elnino14

I read a whole bunch (or 3) of Free Comic Book Day comics, they included GI Joe, Transformers Animated, Aliens, Predator, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and a Dark Horse sampler. I didn't care for any of them, the best of the bunch was the Aliens and Predator stuff. I'm not counting any of these. Continued Y: The Last Man with vol. 2 (Cycles). Dread is absolutely right, the beginnings of this series is setting it up to be one of the greatest series of all time. The book continues the consistently funny, intriguing, and thoughtful world imagined by Brian K. Vaughn. It's not as strong as the first book, but it's still one of the strongest books I've ever read. The focus of this book deals with constnatly conflicting ideas of a utopian society and the means towards creating that society along with ideas on the prison system, justice system, sexual morality, among others. If any flaws, I felt the conflict between the leader of the feminist militias and Yorick came too soon, the romance also budded too quickly. Although these "flaws" seem to have reasoning behind them, adding to the bigger picture. 9/10 The Incredible Hulk: Tempest Fugit. I never read Peter David's original run on the Incredible Hulk, this trade represented his return to the character, and it's a fun, but somewhat unsatisfying read. It feels like Millars run on the Wolverine and Spider-man, throwing Hulk into some giant, entertaining fights, with blockbuster action, sprinkled with some intellectualism. It's got a great first two acts doing this and a subplot of Bruce as a teenage youth, but the third act has the story implode on itself. Leaving a rather unsatisfying reveal and ending. The one-shot at the end of this TPB is excellent though. 7.5/10 Total: Comic books: 9 Trade paperbacks: 30 Daredevil by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson Volumes 1, 2, and 3; The Authority by Ellis/Hitch/Millar/Quietly Volumes 1 (Relentless) and 2 (Under New Management) and 3 (Transfer of Power); Batman: Year One; Batman: The Long Halloween; Planetary vol 1 (All Over the World and Other Stories), vol. 2 (The Fourth Man), and vol. 3 (Leaving the 20th Century), Planetary Crossing Worlds (The Crossover specials); Planetary 19-26; Batman: The Man Who Laughs; Frank Miller's Daredevil: The Man Without Fear; RONIN; JOKER; Deadpool #1; Punisher Max vol. 1-4; Penance: Relentless; Thunderbolts by Warren Ellis vol 1-2; Thunderbolts: Secret Invasion, Astonishing X-men Hardcovers volume 1 and 2, Daredevil: Born Again, Y: The Last Man vol. 1 and 2, The incredible Hulk: Tempest Fugit

So I finished a lot of big exams and a huge draft for my special project for my master's program and decided that I wanted to read something really good. So I started: Y: The Last Man vol. 1 (Unmanned). I really really like it. The first issue is absolutely excellent providing some background on all the major characters before the event. The first few issues after that is Vaughn doing a ton of world-building, introducing us to a world that's very different from before. I love how a lot of characters don't change a bunch, just some features are kind of stronger. Yorick is a lovey dovey dork, and afterwards he's more of a lovey dovey dork. The feminists become militias, etc... It's all got some really interesting political themes going on. It's a very plot driven book, and it's not a bad thing because the plot is so good. I can't wait to read more. 9/10 Total: Comic books: 9 Trade paperbacks: 28 Daredevil by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson Volumes 1, 2, and 3; The Authority by Ellis/Hitch/Millar/Quietly Volumes 1 (Relentless) and 2 (Under New Management) and 3 (Transfer of Power); Batman: Year One; Batman: The Long Halloween; Planetary vol 1 (All Over the World and Other Stories), vol. 2 (The Fourth Man), and vol. 3 (Leaving the 20th Century), Planetary Crossing Worlds (The Crossover specials); Planetary 19-26; Batman: The Man Who Laughs; Frank Miller's Daredevil: The Man Without Fear; RONIN; JOKER; Deadpool #1; Punisher Max vol. 1-4; Penance: Relentless; Thunderbolts by Warren Ellis vol 1-2; Thunderbolts: Secret Invasion, Astonishing X-men Hardcovers volume 1 and 2, Daredevil: Born Again, Y: The Last Man vol. 1

