It’s been a weird couple of days at work. Not bad by any means, just weird. On the bright side, I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would. I also feel appreciated there, which is a lot more than I can say for my previous job. Also, last Saturday I swam three 400m individual medleys in the span of 40 minutes. Made massive improvements on my butterfly technique as well. I’m in the best physical shape I’ve ever been in, and I want to keep improving while I still can. But anyway, it’s time to talk about comics.
After two weeks where I hardly had any comics on my pull list, I’ve suddenly got 6. Although my local shop ran out of Cable 157 before I got there, I still picked up X-Men Red 4, Star Wars Poe Dameron 27, All-New Wolverine 35, Superman Special 1, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 82. Here are my first impressions, and links to full reviews will be added when they’re posted.
X-Men Red 4 is good. After a brief opening action scene, this issue mostly explains what’s going on. It tells us Cassandra Nova’s plans in detail, mostly from the perspective of the X-Men discovering her sentinel brain implants that turns anyone into a mutant hating crazy person. As proven with Storm attacking Jean Grey’s team at the end of the previous issue, it clearly works on mutants as well. In a franchise where we’ve already seen so many iterations of sentinels, this one somehow feels unique. A lot more subtle, and by extension, more sinister. Besides that, it still carries a good balance between story driven, dramatic and fun. That makes this series worth checking out for X-Men fans in general.
Star Wars Poe Dameron 27 is fun. It continues exploring Poe’s side of the story during The Force Awakens, giving us some background details that the movie didn’t have room for. We learn more about how the Resistance learned of the Starkiller Base, including a rather dangerous stunt that’s fun to see play out. Framing these flashbacks with Poe, Rey and Finn conversing on the Falcon after the events of The Last Jedi works in this comic’s favour. Fans of the new Star Wars trilogy will likely enjoy the last couple of issues, whether you’ve read the rest of this series or not.
The Superman Special is fun. It continues a story that happened in the main Superman series a while back, when Superman and Superboy were trapped on a dinosaur island for a few days. Clark and his son agree to keep a promise they made before they left, to help rescue a man who helped them return home. It’s a fun comic with a nice dramatic story to balance it out. It shows the sense of honour that Superman is bound by, and I like how it’s actually Jon who prompts his father to go back. There are a couple of smaller stories after the main one that are also worth reading. Superman regulars will likely enjoy this special, and it’s worth checking out for Superman fans who haven’t been reading this series.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 82 is great. Trying to describe this issue’s story contents in one paragraph is next to impossible though, because it’s one of those weird in-between issues that references so many past events that it’s crazy. The comic explains everything you need to know just fine, and even goes deeper into things that regular readers already know, but I’m at a loss as to what to say about it. But what else can I say about a comic where the turtles visit a snobby immortal frog, while the rat king is enticing children to follow him with some sort of flute, and there are backroom dealings behind a scientist and an anti-mutant government organization all in one issue? With all that said, this is a great series for Ninja Turtles fans.
healed1337 
X-Men Red was good. Had plenty of fun stuff. I’m hoping the book does shift a little to focus more on the characters and their dynamics, though. Especially because I’m frankly tired of “hateful humans try to kill mutants with robots,” even if it is a different variation on that being used.
Wolverine is a solid finale to a great series. Sad to see it go.
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