A Descent into Dullness

Man that is a big stack of comics.  And thats even with missing like four of them.  Starting with the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.  With the boys ending up joining a crew of conditional pirates to fight some bad pirates.  Bad pirates who have anarchronistic speed boats and laser pistols...

Samurai Jack pays a return visit to his friend Soule the Seer, who has an idea for a mystic ritual centered on Jack's ancestral blade that could return him to his home time.  But first giant scorpions and devil dogs...

Marko and Alana's marriage hits some rocky shoals in Saga, Prince Robot has a meeting with King Robot and Dengo the Robot Revolutionary looks into making use of the illegitimate theater...

The Wicked & the Divine introduces the triple-Goddess of the Morrigan/Badb/Gentle Annie to go with Lord of Darkness, Baphomet...

Malcolm Dragon continues to be a mutated more Savage Dragon as he cleans house on the Vicious Circle.  Plus a back-up story of Vanguard and Friends in Spaaaaaaace...

Tomas and his fellow surviving anti-alien friends discover the secret to making their anti-alien gun work in the Saviors.  You just have to be high when you shoot an alien shapeshifter with it...

Brubaker & Phillips latest noir comic is the Fade Out, a late 40s decadent Hollywoodland story...

Two weeks and two issues of Knights of the Dinner Table.  They must have rushed one out so they wouldn't get knocked behind schedule by GenCon like normal.  Mostly still focusing on the Sword of Death & Destruction in-party conflict at the Knight's table.  But that looks to be spreading out and affecting the other groups.  Mostly because of the betting on the outcome and attempts to handicap said outcome...

Dark Horse Presents launches again with a new format and new #1 issue.  The price drops down to $4.99 but the page count drops to 56 pages as well.  Of course part of that launch is a new Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot short, as well as starting a new arc of Resident Alien...

And in addition to the regular Conan the Avenger where Conan hunts for a dangerous witch and has a falling out with his Princess boss/lover; there is also Groo vs. Conan where the pair meet for the first time and team-up to hunt the marauding swordsman known as Groo...

Adventure Time has Marceline and Bubblegum get driver's licenses and introduces the psychic danger of the Mnemonoid.  And Adventure Time: Banana Guard Academy has academy commandant Captain Banana Guard looking to force all those non-banana recruits to quit, since he can't just kick them out.  So its kind of like the first Police Academy movie but without a guy who makes funny sound fx just with his mouth...

And finally I didn't realize until just now that the Bee & Puppycat comic is an anthology featuring various writers and artists.  Don't know how I missed that for three issues...

New New Warriors with some Avengers attacking like jerks.  I don't like the current interpretation of Captain America as Commander Jerkass.  This is one case where I'd very much like to see the character move back towards the version in the film MCU...

Thanks to a friendly undead sorceror-king, King Conan gets the magic gemstone of McGuffin and heads back to his kingdom.  To gather a big ol' army for a royal ass-kicking..

Non-royal Conan the Avenger parts ways with his new witchfinder friend in order to take a job guarding a sexy arrogant princess.  Plus a nice speech from his dad in a flashback that a GM for old-school D&D can explain why barbarians won't adventure with wizards.  Because fuck wizards, thats why...

The Unwritten: Apocalypse has Tommy and his friends and family begin their quest for the Grail.  And Marionette lady and Ol' Man Killer make plans together...

Wonder Woman's eldest half-sibling, the Firstborn, continues to be a big violent, sulky baby even after conquering Olympus and Hades and I think the Ocean as well.  Next up, the Garden of Life.  Seriously, hes such an emo whiner...

Decided to get the singles for the new TMNT: Turtles in Time mini-series.  Mostly 'cause the first issue is done by Ross Campbell who draws an awesome Ninja Turtle and some great dinosaurs and brain aliens as well...

Aku's latest attack on Samurai Jack involves a gravity manipulating spherical robot.  You can guess how it works out...

In Adventure Time, PB explains to her people why they're all ghosts now.  And then Finn & Jake figure out how to defeat ghosts with ghosts thru the power of cooperation...

So it turns out the missing Prince Robot of Saga has been at the intergalatic whore house of Sextillion.  Which may be for the best as the social order in the Robot kingdom looks to be due for some shaking up...

Man, that is a lot of deaths in Invincible as Robot makes his play for global domination.  And I'm not talking nameless background people.  Like named, secondary characters.  Seriously when making plans, a sign they're stupid and wrong should be "How many of my closest friends will I have to murder?"

Malcolm Dragon continues in his father's footsteps of getting attacked by super-goons and then getting yelled at for the people caught in the spillover in Savage Dragon.  Plus his girlfriend's parents are still pushing her to date some nice Chinese boy...

