At this rate, if nothing thrown at the Hulk's direction could even manage to make him pause to scratch his nose for a second, it certainly won't be much of a surprise as an expectation to see Lord Dracula get his face pummeled in in the conclusion of the third issue.
With the combined mental effort from Lord Dracula and company, they have now brought themselves up to speed as to whatever they're dealing with, while Nul: the Breaker of Worlds or formerly the Incredible Hulk goes on a rampage through the monster forces put up against him in an attempt to drag him down even for a moment, which at this point would now seem only to end in futility. If that's not done in good sense, then neither is sending a team of vampire outcasts known as the Forgiven out there to deal with the hammer-wielding atrocity while their leader remains within the abode of Lord Dracula, trying to seek out a weakness in the Hulk, anything in order to stop it once and for all. Well, not that long as we're speaking of the Hulk here.
At this rate, if nothing thrown at the Hulk's direction could even manage to make him pause to scratch his nose for a second, it certainly won't be much of a surprise as an expectation to see Lord Dracula get his face pummeled in in the conclusion of the third issue.
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Apparently getting thrown into the vacuum of space eternal by a Norse Thunder God in a hammer fight does not seem to be impeding in any way the Hulk's progress in causing as much destruction as possible. With the Hulk landing on Dracula's Romanian domain, resuming much put off course on property damage and spreading of fear among the population, the lord of vampires is now forced to take matters into his own non-hammer-wielding hands, which isn't all that much fun as it would sound at first. Preliminary staking out, attending to the intrusion of outcasts never do. So we've got one monster smackdown to make things a little more cinematic. Wheee.
This is where it all started, the moment Deadpool embarked on a seemingly impossible quest to kill himself. From the cover it wouldn't be painstaking to figure out through what means he'd go to that end. Yes, it's the Incredible Hulk down to Bruce Banner's self restraint. It's the unstoppable force against an unkillable target, as Deadpool went to great pains in order that the Hulk might be motivated enough to grind him to a subatomic pulp with his bare hands. A lot of incendiary fun, mind numbingly amplified Tom-And-Jerry action and then there's this:
Now, it's not in the order of any proper gentleman to mistreat a proper lady, though when both protagonists of a story fall short by vast degrees from any conception of the word, anything could happen really. Recently (well, not so much; considering this issue was published probably months ago) Deadpool escaped from a mental institution set in England, though freedom flicks back up into the air the way a not so professional angler does with a still baited hook from the water when he was forced to confront Dr Ella Whitby, who in fact aided in springing Deadpool out from said asylum in the first place. What was once a clinical fascination of the warped mercenary now evolved into an equally warped sense of love for him. Now Deadpool's main priority is to get out of England before the doctor could do anything worse to him, and get on with things put off during his incarceration such as dying.
Well, it's Deadpool, toned down so to speak with the usual elements of the character that is excessive bloodshed, self mutilation, etc. In fact, such elements seemed to have dried down since the day he was institutionalized, and he's still trying to get himself killed to the extent that there is no way his exceptional healing factor could bring him back to one piece. Other than roughhousing the British secret service and keeping the Queen hostage, the issue's pretty dry. And who says the visually abhorrent are terrible with women? Behold Deadpool's past dealings with women:
Mystery Men #3 brings in two new characters to the Mystery Men as shown above: The Surgeon, who reminds me of Darkman, what with being burned alive by an angry mob and the mummified look; and Achilles, the Greek hero reborn to the sword and shield in the body of Professor Green, aided by said mystical amulet. Which would have taken on the fullest of its effect had it not been the average-joe-in-jumper look. Both bearing a hatred toward the General for robbing them of the things they had cherished before becoming what they were, both bent on vengeance upon the man.
Obviously the issue's attempt to cover so much ground sacrificed much of the existing Mystery Men's time on the pages. A little too rushed on the writer's part. The issue's ending made little sense from whatever was let on at this point. Shoddily put would have been my definition of the issue. Following the first issue, Mystery Men #2, oddly enough, starts off with the introduction of Sarah Starr, sister of the aforementioned dead actress, and her account of killing her friend in a plane crash, resulting in her remaining earth-bound possibly for the rest of her life. Which almost doesn't relate to anything throughout the story.
Significant points throughout the issue include the real identity of the Revenant, the relationship between Dennis Piper and the General, Professor Green's recovery of said mystical amulet as requested by the General, and a lot of broken windows. Great story, in the sense that I don't find it entirely boring, maybe lost a little time digesting jargon when the General accounted his plans to maintain the Depression. Set during the Great Depression Era, Mystery Men #1 introduces Dennis Piper, a billionaire of some sort by day, a Robin Hood-esque character named the Operative by night, who the corrupt local police had chosen as the scapegoat for the murder of a budding actress, which as it turned out was a sacrifice to a Fear Lord courtesy of a cadaverous seeming general with a supernatural allure to women in his search for a mystical amulet of some sort.