Episode 30-34: The Phoenix Saga (5-parter)... Since I'm not usually a fan of the x-men in space stories, I didn't like this all that much. Certainly there's a lot of good, but it's also got some huge pacing and balance problems. They throw in way too many characters in such a short time with none of them getting any real depth. The first episode sees the title characters trying to get into space to prevent something that they're completely unsure of, during this episode there's some real nice call-backs to the first episodes of the series and the attack on the mutant registration agency, but overall the episode is kind of dull and uninteresting as you're not sure what the purpose of any of it is. Eric the Red who is the villain of the piece for episodes 1 and 3 is just a terrible villain. Banshee makes an extended guest appearance, but doesn't come off any more than a boring older mutant married to Moira. Episode 2 is the highlight of the saga, as it plays up Jean's sacrifice, there's consequences to their actions, evil Xavier, and the whole team is imploding emotionally. It's easily the best episode of the saga, and it has very little to do with Phoenix. Episode 3 is a mess of a diversion, and Xavier's actions are the best part of this, as he really thinks he's going crazy at points. Gladiator's introduction also screams epic. Juggs is hilarious and makes a good guest here. Episode 4 and 5 for all it's craziness and adding in tons and tons of characters and for all its faults, it gets the epic space saga mood right. It feels like an epic space saga with universe wide consequences. Tons of guest appearances help add weight to the situation. Again the villain is rather unintersting and stereotypical and Phoenix honestly doesn't strike me as any more interesting than Jean was. But it's got some fun stuff in it but it's all very flawed. 7/10

Well it looks cool and at least now I know I can skip the pilot because I think I just got a 3 minute summary of it.

Holy Shit...Baron Samedi is in this movie.

Episode 28-29: Out of the Past Parts 1 and 2 Season 3 begins with a hell of a two parter with some much updated animation. The animation looks beautiful in this two parter and the best the series has looked, replacing the more rough choppy animation of season 1 and 2. I don't know if this stays, but it certainly looks good. The first episode in this two parter, focuses mostly on Wolverine and Deathstrike rivalry, it exposes just a little bit more about Wolverine's past that we got a ton of glimpses of in Season 2 one-shots. It's a good episode, it drags a bit, as some of the stuff, like the Weapon X experiment, is repeated from before, but it still presents an interesting villain and rivalry. The second episode is a very strange change of tone, as it focuses on this green alien monster sucking the life out of people. The two episodes don't flow together as well as they should, with the Deathstrike/Wolverine interaction really linking up the two episodes. Also there's a lot of time spent setting up, it can be a drag especially if you're like me and you don't care for the Morlocks too much. There's a lot of good stuff here too, with some little quiet scenes of some of the X-men outside of their super-hero duties, I actually liked those the best. The action between the Marauders and the Wolverine led team is quite fun and overall this episode adds some depth to Wolverine as someone who really wants to do penance, as he takes care of friend, Jubilee, enemy, Deathstrike, and strangers protecting them all from danger. 8/10 Next up is the 90's animated take on the Phoenix Saga.

Anybody give me a quick review of this just trying to figure out if I want it or not? Eternals by Gaiman

Fanfic Theatre Episode 5 1 Year Sitcom: Working on Channel Awesome A couple new videos as That Guy With Glasses. Fanfic Theatre was ok, while the 1 Year Sitcom was absolutely terrible. Easily the most unfunny, disappointing video I've seen on the site.

Yeah a lot of people on this forum seem to like him the most. I'm just an exception.

It was backwards for me in terms of That Guy With the Glasses this week, I didn't like Nostalgia Chick or Critic, but I really liked Linkara (who I never find that funny) this week. Hmm...

