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Star Wars Legends: Rise of the Sith Omnibus Review!

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For modern audiences, the stories collected in the Star Wars Legends: Rise of the Sith Omnibus–first published by Dark Horse Comics over the course of the ‘90s and ‘00s but published today by Marvel Comics under the terms of their current licensing agreement–face a pair of uphill battles. For one, all of these stories are non-canonical “Legends,” meaning they don’t count in the current Star Wars narrative continuity, for whatever that is worth to any given reader. For another, they all take place in one of the lesser-loved eras of the Star Wars chronology, just before and after the events of The Phantom Menace.

Even though the prequel trilogy overall has received something of a reappraisal, as fans who encountered it as children have grown up to remember it with some of the nostalgia that drives fans of the original trilogy (and because many of the characters and concepts introduced by the prequels have since been mined for better and better-received stories in other mediums), The Phantom Menace itself remains something of the black sheep of the Star Wars family. [Read more…] about Star Wars Legends: Rise of the Sith Omnibus Review!

A Brief Retrospective of Al Ewing’s S.W.O.R.D. & Kieron Gillen’s Mister Sinister & Eternals

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In Anticipation of X-Men: Red #1, Immortal X-Men #1 & A.X.E.: Judgment Day

A group of people in clothing Description automatically generated with medium confidence
[promotional art by Dustin Weaver]
With myriad “Brand” new and “Sinister” twists around the corner with the imminent debut of X-Men: Red by Al Ewing and Stefano Caselli and Immortal X-Men by Kieron Gillen and Lucas Werneck, we’re here to recap what seems most relevant from Ewing’s S.W.O.R.D., his spectacular first foray into the X office, and look back briefly at Gillen’s excellent Uncanny run of a decade ago, particularly his indelible transformation of Mister Sinister into true high camp villainy, before turning to his current stunningly epic Eternals, catching X readers up on how much that heretofore forgotten franchise has been utterly transformed, worked over from the ground up and made storyable at last, complexly laced with broken palace politics by the notorious gamesmaster who will no doubt ring like Machiavellian discord through the Quiet Council, much to its immortal disquiet. Plus! We shall speculate on this summer’s looming three-way conflict between the Avengers, the X-Men and the Eternals—the Immortal X-Men scribe’s A.X.E.: Judgment Day.

(And, with great good fortune, in order to fully enjoy this event, it appears that readers need not bother with the dreck that is Jason Aaron’s Avengers.)

We’ll start with a look back at S.W.O.R.D., but the majority of this piece is about Gillen’s Eternals and speculation on Judgment Day… [Read more…] about A Brief Retrospective of Al Ewing’s S.W.O.R.D. & Kieron Gillen’s Mister Sinister & Eternals

Marvel Then: Silk After Spider-Verse!

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While Silk Volume 0 followed the Marvel Now! event Spider-Verse, which involved different incarnations of Spider-people across the Marvel multiverse battling Morlun, the enemy of all Spider heroes, Silk aka Cindy Moon, had been introduced prior to Spider-Verse via Vol. 1 of Amazing Spider-Man (2014). Freed from a bunker by Peter Parker after hiding away from Morlun for a decade, Cindy Moon was initially a horny, amateur Spider-Hero with a lot of room to grow.

Although she had a good first encounter with Black Cat in Amazing Spider-Man, Silk’s inexperience would cause her to make big mistakes during the Spider-Verse event. Her civilian life wasn’t much better. When she wasn’t in lust with Peter Parker due to some weird Spider power related stuff, she was interning for the news station Fact News in order to use their resources to find her missing family. While Cindy was locked away, her parents and her brother Albert had disappeared. As a result, she initially has no one to turn to other than Peter Parker.

Post Spider-Verse event, Cindy finds herself with an over-active Spider-Sense and a renewed determination to make it as a hero and make a new life. It is at this point where Silk Volume 0 begins. [Read more…] about Marvel Then: Silk After Spider-Verse!

Moon Knight by Jeff Lemire & Greg Smallwood Review!

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Moon Knight by Lemire and Smallwood is the definitive take on the character.

We’re lucky to have Moon Knight by Jeff Lemire and Greg Smallwood. The character of Moon Knight is fractured. He can be, and often is, many different things at the same time. That makes it difficult to come up with a definitive take on the character. After all, how do you define the essence of someone that constantly reinvents themselves? Lemire and Smallwood deliver an answer for this question in three parts. [Read more…] about Moon Knight by Jeff Lemire & Greg Smallwood Review!