Captain America #01

The relaunch of Captain America title has Steve Rogers back as Cap. The new storyline have nothing to do with the ongoing fear itself event happening in the marvel universe. Written by Ed Brubaker the story more focused into captain america's tale of adventures from the past. In the first few pages, cap reminisces about the world war 2 and how he stopped the nazis. Then fast forward to present he attends the funeral of Peggy, an old colleague from world war 2.

But soon enough the past catches with Steve as same familiar face from during the war shows up and tried to assassinate Nick Fury and Dugan at the funeral. Steve goes after the assassinator but ends up getting blown by the villain. Steve ends up alright and it was later revealed through flashback the assassinator is named Bravo an old acquaintance during the war as he and Steve worked together with Nick Fury and Peggy on a mission in europe. It seems that the mission main person is a boy named Jimmy. His abilities is not revealed here. Back to present Steve sensed that Jimmy is awakened from a coma. As Cap with Nick Fury, Sharon Carter and Dugan went to retrieve Jimmy they were ambushed by hydra and they managed to snatch Jimmy.  These hydra is of course dispatched by this Bravo and is in cahoots with Baron Zemo, another very old villain resurfaces.
There are many unanswered question from this issue alone. More light should be shed in the next issue.

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The action is thick and fast in this issue. Odin is all anxious and try to galvanize all his forces in asgard but in the process chain up Thor in a prison for his disobedience. Odin is making earth the final battle ground with the Serpent. The unidentified objects which are hammers similar to Thor's summoned by the Serpent arrived and crash on earth on different parts of the continent.

Juggernaut possessed the first one and the hammer transformed him into a more enhanced version plus a new look armor suit with the name Kurth breaker of stone. In the process his mind is possesed by the hammer as well and is doing the bidding of the Serpent. Then the Bruce Banner hulk got the other hammer in Brazil and was also transformed by it into Nul breaker of world with an enhanced costume suit as well. Hulk is going to be most powerful and hard to stop of all the hammer wielders.

In South Africa absorbing man is trying to pick up the hammer recently crashed into a diamond mine there but to no avail. Until his companion titania comes along and easily holds it up and transformed in Skirn breaker of men. I wonder will she breaks only men. As all the hammer wielders started to bring chaos around the world the avengers are no where to be found. There's also a blitzkrieg of Washington depicted on a 2 page full spread where Sin with her armies of nazi robots bombs the capitol hill. Will the avengers strikes back in the next issue but then how and why are they taking so long.

Fear Itself Spiderman 1

The story here describes the fear that is gripping New York city residents a few hours after 'fear itself' begins. Here spidey narrates through all the crazy thing that is happening to the citizens. People are beginning to fear about everything that is needed to be feared about. In the first few panes spiderman have to save an Iranian taxi cab driver from a mob hell bent on lynching the cab driver. Mobs are everywhere and the city is in chaos.

Even Spiderman isn't spared as his constantly trying to contact aunt May by phone ended in futile. Spidey begins to start thinking all the bad things that could have happened to her. Meanwhile Spiderman has to do a lot of saving and rescuing in the city including stopping a van fully loaded with explosives from ramming into the police station and exploding. Only for the police to misinterpret what spidey has done and instead blamed him on the attack. Spiderman have to escape with the cops shooting at him.

In the final action, Spiderman managed to save a guy from jumping down a building only to be undone by his running out off web fluids and causing both to fall midway from the building. Spidey injured and barely able to stand then gets surrounded and attacked by rats as the villain behind it, the vermin is revealed in the final pane

Avengers 12.1

Here is a standalone issue just before the big event Fear Itself. The story concentrate more on the appearance of an unknown extraterestial entity and spiderwoman dispatch herself to investigate at Wakanda. As she stumbles on the source of the alien entity, she was surrounded and kidnapped by a group of villains. These so called second rated villains called themselves the intelligentsia as they are smart people amde up of the wizard, thinker, modok and red ghost. They seek to experiment the unknown alien entity that is in some sort of mummy steel casing that they found.