Backlash 09: Jack Swagger vs. Christian: This is a great opener right here and probably the best match I’ve seen out of swagger thus far. Swagger cocky and arrogant as ever, is focused on the midsection for most of the match, and while he slows down the match on a long heel heat segment, it’s never boring. The crowd is freaking huge into Christian, hanging on every nearfall, on every comeback, and frankly it seems like Chrisitan has gotten even better as a wrestler while he was away. He played the face well, not taking any smack talk from Swagger, and keeping his comebacks varied. Although he never really showed off his moveset here as he was on the receiving end, it looks like it’s expanded a tiny bit. The crowd tried to push a veteran vs. rookie story, but I’m not entirely buying that. *** ¼ Kazoo reunion (not quite): This was perfect for a reunion of the now crazy evil Edge and the face Christian, they hinted at past times together and the reasons for the change in Edge. Only thing I thought was kind of strange was that, Christian had problems with Cena just like Edge does. Remember that great feud that the company never got behind, yeah. Chris Jericho vs. Ricky Steamboat: One of the most surprising matches from Mania gets a rematch here. And it’s just as good as the one at Mania, it’s a really fun match with Jericho at his slimiest best here and Ricky Steamboat as the all-around good guy Legend. That’s all there is to it, it’s just Jericho and Steamboat going at it, with Jericho wanting to snuff out the Legends, and really that’s all you need. Jericho panders to the crowd like the cocky little shit he is whenever he’s got one up on Steamboat, and Steamboat pulls out all the old tricks. It’s a fun little back and forth, some parts look icky like the Figure-four, but they’re few and far between. Steamboat has some of the best pure wrestling around. ** ½ Kane vs. CM Punk: Another surprisingly good match, things are definitely looing up for this PPV. Although the crowd wasn’t nearly as into it and not into CM Punk at all, the two wrestlers had a solid match with some really good back and forth throughout. They had solid body part psychology that helped tell the story of Punk trying to avoid the Chokesalm, he can take Kane standing, but after this match and the Mania match, it really put over Kane’s chokeslam as something deadly to Punk. Punk took a page out of the Benoit book, by mainly going after Kane’s arm, in order to take that weapon away. Kane looked solid as well, they pulled off some really surprising reversals, and the whole match went off without a hitch, I thought. It’s unfortunate that Punk isn’t over but he’s not going to get over, if they keep treating him like a jobber. *** Matt Hardy vs. Jeff Hardy: Did the Hardy curse continue? These two have never had good matches against each other and….this was no different. Certainly it wasn’t a bad match, it just wasn’t very good, on par with the Mania match. The chemistry between the two brothers as opponents just simply isn’t there. They whole match played out goofy, and they tried to play most of the match straight, using a ton of submissions, but it never worked. The ending, while unique, was dreadful and was the exact opposite of a hot finish. It seems like I Quit matches have always ended coldly, especially recently, nothing has ever reached the first I quit match with Austin and Bret. ** Randy Orton Promo: What a great promo by Orton, playing off of the history between HHH and Batista, and trying to promote dissent amongst HHH’s team. Khali Kiss Cam: Most of this is a bore. Not a big fan of this whole Santina angle. The best part of this segment was JR and the announce crew. They’re absolutely awesome here and JR actually looks kind of pissed, like he really didn’t know this was what was going to happen. It picked up when Beth came out. The stand off between Beth Phoenix and Khali was pretty cool and the aftermath was at least chuckle worthy. Legacy vs. Team Hunter: This match was miles above the disastrous Mania main event and very much the preferred match in terms of quality. The build for this match and the match stipulations are wonky, but the booking of the match itself was so much better. The crowd was really on fire all night, so they helped a ton with this match here, it made all the hot tags better, the face in peril segments better, and honestly you can’t really work the Southern tag style, which is pretty much what they did here, unless you have a hot crowd. It was nice seeing Hunter so helpless and desperate, while Batista and Shane were out there practically defending his title. The only thing I didn’t like was Randy Orton disappearing for the beginning of the match, mainly because the two on three portion fell flat. But Orton’s return and subsequent attack on Batista got a rise out of the crowd. Also the pacing was off, in terms of the face in peril segments, they sometimes felt they went on way too long. But that ending really was incredibly well done bringing in the spirit of chaos, breaking down, and making the match exciting. *** Edge vs. Cena: What a tremendous match and one that really lived up to the main event marquee. Honestly I’m not a huge fan of Last Man Standing matches, and the only one I’ve really enjoyed has been the one between Jericho and HHH, but this one was rather good. Usually these matches have a lot of big spot, lay down, big spot lay down, and it gets monotonous quickly, and while at times I felt that here, they eased into a pace that wasn’t too slow and really worked in the emotional aspects of the match. They played off of the history very well, making the two men evenly matched, knowledgeable opponents. They played off the “I always get up” idea with Edge throwing everything and the kitchen sink, but John Cena still getting up. There’s a lot of emotion here, with Edge really trying to prove himself, show that he is just as tough as Cena. Edge’s desperation is also apparent, as it’s the only time weapons are really involved (outside of the stairs), and Edge resorts to using them. But the end of the match really sucked as it was kind of inconclusive. It left this wide open, they both proved that they are super tough, and Cena was down not due to anything Edge did but due to something Show did. Crappy interference ending to a rather great match. *** ¾ Top WWE PPV Matches of 09: 1. HBK vs. Undertaker (Mania 25) - **** ¾ 2. Raw Elimination Chamber (No Way Out 09) - **** ¼ 3. Edge vs. Cena (Backlash 09) - *** ¾ 4. Smackdown Elimination Chamber (No Way Out 09) - *** ½ 5. MITB (Mania 25) - *** ½ 6. Christian vs. Jack Swagger (Backlash) - *** ¼ 7. Jeff Hardy vs. Edge (Royal Rumble 09) - *** 8. CM Punk vs. Kane (Backlash) - *** 9. Royal Rumble (Royal Rumble 09) - *** 10. Edge vs. Big Show vs. John Cena (Mania 25) -*** 11. Shane McMahon vs. Randy Orton (No Way Out 09) - ***

