This Week's Comic Stack 6/16/10

The Good:

• Brightest Day #4- The Hawks stepped through the Door O' Bones onto... Pandora from Avatar?[floating rocks], Deadman met up with Dove and Hawk, some Atlantean types attacked, Robbie Raymond was attacked by a "Ghenna" made of salt while Jason Rauch slept and a Firestorm atomic power symbol emanating from his head, and the new Aqualad appeared, although powerless.



• DC Universe: Legacies #2- Len Wein continued to examine the history of the DCU. This time it was the late 40's and early 50's. As the JSA made it through the war and ended up forced into retirement by the HUAC. In the secondary feature Wein looked at the Seven Soldiers of Victory. JH Williams III did something real unique with the art. He drew each member of the Soldiers slightly different, as if they were done by different artists. This played into the old formula in SA/GA teams and team-ups of the group splitting up for mini adventures then reuniting for a climax. Although here each was only for a half page.



• The Lone Ranger #22- This was an incredible issue. I admit, mainly because of the hint at the future of a certain character named after a verdant insect. The plot picked up after last issues bleak looking ending and provided a satisfactory resolution of that cliffhanger, yet still had a continuation of the bigger story.


• Birds Of Prey #2- The Birds were set up by the White Canary and a mystery person. Dinah was framed for murder and her ID made public (Max Lord again?) than lured to fight White Canary while the police arrived. The BoP joined by Hawk and Dove are forced to fight the cops to avoid arrest. Oracle prepares to enter cyberspace to find out how Dinah was framed and how. It's interesting that in Brightest Day DC will have TWO "outlaw" superteams.


• R.E.B.E.L.S. #17- I missed the last issue so I was catching up while reading this one. Blackfire (Starfire's evil sister) regained her lost powers and her Tameranian forces attacked Rann. So in this issue the conflict raged on Rann while the sisters fought each other. The new rookie Vegan sector GLs showed up to end the battle, but make matters worse almost creating a temporary alliance against them. Luckily, a Thanagarian fleet showed up carrying Vril Dox who was negotiating a formal end to the Rann/Thanagar conflict. Rann, Thanagar and the displaced Tamaranians all came to an agreement. The Tamaranians will colonize the southern contident of Rann. The rookie Lanterns happily reported the cessation of hostilities to Salaak, who chided them for allowing Dox to undermine the Corps authority and mission.


• New Mutants #14- The eleventh part of Second Coming, this issue really nailed the desperation of the X-Men and their Utopia. Cyclops gave a Jack Shepard "Live together, die alone" speech to all the mutants on the island. Hope and Rogue prepared to do... something bad ass. The frequency between waves of Nimrods increased, Colossus was overwhelmed and had his arm broken. Xavier aided his son Legion in wrangling all his personalities and their powers to come to the rescue. Meanwhile in the future X-Force's mission was proceeding well until another Master Mold Sentinel activated. The book ended with a weakened Magneto summoning up his strength to go into battle.

The Alright:

• Age Of Heroes #2- This second issue featured: Gravity battling Warhead (the Radioactive Man's "child") an okay intro to Young Allies; A new(?) American Son battling a generic monster with a Spidey cameo; A pointless Young Masters two page story; and the best story...a one page Gauntlet piece that had him answering another serviceman's question as to why he chose to come to Afghanistan if Steve Rogers offered him a spot on the Avengers.


• Atlas #2- This issue was a "getting to know each other" issue as 3-D Man and Atlas shared their histories thanks to The Uranian's telepathy uncovering some mysterious discrepancies. They did go to Iceland (to stop that pesky volcano) for some action. 3-D Man had a cryptic remark to The Uranian as his vision revealed something that he has been hiding from the others (exactly what, wasn't shown). The backup flashback story was a midly interesting "zombie" story.