A Descent into Dullness

And the not-yet-a-team ragtag New Warriors manage to win against the High Evolutionary and Other Dude.  I'm mostly just glad to be able to see more of Manic Pixie Girl Hummingbird and her partner Ultra-Moody Scarlet Spider.  Even at Marvel's stupid $4 price point...

Old Man King Conan continues his flasback tale of middle-aged Deposed Conan.  This time he gets to stab a big-ass snake.  As Conan is wont to do...

Grabbed the 2nd and 3rd issues of Rucka's the Veil.  At the same time as the latest Fatale, which begins its final arc.  If their were more than two issues to go I'd probably be dropping the former.  'Cause it doesn't measure up well...

And look Rat Queens is back already.  I'm glad to see the hiatus between arcs of the best D&D comic was so short...

And a new crime/noir comic from Jason Aaron (and artist Jason Latour), Southern Bastards.  I liked Scalped and its between seasons for Justified so we'll see where they're going with this for a bit...

And a pair of Adventure Time related books.  Adventure Time 2014 Annual by Frank Gibson and Becky Dreistadt presents a birthday tale of Li'l Fiona.  And then more of Adventure Time: Flip Side.  With the Reverse Curse ravaging the Land of Oo, Monkey Wizard continues to refuse to kidnap Art Princess and runs off to be a cowboy...

Astro City finishes up its Winged Victory arc with both a super-villain beat down and WV confronting her backers with their views on how to empower women.  I also like how she tells Karnazon he should stop trying to arch her, because he used to be a Big Thing kind of super-villain before he got obsessed with beating her...

Invincible has to team with Other Universe Robot and O.U. Mauler so that he can get back to his universe and stop Robot.  Their plan involves cloning, thus Mauler.  Invincible Universe continues with the upgraded threat of the Lizard League.  The former bottom tier group ends up requiring the entire Guardians of the Globe to be called in, which still might not be enough...

Thomas and Nate head into Mexico to hook-up with an anti-alien cell in the Saviors.  The motley group has plans for testing a new weapon on the aliens running the cops and the cartels in their area.  Though Thomas is still pretty shy of joining any kind of resistance group...

Velvet travels to a covertly legendary masquerade in order to find a off-the-grid Russian former agent.  Who will hopefully provide her with more information to help her find how to clear herself...

So of the eight new-ish New Warriors, we've got Sun Girl and unnamed horn guy in the sewers defending Morlocks; Robbie & Vance leaving New Salem to check the Avengers database on the new bad guys; Kaine, Hummingbird and the new Atlantean girl having their initial Meet Cute/Misunderstanding Fight; and the new Kid Nova still a prisoner of the High Evolutionary...

Lobster Johnson works to solve his latest mystery while dealing with a more hostile than usual NYPD.  And Cindy, Lady Reporter attempts to dig into the past of the Lobster.  Mostly finding awesome if kind of useless stories about pirates and mountain men and cougar shapeshifters...

Rucka's latest, Veil, is interesting.  Though I'm hoping it moves away from being just a creepier version of Fatale's deadly but irresistible lady concept...

Finn, Jake and Marceline go about tracking down Princess Skyblade Harbinger in Adventure Time: the Flip Side as part of a plan to try and get Monkey Wizard back into the Princess Kidnapping game...

And just under the wire I get to the June book list. Which starts with rereading the Honorverse anthologies. Well the stories that worked in the setting. I'm looking at you John Ringo. More than Honor, Worlds of Honor, Changer of Worlds, the Service of the Sword and In Fire Forged. I was going to get to the regular Honor-verse books again, but I mostly kept getting distracted by new stuff...

Well mostly new stuff, since next up was the physical copy of Flint, Goodlett and Huff's 1636: the Kremlin Games after I forgot to cancel it when I bought the e-ARC...

But then a new book with John Scalzi's Redshirts. A fun, if quick book, about the titular trope of the extras on a tv show who get killed off to show how dangerous the threat of the week is. And told from the perspective of those "redshirts". And ones who grow to realize the trap they're in...

And then another Weber reread of the newest Honorverse book a Rising Thunder, probably in anticipation of that series wide reread I never got to...

Next up was a novel by Paul Tobin, one of my favorite comics' writers. Still doing a capes story with Prepare to Die, but mixed in with a love story. Later in the month I got around to another supers prose story with Jim Bernheimer's Confessions of a D-List Super Villain. The basic set up has nearly the entire world taken over by mind controlling bugs. With only minor power-armored bad guy Mechani-Cal still standing. And yeah names are the one area where Bernheimer's creativity tends to fall down. But other than that a enjoyable capes book...