The avengers and the s.w.o.r.d organization that monitors aliens activities proceed to track down spiderwoman on learning about her disappearance. No one gets left behind even in avengers. They tracked her down to the villains headquarters and a battle ensues. Before long the avengers overpowered them. Modok is pulverized by Thor with just a swipe of the Mjolnir. Soon after the alien entity already being prodded by some of the villains is awoken. It is revealed that it is Ultron, the enhanced a.i. robot created by Tony Stark a few years back.

Thor leap into action and give it another of Mjolnir's blow causing the whole place to explode. What causes the explosion is not exactly revealed but Ultron managed to escape in the confusion as it is not ready for a battle yet. Surely with the return of this indestructible Ultron after being banished from earth will cause massive damage in issues to come. But not before the event in fear itself is ongoing. The pencils by Bryan Hitch is as usual very awesome and life like especially the full spread pages.If only there were more full page spreads especially of the fight sequence.

 Notable event: Ultron is back on earth

Fear Itself 1

The first book of this year's major event gives an introduction on the main players in this event. The avengers seems oblivious about what major event is about to happen. Only Odin knows and he commands all asgardian to go back to asgard. His intention is not revealed here. Thor and Odin had a fight where Odin wins easily enough. Now the avengers are left without the gods. The watcher/witness also makes an appearance here which could only mean something big is going about to go down.

The daughter of red skull, Sin meanwhile strikes into an old base of Hitler where a hammer weapon is still kept secretly which nobody is able to wield. Sin is successful in wielding it and soon is on her way to the deep sea. On the way she fights off a few dragons that is guarding an underwater cave. Later it is revealed the place is where the main villain the Serpent is imprisoned long ago by Odin. Now that he is free he summoned the worthy which are weapons. The weapons in the shape of unknown objects from space heads to earth and lands on different parts of the world.
Next issue should be highlighting the villains worthy enough to wield those weapons.

Main events: The asgardians left and the serpent is back.

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A standalone issue here where mostly action is Wolverine doing his thing. Hope, one of the few mutants is kidnapped by some thugs to find out what it is her power that enables her to reactivate mutant genes. The villain is crimson commander, some mutant that is created as super soldier during 2nd world war. But since m-day happened this crimson commander has no more healing abilities and had aged significantly. So he plans to dissect Hope in order to get the answers.

But Wolverine as usual managed to get in and bring her out. While on the road they are chased and bombed while Wolverine is still in the jeep while Hope managed to leap out. Wolverine is toasted but he is of course not dead and need time to heal. Meanwhile the commander grabbed Hope but she resisted all the way and was injured in the event. Wolverine waked up just in time and disposed of all the thugs including the commander with swift strike of his claws cutting through. It was later revealed that Hope have the ability to mimic other mutants abilities when she is close enough to them and thus enabling her to heal quickly from mimicking Wolverine's abilities.

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John Constantine just got married in the previous issues. John has been missing a thumb and this new story arc deals with the diificulty that he has with his missing thumb. Story centering around missing thumb is kind of refreshing to say the least. His wife Epiphany find that she can't live with John's missing thumb and so off John go to the doctors to find a new one. Finding a thumb is not easy as it looks.

John conjures up a spell of some sort to come up with the ideal way to get a new thumb, by predicting a fatal accident which is where he's gonna find one. The spell is energy sapping but he does make it to the location of the accident.

 As he was preparing to cut off one of the accident victim's thumb, a monster came to reclaim the victim's body as he has made a pact with the monster. But John would not have any of it and in the end he does get his thumb.

But things are going to get interesting as John has other problem as well which is not of his doing but of his other evil twin from the previous issue. The deed is done and a bunch of witch is summoning a monster that is gonna kill John in the next issue. Lets see there's any more tricks up his sleeve to deal with this. Peter Milligan sure has this series going on a interesting path with John's marriage and this missing thumb story arc.

