"I'm a doctor, dammit, not the head of security!"

Today's title comes from the book I'm going to cover today, 1996's Star Trek/X-Men. This book came out as part of Star Trek's 30th anniversary, and it was written by Scott Lobdell with art by Marc Silvestri (it had about half a dozen inkers, so I'm not gonna list them all out). I remember loving this book when it came out, so I can't wait to get this reread on and see if it's as good as I remember (or at least as fun).

We open on the bridge of the Enterprise with Kirk, Spock & McCoy discussing a space anomaly the Enterprise has encountered. Kirk's Captain Log tells us that they are at Delta Vega, a planet the Enterprise has been to before, a place that brought a lot of pain to Kirk. This happened in the Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the series second pilot, when the Enterprise was called to Delta Vega and Kirk's best friend, Gary Mitchell, was transformed into a god-like being.

The Enterprise continues monitoring the anomaly when Uhura isolates a signal emanating from the anomaly. It's a distress signal, but she can't translate it, and neither can the Universal Translator. Suddenly, an odd-looking spaceship emerges from the anomaly. Kirk tries to have Scotty get the ship in their tractor beam, but before Scotty can act, the ship gets destroyed in the anomaly's wake.

Spock informs Kirk that the Enterprise's sensors had been able to scan the other ship before it exploded. There were seven near-human life forms on board, but before Kirk can fully digest whatever "near-human" means, a gigantic ship uncloaks right in front of the Enterprise and fires a projectile at them. The projectile stops 100 kilometers from the Enterprise, and the crew is surprised to see it's a being, and not just any being: it's Gladiator from the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.

He warns the Enterprise that he has claimed the planet for the Shi'ar Empire (of course, Kirk marvels how he's able to talk in space), and as a parting warning, Gladiator punches the ship. Yes, you read that right. He punches the Enterprise, damaging the shields.

We then get to see that someone has been spying on the Enterprise crew via the ducts: Wolverine. Yep, those seven life forms on that ship that exploded are the X-Men, and they managed to teleport off. Unfortunately, they were aiming for Deathbird's ship (Deathbird is the sister of Shi'ar Empress Lilandra) & ended up on the Enterprise by accident.

Beast soon figures out that somehow, the X-Men got transported into the future when they got sent through the spatial anomaly. However, they can't deal with that mystery at the moment. Gambit was injured during the teleportation, and the team needs to find the medical center of the ship. Jean uses her telepathic powers to try and find a way off of the ship so they can escape without being detected, but Spock senses her somehow, and he leaves the bridge to check up on his hunch.

Meanwhile, Storm & Beast manage to get Gambit to sickbay (via those ever-so-useful air ducts) where they run into Dr. McCoy. Dr McCoy, meet Dr. McCoy. This is one of the niftiest little scenes in the book, and one of my favorites.

Back with the rest of the team, they're headed through the ship, trying to reach the shuttlebay. Their plan is to steal a shuttle craft & take it down to the problem, but they run in to a little problem in the form of Spock. Wolverine being Wolverine, he attempts to attack Spock, but Spock brings him down promptly with a Vulcan nerve pinch. Doesn't work, though. Wolvie's healing factor brings him right back, and he pops his claws while demanding Spock take them to his leader.

The action now cuts to Deathbird speaking with Gladiator & her vizier. We learn that she has brought the ship to the anomaly because she believes that the energy emanating from it could allow her to conquer the universe. Gladiator tells her that their sensors have found a humanoid life form on the planet (which is supposed to be lifeless), and she makes plans to go down and visit it.

We now get our first glimpse of Delta Vega. Somehow, the planet is being transformed; the source of this transformation is Proteus, long-time X-Men villain. He has combined his essence with that of Gary Mitchell (Kirk's dead friend), and their two immense powers have been combined.

Back aboard the Enterprise, the two teams are having a meeting in the ready room when Chekhov informs them that the rift is expanding again. Kirk tells Spock to get a landing party ready to head down to the planet and see what's going on down there. The rest of the teams depart, leaving Kirk alone with Jean Grey.

