team has been instructed to help assist a pregnant planet. A what?! Yeah, it makes no sense, but that’s the Silver Age for ya. In the second story, the Sentry’s life is manipulated by shadowy children, who send a robot Sentry to break up his date with Lindy Lee, and try to set him up with the Sentress. Finally, we discover the identity of the mysterious and half-glimpsed parent who’s been telling his son stories about the Sentry’s adventures.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Any story that includes the Boy Blob, the Interstellar Mailman, fruit-pie-loving hippies, and a stoned Dr. Strange has got to be worth reading.

Christmas is over for another year, there’s torn wrapping paper and spilled eggnog all over the house, and we still didn’t get what we really want (a pony), so it’s time to get right back to reviewing comics.

Captain Britain and MI:13 #8

Spitfire’s in pretty severe trouble, having been severely mangled, but Blade runs off Plotka with a sword made from pages from magical books, then shows Spitfire how to use her vampiric nature to heal herself. The government manages to capture one of the indestructible Mindless Ones, but is then stuck with a whole bunch of other Mindless Ones with no way to capture them, too — time to Run Away! Captain Britain is trying to figure out how to escape from a dreamworld that gives him illusions of whatever he wants — including illusions of ways out of the dreamworld. And the whole team gets betrayed by someone they never expected.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Blade’s Wordsword is pretty nifty (but, like he says, not much good in the rain). Heck, pretty much every page that has Blade or Spitfire is guaranteed awesome. The rest of the group hasn’t been too interesting lately…

The Age of the Sentry! #4

Cranio, the Man with the Tri-Level Mind, is up to his old tricks, stealing a time machine to unleash chronal chaos. The Sentry manages to capture him, but the mixups in the timestream has created a new version of the Sentry who operated during the 1940s. The new Sentry packs a gun and attacks beatniks, but he helps save the regular Sentry from his arch-foe, the Void. Eventually, they figure out how to send the Golden Age Sentry back to his own dimension. Later, the Sentry teams up with the Blonde Phantom, the new leader of the Avengers, as they try to track down a kidnapped rock band. This leads to another of the Sentry’s terrifying modern-day hallucinations. Will the two heroes be able to survive an attack by the Mole-Men? Will they get to rock out with the band at the end?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I love the Silver Age freakiness of this title, but I’ve started looking forward to the Sentry’s scary freakouts, where everything gets dark and nightmarish and bizarre. Did these adventures ever really happen? Are they all the Sentry’s hallucinations? Is it all a bedtime story told by bored parents? It’s head-trippy, and I love good mind games.

The Age of the Sentry #3

The Sentry meets up with the Mountain Man, a superpowered hillbilly! But putting the smackdown on the irritated irradiated inbred idjit isn’t the toughest challenge the Sentry will have to deal with. There’s also — GASP! — a shotgun wedding! Can the Sentry escape this baleful backwoods brouhaha? Meanwhile, in the backup story by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover, the Sentry and Millie the Model have to help a lovesick space monster named Manoo figure out how to win the love of a tentacled space-hottie.

Verdict: Thumbs up for Silver Age ROFLtastic fun.

Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel #1

And lo and behold, Marvel has cooked up another megapowerful but somehow forgotten superhero from the Silver Age, just like the Sentry. This one is the Blue Marvel, and the twist here is that when his mask gets ripped in the early 1960s, everyone finds out that the most powerful man on the planet… isn’t a white guy. Everyone freaks out, the Blue Marvel gets hounded by threats and hatred, and he’s finally persuaded to retire to quiet anonymity. But why is his nemesis now showing up in the modern-day Marvel Universe threatening to kill everyone?

Verdict: Thumbs up, so far. Interesting story, nice characters, decent twist, and a little reminder that, no, everything wasn’t actually perfect just ’cause it happened in the ’50s and ’60s. Hope the story doesn’t fall apart now that the twist is out of the bag.

The Age of the Sentry #2

I didn’t think I’d keep reading this, but dangit, when your cover features a giant monster called Ursus the Ultra Bear, I am helpless to resist.

