Agent Carter’s trip to California continues in “Better Angels.” In the wake of the disaster at Isodyne, Dr. Wilkes has been very neatly framed. Between his being black, and the paranoia about communists, it’s not a hard sell to most. Carter, of course, doesn’t buy it. Equally of course, Sousa is about the only one willing to listen to her.
In the second part of the pilot, Legends of Tomorrow finishes setting up the status quo for the show. They are still in 1975, now trying to get a better fix on where Vandal Savage is, after getting the information from Professor Boardman. They are already developing some quirks- apparently flying on the Waverider, whether through time or just normal space, doesn’t agree with Mick Rory, Heat Wave.
The new team is coming together. They’ve defeated their first foe, and are now trying to figure out where to go from there. Stark is having money problems, so a lot of the usual bells and whistles of being an Avenger are missing. Their headquarters is neither Mansion nor Tower, but an abandoned hangar in New Jersey that they are refitting. Stark does get one thing that most would consider an essential part of the Avengers experience- Jarvis.
As if Barry doesn’t have enough problems to deal with, a foe he thought was gone forever pops up in “The Reverse-Flash Returns.” Flash speeds through the city, to a voice-over about reasons to run, especially ironic from a speedster. He checks in with Cisco, who tells him he’s handled everything in Central City already. Barry ignores Cisco’s suggestion to take a break. Wells and Cisco, meanwhile, get into a humorous bickering match over coffee.
They are having fun with bits of the Superman mythos on Supergirl. This week’s title, Strange Visitor From Another Planet, is one of the descriptions of Superman from the radio and tv show days. It’s nice to see the nods to the decades-long history of the various characters.
After a lot of preview material, and a slow build across both Arrow and Flash, Legends of Tomorrow finally debuts, the newest addition to the CW-verse, or Arrow-verse, depending on which name you like better. Rip Hunter gathers a group of heroes and villains both to fight the immortal evil of Vandal Savage. Except for Rip himself, all of the other characters have appeared on Flash and/or Arrow. It really was one of the longest builds to a new series I can remember seeing. The CW shows are showing the same attention to continuity and building a cohesive world that Marvel Studios is using on their shows, and the DC movies so far have utterly failed to.
The second half of the season opener for Agent Carter is “A View In The Dark.” While they solved the murder in the first episode, they ended up with a lot more unanswered questions. Chadwick and Frost are clearly up to something or other, and the weird black floating stuff they showed last time is definitely SSR territory.
The first issue of this book was largely set up. It established Red Wolf as an Old West sheriff and man of action, very much a man of his time. Then, near the end of the issue, he runs afoul of a magic using bad guy. The evil doer worked his spell, and Red Wolf was banished to a strange and mysterious land- the present.
Khalid continues his journey as the new Dr. Fate. So far, he’s mostly stayed in Brooklyn, aside from a few detours to another plane. Now, he takes a substantial road trip to Mont Saint-Michel, France. It’s actually a nicely balanced story about a servant of one sect of gods helping out people in general. I like how Levitz did this.
Ms. Marvel’s first story arc in the rebooted Marvel Universe ends this issue. Her image has been used for a shady housing development without her consent. That’s bad enough for the young hero, but there’s a lot more going on then meets the eye. Bad enough that the creepy takeover of the area is being backed by Hydra, but their resident mind-control expert is bad news. The people under his control have had purple glowing effects. Purple plus mind control in the wake of the Jessica Jones series will probably have people thinking Kilgrave the Purple Man, but that’s a nice fake. As was revealed last issue, the baddie in question is Dr. Faustus. Despite a goofy name, Faustus is a very dangerous foe and expert in the field of mind control.
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