Of course, Kirk being Kirk, he tries to hit on Jean, but she quickly puts him in his place.

The two teams beam down to the planet where they find what appears to be a Scottish village. Little Proteus has been a busy villain! And he takes no time at all to show himself. Proteus/Gary have joined forces with Deathbird and the Imperial Guard. She's promised him that she'll take him along on her ship so he's free to conquer the universe as he desires. He reveals that Proteus was searching for a body to contain his essence, one that wouldn't burn out because of his powers, and he was attracted to the psionic rift. He found Gary, and when they bonded, they found that they could control the rift & affect changes to reality.

Now here is where things really start getting cracky. Spock, who remained on the ship with the Drs. McCoy, informs Kirk that the rift is expanding erratically. Bishop tells Kirk that his mutant ability enables him to rechannel vast amounts of energy, so Kirk has him beamed back aboard the Enterprise to help out.

Beast & Spock are putting their vast intellects together to solve the issue.

Back on the planet, Proteus/Gary betrays Deathbird, and the heroes attempt to attack him, even though they know it's not going to do any good. Kirk asks Jean to use her psy powers so he can talk to Gary. Gary is very, very angry at Kirk still because Kirk killed him when his powers threatened to overtake them all. Kirk tries to reason with him, to explain that he acted out of justified fear. Jean seems to reach Gary by telling him that he still has humanity in him and he knows what he has to do.

The fight is continuing, but Proteus is pretty much thrashing them. Spock contacts the landing party and tells them that they're going to attempt to destroy the rift (resulting in a cold-blooded Vulcan comment from Bones). Gary in Proteus starts to protest as they begin their siphoning of the energy rift, and Jean, Cyclops & Kirk plead with him.

Bishop, riding on the ship's nacelle barrel, refocuses the rift's energy through the phaser banks & fires it back into the rift, causing it to contract upon itself. Of course, they never explain how Bishop, a human (he may be a mutant, but he's still human) can breath in space, but let's leave that aside, shall we?

With everything a success, it's just time now to clean up. There's nothing left of Gary, and we get a "He's dead, Jim" from Bones as a result. The Imperial Guard almost starts to attack, but Cyclops uses his authority from Lilandra to commandeer their craft. Deathbird immediately surrenders, but as she says, "only because there is nothing left for us here."

The X-Men give the Enterprise crew a hurried goodbye (they have to leave before the rift completely closes). Cyclops tells Kirk that seeing his crew has given him hope for the future (awwww), and Kirk returns the favor by telling Cyc that the sacrifices people like the X-Men have made is why they've made it this far as a race (double awwwww). The X-Men depart on the Shi'ar ship, and things go back to normal for the Enterprise. Bones & Spock go back to their regular bickering, which Kirk cuts off. The issue ends with Kirk telling Sulu to bring the ship out of orbit "to the future, Mr. Sulu. To the future."

All in all, it's still a good read. Memory had kind of made it a little better than the reread proved it to be, and it wasn't quite as funny as I had remembered it, either. Still, it's a fun book, and if you can find it for cheap, I'd recommend it just for the sheer crack.

"I am fire and life incarnate! Now and forever -- I am Phoenix!"

Well, another week, another Mutant Monday! And today, I'm going to be covering an alternate version of my favorite character, Jean Grey. The book in question is What If? #32, What If. . . Phoenix Had Not Died?

The What If? series really doesn't get enough love. It's one of my favorite series, and I've tried to get my hands on as many issues as I can find. In this series, Uatu the Watcher gives you a premise and then shows you what would have happened if events went another way. Not every issue is dark or has a sad ending, but a vast majority of them do. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the angst. And, boy, does this two-parter have angst in spades (I'll cover issue #33 tomorrow)!

