Peter David himself is apparently leaving again after the M stuff ends. Yeah, this 2nd run definitely hasn't been all that great. I did like the one self-contained issue (#82?) but the nightmare story was just lame. OH well, sometimes you can't go home again.

Sometimes, it's better to just ignore what bad writers did to characters you want back to "normal." Like:
The whole Spiderman Clone saga thing.
Alicia Masters turning out to have been a skrull
Colossus inexplicably dying to "cure" the Legacy virus (and before that, the whole brain damaged acolyte colossus)
Teenage tony stark
grown up Franklin Richards forming the "Fantastic Force"
"Cannonball" Sam Guthrie going from the grown-up, confident "leader" of X-Force to a bumbling rookie X-man.
Age of Apocalypse rejects Dark Beast and Sugarman being on our world
Wolverine without adamantium
"Armored" daredevil
Hawkman's origin
Powergirl's origin
Hal Jordan going nuts and killing Kilowog, as well as the whole GL corps
Hawk going nuts and becoming Monarch, all because it was leaked that Captain Atom was going to be monarch and they wanted a twist.
The immortal Highlanders actually being from outer space (okay, that one's not a comic)


Now I'm an old-school comic book fan that enjoys continuity, but I realize that there are hundreds of writers writing for these same characters, and not everything some hack writer does is good, even if it is "in continuity." So I accept the "explanation" of Colossus's death. Of the storylines above, I can't remember how any of them got resolved, I'm just happy that they did.

Zero Hour fixed Hawkman's origin

Don't forget Heroes Reborn. The quasi-Crisis fixed Teen Tony, Hawkeye's ear, and other Marvel dangling storylines.

They've also done an OK job of wrapping up X-stories. It's pretty clear who the third Summers brothers is. They finished The Twelve, Apocalypse, most of the timeline continuity errors, although recently they've really been fucking up X-men again.

Birds of Prey #84

not a spoiler

What the hell did Brainiac do to Barbara Gordon?!

I don't usually get this comic so I only bought the last issue #83 because of a supposed IC tie-in amd I bought #84 just to see what the comics is like. Plus, I like the way the girls are drawn in BOP.

By the way, who was the 3rd Summers Brother?

And who were "The Twelve?"

From what I remember, Zero Hour did a really poor job of "fixing" Hawkman's continuity. Didn't they just combine all these different Hawkmen and some kind of Hawk avatar into one being?

I will say that I enjoy JSA because it does try to fix random breaks in DC continuity. I mean, they even brought back Infinity Inc., and they had to bring some back from Vertigo to boot! I still wonder how fans not steeped in DC lore take this book, though...

I do face a similar issue with Legion of Superheroes. On the one hand, as a lifelong fan, I miss the old post Zero Hour continuity (and I miss the real pre-Crisis superboy legion even more!). But I do admit that this new series is pretty good, though they really don't seem like "my" Legion... and Waid didn't waste time trying to explain away the reasoning behind the reset. Much cleaner this way, and I hope it finds an audience that will stick for once.

The Twelve were: Professor X, Storm, Sunfire, Iceman, Cyclops, Cable, Phoenix, Bishop, Magneto, Polaris, Mikhail Rasputin, and Living Monolith.

Yes, Hawkmen were all combined into one "Hawkgod", which led to the creation of the Katar Hol/Shayera entities that are continually resurrected.

Yes, JSA is a tad bit out of reach of the casual reader. Still great though.

The New Legion spun out of the Titans/Legion crossover. The Legion's future was destroyed during a battle with the Fatal Five (time-cloned to be the Fatal Five Hundred). Only one member survived the original timeline (I forget who right now). It is also being hinted that the future in Legion is a product of the upcoming Infinite Crisis. I like the series though, a nice blend of pre- and post-Crisis concepts.

I guess no one knows what happeend to Barbara....

DC is following "Infinite Crisis" with a year-long series coming out weekly to fill in all the gaps. Assuming the writing and art is somewhat consistant (I can't imagine less than 3-4 writers/artists would be working on it), sounds like it should be interesting. With it being 52 weekly issues over the year, DC is calling it the 24 of comics.

I really like the idea of 52. I'd really like to know what creators they get on the book. I wonder if the issues will be credited to different writers or if it'll be like Countdown where the whole thing is credited to multiple writers. It'll be interesting to see if you can just pick up certain issues or if you need to pick up every issue for it to make sense. I would've expected the former until I read that the series will have 4-6 primary characters. If they can get the comic out for under $2/issue or maybe put out collections of the issues quickly and cheaply I'll definitely check it out.