Episode 26-27: Reunion Parts 1 and 2 – Finished season 2, and it didn't end off on the bang that I hoped for. After all this build for the Savage Land, the 2 part finale was kind of flat to be honest. It was missing a sense of spark, and actually the stakes weren't nearly as high as they were in Season 1's finale. The first part plays out like an ultra-long set-up for the better episode 2. Episode 2 is all over the place, with the X-men landing in a trap, Wolvie splitting up, meeting Kazar, and returning on a rescue mission. It's all kind of meh. These episodes do some things right, it's does supply a satisfying end to many of the season long arcs, the Gambit and Rogue romance finally comes to a head, Morph's struggles reach a conclusion, and Magneto and Xavier have a great send-off from their season long team. While the good stuff is there, it just didn't come together as well as it should havein this two part finale. 7/10 7

I personally thought it was rather average, way too much focus on rehashed jokes and getting in as many people as they could. When all honestly, nobody watches the all. I thought they were trying way too be hard to be funny, but I have to be honest I did laugh a couple of times. As for who I watch: AVGN, The Critic, Nostalgia Chick, Spoony, and Lee (from Still Gaming). And sometimes: Marzgurl (I liked the History of Animation bit). So I was kind of lost on who many of the other people were.

Uhhh... I don't get it

Five episodes today: Episode 20: X-ternally Yours – 5.5 This is a Gambit centered episode, and honestly, I'm under the impression the less I know about him the better. It's not that Gambit is a crappy character, but his character thrives off his mysteriousness, his coolness, and this kind of pulls the shade back showing us how dull and uninteresting his past really is. This time around the theme is gang warfare, and the absolute pointlessness of gang violence. Overall, while I like Gambit as a supporting character, I didn't care for this highlighted appearance. Episode 21-22: Time Fugitives Parts 1 and 2 – 7 The return of Bishop and Cable may cause some automatic groans with others, but to me this was a somewhat confusing but sufficient episode. It pits the two time-travelers against each other in a race to save two futures. It was a great idea of seeing the episode once with just Bishop there messing with the past, and then seeing it again with Cable but it didn't work out quite well in execution. While the second episode increased the tension a ton, it was also a bit harder to watch just because you're re watching scenes, with little changes, that you only just watched recently. Still, I think this is the end of the time-travelling episodes. Episode 23: Rogues Tale – 7 While Gambit's past is better left uncovered, they really beefed up Rogues angsty past and it worked. It shows the constant conflict of Rogue and why Rogue has been so defensive all these years. This is also one of the first episodes to include people outside of the X-universe, with the inclusion of Ms. Marvel. The episode plays off of the inner conflict of Rogue and while sometimes the episode has a tendency to be over-melodramatic, it still interesting to see Rogue's struggle within herself, and in terms of her parental figures. We also get another glimpse of Mr. Sinister and his large machinations all season long. Episode 24: Beauty and The Best – 9.5 The final episode highlighting a single X-team member in a season full of them, this time around it's Beast who gets the spotlight. This is a really good episode, it shows how the most intelligent X-man deals with his life, deals with love, and how it's all foiled by bigotry and exclusion. I really like Beast here, it shows the strength of his character, and at times the beast inside of him when his girl is threatened. The Friends of Humanity arc comes to a close here with the reveal that Creed is actually the son of a mutant, driving him mad with terror and anger, and as a result driving out any charismatic power he once had. At times the music is too over the top trying to make the scene way too melodramatic, and the relationship between Beast and the blind girl isn't executed to it's fulled, but it's still an excellent episode overall if not one of the best