Oh, goodness…it’s 1 hour and 30 minutes of Doctor Who, the week in comics, and of course a tribble ranch of Star Trek Into Darkness! Oh, and a little thing we like to call “the return of Bobby”. We don’t spoil the shit out of Star Trek because mostly we can’t articulate our thoughts particularly well, but there’s all manner of nerdraging and nerd boners.
The latest issue of Star Wars is split between Han Solo and Chewbacca trying to stay one-step ahead of the Imperial agents on their trail deep underground in Coruscant and Leia and her team of Stealth X-Wings being ambushed by a Star Destroyer and an entire fleet of TIE Interceptors.
With Willow‘s return and Xander preparing to betray his friends to save Dawn, Season Nine moves closer to the finale as “The Core” begins with Buffy, Willow, and Xander heading to the only place on Earth that might have enough magical energy to save Dawn’s life – The Deeper Well.
Every year you can count on Atomic Robo to deliver one of the best comics of Free Comic Book Day. The 2013 issue features out intrepid science adventurer (who just happens to be an atomic-powered robot built by Nikola Tesla) taking on a rogue robot.
How can a comic that starts off so well end in the kind of trainwreck that will damage two of DC’s Bat-books for months to come? The latest issue of Batman and… gives us a team-up of a more brutal Batman than we’ve seen in a while with Red Hood who has finally found some peace with his mentor after the fallout of mostly wretched Death of the Family.
Okay, so we lied. No Bobby and we blow past 45 minutes like it’s the check-out counter at Randy Quaid’s hotel*. But we’ve got a veritable SLEW of comics to cover as well as Doctor Who, Iron Man 3 spoilers, Free Comic Book Day (and how Atomic Robo totally owned that day), the wisdom of Zach Braff, and an intervention of Cap’n Carrot’s hideous carrot addiction.
Spoiler: Hawkeye still kicks ass. And Aaron still loves the Avengers and all related titles.
*If you caught that reference; congratulations and we’re sorry.
Derek Dynamo and Super Dinosaur get their first taste of Tyrannosaurus X when the super-powered dinosaur version of Max Maximus battles the two heroes above the Statue of Liberty and all through New York City.
The calm before the storm finds the ronin of Lord Asano scattered across the land working as farmers or laborers, or, as in the instance of Oishi Kuranosuke Yoshio, shaming any lasting respect they might have by playing the role of a town drunk. After months of planning, Kira Yoshinaka has finally been lulled into a sense of security and begins to fire some of his guards and spies as he plans to move into his new palace.
After discovering the creature masquerading as Michael Holt is actually Darkseid‘s right-hand man Desaad, Power Girl finds herself under attack from all sides as warriors from Apokolips destroy various Starr facilities around the globe, Boom Tube-ing in and out without a trace, and Karen Starr herself is attacked in the press as her carefully created celebrity persona begins cracking around the edges.
The Emperor Penguin storyline comes to an end as Batman battles Ogilvy, the self-proclaimed new crime king of Gotham who stole the Penguin‘s money and operation for his own. Underestimating his opponent, Batman arrives to discover Ogilvy has been busy by combining the stolen Man-Bat serum along with a version of Venom and a little contribution from Poison Ivy to craft himself into a legitimate super-villain threat.