Fatale closes in on its finale, with magic sex rituals and more revelations about Jo's past.  Awful, terrible revelations...

The Wicked & the Divine is a new series from Kieron GIllen and Jamie McKelvie.  The set-up here is that every 90 years, groups of "gods" reincarnate and hang around for several years, incarnated as teen-agers apparently...

And finally a new Alien Legion series from Chuck Dixon, Larry Stroman and Carl Potts.  Stroman's pencils look a lot tighter and more focused than the last thing I saw him do (probably a random issue of X-Factor).  Anyway, something Harkilon civil war something something refugees something.  All that matters as the Legionnaires of Nomad will be at the forefront wading hip-deep in the muck and blood before long.  I was dissapointed not to see the 'icks, who I'm pretty sure survived the last AL mini...

Lots and lots of comics for the last three weeks.  With almost half just from this week.  Starting with the latest Dark Horse Presents, with a brand new Hellboy short story set during his Mexican wrestler years.  And a related comic with the final issue of itty bitty Hellboy and a pool party for Abe's sister Eve...

The Massive finishes up its anti-whaling mission with a death and a compromise.  And with the end drawing ever closer to his run on Conan the Barbarian has a great many deaths...

Adventure Time: Candy Capers finishes up as Peppermint Butler and Cinnamon Bun make a few final tries at providing the Candy kingdom with replacement heroes.  All leading to the conclusion that Princess Bubblegum is a bit of a science experiment obsessed jerk.  Which matches well with regular Adventure Time where she explains the origin of the Giant Creeping Gum Ooze to Marceline.  Plus bonus  gender-swap universe story that features an evil boy band vs. Marshall Lee's emo song stylings...

Astro City begins an arc revealing the origins of Winged Victory with guest stars the Samaritan and the Confessor.  Or three of the more obvious homage characters for the book...

Hinterkind has one pack of violent jerks taken down by another pack of violent crazies and with a third pack of violent jerks on the way...

Then doubling down on Marvel, cause two issues a month for titles is a thing for them.  We've got Longshot Saves the Marvel Universe with issue three having a vampire Wolverine, a werewolf Captain America and a mopey Magneto.  And then in the finale Longshot..er..saves the Universe.  And Young Avengers' final battle with Mother is won with teen boy kissing.  And then an epilogue slash dance party...

Daredevil's solution for the Sons of the Serpent problem seems to involve pirate radio and evil cult bible ransoming...

Moving on to Image.  Invincible Universe invades a prison as the Guardians go proactive.  Invincible has Monster Girl work on her issues with being a dead beat dad.  Velvet goes for a glide in her journey to find out who is framing her.  Saga shows that a violent confrontation can only get worse when you mix in a third party.  Pretty Deadly almost has a plot I can follow.  Prophet sort of doesn't but it does have two bigger than kaiju monsters brawling.  And  G0dland presents its long delayed, post-humanist final issue.  Space babies, talking mice and Kirby krackle may all be involved...

Samurai Jack's quest for the time travel threads leads him to what seems to be an idyllc village with a powerful warrior guardian.  But seems to be is hardly ever accurate for Jack...

And finally the second volume of Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard draws to an end with new contributions from Bill Willingham and Brad Thomte, Jackson Sze and Justin Gerard and Cliff Monear...

In this latest Saga someone gets shot, someone gets scared and someone gets stabbed.  These are all separate someones though...

Prophet is full of..um..stuff.  Stuff that happens.  And is crazy.  And also Troll flies into action as Badrock approaches.  Two things from the 90s I never thought I'd be interested in seeing...

While I missed the 2nd issue, I did get the latest itty bitty hellboy with the most adorable trip to Hell ever...

So this issue of King Conan is number six of six.  But next up is a six-volume mini, King Conan the Conquerer, with the exact same creative team.  And KC #6 has a bit of a floating ending.  So I'm not sure why Dark Horse decided to do two six-issue minis, rather than one twelve-issue one.  Even with a three month pause between them...

And finally the Adventure Time 2013 Spoooktacular.  This one-shot has the Ice King crashing a party, Finn & Jake encountering a Pumpkin Princess, Starchy's missing moustache and Marceline getting upset when people are nice to her after she pretends to be a nice person...

I wonder if what makes me really like this two-issue arc of Astro City is that the lead is a heroic call center employee...

Saga takes a look at how everyone who isn't Prince Robot is doing up to the point before the start of the last issue...

Amnesiac Jo in Fatale has the has been rock band that has taken her in on a slow burn of destruction.  Which could be argueably better than the morass of failure they were in before.  Plus how she once turned a kid into a future serial killer...

