Take It Or Leave It – September 4, 2013

Welcome to Take It Or Leave It, where each week we pick out some of that week’s newest comics and give you our opinion on whether it was worth the price and you should take it, or if it was better left sitting on the shelf.

We’re back again with a pretty light week of Take It Or Leave It. Like several other members of One-Quest I’ve been spending a lot of free time battling my way through Eorzea in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. As such I didn’t get to read all my usually books this week! Fear not though I tried to read the big stuff. Well except Infinity, that’s just a travesty of a comic. But enough about that, lets get to the comicy goodness that is Take It Or Leave It!

Alphabetical by Publisher

DC Comics | Marvel Comics

Forever Evil #1 I was really unimpressed with Trinity War, and was even less excited for Forever Evil to be coming right on it’s heels. To be honest though, while it was called an Event I feel like Trinity War was really just the prologue to Forever Evil, which in this first issue was better than anything we saw in Trinity War. It’s not surprise though Geoff Johns is amazing when it comes to writing villains. Don’t get me wrong he does great with the heroes too, but that guy just knows how to make you want to read about the bad guys. This first issue of Forever Evil wasn’t any different, it really set the stage for what’s going on and had some pretty shocking developments. While I don’t see this redefining the DC Universe forever or anything, it should be a fun ride while it lasts. Or at least lets hope it is. Verdict: Take It Score: 8/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Justice League 23.1 Darkseid #1 Darkseid is a really popular villain, but I’ve never liked him. And unfortunately this look into his past and what makes him go didn’t help that. It was nice that he hasn’t really been in the Justice League since the first arc, but now I have a feeling they’re going to be pulling him in more and more by the end of Forever Evil. To talk specifically about this issue, there just wasn’t anything particularly special about it. Nothing that made me want to keep reading to see what there was about this villain. I haven’t had a chance to read any of the other Villain Month books yet, but if this is where they’re coming from I might not want to. Verdict: Leave It Score: 4/10 Reviewed By: Chris

All-New X-Men #16 Lets clear this up first, if you didn’t notice this is part 2 of Battle of the Atom. The first part of the new X-Men crossover is a little further down and it’s called X-Men: Battle of the Atom. Both books were good, which honestly isn’t surprising since they’ve got the same writer. But lets focus on this second chapter first shall we. All-New X-Men has been a great read since it launched last year. Unfortunately it’s been a little slow too, a lot of it has been the fantastic character development from Bendis, but not a lot of X-Men in action like Uncanny X-Men as had. This issue isn’t really an exception to that, but with the arrival of more time travels at the end of Battle of the Atom Part 1 this issue is more than worth reading even without action. There are some great interactions in this book, and plenty of humor to go with the generally somber tones. Oh and there was one hell of a reveal at the end! I’m not going to spoil anything, but I didn’t see that coming, all my guesses were way off. I’m going to repeat myself in a minute when I’m talking about Battle of the Atom #1, but this is probably going to be the Event to read this year. Verdict: Take It Score: 8/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Superior Spider-Man #17 This could have been the worse book on the market and throwing Spider-Man 2099 on the cover would have had me buying it. Like last weeks Scarlet Spider #21 featuring Ben Reilly (which I didn’t get to talk about!), I’m just a sucker for these ’90s story lines. When I was a kid I didn’t really read much, but the books I did have were Scarlet Spider and Spider-Man 2099. Well those and a copy of Death of Superman that I never opened but that’s beside the point. Anyway it was great to read something set in the 2099 timeline again, Dan Slott did a great job, I actually remember him asking on Twitter months ago about 2099 slang, and he used a lot of it! This book isn’t just about nostalgia though, it plays in perfectly with the ongoing story that’s been happening in Superior plus the entire Marvel Universe after Age of Ultron. It’s really books like this that show you just how much planning and teamwork gets put into these books. It’s a shame we didn’t get much Superior Spidey vs 2099 Spidey, but that’s for next month! Verdict: Take It Score: 8/10 Reviewed By: Chris

X-Men: Battle of the Atom #1 Well unless you read the page out of order, you already saw my thoughts on part two of Battle of the Atom. So lets get right to this, the issue was a lot of fun. It started out just like any issue of the current Uncanny or All-New X-Men would. This is thanks to the writer being the same across all these books. Bendis is great at really tying his books together. While the major catalyst of this event doesn’t happen till the very end of the book, everything that leads up to it feel right. This book doesn’t come off the way a lot of other books do in a crossover. (I’m looking at you Infinity!). Now while time travel is getting a little ridiculous in the Marvel Universe right now, I feel like there must be a great point in it. After all the main architect for Battle of the Atom and Age of Ultron, which involve the most time travel, is the same guy. By now I’m sure you’ve figured out I really liked this issue, in fact I’m trying not to just fanboy out about how good it was, but well it really was that freaking good! If history has shown us anything, event comics are usually pretty hit or miss. At the same time X-Men events have had a pretty good string of being exciting, fun, and effecting the general mutant population for years afterwards. We’ve got 3 big crossover event things running in comics right now. DC has Forever Evil, and Marvel has both Infinity and Battle of the Atom. Now if you’re into crossovers and you want to pick a winner out of these three. I say go with X-Men, they’ve got a better track record, and this issue alone is worth giving the rest of the books a shot. Verdict: Take It Score: 9/10 Reviewed By: Chris

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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