Incredible Hulk #610

Skaar's a good kid, really. He just wants to be loved.

It's to my eternal shame that I haven't done an Amadeus Cho strip yet - Incredible Hercules had one of my favorite running plotlines over the last couple years, and Cho is easily my favorite new Marvel hero since the Runaways. I tried to follow Pak and/or Van Lente (are they different people?) over to Incredible Hulk when that started back up, and I was very interested in the idea of Banner training Skaar to take out the Hulk when he came back, but once Betty and MODOK and Red Hulk and Leader and all that nonsense started getting involved, I just couldn't take it anymore. The last thing I remember is all the other heroes Hulking out, and luckily, I don't seem to have missed much between there and here. Hopefully we can get back to the good stuff now that the ol' green meanie is back.

Oh, and if I don't get a comprehensive and thoroughly believable explanation for why Thunderbolt Ross' mustache disappears when he transforms, I will be mailing Marvel an animal corpse of some kind.

Age of Heroes #2

My roommate was a big fan of the original Young Avengers series, and was categorically opposed to their Dark Reign mini because it largely ignored them in favor of a new set of Young Avengers - now called, apparently, the Young Masters. I had no such compunctions, and I actually found some of the newbies pretty interesting, especially the superhero-as-modern-artist Coat of Arms.

Even if it doesn't seem to be leading into any new story in particular, I was glad for the two pages they got in Heroic Age: Age of Heroes: Heroes of the Heroic Age Heroically Aging #2: Age Harder. It suggests that Marvel's not done with the group just yet, and it's a nice refresher for those of us who didn't pay a huge amount of attention to them initially - I for one had forgotten all about this whole "Invisible Mansion" business.

I love that there's both an Infinite Mansion and an Invisible Mansion operating in this universe at the same time. They should get their own team-up book.

X-Men: Second Coming

Okay, maybe I'm not about to quit it cold turkey, but this whole impending X-Men vampire thing is severely underwhelming in light of Second Coming being hands-down the most well-executed, exciting, engrossing major crossover I've read in maybe ever.

Even as someone who's been largely cool with the handling of the Avengers' whole Disassembled-Civil War-Siege story arc, I'm really starting to wish they'd do more crossovers in the format of Second Coming. The Marvel solicits for September came out the other day, and there are like forty-six different Shadowland tie-ins, some featuring - not involving, featuring - characters I'm barely even aware of. I've been reading Daredevil forever and I'm excited to see how far they're going to go, but how much tighter would it be if it bounced around between DD, ASM, and Thunderbolts for a few months instead of being one major miniseries and a crapload of tangential stuff?

Back in the 90s, they would start and finish something like Age of Apocalypse or Onslaught with a big, crazy one-shot, but the story itself had a distinct place in the arcs of the ongoing series; I don't know why they don't do that anymore. Obviously there's more money to be made in doing a major storyline entirely in several limited titles, and I can't exactly say I'm surprised that they'd go that route...so maybe what should really surprise me is the fact that Second Coming isn't being done that way. Which just makes me appreciate it all the more.

Astonishing X-Men - Xenogenesis #2

...you know, I think this one speaks for itself. Amusing behind-the-scenes note: while contemplating ways to make Emma Frost visually distinct beyond just her blonde hair, I briefly considered the logistics of giving a stick figure giant breasts. Needless to say, I decided against it.

Also needless to say, this whole "Ghost Box radiation" thing would be a lot more interesting if I could remember the ending of the original Ghost Box story. Did it end? The last I remember, they were going to see Forge. Maybe I missed an issue, but it's hard to tell when it comes out as intermittently as Astonishing.

Daredevil #507

On pain of making a second reference to Power Rangers - isn't this whole thing where Hand ninja disappear when you kill them just an edgier version of those generic bad guys that you kick in the chest and they vanish? In both cases, it's really just a sanitized, feel-good way of killing an enemy. Daredevil, or the Power Rangers, don't seem to be murdering people, because there are no messy corpses lying around (though there are bound to be some leftovers), but the truth is that the heroes are violently ending these beings' existence.

Granted, they do make a show of DD trying not to kill any Hand when he can help it, but that compunction is quickly tossed aside when things get rough. If DD threw a hunk of ice at a Hell's Kitchen mugger's forehead and impaled him, it'd be a huge freakin' deal - Spidey and Luke Cage would be hunting him down that night. But magical exploding ninjas? Whatever.

Tuna Fish

It happens, folks - freakish confluence of many real-world responsibilities and not many interesting new comics this past week. Avengers Academy is out this week, so you can probably look forward to something at Reptil's expense next time.

Invincible #72

From what I understand, readers of Invincible have been positively clamoring for the return of his yellow costume. I mean, if you looked up "clamoring" in the dictionary you'd see a picture of an Invincible reader with an angry sign. Me, I haven't minded.

But what I wonder, now that the yellow is back, is whether Kirkman really intended to do it all along, or if he caved to fan pressure. The latter would be perfectly understandable, especially with something as trivial as a costume design, but it would make the scene with Art in Invincible Returns look kind of disingenuous, wouldn't it? Mark going on about how angry and violent he's become, just as an in-universe excuse for the design switch, rather than as an indication of where the character is actually headed? That was only two months ago, and things certainly don't seem poised to become any less violent anytime soon.

Thunderbolts #144

Okay, so maybe I went for the easy laugh, but people are way too cavalier about this whole jumping-out-of-the-plane business. We're constantly hearing about missiles from US craft that miss their targets even with trained operators, guidance systems, and so on, but any supe who can theoretically withstand the strain of jumping out of a plane seems to also come with the magical ability to hit his exact target every time.

And even if I felt generous enough to grant Luke Cage the impeccable aim - he flings his little duffel bag out by itself rather than just holding onto it for five seconds! Okay, he's got those armband things or whatever, but how does the bag get through the shield? And how does Ghost's helmet not end up in a billion pieces, and/or embedded in some con's skull?

Movin' On Up

It's true, boys and girls! After toiling in obscurity for almost 9 weeks, Half-Assed Commitment is now located at www.half-assed.com, which I cannot believe I got. Even the comic itself doesn't know what to make of it. Yes, it's a brave new world for HAC and its readers, and I'm sure both of you are very excited.

Back to our regularly scheduled Half-Assery in two days!