Okay, quick recap (or as quick as possible) on Phoenix, for those unfamiliar with her/it. Jean Grey was a mutant who had telepathic/telekinetic powers. In a story from the early 80s, the X-Men were traveling in a shuttle craft through a solar flare, but the radiation began seeping through. One person had to stay at the controls while the rest remained in a shielded part of the craft; Jean used her telepathic powers on the ship's pilot to learn how to fly the craft, all while using the telekinetic portion of her abilities to keep the radiation out. She managed to save the X-Men, but not alone: the Phoenix Force heard her pain and offered to save her life, which she accepted.

The Phoenix took on Jean's form and placed her body in a cocoon on the ocean floor, and when she returned to the X-Men, they believed she had died and was resurrected by Phoenix, but it was just Phoenix becoming Jean.

They went through a lot of adventures with Phoenix, but the power became too uncontrollable for her. She was manipulated by Jason Wyngarde (Mastermind) and the Hellfire Club, she destroyed a planet full of broccoli people by consuming its sun (yeah, you heard me right; I might go into that part of it one day), and, finally, she was sentenced to death by the Shi'ar Empire (an alien race) in order to bring her madness to an end.

Jean/Phoenix had seemed to have her powers back under control by this time, but it wasn't enough for Lilandra, leader of the Shi'ar. The X-Men fought to save Jean by battling the Imperial Guard; Jean brought the battle to an end by committing suicide. She just couldn't stand the risk of Phoenix taking over her again and possibly dooming more people.

And that brings us to the beginning of this What If? issue. See, in this timeline, Jean was taken out early in the battle with the Imperial Guard, and instead of executing her, they performed a psychic lobotomy, removing all traces of her abilities and powers, making her just a normal human.

The X-Men return to Earth, and life goes on pretty much the same as in our timeline, except that Scott (Cyclops) and Jean marry and leave the team. Jean is plagued by nightmares of the horrible deeds she committed as Phoenix, which strains her relationship with Scott.

One night, they have a visitor to their home out on Martha's Vinyard (oh, yeah, purchased for them by Warren Worthington III, Angel): Magneto. He's come to take Jean up to Asteroid M and offer her a chance to have her powers back.

She nearly takes that offer, too. The X-Men come to the rescue, but it wouldn't be a Claremont-era X-Men comic without a some internal monologues (Claremont didn't write this book, but he was credited with plotting it):


And then we get this awesome image, a great homage to the cover of Giant X-Men #1:


Okay, back to Jean. She struggles with the allure of allowing the Phoenix Force to overtake her once more. She finally decides not to give in, and she begins destroying Magneto's energy chamber, and, Magneto being the evil dude he is, nearly strikes her in his anger. Hey, I'd be kind of pissed, too, if someone started bashing my electronic gizmos with a metal bat!

When Jean rants at Magneto and tells him how he could make the choice to become good, too, he turns away and says that his path was chosen years ago, and he lets the X-Men go.

They return to Earth once more, and things start returning to normal. They return to the X-Men, Scott as leader, Jean as a teacher for the younger New Mutants team. And they have a baby, little Rachel Summers (who, in our timeline [well, not really our timeline because she came to ours from another timeline; man, the Summers family tree really messes me up!] became a member of Excaliber in the 90s and a member of the X-Men in the 2000s). Life seems to be going really, really well for them. Which, of course, means that it's all about to go into the crapper.

Little Rachel wakes Jean up one night, crying horribly.

It turns out Jean may have been right about Rachel having powers; Scott enters the room, only it isn't Scott, it's Mastermind. He tries to manipulate Jean once more with his powers of illusion.

Ugh, that creeps me out so bad, especially the image of her covered in maggots!

But in typical convoluted fashion of the X-Men comics of this time period, he's not the only one trying to manipulate. Mastermind himself is being manipulated by the Shadow King, an old X-villain who once crippled Charles Xavier.

Jean tries to fight back, but Mastermind/Shadow King shoot her and steal Rachel; Shadow King has plans for Rachel, but he doesn't really explain those plans.

The shots kill Jean, and as her body lies cooling on the bedroom floor, Phoenix comes back and saves her life once more, but Jean fights back against Phoenix to no avail.