in terms of pacing, story, characters, thematic relevance, and action. Episode 25: MojoVision – 2 You know how I thought whatever it takes might be the worst episode of the series, I was wrong this takes up that mantlepiece. I hate this episode, I hate MOJO, and it just sucked all around. It's boring, and it spends wayy too much time with Mojo, there's literally no depth here. Outside of the inspired pairing of Wolverine and Jean, showing how much Wolverine still cares for her, the quick catch-up with Xavier and Magneto's treks through the Savage Land, and the Punisher cameo, it sucks. It's just boring, unexciting, the fight sequences suck, it takes way too long to get going, Mojo has so much dialogue that doesn't really mean anything. If you come across this episode just fast forward through most of it to catch up on Xavier and Magneto's journey, or outright skip it and you won't miss too much. Next up the two part finale.

I watched Voices of a Distant Star, it's just a really great film. And yet it's 30 minutes and I feel entirely satisfied. I usually dislike most anime, but this was really good. It's a simple and complete story, it makes sense, and it doesn't take 2 hours to get going like most series do. I would suggest anybody to go watch it.

The next two episodes were some of the best episodes of the Season, and one possibly the best episode of the series. Go figure that they're both Wolvie-centric. Episode 17: Red Dawn This marks the return of Colossus and the first and only appearance of Omega Red, it's not quite as good as I remember it. But still an excellent episode overall. The episode is kind of dated as it has a lot to do with the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and Omega Red's desire to put the Union back together, to create an empire. It's really pretty cool with some showing of the differences between extreme patriotism of Omega Red, and the less-patriotic but more caring for his people, Colossus. Wolverine and Omega Red have some history and thus it adds to mythology of Wolverine a bit more. Even though there is some great team work, the rest of the X-men fall to the wayside a bit, letting Colossus, Wolverine, and Jubilee take center stage. Jubilee is pretty ecstatic in this episode, she kind of takes in everything with naive eyes, but when she gets to Colossus country she realizes the gravity of the situation. It's pretty interesting seeing her reactions here. Omega Red is a really cool one-off villain, he's got a really interesting look, a really good voice, and some pretty cool powers. Overall a really good episode that while is still divergent from the main themes, provides some other interesting themes as well. 9 Episode 18: Repo Man Another Wolvie-centric episode, this time looking more into the history of Wolverine. This is probably one of the best episodes of the series. It's classic Wolverine. This time his history with Alpha Flight and the Weapon X program come back to haunt him. There's a ton of flashbacks here showing him how he got his adamantium claws, how he lived as an animal, how he was domesticated, and then welcomed into a family. It builds a lot of suspense because Wolvie has history with these people, and there's a lot of built-in emotion in that. Ultimately you find out, Wolverine left because he didn't want to be a weapon anymore, he didn't want to be an experiment anymore, and Department H had been using him for that purpose, not because they cared about him. Vindicator and the General play the villains, the General having evil intentions in the whole situation, Vindicator feeling more slighted and betrayed. It's interesting because that's exactly how Wolverine feels, that's exactly how Alpha Flight feels, it's just a room full of feelings of betrayl. Anyways great episode that deals with the thin line between government weapon and team community. Also there are a couple of glimpses to the ongoing journey of Professor X and Magneto through the Savage Land. Some interesting things pop up in this episode, with them finding the island is inhabit by Mutates, and Mutates were created by Magneto and it builds a bit more intrigue as we now know Magneto may know more than he has let on, builds a little bit more distrust between Xavier and Magneto. 9.5

