Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Comics Review: Wonder Woman, X-Men, and Conan Part 1

I took a trip with dad to the Downtown Mall on Saturday morning.  I’m not sure how I talked him into it, since he just wanted to get lunch at KFC, which is not nearby.  The weekly Farmer’s Market was going on.  The street was packed with vendor stalls and throngs of people browsing.  Apart from Aggie Football and Men’s Basketball, this is likely the main community event in Las Cruces.

 

Mostly, dad was going to look for a couple of books at Coas used bookstore.  I was looking to see what they had and took too long.  I ended up grabbing three comics from their pile in a rush to meet him at the register.  The comics seemed promising.  I sort of dragged him into Zia Comics.  I took a quick look around before getting what I meant to get.

 

I was actually in a pretty jovial mood.  I picked up a jar of honey, some cinnamon roasted almonds, and tossed a couple of bucks to a couple of street musicians.  I kept seeing people carrying bags of popcorn.  I finally gave in and went looking for the vendor.  There was a line for the kettle corn.  I ended up behind a guy buying ten bags and had to wait a little while.  When I got mine home and tasted it, OMG!  It was the best popcorn I’d ever had!  I need to figure out an excuse to get back there for more.        

     


Wonder Woman Day Special Edition #1

I think this comic was originally a Free Comic Book Day giveaway.  This only reminds me that I missed out on FCBD last weekend.  I hadn’t been keeping track of it, but I suddenly remembered it last Sunday and wondered when it was.  That’s probably okay.  Mostly, it’s a complete waste of time.  A couple of times, Zia Comics outright stiffed me on the free comics.

 


This comic was basically a promo for the first Wonder Woman movie, though the comic has basically nothing to do with the movie other than the name of the main character.  (That’s always been an issue between the comics and the movies.)  There’s lots of Wonder Woman ads in the comic, especially for statues.  This one pictured was the best of the bunch.



I got this for the artwork, which is good.  As for the story, there is none.  Zero.  It’s a bunch of pretty pictures.  It’s some kind of prologue to a story.  Wonder Woman is searching for Cheetah in jungle to talk to her to some reason.  Also, Steve Trevor now appears to be a Navy SEAL, instead of an Air Force pilot.  This sort of irritates me for some reason, however practical this change might be for the story.  It’d be okay for free, but nothing you’d want to pay for. 

  


Uncanny X-Men #396



This is from 2001, long after I stopped reading the comic.  I think it was ironically right after Chris Claremont left at the end of the 80’s.   In the 90’s, the X-Men achieved their peak popularity.  I did read the restarted New Mutants for a while during that time and enjoyed it.  In other words, I have no idea what the context of this comic is.  I didn’t recognize Iceman.  He wasn’t using his iced-over form in this.  They seemed to be trying to make him look cool (before destroying his character later in the current day).            

 


This issue features a team of X-Men team, Iceman, Angel, and Nightcrawler, chasing down former student, Chamber, who must be one of the worst designed mutant characters ever.  He’s got some kind of bio-chemical reaction going on in his mouth and chest all of the time.  There have been plenty of weird mutants, but for ones that are main characters, they have to not be absurd. 

 

Chamber’s in a relationship with a pop star and this is somehow embarrassing all mutants.  The guys are trying to convince him that he’s part of their world, not the normal world, and he should be out and proud as a mutant, but not on display as a mutant.  You got all of that?  It didn’t make sense to me either.  Their analogy was lost on me, so that’s why they had to make it blatant, by flipping Iceman later.        

  

They boys are also searching for a mutant mass murderer.  They find him and then get their butts kicked by some normal-ish guy, Mr. Clean, wielding a flamethrower.  It’s kind of embarrassing.  These guys have been X-Men for a long time and are superpowered.  (And they should be acting as a team, not fighting one at a time.)  One guy just using regular weapons should not be a threat.  Admittedly, this guy did wipe out a bunch of mutants living in the sewers of London at the beginning of the story.  He must be more exceptional than he looks. 

 

Wolverine shows up at the end.  Presumably, he’ll straighten all this out in the next issue.  And if he doesn’t, the attorneys for the actual Mr. Clean will scrub this imposter from existence.  Again, the artwork is really good, which sort of makes the comic even worse.  It’s such pretty wasted effort.   


Uncanny X-Men #22 (vol. 2?)

This is the newer comic (2019).  I guess they restarted the numbering.  I’ve seen variations on this cover with the guns and laser spotting on a couple of other X-Men covers.  What is Cyclops doing with Wolverine here?  I more I look at this picture, the more I’m questioning it.

 


Well, here we have a comic from 2019.  Here’s Doctor Nemesis wearing a facemask (which will not protect him against a cold) and he’s talking to Emma Frost about a vaccine.  Would this be that “predictive programming” thing?  Were the makers of this comic told to include this? 

 


I got this mostly based on the artwork and from seeing Danielle Moonstar up front, who is one of my favorite characters.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t have much to do with this.  This was the end of a storyline that I have no clue about.  Sentinels show up.  A couple of X-Men maybe died, but probably not really.  A bunch of X-Men, who were thought dead, come back to help.    



Cyclops looks pretty pathetic and mopey in this, but redeems himself by the end and gets the girl.  Meanwhile, Emma’s head keeps going from shaved to glamorous.  I kept thinking there were two different characters in this when I first flipped through it.  Kitty Pride is also in this, another one of my favorite characters, she looks terrible.  Much like Iceman, it was a bad change.  Like the other two comics, at least I can use this for art practice. 

Part 2       

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