The Revenant was later introduced into the story, intervening twice in the police's attempts to arrest the Operative. A coloured vigilante garbed in a white cloak offered to aid in Piper's venture to seek out the culprit behind the actress's murder, apparently aware of the billionaire of some sort's secret identity as the Revenant handed him the Operative's black mask. Overall, the story is okay, set on an all too familiar theme, with an added supernatural element and a black vigilante to lessen that sense of familiarity. By familiar theme I meant corruption in the people sworn to protect the innocent, vigilantes doing their dirty work and so on. A few vague points include whether Piper's actually stealing from the rich and giving to the poor instead of fueling a higher social status, which would lead to certain questions being raised, mainly on the lines of charity or other more socially acceptable ways of improving the lives of the general public. Stress typical of a higher social class impeding rational thinking that sort of thing perhaps. Gotham by Gaslight is a noirish presentation of DC's greatest detective, set in conjunction with Sherlock Holmes as the World's Greatest Detective back then as well as Jack the Ripper, the ever elusive serial killer and a bloody trail of murdered whores in his wake. It starts off with Bruce Wayne, aka the Batman, accounting a recurring dream of his parents murdered in front of his youngish eyes to Sigmund Freud, a renowned expert on psychology of the time who as it was the case of any respectable psychologists tried to dissect it. It was then revealed Bruce Wayne was under the tutelage of two renowned masters on the elements that make up the man's alter ego for a daunting period of five years, before returning to Gotham, where out of the blue he decided to take up crime-fighting as a nightly leisure dressed ridiculously as a bat. With a portion of the city whores cropping up dead and the general public linking this unsightly affair to an equally unsightly presence amid them, Batman was forced to embark on a search for the real perpetrator, only to have come moments too late at the scene of the crime, where a body lay freshly dead.
The police of Gotham were of no help to the Caped Crusader either, as they were all but eager to arrest the killer themselves by convicting Bruce Wayne the seemingly innocent millionaire for murder and put an end to this ghastly business so as to attend to more important things. Days passed as Bruce Wayne attempted to solve the puzzle that had been the reason to his incarceration and being bound to a hanging, while everyone remained comfortable under the illusion that they had finally caught their killer. Gotham by Gaslight presents Gotham and its inhabitants in the traditional nineteenth century getup, and this is one of those stories where the killer is whom you least expect to be, with a number of loose ends throughout, such as where Bruce Wayne learned kickboxing. Batman's costume was more of a costume than in any regard bodily protection, as it obviously had been crudely stitched up from pieces of cloth via contemporary tailoring and none of that synthetic affair. Still, it's a costume with a purpose that is to inspire fear in the hearts of the city's evil heart, on those lines at least, whereas Gotham's police force, as it was in modern times, presented itself as an incompetent policing body, with Inspector Gordon, as was his descendant, being the sole exception. All in all, a Batman-origins tale that could have started off a lot better. Well, my first thought upon stumbling across this whole new series by Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli as part of DC's New 52 was, 'A Hellboy ripoff of a dead body.' From certain respects, one would agree, the rampaging monsters, monster with a gun theme, the only difference being: Frankenstein's rather a gruesome arrangement of body parts courtesy of a mad scientist, who of all more imaginative bodies chooses that of a prepubescent, seemingly innocent schoolgirl wearing a black mask, which come to think of it may not be quite so out of line with the whole idea of being mad; Frankenstein's married to a less gruesome female rendering of the same concept as himself, with an added pair of arms, so my first impression of her was Kali or some other multi-armed goddess.
Set in the twenty first century, the story starts off with the dog of an elderly man and his grandson running the utmost misfortune of being stripped of flesh by unearthly creatures, triggering the alarms of S.H.A.D.E (short for Super Human Advanced Defense Executive), whose headquarters resided within a small globe floating above Manhattan City. Frankenstein was sent in, along with a team of monsters put up to the former's convenience and initial outrage, as what would be more befitting to respond to a monster threat? It was revealed that Mrs Kali Frankenstein (well, it's the only name we can do with here) was already sent in to investigate before Frankenstein before she lost contact. As opposed to the initial impression, an equally cadaverous acquaintance of Frankenstein somehow detected the presence of refugees within a church, in the midst of an all-out pandemonium, and here comes the part the normal, though less fascinating populace expresses their irrational fear for the... visually esoteric. For those with a fetish for monster fights and the occasional knight in not so shining armour, this is clearly your thing, and an impressive work at that. The artwork amplified only the chaotic details of Frankenstein and his monstrous compadres, at the same time making the smooth schoolgirl features stand out more. So far as I know about Frankenstein is that he possesses an adequate knowledge of the poetic arts from which to draw upon whenever the situation calls for it, while being the one-monster no-nonsense army fighting for a righto. Wonder whether he's ever considered with his wife in the way of... procreation. |