Started Season 2 of the show, Episode 14-15: Til Death Do Us Part – 7.5 These first two episodes were pretty cool. The opening sequence with Wolverine is awesome as he fights in the Danger Room while Cyclops and Jean are getting married. I loved the whole evil Morph deal. It kind of flips the whole revenge story, as Morph has a legitimate gripe with Cyclops and the X-men team, yet he's still portrayed as a villain. It was an awesome story with Morph playing all the X-men against each other, but he himself is being played by Mr. Sinister. Also another piece of the season 2 arc appears with the Friend of Humanity making their first appearances here. They are a great foil to the X-men, and a good representation of the basic theme of the X-men. Their attempts at trying to turn the US general public back against the X-men were great in this episode. Although there was a lot of good stuff here, I thought Mr. Sinister was really out of place, his whole plan is unclear and his lackeys kind of suck. After reading Peter David's X-factor visionaries I understand that his lackeys and at times, Sinister himself were foils for the X-factor team and since that book was pretty much a comedy book, those characters didn't translate over well here. The conclusion also was inconclusive, and felt too wide open. I understand this is serialized storytelling but nothing is really solved at all here. Episode 16: Whatever it takes – 5 This episode is dull. It's mainly about Storm and the Shadow King. Shadow King's character makes no sense here, and they reference Storm's past with the Shadow King and it also makes no sense. There's also a ton of references to Professor Xavier's battles with the Shadow King. But nothing really gets explanation. Storm is all about leadership, self-sacrifice, and being motherly and all three of those characteristics get shown here in spades, but overall the episode isn't all that interesting. The subplot is much more interesting with Wolverine tracking down Morph, trying to convince him to come back, and it's a bit more conclusive. Morph isn't coming back. These are the best scenes of the episode and no, it's not because Morph turns into Deadpool at one point. It's mainly because it shows more of Wolverine's character, how he's haunted by his past, and how Morph manipulates Wolverine with his abilities. But overall, it's a dull episode as it mostly focuses on the Storm story with her son.

Oh I don't disagree with you, she can be a good actress, but her playing Storm obviously wasn't the right circumstances 3 times in a row. Maybe it has to do with the character being so shallow, but nonetheless, she didn't set the world on fire as Storm even when she was given more to do in the last two films. So I still stand by my original statement Halle Berry sucked as Storm, she was basically sleep-walking through the movies.

FIXED Haven't seen the Wolvie movie because I had too much stuff going on this weekend, will try to go see it next weekend.

I've just noticed TFAW's crazy sales... So I wanted to see what people had to say about a few books in general, and if you've read or are reading a series can you tell me which arcs of TPBs are the best: The Boys by Garth Ennis Cable and Deadpool Earth X - by Alex Ross the original 12 issue maxi series Identity Crisis JLA by Grant Morrison JLA - Tower of Babel Human Target Marvels Ultimate X-men by Brian K Vaughn (I wasn't a huge fan of Millar's run, there were some parts that were ok, but I just couldn't get into it overall. I really liked Bendis' short run, but right around early Vaughn is when I stopped trying)...

