Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #60: Ronin

You’ll never guess who’s behind the mask. Seriously. Even I’m not sure here.

When Brian Michael Bendis took over the Avengers titles, he decided to blow up the team.  That was literal in more than a few cases, like Jack of Hearts.  Hawkeye, who Bendis claimed was his favorite character, died in another massive explosion but emerged later thanks to House of M.  These things happen.

But Bendis then brought in a new team that he saw as a chance to do an all-star team like the original Avengers line-up was, but with the all-stars that existed then.  Not all of them made sense, and some of them were questionable picks.  But among the promotional art was a “new” character called Ronin.  Who was Ronin?  Well, that depended on what comic you were reading.

Road To Secret Wars Part 6

Pow! Zap! Bop! Bop?

Continuing the recap on the run-up to Marvel’s new Secret Wars, as seen in Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers runs, if at least for the sake of Jimmy Impossible.

As ever, SPOILERS behind the cut.

Road To Secret Wars Part 5

I’m seeing double! Four Thors!

Continuing the plot recap of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers runs leading up to the new Secret Wars, if for no other reason than to please Jimmy.

As before, SPOILERS behind the cut.

Road To Secret Wars Part 3

Now with dinosaurs.

For those who plan to read the new Secret Wars but managed to miss the preliminary work in the storyline, here’s part three of the summary.

SPOILERS below the cut.

Super Sad: 33 Marvel Titles Ending Post Secret Wars

Noooooooooooo!!! Marvel set to retire 33 titles after Secret Wars is over. What is this wacky world we live in? What crimes against humanity have we incurred to suffer through this kind of news? What lies have they fed us to bring us to this point? Stick a fork in me, because I’m done, I just can’t handle it. Can you? See what titles they are talking about ending, and come have a big cry with me afterwards.

Pucked From Beyond The Grave

Wrong Puck!

Wolverine is somewhat renowned as, among other things, a short superhero.  Most adult male Marvel heroes that aren’t Spider-Man easily get to be about six feet tall, minimum, while Wolverine is a measly 5’4″ tall.  To make Wolverine look tall, his onetime sorta Alpha Flight teammate Puck is needed.  Puck absorbed a mystical sorcerous swordsman and managed to have his body condensed to half his regular size, so he generally appears to be, like, 2 feet tall.

Oh, and he was killed in an offhand, offscreen manner early in Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers run along with most of Alpha Flight to make a bad guy look tougher.

The Beyonders Back And There’s Gonna Be Trouble (Hey-la, Hey-la, Beyonders Back)

 

Sharing my (mostly spoiler free) thoughts on a couple of this weeks new comic releases because if I don’t make my quota for posts for the week I’m contractually obligated to wash Watson’s car over the weekend.

From A Certain Point Of View: Political Perspective In Speculative Fiction

Way back in the year 2000, I was snooping around the DC Comics message boards and came across a debate over who the various members of the Justice League at the time would vote for in the 2000 Presidential election  One particularly memorable individual insisted that all the various Leaguers would have obviously voted for George W. Bush except for that “treehugger” Aquaman.

There is one problem with this assumption:  Aquaman at the time couldn’t really vote in an American election.  He was the king of Atlantis.  You know, foreign citizen.  And given the way he was being written in his solo title at the time, it probably didn’t matter much to him who the president was.  Plus, there aren’t many trees to hug on the  bottom of the sea.  Oh, and he’s a fictional character.