Invincible Universe opens with a brawl with mind controlled bank robbing gorillas and then moves to super-psychotic South Korean dictators...

Prophet is still very much Prophet.  At this point you're reading and being amazed or not...

Vicious jail brawl between Mako and Savage Dragon.  Plus Malcolm meets his girlfriends parents.  Things go well, in that super-villains don't attack during their dinner...

And finally Adventure Time: Candy Capers where Peppermint Butler teams up Marceline the Vampire and Treetrunks the Tiny Elephant to go out and solve mysteries.  Treetrunks is the maverick on the edge partner...

Though I've also got the one title from last week, Saucer Country. Which hopefully isn't the final issue like I thought, since it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger involving the origin of the Naked Magic Couple...

Wonder Woman, War and Orion (the New God not the Olympian) continue on their Baby Rescue mission...

New Dark Horse Presents, but sadly no new "Finder" this issue. There is an alt-history story about Custer by Howard Chaykin. And a "Fish Police" story, except in some pre-historic setting. Oh and an interview with artist Geof Darrow...

Poor ol' Conan the Barbarian still having relationship problems. Even after following Belit to Shem. And artist Mirko Colak comes close to making me not miss Becky Cloonan on this book...

Between Foggy's cancer and seeing if his last relationship is salvagable, Daredevil hasn't had much time to dedicate to finding out who is screwing with his life. Which means that person mails a box of experimented on attack dogs to his his office...

The Dark Avengers may be getting closer to solving the mystery of Marvel Super Gang Fight World. Or maybe they're just getting close to falling afoul of one of the battling warlords...

Saga has a happy rescue and a sad death and some boning. And Alana has a filthy, filthy mouth...

Still in the picking up the pieces stage on Invincible from Dinosaurus' attempt at population control. Also I can't help but smile at how the major weakness for male Viltrumite's is love...

Adventure Time finishes up the crazy jerk A.I. thats taken over all the other robots story. Plus a second Princess Finn back-up story. With Ice King princess-napping Finn...

And finally decided to check-out the relaunch of Poison Elves. It picks up right where Drew left things before his death and then changes things up by having Luse move away from the Gather Up All My Buds Rescue Jace/Wisp plan...

Since this week had no shipment 'cause of Holidays, lets finally get around to last week's comics. Starting with Dark Horse Presents. The returning Dark Horse series this time around is "X", which was a gun-killing vigilante type from their Comic's Greatest World launch back in the 90s. Also some more "Resident Alien" and that Pokemon-parody "Gamma". Oh and a bit of "Mind Mgmt" by Matt Kindt, the regular series I keep seeing getting talked up...

And a happy surprise, in that I'd forgotten it was coming out this month, in a new Empowered one-shot. With Emp having to deal with sexy nanotech malware. The deadly danger of one of her teammates fapping material...

Daredevil finishes up with the whole Spot/Coyote thing. And then has a confrontation with Foggy over how easily his friend turned on him...

Saga sees Marko and Alana still spending time seperately with his parents. Plus a visit to when the two first met...

Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads continues to be all full of crazy cool Brandon Graham-ness...

Marceline joins Finn & Jake for some video game fun in Adventure Time. Plus a Susan Strong back-up by Zack Giallongo...

The main focus for the Unwritten this time around is Tom in the Underworld, where he meets a pair of kids he's met before. Though thanks to all of them having drank from the Lethe, they don't recall one another...

And finally Wonder Woman goes looking for another of her siblings and ends up meeting Orion of New Genesis as well...

Saga has the Will run into difficulties in stopping child slavery space-whorehouses, our runaway family getting a ride, Prince Robot getting news from home and someone getting shot at the end...

Glory and her allies win against the attacking "demon" force but realize they'll need additional help in the future. Someone whose capacity for brutal violence makes Glory seem restrained...

Wonder Woman is more family problems, with Artemis teaming with Apollo to go after Zola and the still unborn latest child of Zeus. Plus an appearance by Demeter...

What I'll take away from the Unwritten is the sight of a rampaging Hephalump and a couple throwaway panels that give the origin of that asshole bunny...

In Adventure Time we learn that Jake shouldn't be trusted with a time machine. Is anyone shocked by this?

Avengers Academy has Phoenix Force Emma Frost continue to beat up on a teen boy's puppygiant killer robot. Despite everyone around her violently attempting to stop her from destroying said puppygiant killer robot...

Daredevil manages an escape from the clutches of the Finance Minister of Doom, despite having his senses all on the fritz...

And finally an oversized, 104-page Dark Horse Presents. Thats only 13 cents a page! A great bargain, especially when some of those are new pages of "Finder" or "Nexus"...