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AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #520-524 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Action-wise, this is the "Hydra Four" arc. Spider-Man and some of his New Avengers pals take on four men with weapons engineered by Hydra that enable them to mimic the powers of the four best Avengers: Thor, Iron Man, Captain America and...Hawkeye?!? The New Avengers kick their asses. And since…
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #519 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Last issue, May Parker's house was torched by an arsonist. Pete feels terrible because it's his fault that it happened. Tony Stark moves the whole family into Avengers Tower. Thusly, JMS and Mike Deodato parallel the events in New Avengers in the pages of Amazing Spider-man. Obviously, this makes for…
Thor: Blood Oath #1-6 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Issue #1 of this series starts like this: And the battle with Absorbing Man ends like this: Yes. That did feel good. What an excellent start. From there, we essentially get a “Tales of Asgard” story told in a modern style. Remember “Tales of Asgard?” That was the title of…
Amazing Fantasy #7-12 (2005): 1st new Scorpion - Earth's Mightiest Blog
In what appears to be the first major Marvel effort ("Marvel Next!") to take its old products and make them young and diverse, this series turns from Spider-Man to Scorpion. She's cool because she skateboards. Carmilla Black is basically sold by her parents to A.I.M. who give her a "stinging…
New Thunderbolts #9 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Last issue, Sub-Mariner punched Radioactive Man through a wall. This issue he continues to pummel him because his radioactivity poisoned Atlantis. That all gets resolved via a solid story with a nice twist in the end. During it, Monica Rambeau goes from Captain Marvel to Photon, and Genis Vell learns…
Captain America #7 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
This issue is really a prelude to the big, game-changing Winter Soldier story. 1980s Captain America nerds (like me) all remember Jack Monroe, who took on the role of Nomad and partnered with Cap during that time period. Well, he was killed in the last story. This issue is his…
Spider-Man Unlimited #10 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Once again, two stories. The first one is pretty good: An intern at the Daily Bugle hates Spider-Man as much as J. Jonah Jameson, and Spider-Man tries to win him over by fighting Rhino and proving he's a good dude. Second, Peter helps a student who gets her purse stolen…
Marvel Knights 4 #19-20 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
While I love the homage to a fastball special, I’m pretty tired of the generic covers to every issue in this series. This story features the Inhumans, for example, but you’d never know it by the covers. Apparently, Gorgon has a daughter now and she’s old enough to have a boyfriend. …
Tales of Thing #1-3 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Oh. Oh no. Oh this is not good at all. Three standalone issues that I could have written about in individual posts but they’re terrible. First is a Thing/Doc Strange team-up. Next, Hulk vs. Thing on Hollywood Boulevard. Finally, Thing and Susan Richards team up.
Armed Forces Exclusive: New Avengers #1-2 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
The New Avengers and the Fantastic Four help the military investigate a crash-landed space ship and then stop a Deathlok-looking guy from stealing military weapons. The books were a give-away to the military, so I'm not going to find fault with it but...The military is barely in it. In fact,…
ATLANTIS ATTACKS! (1989 Annuals) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Last year, Marvel did an “Annuals Events” starring High Evolutionary, and this year even more annuals participate as Atlantis attacks: It took 14 extra-sized issues to tell the story. Not that it’s super complicated. A mystic villain teams up with Attuma to gather the shattered pieces of the Serpent Crown in…
New Thunderbolts #8 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
After a quick battle with Batroc’s brigade… …Speed Demon’s old partner in crime Shocker invites him on a heist. Surprisingly, Speed Demon accepts, but only because the new team needs money… But first he fights Blizzard, who wants to stop Speed Demon from returning to a life of crime. Nice. …
Marvel Knights: 4 #15-18 (2005): Divine Time - Earth's Mightiest Blog
During this arc, the “Marvel Knights” banner disappears and the title becomes just “4” (with a little “MK” in the corner box). I’m going to keep the original title for the sake of simplicity. This series has never been very good, and this arc has time travel and alternate future…
Gravity #1-5 (2005): 1st Gravity, Black Death - Earth's Mightiest Blog
A Wisconsin youth named Greg Willis who idolizes Spider-Man is sucked into another dimension while yachting on a lake, and returns to Earth with the power to control gravity. He makes a costume and decides to go to the big city to become a superhero. While meeting his NYU Student…
BLACKEST NIGHT--THE D.C. EVENT (2009) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
This series of posts reprints 2014 material from my old site, without revision. DC launched its Blackest Night event in 2009, a time when Geof Johns was the hottest writer around. He'd turned the bottom-selling and usually silly Green Lantern comic into a flagship title that supported its own spin-off…
HULK #77-81 (2005): Tempest Fugit - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Peter David returns for a Fin Fang Foom story that's nowhere near as good as his earlier Hulk stuff. Hulk is stranded on an island full of monsters, along with two human castaways. Turns out, General Ross appears is responsible: He is leading an experimental weapon that makes people's scary…
Wolverine #32 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Mark Millar gets to work with the great Kaare Andrews on a single-issue WWII story. Apparently, Logan did time in a Nazi death camp. But obviously, he couldn’t die. They shoot him, gas him, torture him…The story doesn’t end with his escape, it just has him awaken for another day…