However, Phoenix finally realizes that she has been Jean this entire time. She was always Jean from the time she saved her on the shuttle craft and took on her form and psyche. This knowledge drives her over the edge, and she flies to the ocean where Jean's body lies in its cocoon.

She imagines how Scott will react to the truth that the woman he loves, the mother of his child, is a farce, and she believes that he will hate her for the lie. And she performs a horrible, unforgivable act:

And that is one hell of a cliffhanger. We'll continue with part 2 tomorrow, so come back for that!

In parting, I'll leave you with my top 5 X-Men list. Granted, this list is always subject to change, but these are my top 5 for the moment (and most of them are eternal top 5 members). They're not in any particular order, no method to my madness.

5) Wolverine: Okay, confession time - I have not always liked Wolverine. Phew! That feels good to get off of my chest! When I first got into comics & into X-Men comics specifically, I absolutely hated Wolverine. I thought he was completely over-used and over-exposed. I thought most people gave him more credit than he deserved, that he wasn't that great of a character. What changed my mind? Wolverine #75. It was the aftermath of the Fatal Attractions cross-over, and Logan was adjusting to life after having his adamantium ripped from his skeleton by Magneto. I may cover this issue soon, so I won't go all the way into it, but the clincher for me was the ending. His relationship with Jubilee showed me how much variety Wolverine COULD have when written well, and, for the most part, I've enjoyed him since. I like my Wolverine tough, ass-kicking with a side of gentleness for kids and ladies.

4) Nightcrawler: I've loved Kurt from the first time I saw him. He's Errol Flynn in fuzzy-blue-elf form. He's a bit of a throwback in that he believes in chivalry and loves to fence, but that's part of his charm. One of my all-time favorite images of Kurt is as a pirate. He's kind of been one both in the Excalibur series and in his 4 issue mini-series from the 80s. I don't know if I really care for his current incarnation (he became a priest a couple of years ago), but I do like that he's a man of strong faith, especially given the contradiction it creates with his nearly demonic appearance. If you want to read some really good Nightcrawler stories, search out Vol. 1 of Excalibur, especially through about issue #50. I'll definitely be covering some of those stories here, so keep an eye out for that!

3) Beast: Hmmmmm. . I'm detecting a pattern. Blue, fuzzy, sense of humor. . . I mostly prefer Hank from the 80s-90s; I'm not real keen on the current catlike Beast. Hank is one of my favorites because of his intelligence and his sense of humor. I also love the dichotomy he faced once his secondary mutation kicked in and he became beast-like: the intelligent man who looks like a monster.

2) Jean Grey: I like Jean because she's more than what she seems. For so many years, she was underestimated and underused, but then the Phoenix storyline hit, and the depth of her innate powers was revealed. Jean often gets relegated to second fiddle and usually doesn't get the respect she deserves (she was one of the founding X-Men for heaven's sake, and the first one Xavier recruited!), but when she's written well, she's amazing.

1)Magneto: The first and best X-villain. Like with so many X-Men characters, Magneto benefits best by great writing. He's such a great character: Erik was a child during World War II when he and his family were interred in concentration camps for being Jews, and he went through absolute hell there. Some of his origins have his powers first appearing while in the camps, but what is interesting about him to me is even though he went through this ordeal, he himself believes that mutants are superior to humans, and some of his statements over the years have been rather Hitleresque. One of the best Magneto stories is the Testament miniseries from last year; it shows his years in the concentration camps, and it's utterly heartbreaking. I definitely plan on covering it here.

So, there ya go. Come back tomorrow for part 2 of the Phoenix What If?, and I also plan on showing you a few panels from The Incredible Hercules.

Happy Monday! (Or Not)

It's Monday, the start of a fresh week, and my plan is to blog every day this week. Let's cross our fingers & hope I can achieve that!