Then I went back to David Drake's "Lt. Leary" series with the Far Side of the Stars. The British Empiralism in Space is a bit more explicit with this one. With the series leads, temporarily beached, commanding a wealthy noble couple on a vacation cruise of various less "civilized" worlds...

After that was the Mongoliad by..well a bunch of people, including Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear. The mosiac, shared novel is a historical fantasy set during the era of Genghis Khan's sons...

Next up a pair of anthologies. Hex Appeal edited by P.N. Elrod is one of the better urban fantasy collections. In fact Elrod seems to have a pretty strong track record in putting together collections of stories that I predominantly like. As opposed Vivisepulture, a horror anthology edited by Andy Remic and Wayne Simmons. While there were probably a couple decent tales in it, I can't recall any of them out of the mess of mediocre, stupid or just plain terrible ones. I think I picked up the anthology for my Kindle months ago because Adrian Tchaickovsky had a story in it and I can't even remember what his was. Maybe the one about the killer ghost in someone's plumbing?

The Trilisk Ruins by Michael McCloskey was something where I kept seeing ads for it when browsing at work. The cover was pretty basic looking, but something about it made me click thru and read a sample. Not great scifi, but interesting and enjoyable with lost alien civilizations, artifact smugglers and a really alien-seeming alien...

Deadlocked was the latest "Southern Vampire" from Charlaine Harris. More vampire problems, mostly fallout from the killing of the Louisana Regent by Eric and his people. Plus problems with her remaining Fae kin and shapeshifter politics because of Sam and Alcide. Still weird how oddly tame these books are now compared to the HBO series...

Then I finally got around to my John Carter: Andventures on Mars omnibus of E.R. Burroughs. Once you work past the White Man's Burden and similar issues, the books are enjoyable as simple pulp advernturism. Well the first three, by the fourth and fifth books I was just skimming. Also I do prefer the more active movie version of Dejah Thoris...

Finished up the month with the e-Arc of Lois McMaster Bujold's Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. The newest "Vorkosigan" is centered around cousin Ivan Vorpatril, a woman on the run and in hiding and a rush wedding that seems to make sense to everyone at the time...

Total books: 18

Well, comic anyway. With the Unwritten being the sole title from my pulls to arrive this week. Tom and his friends continue to investigate the proto-super-hero, the Tinker. And the Conspiracy goes around murdering everyone associated with Tom's life. Or possibly his father's life. Or at least the books...

Since it was such a light week I also grabbed the first two collections from the relaunched Marvel Adventures Spider-Man. I love this line and Tobin's writing on this version of Peter Parker...

Marvel Adventures the Avengers: Vol. 8 the New Recruits written by Jeff Parker & Paul Tobin; pencils by Rodney Buchemi, Ig Guara and Matteo Lolli; inks by Rodny Buchemi, Sandro Ribeiro and Christian Dall Vecchia; colors by Ulises Arreola and Chris Sotomayor; letters by Dave Sharpe
Marvel Adventures the Avengers: Vol. 9 the Times They Are A-changin' written by Paul Tobin, pencils by Matteo Lolli, Ig Guara and Casey Jones; inks by Christian Vecchia, Sandro Ribeiro and Casey Jones; colors by Sotocolor and letters by Dave Sharpe

Marvel Adventures is the all-ages, continuity light imprint for Marvel. With the same general characters but without all the drama, angst and "mature" stories. No hero murdering robot/god/clones. No deals with the devil. No blown up school kids. Just light-hearted, super-hero adventures...

The series starts with an Avengers line-up of Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Storm, Wolverine and WaspGiant-Girl but quickly expands. With additions like Ant-Man, Hawkeye and Black Panther. In volume 8 the Avengers struggle to convince Luke Cage to join up, help Thor duck his father to go on a date with Storm, rescue a kitty, get trailed by Tigra and spend a day at the beach with Namor...

Volume 9 continues with more imaginative and fun stories. Like the Avengers being recruited by the IRS to chase down non-compliant villains. Or helping Ka-Zar get his driver's license at the same time as Stegron leads a dinosaur invasion into New York...

With only ten volumes Marvel Adventures the Avengers is a great pick for any Marvel fan wearied by the last several year's status quo. Or just fans of super-hero comics that are fun and a joy to read...