Inhuman #6

A well-written comic book is Charles Soule's Inhuman. It tells the story of Medusa trying to piece Attilan, the floating Inhuman island nation, back together after its king and Medusa's husband, Black Bolt, blew it out of the sky when he detonated the Terrigen Bomb.

New Attilan now protrudes from the Hudson River, and Medusa has been gathering NuHumans there. In Inhuman #6, former Attilan king The Unspoken has succeeded in capturing Attilan and taking Medusa prisoner.

In the seven scans below Inhuman physician Vinatos leads a kamikaze attack on The Unspoken who is sitting on the throne of Attilan. Ryan Stegman is the artist; Marte Gracia provides the colors.

Infinity #3

Last weekend I dipped into Marvel's current crossover blockbuster event, Infinity.

Part of the Marvel NOW! re-branding that coincided with the conclusion of the Avengers vs. X-Men Phoenix war, Infinity, stretched as it is over several different titles with tie-ins in various books, is turgid, opaque, unsatisfying.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of writer Jonathan Hickman. And the art by Jerome Opeña, Dustin Weaver and Jim Cheung has been topnotch. It is just that I am exhausted with the blockbuster crossover events and the crass commercialism behind them. For instance, Age of Ultron supposedly feeds into the Infinity storyline, but I wouldn't know that because I threw in the towel on that blockbuster crossover event before the final issue. I have all the Age of Ultron issues here in the studio. I read the first five issues. I just have no desire to take the time to finish off the title.

The plot architecture of Infinity is a classic Western. Cavalry exits fort in pursuit of Indians. Marauders attack and capture defenseless fort. While most superheroes are in outer space engaged in Star Warsesque battles with the Builders, creators of the universe who have decided that the Earth must go, the baleful Thanos, in order to claim the remaining Infinity Gem, decides to stage a sneak attack on our seemingly defenseless blue-green planet.

Below are scans of the three pages that conclude Infinity #3. Black Bolt goes aurally ballistic on Thanos. The art is by Jerome Opeña and Dustin Weaver; colors, Justin Ponsor:

New Avengers #8

Jonathan Hickman is working on some big themes in The New Avengers, another excellent Marvel Now! title. How does multi-dimensional annihilation strike you for size? Namor, Beast, Iron Man, Reed Richards, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Black Bolt -- big hitters one and all -- are dealing with a situation where infinite worlds from other dimensions are cued up to collapse on our own in a cosmic display of super dominoes. Extreme events call for extreme measures. So the New Avengers have created a bunch of mega-bombs to blow up the fully-populated alternate worlds in an attempt to buy themselves -- and our planet -- some time to figure a way out of total destruction.

Jonathan Hickman is a bona fide brainiac and gifted writer. Mike Deodato, who succeeds Steve Epting, provides art that is suitably grand. This is a fine comic book and I've enjoyed reading it. It taps into a sense of doom that is so prevalent today.

Below are three scans from the first few pages of The New Avengers #8. On the third page Tony Stark is addressing our current real-world situation, and not just the comic-book narrative he is appearing in:

I think everything is breaking down.

This world, this system, our galaxy ... the fundamental underpinnings of ... well, like I said ... everything.