So, I hope you guys here in the States are enjoying your holiday off, if you're getting it off, and for those of you elsewhere, I hope your day back is going well. :-)

Today, I'm kicking off Mutant Monday with a trip through X-Men #1. This series came out in 1991, written by Chris Clarement with art by Jim Lee. It was part of Marvel's relaunching of the X-Men titles, and it was a herald for all things that comics became in the 90s.

What do I mean by that? Well, issue 1 was released with multiple versions of the cover, which could be combined to become one big image. It was probably the first title to feature such a gimmicky cover, and gimmick covers became a staple of the 90s, especially in the X-Verse. Foil covers, holographic covers, variant covers, glow in the dark covers. You name them, they probably made them in the 90s.

Now, apart from the covers, the other things that were ushered in with the 90s were big, bombastic storylines, exaggerated bodies (you'll see some of that in a little bit), and pockets. I say the last somewhat in jest, but with artists like Rob Liefeld, you definitely get a ton of pockets & big weapons (but we'll get to that on Wednesday with Deadpool).

The late 80s-early 90s definitely brought about more cross-over stories. In just a short few years, we had the X-Tinction Agenda, X-Cutioner's Song, Fatal Attractions, Blood Ties (an Avengers/X-Men cross-over), The Phalanx Agenda, Age of Apocalypse, & Onslaught. I know there were more cross-overs after Onslaught, but that was where I dropped out of the X-books.

So where does that put us with X-Men #1? Where X-Men #1 picks up, the team is bringing everything back together. The Mansion has been rebuilt after being destroyed two years prior, the original X-Team (Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Angel, Jean Grey/Marvel Girl) have rejoined the team after disbanding their team, X-Factor, and many of the costumes have been redesigned.

When the issue opens, a couple of spaceships are having a heated battle above Earth when they venture too close to Asteroid M. Big mistake. This is Magneto's home, now that he has left Earth in an attempt to have some peace. Obviously, he's rather irate at having his home disrupted. However, instead of killing the intruders, as the old Magneto might have done, he says he'll return them all to Earth, eliciting protests from one of the men.

This man is Fabian Cortez, leader of the Acolytes (a pseudo-cult who follow the teachings of Magneto), and he manages to talk Magneto into letting them stay. This may be a bad decision on the part of Erik, as we'll see through the first few story arcs.

Cut back to Earth, the X-Mansion. Now that the original X-Men have come back into the fold and there are many new team members, they're running a little simulation. They've split the members into two teams, and their goal is to infiltrate the Mansion & find and "capture" Professor Xavier (who has a little extra protection in the form of Jean Grey).

This whole sequence is probably one of my favorites out of any X-Men book. You get a lot of great banter between the characters, some nice action sequences, and you get to see Jean kicking a little butt. But my favorite moment of all time is below. To set this up, Gambit has managed to get through the fortifications, and, being the lusty Cajun that he is, kisses Jean after he's taken her down with some of his kinetic energy card blasts. Unfortunately for him, the Jean he just kissed is a robot who explodes on him. Cyclops starts to inform him that he's been disqualified, but he interrupts and replies, "I know, Cyclops. Je suis mort - I am now dead." (this was actually one of my pet peeves on this reread, the amount of stilted French Gambit uses; I guess I don't find it as charming as I did when I was 16)

So, back up in the control room, we get this little scene that still makes me crack up:

My friends and I must have laughed over and read through this scene so many times in high school. It's nice to see a little gentle ribbing coming from Scott; he's always so stiff & angsty throughout the X-books, and his character in this issue was a refreshing change from my memory of him.

Of course, Wolverine is the one who finally "tags" Professor X, and he gets a reaming out from Cyclops for putting his claws too close to Xavier's head. Just when I started lovin' you, Scott, you gotta be the big dick again.

And, so, the X-Men have to come to the rescue when Nick Fury contacts them about Magneto. Asteroid M is currently over Russia, which is making the Russians justifiably nervous, so they start searching for Magneto's energy signature. Xavier agrees to Scott's plan to split the team into two teams, the Gold & Blue teams.

