Berkeley Place

Look, I get that Jerry Ordway is a comic book legend.  I appreciate his role on so many great and important series.  But I hate U.S. Agent, and even a legend can’t make me like him. Picking up from the Maximum Security event, Agent Walker gets a job working with SHIELD and locking up super villains.  Val Cooper sets him up with his own team: S.T.A.R.S. (Superhuman Tactical Activities Response…

Here’s the story in a sentence: Amidst all the anti-mutant hate, new British pop superstar named Sugar Kane decides to date a mutant.  How cool an idea is that? The issue starts with Kane getting mobbed by fans and saved by Chamber.  She’s clearly smitten with him, and they end up getting involved.  Admit it: When I led with the fact that a pop star was dating a mutant, you didn’t think it…

This is a really cool arc. A new villain who has the power to “fuse” the abilities of known super-heroes (he’s named Fusion) debuts and tricks Spider-Man into failing to defuse a bomb that kills 300 people. It turns out, though, that Fusion doesn’t actually have that ability. Rather, he can make people think that he has powers. Spider-Man defeats him, of course, but not until after Fusion makes…

While Grant Morrison was beginning a legendary, legend-breaking run on New X-Men, Joe Casey started writing the oldest of the X-books, Uncanny, and took an unorthodox approach to a much more traditional type of X-comic about the usual mutants trying to save the world that hates them… But this first issue was a damn fine book. A new mutant named Warp Savant celebrates his 18th birthday, which…

Luke Cage joins the Knights to take on Fu Manchu. It’s the first time Luke and Shang Chi meet. The story is…Basically nonexistent. I didn’t really understand why any of the things in it were happening. But in the end, Fu Manchu attacks the building that serves as the Marvel Knight’s base, and blows it up. Since Moon Knight paid for it, the cost of the loss forces him to retire and stop funding…

Picking up from last issue, Jessica has a tape of Steve Rogers changing into his Captain America uniform. She doesn’t want to have it. She recognizes that she has to deliver it to her client, and it could undermine one of the most important and best people in the world. But at the same time, the woman Steve Rogers was with right before he changed into his super alter-ego is now dead. Strangled.…

Let’s talk about that cover for a sec.  Why is Frank’s shirt ripped—he’s not shot or anything.  Why are there no bullet holes in the kids or the wife?  They’re dead, and their clothes are fine!  Why are the angel wings on his children but not his wife?  Is this a hint that she wasn’t really the mother of his kids? So many questions. The angel motif continues on the cover to #2. Quite…

These issues are the first to offer David Mack’s painted art on the interior, which is nice. “Wake Up” is mostly about Ben Urich trying to locate the “villain” Leap Frog, who has gone missing. Urich learns this from Leap Frog’s young son, Timmy, who is basically a zombie–sitting on his bed chanting a story about Daredevil fighting a made-up villain called “The Fury.” Ben Urich is a reporter, not…