you happy puppets

drive-by readings

Deadpool Team-Up #890 (Marvel) James Asmus Micah Gunnell Rob Stull John Rauch Jeff Eckleberry Humberto Ramos/Edgar Delgado (cover)

what we learned: insurance salesman Machine Man (ahaha) stakes a claim to Deadpool for all the property damage he's caused through the years (ahahaha). however, same insurance company is currently held hostaged by disenfranchised customer Puppet Master, who has an axe to grind (or clay to mold) because of greedy corporate executives.
oh shit moment: Puppet Master ends up getting tossed outside the window, which eerily mirrors how the damn fat cats think about us common Joes.
what's next: hey, editor: several words that rhyme with Gorilla: Sarsaparilla, Pancho Villa, Umbrella.


yes, Mr. Masters, just like yours.

viva Zapata!

drive-by readings

Deadpool Team Up #898 (Marvel) "Bring Me The Head of Mickey Dobbs" Mike Benson Carlo Barberi Juan Vlasco Marte Gracia Joe Sabino Humberto Ramos/Edgard Delgado (cover)

hate to use a cliche, but if you really have to read one book this month, well ... this is it.

ok, that may be too much praise, but very few books keep me really entertained these days, and those that barely do the job, i try to make fun of. am surprised considering Deadpool has turned into the new Wolverine (rivaling him for most appearances in the Marvel U every month), that a revived 'Pool series with the issue number counting down would be a lot more interesting that any regular 'Pool ongoing series.

the #899 opener written by Fred Van Lente was funny, but this second, by Mike Benson, is really hilarious. combining the irreverent hitmen-slash-luchadores the Zapata Brothers (from his solid Moon Knight-in-Mexico run) with immortal-assassin-slash-buffoon Deadpool ... well, the possibilities are endless. Deadpool takes a job off another hitman who tries to whack him - deliver a head to certain people for eight figures (we keep forgetting the 'mercenary' part of 'Pool as he's been a fixture in the Marvel U for awhile now - battling aliens, fighting with Spiderman & the Punisher, hanging with Cable and the X-Men, etc.). the Zapata Brothers take his bounty but run afoul of their subcontractors. 'Pool tracks the Brothers down, and what do you know? turns out they run the Mexican branch of the Deadpool Fans Club! and this only means one thing .... TEAM-UP!

Benson hits nice touches with the smartass Zapata Brothers that resonate with me like iPhone vs Blackberry debates and their musical tastes. (i love Oingo Boingo, and i love the Pet Shop Boys up to circa Behavior, ok? so sue me.) its quite fitting that characters can be created out of modern luchadores (thank you, Jack Black) that cater well to the Facebook and Twitter crowd (and they even talk like them, with the educated Latin American twinge, minus the hellish frequency of the "like" expression and the upward inflection). and the look on their faces when 'Pool reveals that they whacked their idol with a shovel - precious. and the funny lines aren't forced at all and play with the fourth-wall-breaking thing ("i got a Bowen Bust of your head!").

now, now, before Joe Quesada or Dan Buckley reads this (chances: nil and nada, and nil just left town), let's not go crazy and clamor for a Zapata Brothers solo series. that might be a good idea in the short term, but would water down the characters and burn everybody out, especially in the hands of some writer who won't hit the right notes. i prefer to read them from time to time, OR maybe in a consistent team up with Deadpool, since they got the chemistry going already. but if they are gonna do this, can we please have Humberto Ramos doing the interiors too?

you hit like a girl! #5

hey, its been a while since we had one of these. we gotta change that!

in this episode, we rely on an young reliable: X-23 (and an old one: Yuriko, a.k.a. Lady Deathstrike). this fight scene appears in the pages of New X-Men #45, right in the middle of the Messiah CompleX crossover.

was there any doubt that Deathstrike's time has passed? (i guess this means Kelly Hu won't be invited back for reappearances any time soon)

X-23 is proving herself to be quite the worthy successor to Wolverine in case he hangs up the claws. if you don't believe that statement, here's a couple of scenes from the latest slobberknocker between the X-Men and the Marauders (and X-23 is part of the dirty ops squad now known as "X-Force", only because as writer Ed Brubaker said, "there's no 'X' in 'Warpack').

for the record, that was the brain-tossing, power-warping Korean jerk known Scrambler (real name Kim Il Sung - go figure). but since these dopes have been cloned by Sinister time and time again, X-23 has a real shot of doing it all over again.

gonna get you too

and another one bites the dust!

okay, just because we see Hellion (Julian Keller) skewered by a new Lady Deathstrike, doesn't mean he's dead, right? right??

apologies to n00bs. Hellion is a junior X-Man; more specifically, he's part of the junior squad creatively called "New X-Men". they're this generation's New Mutants, and after the Decimation event, seemed destined to be the last generation of mutants ever because the mutant gene has not sparked again. at least until a mutant baby was born, and every group with an agenda is suddenly hell-bent on getting their hands on it.