Now we come into a little goof in Claremont's writing. We cut back to Asteroid M, where the humans and the Acolytes are fighting. One of the humans kills one of the Acolytes, AnneMarie (remember this!), and Cortez uses his influence to show Magneto that the leaders on Earth will react to his presence and that he needs to act accordingly.

The X-Men get a read on Magneto, and he's in Earth's atmosphere, raising an old Russian submarine, the Leningrad, which he sunk some years ago. He had tried to remove the threat of nuclear weapons from the world, but the Russians didn't take kindly to that and attacked him. He sunk the Leningrad, all hands on board, and now he's trying to take the warheads from the ship.

He and Rogue have a little talk while Cyclops tries to sneak-attack him with the team's new Blackbird plane, but it doesn't work. It only leads to more fighting between the X-Men and Magneto, which leads to one of the most chilling panels in the book

Things quickly fall apart. Wolverine slashes Magneto with his claws, Magneto tries to flee with the warheads, and Rogue tries to talk him down, only she gets pummeled by bullets from (I'm assuming?) a Russian aircraft. In order to save Rogue, he uses his magnetic powers to shoot her down to Genosha (an island with mutant refugees; not exactly the safest spot), and then he detonates one of the warheads to cover his escape back to Asteroid M.

Back on M, Cortez notices how badly Magneto is bleeding, and he offers to use his powers to heal him. Now, here comes Claremont's big mistake I alluded to earlier: Cortez mentions that his powers will save Magneto, "as they have my sister from the SHIELD Agent's weapon." The sister is AnneMarie, who died earlier in the issue. Buwha? She clearly died earlier, but I guess Claremont didn't want to kill her off yet, so he conveniently uses Cortez to save her. Okay . . .

The story now cuts down to Genosha where the Chief Magistrate is asking that Rogue help deal with a group of mutant terrorists who are working their way through the city. Unfortunately, they show up at the hospital as they're searching for Rogue. Yep, it's the Acolytes again. Rogue is quickly overpowered, but the rest of the X-Team show up to save the day. We get a big battle before Magneto shows up again, seemingly healed from his wounds, and he declares that Asteroid M is now a safe haven for any mutant who chooses to leave Earth, but he also declares that he will take any attack against any mutant as an attack against him. Tough guy.

The final two panels are a foreshadowing: We see Banshee walking in to talk to Moira MacTaggert in her lab, but she's weeping profusely. Sean asks her what's wrong, and she replies, "I dinna ken what could've possessed me. Lord my Lord, what have I done? This terrible thing that's happening. . . Banshee, it's al my fault!" Bum bum bum!!!!!

All in all, it was a pleasant read to revisit. My biggest complaints were the written out accents (like for Gambit, Moira & Sean) and the constant internal monologues that Claremont adores. Maybe it's because comics in recent years have gotten away from the internal monologues, but they really bothered me on this read. Here's an example from Psylocke attacking one of the Acolytes:

I don't mind an internal monologue in moderation, but it seems like every single page has one or more. Moderation, Claremont, moderation!

So, that was X-Men #1. I'm still not sure what's coming up for tomorrow, but on Wednesday, we'll tackle a Deadpool book. Much fourth-wall breaking to come!

Beginnings (or How I Lost My Heart to Jean Grey)

First, a little news:

As you may have heard, it was announced today that Disney has bought Marvel for $4 billion (story on CNN over here). I have very, very mixed feelings on this. I have a great amount of love for both companies, but I do not want them mixing. There is a part of me, no matter my loyalty to Disney, that feels that Disney may try to control what Marvel is publishing. I don't want that to happen. I don't want Disney dictating the level of violence that can be used, the amount of cursing, etc. I know it's premature to worry about that, but the thought is in my head.

On the plus side, maybe this means we'll see more of the Gargoyles & Haunted Mansion titles. I've never seen either title in my LCS, but maybe they'll become more prominent. Perhaps we'll see more Disney properties become comics (I'd be up for a Kingdom Heart book, though Square/Enix would have to have a say in that, I suppose).