Holy shit, I just came across this. There's a ton of books that are way cheap. If I didn't just buy 8 tpbs of Y the last man on E-bay, I'd be all over this.

Daredevil: Born Again - This year I wanted to go through all of Frank Miller's Daredevil runs. So far, overall, I've really liked his Daredevil stuff. A lot of the stuff in the original run is really excellent (the issue where Elektra dies, and the Russian Roullete issue being the two best). This is the last thing I had left to read in terms of Miller's Daredevil, I saved it for last because it's considered the best of Daredevil ever. Ultimately I really liked it. It's got classic all over it. Sure the art is really no-nonsense, splattered with some unbelievable imagery with tons of great characterizations and close up, but not quite as beautiful as The Man Without Fear. The story really is the seminal Daredevil story, if you only read once in your life you should read this. Daredevils descent, Daredevil being put through the ringer, it's all really some of the best work of Frank Miller. Is it as good as Dark Knight Returns? No, not really. But through it all, reading all of Miller's Daredevil work from the 80's, to this Born Again piece, I can see him get better and better. This is a really amazing story. Although for some reason, I expected the religious aspect to be more overt, and the last two issues with Murdock on his path to redemption, Miller resorts back to the archetypal superheros and supervillains which was anti-climactic especially after his total deconstruction of Matt Murdock. 9.5/10 Astonishing X-men by Joss Whedon: Speaking of Archetypal superhero stories, that's pretty much what Whedon gave us here. I'm an unabashed fan of Buffy and Angel (With Angel topping Buffy for some reason), so naturally I'd be interested in his run in X-men. It really is just a great X-men story, and I really hate space stories, which is what this eventually turns into. Kitty gets a lot of page time here, she's our main character for this run, we are reintroduced to the X-men through her perspective, and she plays a huge part of every story arc. The writing is top notch, Joss Whedon really excels at the little character moments, making them really important. The story has its ups and downs, but it all ties up nice in the end. Although at times I think this is pretty accessible to new readers, there's a ton of references to Grant Morrison's run, and I think a good knowledge on what Grant Morrison did is important to understanding these references, if not the entire third arc. Near the end, during the fourth arc, I thought it got a bit weaker, maybe it's because I don't like space stories but it just wasn't as poignant, even though it really tried to be. Cassady is excellent and one of the best artists around, his work here is excellent, except in the fourth arc where I had a hard time telling the aliens apart, and I had a hard time understand what was going on in some panels. But in the earlier issues, his work is excellent with Joss not putting any writing at times and letting the pictures speak for themselves. In terms of the overall, like I said it's probably the Best X-men story since Grant Morrison (and even I didn't love it especially because the quality dropped the more you read) and rightfully so, because in some ways these books are Morrison's spiritual successor. Even if you have a passing interest, you should probably pick this up! 9/10. Total: Comic books: 9 Trade paperbacks: 27 Daredevil by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson Volumes 1, 2, and 3; The Authority by Ellis/Hitch/Millar/Quietly Volumes 1 (Relentless) and 2 (Under New Management) and 3 (Transfer of Power); Batman: Year One; Batman: The Long Halloween; Planetary vol 1 (All Over the World and Other Stories), vol. 2 (The Fourth Man), and vol. 3 (Leaving the 20th Century), Planetary Crossing Worlds (The Crossover specials); Planetary 19-26; Batman: The Man Who Laughs; Frank Miller's Daredevil: The Man Without Fear; RONIN; JOKER; Deadpool #1; Punisher Max vol. 1-4; Penance: Relentless; Thunderbolts by Warren Ellis vol 1-2; Thunderbolts: Secret Invasion, Astonishing X-men Hardcovers volume 1 and 2, Daredevil: Born Again

I'll be taking exams from 9-4 so, yeah.