New X-Men: Academy X #12 (2005): 1st Paragons - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Another simple, character-based, terrific issue. If you want action, it starts with practice battles against Hulk, where we meet a new student team: The Paragons. Members include Pixie, Wolf Cub, Match, etc. We'll get to know them better later. If you want romance: Emma and Scott scold Rahne for having…
THE DEMON #47-49 (1994) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
NOTE: These posts on Garth Ennis' "Demon" comics were originally on another side, published back in 2015, reprinted here for posterity Demon #47: Garth Ennis likes to rip people in half. He did it best in the first issue of "The Boys." And from issue #48: That ain't a panel.…
X-Force: Shatterstar #1-4 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Rob Liefeld has done a lot of great things. This is not one of them. Like many others, I was excited to see Shatterstar get his own series....Not. The Mojoverse is rarely all that interesting and thus far Shatterstar has never made sense. The fact that he's the son of…
Black Panther #1-6 (2005): Who is the Black Panther - Earth's Mightiest Blog
In 2005, writer Reginald Hudlin and John Romita, Jr. rebooted T'Challa under the "Marvel Knights" banner. The tale started in Wakanda, showing the history of black panthers from the 5th Century up to now. But rather than offer a lot of exposition, we simple see the tribes of Wakanda repelling invading…
Arana: Heart of the Spider #1-12 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
This series was part of the short-lived "Marvel Next" group of titles, which were supposed to signal titles about teen heroes designed (I assume) to draw in new teen readers. Some of them were excellent (Young Avengers, Runaways), others were good or good enough (X-23, e.g.), and then there was…
New X-Men: Academy X #10-11 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Prodigy gets a spotlight issue. His power is that he can “absorb” knowledge from people nearby, but that knowledge fades fairly rapidly. This leaves him feeling like a temporary hero. Emma Frost tells him she can remove a psychological block that causes that knowledge to fade, but suggests that it…
THE TOP 20 WHAT IF? COMICS OF ALL TIME (According to me) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
NOTE: THIS ARTICLE IS A REPUBLISH OF A 2015 ARTICLE PREVIOUSLY POSTED ON MY OLD SITE. IT HAS NOT BEEN CHANGED OR REVISED. I started out reviewing every issue of What If? to see if the stories actually came true (many of them did), but there’s a ton of shit…
Cable & Deadpool #13 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
A terrorist is murdered and Cable and Deadpool investigate the killing, only to realize that Deadpool himself must have committed the killing. Deadpool has amnesia for most of the story, but ultimately remembers that he did it himself--so Cable kicks him off the paradise island of Providence (because it is…
DAREDEVIL #197-200 (1983) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
This is a great arc! Daredevil travels to Japan to find Bullseye. Thanks to Lord Dark Wind, Bullseye gets surgically enhanced with an adamantium spine And somehow he doesn't need a healing factor for his body to accept the implant (unlike Wolverine), and now Bullseye apparently has a psychic link…
Spider-Man: Breakout #1-5 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
This miniseries fills in the gap after New Avengers #2, when a ton of villains broke out of The Raft. It’s told very much in the style of Brian Michael Bendis, with complex subplots unfolding gradually through flashbacks/flashforwards, and that’s not a bad thing, really. Bendis rocked the world of…
DEMON #42-43 + Annual #2 (1993): 1st Hitman - Earth's Mightiest Blog
NOTE: The posts on Garth Ennis' "Demon" comics were originally on another side, published back in 2015, reprinted here for posterity After Demon #40, Garth Ennis and John McCrea wrote Demon's 1993 Annual. They really wasted no time in getting to the good stuff in their run on The Demon…
Spider-Man Team-Up Special (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Roxxon is polluting Monster Island. Mole Man attacks the U.N. to force them to stop. Spidey and the FF stop him AND get Roxxon to voluntarily agree to clean up their waste. This was dumb. Why did Mole Man attack the U.N. instead of Roxxon itself? Why did the world…
Defenders #136-139 (1984-1985): 1st Dragon of the Moon - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Check out that awesome cover by Frank Cirocco. Gargoyle is taken to Afhanistan where he is enslaved by a Mujahideen priest. Seriously. In 1984! The priest uses Gargoyle to fend off the Soviets. Remember when they were at war with Afghanistan? And remember when the U.S. gave the rebels the weapons…
Spectacular Spider-Man #27 (2005): Series ends - Earth's Mightiest Blog
First: Great cover for a final issue. As for the content behind the cover, the spirit of Uncle Ben reminds peter why he is a hero. That’s a great concept for a final issue. With art that recalls Calvin and Hobbes, it’s cute and sweet and ends with a big…
Daredevil vs Punisher #1-5 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Hammerhead and Jackal try to occupy the space left when Kingpin went to jail. Both Daredevil and Punisher want to prevent them from consolidating power, but obviously their tactics differ and they end up fighting each other instead of the bad guys until they work their stuff out and team-up. …
Spider-Man Unlimited #9 (2005) - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Another issue with two stories. The first story, by Chris Yost and Drew Johnson, has Spider-Man getting electrocuted by Electro and it causes his sticking powers to go nuts. It’s fun. The second story is by Petar Bridges and Cully Hamner, and dealing with what appears to be a psychotic…
Wolverine #26-30 (2005): Agent of SHIELD - Earth's Mightiest Blog
Hydra got its turn controlling Wolverine. Now Logan is with SHIELD. I know Mark Millar has his detractors, but they’re usually people who don’t like their comics to be nonstop brawling and fun. I like him. Especially in these early 2000s scripts. Continuing from last issue, Gorgon is now the leader of both Hydra…