In any event, it's going to make for an interesting week of podcasts among the comic world, and hopefully, it will be a positive thing for both companies. I'll be sure to bring the latest whenever it's announced.

And now, back to your previously scheduled blogging. . .

So, you might be wondering what got me into comics in the first place. Well, as a kid, my parents bought me a pack of the old Star Comics imprint from Marvel. I don't completely remember what titles were in it, but I do remember it containing a Muppet Babies book & an ALF book (don't look at me that way! It was the 80s!). I also had a couple of film-to-graphic novel adaptations, one for The Secret of NIMH and one for Return to Oz. I wish I knew whatever happened to them.

After that, it was a long time before I officially got into mainstream comics; it didn't happen until my teen years. It was a compilation of my friend Donna and my uncle who got me into comics. My uncle had been collecting comics for a while, and I kind of remember picking up some of them and flipping through them while he was at work.

Donna was into the X-Men books, and after I started watching the 90s X-Men cartoon (again, thanks to my uncle), I started borrowing her books, and then I snookered my mom into buying them for me.

Back then, the X-Men titles were the only books I read. The first storyline I really read was X-Cutioner's Song, the big convoluted crossover among all the X-books that dealt with Stryfe (Cable's clone), the Legacy Virus, & Professor Xavier nearly dying after being attacked by Stryfe. I remember getting these polybagged copies of it at Wal-Mart; it was a pain to find them all, but I did, and after that, I was hooked.

I stayed with the X-titles until around the Onslaught saga; it just seemed too much like jumping the shark for me, and I hated what they were doing to Wolverine at the time (this was post-Fatal Attractions, where he lost his adamantium thanks to Magneto, and he was going feral; I think his nose actually ran away from his face out of frustration with the bastardization of his character).

See, look! His nose ran away!

I didn't get back into comics until about 2002, 2003. I decided to give X-Men another chance, and I stuck with it until a couple of months ago. I did like some of what they've done in the last few years; money and other situations led me to dropping all of my X-books.

However, I've expanded to other books. Fables and Jack of Fables are probably my favorite titles that I buy every month, closely followed by The Incredible Hercules & Deadpool. I ended up with Hercules as a fluke; I had been buying The Incredible Hulk when the Planet Hulk series ended & they shifted from Hulk to Herc. I was just going to give it a little trial, but it quickly won me over. I'll try to show you why you should be reading it in upcoming posts.

I've been a fan of Deadpool since the 90s. I never got to read his initial appearance in New Mutants, but I've loved him from the first time I saw him in X-Force. I love his manic energy, his breaking of the fourth wall, and his love for Bea Arthur (and of Siryn, though that seems to be stuck in the past and not gonna happen again). You'll see some of him in this blog, too.

Other than those books, the other ones I'm picking up regularly are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Astro City. I like the former, but it's kind of hit and miss; I love the latter, but I'll love it more once Busiek gets back to the regular title instead of the Dark Ages miniseries currently going on.

A Blast From the Past

Do any of you remember this little cartoon?



I used to have the VHS for this, and I watched it quite a bit. I still remember the damn theme song. Just try to get it out of your head! Try! I need to sit down and watch the whole thing and see if it's like I remember.

Stuff You Should Be Reading

Now, I know I haven't talked about my love for the Bat, but I do have a lot of love for Batman, even though I'm largely a Marvel girl. My love probably began with The Animated Series, but I love the books as well, though I don't read them often.

This, however, is my personal canon:


Bat's in the Cradle by *The-BlackCat on deviantART

This is the work of Black Cat, and you should go to her deviantArt page and read all of her stuff. Seriously, it's the best (or nearly best, from the buzz I'm hearing on Batman & Robin) Batman comic around these days. She'll melt your heart with the adorable and make you laugh your ass off as well. Not an easy task.

So, that's a little background on my passion for comics. Up next is a post on Fables #1, and later this week, we'll start the X-Men posts. Hope you enjoy the ride!