Take It Or Leave It – August 29, 2012

---

We’ve got this weeks Take It Or Leave It for you, and it’s been a pretty good week. JohnScott is recovered from his illness brought on by some terrible reads last week and luckily this week is probably the best yet since we started doing this.

---

Chris
This was an awesome week for comics, I only talk about 4 of them below, but I haven’t had a single bad issue yet this week which is pretty damn good. It’s not often that all the books that come out in a week are totally worth the money. I usually at least come across one that just feels forced or doesn’t meet up to the previous one.

	Avenging Spider-Man 11 Avenging Spider-Man is a team up book. Every few issues features Spidey fighting alongside a Marvel Superhero. I started buying this book back at issue one because of the creative team. Zeb Wells tends to write a really fun book and it was Joe Madureira long awaited return to comic books. Unfortunately this team only last for the first team up. The book has had a few decent moments since then, and luckily enough issue 11 was one of them. It’s one of those Pete / Aunt May issue that come up every couple of years. This one taking place on what I’m assuming is the anniversary of the day Uncle Ben was shot. It’s a well written story, thanks to the return of Zeb Wells and for any sentimental readers you may just find a few tears in your eyes. There aren’t really any fights in the book, mostly flash backs and talking but it’s still a solid read. Also if you stay for the letters page at the end you’ll see one from yours truly asking what was up with the lack of continuity with Pete’s identity being hidden. I’m not totally satisfied with the answer, but hey it’s better than nothing right? Verdict: Take It
	Ultimate Comics X-Men 15 When this series first started back up I was super excited and really liked what Nick Spencer had started setting up. The problem was it was all setup, he’s a long form writer and sets up all his pieces slowly and lets them simmer. It was fun but we never got a real payoff. That changed with Brian Wood he brought the series back to focus on a small band of our mutant heroes and it’s been a strong showing book ever since. If you think the normal Marvel Universe just has to many mutant centered books going on but you still want to read about them pick up Ultimate Comics X-Men. Now as far as this issue goes it picks up where the last one left off as Kitty is running back after hearing gunshots. We get to see some actual fighting and that the apple certainly didn’t fall far from the tree. We also get to introduced to a new mutant that any 616 readers will probably recognize, more by name than appearance. Like most of Woods story so far this is an interesting issue with a lot of emotion and sets us up for what looks like it could be a pretty awesome next few issues. Verdict: Take It
	Winter Soldier 9 Winter Soldier is a really fun book, frankly I think the best thing Ed Brubaker has done in his long stint on Captain America was bring Bucky back as the Winter Soldier. He made the Captain America series fun, and not so clean cut. And now he’s back to being a spy and doing things that aren’t exactly publicity friendly. It’s going to be sad when Brubaker leaves the series early next year but he’s still got some stories to tell. With this issue we see Bucky finding Black Widow, who isn’t exactly herself right now. We have some fighting, some inner turmoil, and some really angry Winter Soldier moments. And it all ends with something that I honestly wasn’t expecting. Verdict: Take It
	Wolverine And The X-Men 15 If you’ve read any of the recaps for Avengers Vs. X-Men you know the only series that’s had consistently good tie-ins has been Jason Aaron’s Wolverine and The X-Men. Every issue has humor, and action, and sometimes a little romance even if it is a bit creepy at times. With AVX coming to an end soon, and this most likely being the final tie-in we see a lot of things getting setup for the finale. Students and Teachers and Avengers and X-Men all working together. One problem is I haven’t read most of the other X books so I don’t really know what’s going on with some of the characters. It’s fun that there’s so much crossover between the books but it does make it really hard to just follow one. I’m also baffled as to why Iceman was well frozen the whole issue. Is he stuck that way? Did I miss something in one of the other books? He has some touching moments with staff members like Kitty and Wolverine but rather than being normal he’s all iced up. It’s not a huge deal the story is still strong and interesting and like I said a lot of things get either tied up or setup to be finished soon. Professor X has a pretty amusing few pages too. Verdict: Take It

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

Comments are closed.