Take It Or Leave It – January 23, 2013

Even though I’m a huge Trekkie, I’ve been avoiding any news about the new movie. I specifically didn’t go see the new Hobbit movie because I didn’t wanna see the 9 minute preview. But I have been looking forward to this series. The countdown series before the prior movie was a great surprise, and it looks like this series will be following in those footsteps. This follows up on IDW’s ongoing series set in the JJ-verse, and lays the groundwork for the new movie, filling in some of the gaps between the two movies. The best part though, and a true WTF moment right on final page is the reveal of what I assume will be the series antagonist, a player in the Trek Universe we’ve heard much about but never actually seen in canon (unless one episode of the animated series counts, and it does not). Even though Kirk breaks the Prime Directive all the time (and does so here yet again), as far as I know, you wouldn’t expect this person to, so I’m interested to see how this all plays out, and how it connects to what little bit I do know about the new film. If you plan on seeing it when it comes out, I highly recommend this series.

Verdict: Take It

Score: 9/10

I actually just caught Mars Attacks on Showtime over the weekend. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original card series, IDW is releasing a Mars Attacks book for just about every property they have, with most of them being pretty ridiculous. The book is pretty funny through out, and did cause me to chuckle a few times. However, it’s nowhere near as funny as the Tim Burton movie, nor as gory as the Topps card series. Somehow, on the transition to the printed page and expanded past card length, it just loses something. It doesn’t help that the Transformers magically can understand the Martians, so we actually get to understand what they say, rather than just ‘Aack Aack Aack’, which kills most of the joke. It was however nice to see an appearance by Cosmos, the flying saucer Transformer. For the most part in the show he never made any sense and only appeared like twice, but here he’s a natural fit. He was one of the few I had as a kid, mostly because he had the size and articulation of a happy meal toy. Unless you’re a huge fan of the film or the card series, you can safely let this one pass. Besides, the Dinosaurs Attack cards were so much cooler.

Verdict: Safe to Leave It

Score: 6/10

The two tales in this week’s A + X involve Beast & Spider-Man along with Captain America and Quentin Quire. Neither one is a particularly strong story, but the Beast/Spider-Man one is definitely the better of the two. Even though apparently it takes place out of continuity, because it’s Peter Parker and Cat-like Beast, which are both apparently not the status quo anymore, to state it in a non-spoilery way. So Beast and Spider-Man travel to a future where Beast has turned everyone into zombies, and everyone is a blue cat. Spidey then fights zombies and a giant cat and makes a lot of funny quips, like he tends to do. I’m not overly familiar with Quentin Quire. I just know a bit about him from the Phoenix: Warsong miniseries. But his and Cap’s story just doesn’t do it for me. It was too short, nothing really happened, and then it just sort of ended. He helps Cap fight of a bunch of M.O.D.O.K.’s within Cap’s mind, but he comes off as too much of a hipster for me to like, though he is pretty funny, but not Spider-Man funny. I liked the former story, then the failings of the latter prevent me from recommending the book as a whole.

Verdict: Probably Leave It

Spider-Man/Beast: 7/10

Captain America/Quentin Quire: 4/10