Having granted DC column inches to pimp its summer blockbuster, the New York Times goes all fair and balanced. Brian Michael Bendis has a cartoon in the Small Business special section. I’m not sure what the point is, and I don’t know if that’s an accepted spelling of “sweetie”, but there you go.
Newsarama has previews pages from Novembers Avengers Finale, and Bendis gamely puts on his “sad” face:
“This is the emotional ending to a very tragic story. This is the very special last episode.”
Rumors indicate that the issue will conclude with the surviving heroes in a group hug, singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” as they stumble through the rubble of the mansion.
Actually, I’m feeling a lot better about this whole affair. If Bendis is allowed to blithely resurrect a character who’s been “dead” since 1967, without explanation and in a relatively underdramatized manner, what are the chances of anything in Disassembled sticking? Ah, Marvel… where the graves all have trampolines at the bottom.
With that out of the way, on to this week’s comics:
Wow! That was quick turn-around on the collection of the Avengers-Thunderbolts mini-series. Mystique starts a new story arc with #19. Runaways ends its first volume with #18. A six-issue Black Widow mini-series kicks off with art by Bill Sienkiewicz. And Astonishing X-Men #5 is one of many, many mutant titles pelted at innocent consumers. (It’s a good one, at least.)
I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the first issue of Noble Causes, but I’ll pick up the second because I’m a sucker for super-hero soap opera. I liked the first issue of DC’s new Manhunter, so I’ll be giving that title another try. And, because it’s comic blog law, I’m duty bound to remind you that Ex Machina #4 and Sleeper Season Two #4 come out tomorrow and both stand every chance of being very entertaining, based on past experience. (Even if I weren’t duty bound, I would probably have reminded you anyways.)