We get a couple Silver-Age-style stories here — the first, in which the diabolical Cranio (The Man with the Tri-Level Mind) unleashes Ursus on the world, and the second where Marvel’s superheroes are mysteriously avoiding the Sentry, but what terrifying secret are they hiding?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good gravy, this is cool. Plot synopses alone cannot demonstrate how cool, amazing, and hilarious this is. Carol Danvers shows up as Sentry’s girl-sidekick, the Sentress, wearing an altered version of her Ms. Marvel costume. Truman Capote antagonizes the Sentry throughout most of the comic, reveals that he has a bear phobia, and flashes back to a scene from “To Kill a Mockingbird.” There’s a character named Harrison Oogar, the Caveman of Wall Street. The Sentry’s superpowered corgi Watchdog pees on a fire hydrant and blows it up. A teaser ad for a Sentry annual includes characters like Zombin Hood, Howie Lovecraft, and X-Rex: Reptile Ranger! It even has a moment of modern-day creepiness that works out fairly well. The whole thing was much fun.

1985 #6

The final issue of this series, set on an alternate, superhero-less Earth in 1985. Marvel’s supervillains have invaded, and Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, is preparing to, well, devour the world. Luckily, Toby has made it back from the Marvel Universe with all the superheroes in tow, and they make mincemeat of the bad guys. Toby and his dad rush off to the old Wyncham Mansion, where it’s revealed that the brain-damaged Clyde Wyncham was the planet’s lone mutant, able to breach dimensions, control minds, and even raise the dead. He’s the one who brought the villains here, and he’s been controlling them from the beginning. Toby’s dad tries to talk sense to Clyde, but will his efforts come too late?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Much better than I expected it to be, along with a nice, bittersweet ending.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Sketchbook

Looks like Marvel is going to be publishing a comic version of the classic fantasy. This is a promotional giveaway showing off Skottie Young’s artwork and designs for the characters. So there’s no plot, just some nice artwork.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Hey, it’s free! But the art is very nice, too. Looks like just the thing for fantasy-loving kids, and grown-up fans of the Oz books should also enjoy it.

The Age of the Sentry #1

This is the origin and early adventures of the Sentry, Marvel’s Superman clone, told in a retro, Silver Age style. We get some great little tidbits here and there — a super-powered corgi, a villain named Cranio, the Man with the Tri-Level Mind, who has three brains, the Mad Thinker disguising him as a beatnik movie director, and the Sentry beating the Devil in a fiddle-playing contest.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Kinda similar to Alan Moore’s “1963” series or the retro Mighty Man stories they used to put in the back of some “Savage Dragon” comics. Not real happy about this being an ongoing series — this is the type of thing that’s fun once in a while but gets really tiresome if it goes on for long…

Young X-Men #6

In the aftermath of the first storyline, the team comes to grips with Wolf Cub’s death, Ink’s betrayals, and the whole team getting completely suckered by Donald Pierce. Rockslide punches the holy living snot outta Cyclops, Blindfold leaves the team, everyone gets a few clues about Graymalkin’s origins (it appears that he’s one of Charles Xavier’s ancestors), and Anole returns to join the team.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Pretty good stuff, good characterizations, nicely escalating team tensions. Not real thrilled with Blindfold leaving, since she was one of the most interesting characters in the book, but I’m hoping she’ll be making a return before too long.

The Brave and the Bold #17

Obviously, in this issue, we’re getting a team-up between Supergirl and Raven. Supergirl has voices in her head from her father telling her to kill Superman, so she goes to Raven for mystical help getting rid of her father’s programming. Raven takes her to Azarath to learn how to meditate. Meanwhile, a young urban revolutionary has inherited superpowers from his mysterious vanished father, and he plans on killing a whole lot of people.

Verdict: Thumbs down. The art is… weird. Not bad, just weird. And dang it, I just cannot take Raven’s alter ego seriously. The quiet, emotionless empath from the old “New Teen Titans” comics now spends her non-superhero time as a barely-dressed, fetish-wear goth-punk? Next you’ll be telling me that DC brought Barry Allen back to life…

In the distant misty mists of prehistory, humanity was born with a burning thirst for both righteous violence and weekend maxxin’ and relaxxin’. But for millennia, none have known how to combine these twin desires. But now, we have the secret formula! We have… Friday Night Fights!

From “World War Hulk #5” by Greg Pak and John Romita, Jr., a series which was apparently designed with Friday Night Fights in mind: Hulk introduces the Sentry to his fist.

Umm, the Sentry really seems to be getting into the horrific and brutal Hulk-beating a bit too much. “Just once more”? Takes all kinds to make a world, but I just hope Hulk knows the safeword…