the reason for the skewering is that a town was destroyed in a battle between the mutant-hating Purifiers and Sinister's Marauders. the junior squad, having a score to settle with the Purifiers (notice how these storylines get convoluted and extended), defy Cyclops' orders to stay put (as always) and sneak into a Purifier compound, and discover far more than they bargained for.

but wait! that's not the bigger issue here. what piques my curiosity is what the hell is that hanging by Deathstrike's crotch (study picture above carefully).

if that's not enough, the cover of the next chapter of this Messiah CompleX storyline shows:

someone had weird designs in their head. or maybe am just weird. yes, i am.


anyway, as promised from last summer's Endangered Species storyline, we're about to get a '90s flashback: X-Men vs. Marauders, round whatever.

this sequence rocks:

i love Essex' new Marilyn Manson/Goth look


yes, because normally y'all don't stand a chance





i still cain't believe Remy's on this side


i hope Storm hasn't divorced T'Challa

leave it to Wolverine to do the talking (and subsequent slicing)




suddenly, i can't wait for next week!!!! aaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!

-----
New X-Men #44
Craig Kyle/Christopher Yost/Humberto Ramos/Carlos Cuevas

species diseases

despite being a lifelong X-fan, there's a conspicuous dearth of X-related posts in this blog, and am correcting that now.

the latest summer X-crossover is "Endangered Species" and springboards off the House of M/Decimation storylines of 2 years ago (the mutants were basically benched in Civil War), where the Scarlet Witch pretty much switched off the mutant gene (except the -cough, cough - major characters in X-Men, of course). as a result, there are no more mutants being born or exhibiting powers at puberty. so basically, if you can kill off the X-Men and their affiliates, you'd pretty much wipe out mutantkind. oh, the joy of Steven Lang and Cameron Hodge's ghosts, dancing on top of tables right now.

given the poster/cover above, we should expect a lot more mutants to go six feet under. well, that's what they want us to think; writers usually kill off insignificant characters, or if they do kill major ones, there's already somebody out there planning the comeback from the grave. c'mon, we know the drill.

since they don't do wraparound covers anymore, this means hardcore fans have to shell out double or triple bucks for variant covers. capitalism rules!!!

let's check who's on deck ... courtesy of the always-fun Chris Bachalo.

Colossus? check. i know its been a couple of years, but how glad are you that he's back, rendering his spectacular sacrifice for curing the Legacy Virus moot? if not for Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men - where he was ironically brought back - i'd be really, like, disappointed. ah dunno if you like Sam's toothpick-in-mouth look, but he does look a lot more like a redneck. and is that Northstar on the upper left?

we got Rogue, the leader of the adjectiveless group of X-Men (to distinguish those from the Astonishing ones). Cyclops with minimalist visor, Beast, Kitty Pryde, and Bishop. did you notice what he wrote on his gun barrel? badass!

i still wonder they associate with Mystique - bloodlines to Rogue and Kurt be damned. i guess we got a whole new confident Iceman now, and Cable's still holding the line (heh). i don't like Wolverine's pose here - is he having a bad case of diarrhea?

and even this little spy is in the mix! let's have him breath fire on Mystique's smug face!

over to the other side, courtesy of i-do-like-him-but-really-cant-figure-out-why Humberto Ramos ... we have the antagonists of the piece.

Sunfire, we know ... looking closer to his Age of Apocalypse incarnation, and more recently, involving himself more and more into mutant affairs (he was one of The Twelve, after all, not to mention served as a Horseman). not like in 1970, when he walked out of the Xavier's school even before they made him an official X-Man. something about Bobby making a joke about Japanese internment camps.

we have the usual gaggle of Marauder suspects - Vertigo, Harpoon, Scalphunter, Arclight and Riptide - who may or may not be clones. i don't know anymore; didn't Mr. Sinister get the memo? clones are so '90s! ask Spiderman.

should i be surprised that petulant jerk Random is on this side? and why is the White Queen doing a sexy pose here? you mean to say she loses it again and flips again like a pancake/Democrat? Scott should dump her right now! what in the name of the Shi'ar is going on?

and who's leading the charge from the bad side? why, its none other than Rogue's ex and ex-X-Man, Gambit, who's been more on the side of the crazies in the past 5 years or so. really?? that lovable Cajun? i guess he's been twisted inside so much he doesn't know which way is up anymore. or there's something here that Mike Carey isn't telling us. yet. so i'll bet on that.


the loser Exodus is onboard as well, as is Marauder Prism (that's him, right, with the V-shaped forehead?). rounding out the posers are two chicks who were most recently on the side of the angels - Omega Sentinel and Lady Mastermind. they switch to the other side right here.

and the biggest switch of all, which probably sent most X-fans into a cesspool of shock, anger, and i-told-you-sos, was this:


and this after boinking Iceman (he won't live the teasing down for awhile).

oh, it's on, baby!


(damn, i need a mutant refresher course)
-----
X-Men: Endangered Species #1, X-Men #200
Mike Carey, Chris Bachalo, Humberto Ramos, Carlos Cuevas, Tim Townsend, Scot Eaton