With the Secret Wars (third one, I think) event over and the Battleworld bit ended, the Marvel titles have all rebooted. Another chance for a number one issue, yay (yes, I’m being sarcastic). Agents of SHIELD continues to try and walk the line between the comic book setting and the continuity from the tv show.
If you read comics long enough, story types cycle around. This is especially true for origins and the founding of a team. The “All New, All Different” Avengers come together through the “many heroes cross paths during a fight” type that goes through the first three issues.
The new Thor has been around a while, and has crossed paths with various parts of the Asgardian mythos. In the age of the Marvel movies, you can’t go too long without a certain God of Mischief popping up. This issue has Thor clashing with Loki in several iterations. It’s really interesting seeing all the different versions pop up, although it doesn’t go as smoothly as Loki himself was probably expecting.
The fourth episode of Jessica Jones is called “99 Friends.” Like all the episode titles, this one will make sense by the end of the show. Jessica starts off at the subway, a picture clenched in her hands. After finding out last episode that Kilgrave had someone spying on her, she is both kind of freaked out and trying to find out who’s doing it. The one thing she’s relieved about is that there are no pictures of Luke, so he should be safe.
After the chaos of the Secret Wars, not much has changed for Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel. She’s still in school, still fighting the good fight, and trying to balance being a superhero with the other parts of her life. Her mother is aware of her secret and is something of an ally now, which was a really nicely done reveal a little while ago.
Jessica Jones’ third episode is “AKA It’s Called Whiskey.” It seems fitting enough considering her drinking habits. Jessica takes the trope of hard-drinking PI to a fairly extreme level but, considering what she’s been through, it makes sense.
At the end of the last volume of Thor, they finally revealed who the new Thor is. The new status quo is being established, but it’s ugly. Thor has a heavy burden to bear- every time she picks up Mjolnir, the magic of the hammer wipes out Jane Foster’s chemotherapy, but not the cancer she’s suffering from because it’s so much a part of her now. It’s a nasty twist on an old idea.
Marvel has done a lot of different versions of the Squadron Supreme. The Squadron themselves started off as fairly obvious knock-offs of DC’s Justice League. Of the ones that are in this book, the analogues are fairly apparent- Hyperion is Superman, Nighthawk is Batman, Power Princess is Wonder Woman, Whizzer is the Flash, and Doctor Spectrum is Green Lantern. The Squadron had has several incarnations, and now, after Secret Wars, five survivors, each of a different Earth, bad together to make a new version of the team.
The Agents of SHIELD will get their mid-season break after “Maveth.” This is a very busy episode with a lot going on, some surprises, and a few twists I certainly didn’t see coming. At least one of the characters will quite literally never be the same. That gets said a lot, but it’s true this time out.
“Crush Syndrome,” the second part of Jessica Jones, starts off very soon after the first episode, in a very dark and grim place. She’s in a police interview room with Detective Clemmons. Clemmons is suspicious of her, and also starts asking a lot of questions about Luke Cage. Jessica is not happy that the NYPD was in her office without a warrant, but he points out that her office is part of the crime scene, so no warrant was needed.
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