The Weekly Pull List, Early Edition

Welcome back to the Weekly Pull list, a couple days early this week in honor of Marvel Direct getting two books to me ahead of time. Also, last week I dropped the ball by forgetting to review Annihilation Conquest #4, so I'm going to remedy that today. Let's get to it, shall we?


Annihilation Conquest #4
This issue was a microcosm of the way this series has been going since the prologue and the four miniseries leading in. It gets half the things right and half wrong ( or at least boring). The fate of Peter Quill (who's currently getting the kind of personal attention from Ultron that the Bush administration would insist is perfectly legal) and the remnants of his ragtag band is as good as the Starlord mini. The antics of Ronan and the Super Skrull, who were a dynamic duo of sorts in Annihilation, were terrific. The other half of the story, involving Adam Warlock, the new Quasar, and the High Evolutionary, just falls flat. Too much talking and whining and not so much action, and a thinly disguised fake out at the end are draining my interest in whatever these guys are getting up to. Worse, there's no Nova to make up for it, at least not until the very last issue. Weakest issue so far; DnA need to step it up something fierce next month.

Amazing Spider-Man #550
I called it last week and am happy to say that I was right. This issue was far, far better than the previous issue. Spidey's banter was on point, there was just the right amount of action mixed with character drama, and the new baddie, Menace, really is living up to his name. Guggenheim's got a good handle on this story and all the elements he's using to spin the tale. Larrocca is solid throughout for the most part, though I had a problem with some of his female faces here. There was also a particularly manish looking shot of Betty Brant in one panel, which doesn't match up with the way I usually see her. Still, overall a great issue, and it promises an outstanding final issue of Guggenheim's first arc.

New Avengers #38
This is it, the Secret Invasion is underway, so we're about to see mad Skrulls running around, right? Well, not quite. What we do get here is the fallout of Jessica Jones' decision at the end of January's New Avengers Annual #2, where she fled with Danielle (damn, why'd I just have to look the baby's name up?) to Stark Tower and became a registered superhuman. This issue is called "The Break Up", ant that's exactly what it is. Sure, we get some more posturing from the Mighty Avengers (they've been doing that a lot lately), and we even see the New Avengers get cozy in their new pad, but it's mostly about what's going on between Cage and Jessica. So how does this tie into Secret Invasion? It's hard to tell, except for the fact that we know for sure that at least one person in the Avengers is a Skrull, and that all of this strife is partly the fault of whoever that is. Good issue, but it gets a slight bump down for not really having any Skrull action.

That's it for now, check back on Thursday for the rest of this week's stack.