Review: War Machine #22

War Machine #22, "The Last Stand," Cover Date January 1996
Written by Dan Abnett, Penciled by Fred Haynes and Yancey Labat, Inked by Johnny Greene and Jimmy Palmiotti(?!)

Where we last the Avengers, Iron Man revealed himself as a pawn of Kang, and has killed Yellowjacket (the Guardian of the Galaxy), Marilla, Luna's nanny, and Amanda Chaney, the PR rep for Force Works. He also blasted Wasp in the face, but it remains to be seen if she'll recover.

Review: Force Works #19

Force Works #19, "Time Out of Mind," Cover Date January 1996
Written by Abnett & Lanning, Penciled by Heitor Oliveira, Inked by Rey Garcia

Last issue of the Crossing I covered, Tony was finally revealed as evil and fought the Avengers, thus clearing Hawkeye's name. Kang was also finally revealed as Mantis's mystery husband! Meanwhile, Force Works is in Vietnam, Tony Stark's crazy ex is somewhere in the arctic, and War Machine, U.S. Agent and Black Widow are on some military base in the southwest. Now that we're all caught up, let's get to the action!

Special Review: Warrior #1

Warrior #1, "Warrior," Cover Date May 1996
Written by Warrior, Penciled and Inked by Jim Callahan

We interrupt our regularly scheduled comic book reviews to review Warrior #1, in light of Warrior's surprising death this week. As a little background, Warrior had left WWF in November of 1992, and had since legally changed his name to "Warrior," and by 1995 was ready for a lawsuit against WWF for related trademarks and licenses (that he would eventually win). He took some time off from that in order to self-publish the "Warrior" comic, under the "Ultimate Creations" umbrella, at the tail end of the comic book bubble.

Character Spotlight: Bishop

Way back in August, I started up a feature I hoped to do regularly where I'd spotlight a character created in the 1990's. You can read my first entry over here: http://thepouchfiles.blogspot.com/2013/08/character-spotlight-cardiac.html I'm still taking a brief mental sabbatical before continuing to work through the Crossing, but I figured I'd do another of these.

Presenting BISHOP, the plot device that walks like a man!

Arc Review: The Spider Totem, aka "Coming Home"

J. Michael Straczynski's (hereafter referred to as JMS) run on Amazing Spider-Man is a bit divisive; at the time it was coming out, JMS was a "superstar" writer and his take on the comic was by and large seen as a breath of fresh air. I believe the common view is that his later work on the title is not as good due largely to editorial interference and crossovers with "events" like Civil War. While it's not universally beloved, the Spider-Totem arc made it to spot #13 in CBR's "top 50 greatest Spider-Man stories." In 2009, Marvel began publishing an "Ultimate Collection" of JMS Spider-Man comics; five volumes were published, collecting everything JMS wrote for the book, rather than focus on individual storylines. As a bit of background, I purchased the Amazing Spider-Man DVD some years ago, and have slowly been working my way up through the 70's up until JMS begins his run in 2001. So unlike a reader starting fresh, I came into JMS's run having sat through a truly awful period of comics (and I'm not referring to the Clone Saga, but Howard Mackie and John Byrne's post-Clone Saga relaunch), along with pretty much everything else. Maybe it's this perspective that makes me think that JMS's first story arc is a pretty bad Spider-Man comic.

Review: Avengers #393

Avengers #393, "Dark Days Dawn," Cover Date December 1995
Plot by Bob Harras and Terry Kavanagh, Script by Ben Raab, Pencils by Mike Deodato, Jr., Inks by Tom Palmer

Review: Iron Man #323

Iron Man #323, "Innocent Eyes," Cover Date December 1995
Plot by Terry Kavanagh, Script by Dan Abnett, Pencils by Hector Oliveira, Jim Cheung, and Yancey Labat, Inks by Mark McKenna