Where's Sessa? I need him.

Okay, so what were "the twelve" used for? That group actually sounds familiar, from when I was still reading X-men, but I can't remember for the life of me. And who was the third summers brother?

The infinite crisis followup thing sounds interesting, though I'm not sure I'll want to pick up 52 weekly issues unless the team is consistent (which I doubt).

I've been reading the Marvel 1602 trade recently... it's pretty interesting, but shorter than I thought (only 7 issues?). How was it received when it came out? Last month I picked up a lot of great TPBs... after 1602, I still have the latest Astro City hardcover, WE3, and the first volumes of Y the Last Man (which I'm finally getting around to) and Ex Machina. And this month's comics get mailed to me next week!

The Twelve were originally presented in early issues of X-Factor as twelve Really Important Mutants. It was really pretty vague. Something like seven or eight were identified, and Apocolypse was one of the Twelve.

Later, it was said (or maybe just suggested) that the Twelve would be the ones to defeat Apocolypse and prevent him from ruling the world. This is about where they started pretending that Apocolypse hadn't been identified as one of the Twelve.

Still later, it was revealed that Apocolypse really wanted to gather the Twelve together to tap into their powers and somehow rule the world. He had himself started the rumors of the Twelve for reasons which were never really explained. It was, by all accounts, an extremely bad story, even by late-90s X-Men standards.

There was also some business involving the whole mythology of Cable/Nate Grey/Phoenix/Askani, but I had long since given up on reading x-books by that point, so I can't really keep it straight.

I'm a Batgirl fanboy. So I know. It's a very long standing story arc. Back when some cult was abducting and killing off kids in hero outfits, Babs hacked into their computers and picked up a sort of Brainiac virus. She was sick for a bit and was actually becoming some what computerized. She had parts of her skin as chips. In any case, the story sort of settled down and it was swept under the rug for the following story arc. Seems like she got it under control. Every now and then you will see Babs use some new mask to jump on some network. So it's a slow process of her using this to her advantage. But lately it took over again and is effecting her.

Apocalypse was going to use the powers of the 12 to become an extremely powerful demi-god on the level of the Eternals. It was a horrible story that was trying to tie up all the loose ends in X-men continuity. It was almost as bad as Wolvie getting his Adamantium back. ALMOST.

The third Summer bro is most likely X-treme. He's drawn almost exactly like Havok/Cyclops and has energy based powers. Also, he is immune to their energy blasts, as they are to each other. If it's not him it better not be Gambit, because that theory has already been discredited. If you want more info check out Uncannyxmen.net.

A nice start to the new arc in JLA Classified #10. Guice's art is great as always.

Thanks Jackskeleton!

There's no way there's actually a character called X-treme, is there?

Yeah...he was pretty lame, if I recall - it was during the 90s, all kinds of craziness was going on.

Unfortunately, he's a real character. Blah to Howard Mackie.

Here's a link to a page about X-Treme (and is apparently beloved by at least the author):

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/adamxxtreme.htm

Fabian Nicieza, actually. I never read anything with X-Treme, and that sure is a lame name, but Fabe usually does good work, so I'm assuming the character isn't quite as lame as he sounds.

Was going through some PVPonline strips and thought this one was great, considering what was going down with HeroesCon & Wizard:

http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20050725

Link to Matt Fraction's editorial about the upcoming Wizard World Atlanta and how it will affect HeroesCon (from CBR):

http://www.comicbookresources.com/ne...em.cgi?id=5635

There was a long thread on Millar's World about the WizardWorld ATL being held on the same weekend as Heroes 2006, and pretty much it's a big F-U to Wizard on this one. The last I heard, WizardWorld ATL will not go in 2006, but will look for a better time in 2007.

http://www.newsarama.com/forums/show...threadid=39363

Warren Ellis and Mark Millar will be at Heroes 2006 as well, plus many other pro's who have decided to rally around Shelton Drum's little comic convention that could.

http://www.millarworld.net/index.php?showtopic=51817

Thanks for the links and the good news!

With this latest stunt by Wizard and the increased promotional nature of their magazine, I'd like to subscribe to a different comic magazine (tho I don't think there are too many) - any favorites and/or how is Comics Buyers Guide? Looks like a 12 issue montly sub is around $20 on eBay...