Bottom of the Pile - Jan. 28th, 2015

Amazing X-Men

I know Bobby sounds like a jerk here, but he's actually being dangerously genre-savvy.  It's actually gotten sad that everyone is resistant to telepathy.  There are times when it makes sense--Juggernaut, Magneto--but then other times its so distressingly common that you wonder why they even act like telepaths are relevant at all.

Aquaman

Aquamommy!  No seriously though, considering they've never heavily delved into Aquaman's family outside of his evil brother, this is kind of cool.   I know I said I wasn't all that excited about Jeff Parker's Aquaman run, but he and Paul Pelletier have done a great job on this book--I think I'm just a little sour that Geoff Johns got off the book just when it was getting interesting.

Sidenote: If another woman in your family is cooler than you Arthur, we may have to take the title from you.  Mera's already everything you are but better, and judging from Atlanna's appearance, she may not be too different. 

Batman Eternal

I don't actually have much to say about this--I just tossed it in because I love kitties and this was adorable.  Kind of rare in Gotham. 

Multiversity Guidebook

The Multiversity Guidebook is my favorite comic book of the past...seven or eight years.  It gets it all right.  It explains why the New Gods of Earth-0 are basically no better than the one they're trying to fight--they're not the real New Gods, just weaker echoes of the ones that matter.  It finally makes plain that Multiversity is the sequel to Final Crisis, actually giving weight to Dan Didio's "everything's still in continuity" statement.   And it gives us the guide to the multiverse I've been wanting since they revealed its existence back in 2007.    Grant Morrison has truly been on a roll lately, and I can't wait to see his rendition of Earth-10 this month.

New 52: Futures End

I feel like this overlooks the fact that no one in the League was stopping the guy from building his own transporter, he was just too garbage of a scientist to do it.  More importantly, I'm also wondering whether Firestorm here would be willing to deal with the consequences of terrorists or other undesirables suddenly having access to teleporters.  Just saying.

New Avengers

What I love about Time Runs Out, and really Hickman's run in general, is how he refuses to play this like a regular superhero story.    Everyone's like "What's the plan?", as if there's someone they can go punch and end it all or even better, undo it all, but there is no plan.    While I'm sure eventually Secret Wars will reveal who or what is behind all this, right now that's not the story.  The story is that all these heroes have saved their world, their galaxy, and their universe so many times that they don't even get when a crisis is beyond them.  That's why they're so pissed at the Illuminati for their actions--they think this was something that could've had a peaceful solution.

But it's almost a year later and out of the millions of different universes that once existed, we're now down to 22.  Creation itself is turning out the lights and putting the chairs up before shutting down for good, and they're still asking about a plan, because the concept of losing is just beyond them. 

Spider-Man 2099

Lady Spider is right.  It isn't.

Thor

For those of you wondering what Thor would call himself if he no longer has the hammer.  That having been said, I think I like "Lady Hammer Pants" better.   She's a lady.  She has a hammer.  She wears pants.  Spidey's a genius, as always.

Transformers: Drift - Empire of Stone

What I've loved about the IDW comics is how they manage to find a place for everyone.   Even 'bots from short-lived, not-terribly-popular series like Transformers: Robots in Disguise.   Once just another in a long line of Megatron pretenders, Gigatron has been given his own identity, free to..well, probably not survive this mini-series, but at least he's back for a few issues? 

Uncanny X-Men

Write down this day as the day I officially stopped tolerating Matthew Maloy as a character.  I was wrong.  Wolverine should've popped a claw into the back of this guy's head.  Or Magik should've teleported him out to space.

Not only has he been responsible for hundreds of deaths already, he got not one, but TWO of my favorite X-Men killed?   First Scott Summers, now Emma Frost (that little pile of punch-out holes Kitty's looking at)?   Man, fuck this dude.    Also, "she was going to kill me" isn't a valid defense when you just learned--seconds ago, at that--that you can't actually be killed.  

I think it's the utter nonchalance with which he's treating it all that's so infuriating.  "Ooops, she's dead too.  My bad."  Like a child that needs to be changed...except replace "needs to be changed" with "keeps murdering other people". 

Author's Note: Bottom of the Pile is a weekly column (or at least, my attempt at said) in which I cover the comics that found their way to the bottom of my reading stack, thus being the "best".   Since bog standard reviews can be found literally anywhere, coverage here can range from mini-reviews to funny comments to commentary on a creator's run or comics as a whole, depending on a wide range of factors including the comic itself, the amount of time I have, and my general mood.