Invincible Iron Man #505

Part of on going mega event fear itself, this issue has Ironman in the middle of a battle with a supervillain named Grey Gargoyle. Grey Gargoyle has just turn most of the people in the city of Paris into stones from previous issue. As this gargoyle character wields a new weapon, a hammer that dropped from the sky from the asgardian world, this villain outmatched Ironman in every fight. That is until a dubious hero in armor Detroit Steel intercept while Ironman is down on its knees. But saving Ironman is the last thing he do as the villain deflect and repel all his attack and rips his armor apart revealing the guy inside. As expected on exposure to the gargoyle he turned to stone.

Ironman manage to subdue the gargoyle soon after using laser sword but in doing so drained out his armor's energy forcing him to return to headquarters to repair the suit. This encounter between the two is not over yet and definitely will not end that early seeing how the fear events unfolds slowly.

Mostly a lot of action in this issue, with highlighting of some happenings in Stark headquarters where Pepper Potts is trying to handle every chaos that is happening there.

Captain America #619

Well this is the second last issue of Captain America before being relaunched to coincide with the release of the big budget Captain America movie this summer. Which is just 2 weeks away. This is the final chapter of the story arc Gulag. Bucky Barnes still the Captain America is still trapped and imprisoned at the Russian Siberian Gulag because of his previous crimes as the Winter Soldier. The fist party of the story revolves around Barnes attempt at escaping the gulag and the Black Widow going to the gulag to free Barnes.

Barnes is being tortured and thrown into fights ala gladiator style. But luck is on his side as he faced the final biggest baddest opponent with the name of Unicorn. Apparently the guy has extra eye on the middle of his head that shoots lasers and Barnes seized on that opportunity to use the lasers to blow up the gulag to engineer his escape. Some shots hit gas pipes and the whole thing blows up giving Barnes the cover to escape.
With the help of Black Widow Barnes managed to escape the gulag in the end.

Meanwhile on the other side of the globe the original Captain America stopped some Soviet sleeper agents and dismantled them. Then the prelude to the handling of the Cpatain America mantle from Barnes to Rogers the president is in agrement that Barnes can't continue to be Captain America anymore because of the many scandals of him breaking out of the gulag and his crimes as winter soldier. So technically this is the issue that finally confirms that Rogers will get to be Captain America again. So a new relaunched issue of Captain America is on the cards.
Notable events: Rogers gains back the Captain America title.

Wolverine #9

An issue with revenge on Wolverine's mind as he goes after the people that has put him through hell previously. Very straightforward and not much talking involve here. Wolverine is going after Mystique which some how connected with the unknown red right hand. Red right hand send a lord Deathstrike with a Japanese mask to shut up Mystique but she just cannot die. She'd been shot, blown and practically sliced in this issue.

 Who is this lord Deathstrike remains unknown but he certainly has a lot of arsenal up his sleeves including a phasing device that makes him go through the wall and shoes that walks on walls. There's a creative auction of a dead body and a bunch of ninjas appear at the end. Could the Hand want a piece of the action?
Notable events: Wolverine kills Mystique again but only for a few hours. Starting to looks like lovers quarrel.

Hellboy 7 :The Troll Witch and Others

This a collection of stories from Hellboy adventures. Just want to highlight Hellboy was in Malaysia from the first chapter of the book titled 'Penanggalan'. In it hellboy explores the malay folktale demon where the head can be separate from the body. But nothing that the big guy could't handle. Ended so fast and in flames in the end  before you even knew it. Next story was in Alaska. There is something fishy going on there and Hellboy has a smack down with a hydra there.  The story is a confusing one as there's something like a ghost of hercules guilt appearing in the scene but it was not of much help to hellboy too in the end. Overall there are quite a number of story in this book. Much of it collections from previous issues. More notables one are the troll witch story which is derived from Norwegian folklore. Norwegian trolls turn to stone when exposed to sunlight.