Oh good.

The boom-maker is definitely The Thing, based on Murdoch's song in this installment and the fact that Doom calls the boom-maker Captain.

Also, based on Natasha's comments at the end, I don't know that Reed has the will to trick Doom, but I'm sure I'll be wrong on that point.

If Virginia has been out for a week, then the Queen's been "dead" for about 4 or 5 days. The fact her closest court officers (Fury and Strange) aren't with her seems to indicate she is dead. If the poison only makes her appear dead, someone (maybe Invisible Girl?) should be with her to take care of her, although I'll be surprised that the shock to her system doesn't kill the Queen if that's the case. IOW, maybe she's not dead, but I'm inclined to think she is. However, I am always wrong with things like this.

I'm also wondering what's up with the pterodyctls and dinosaurs.

In unrelated (and old!) news -- Donna Troy is dead! I'm so hurt by this. I liked her.

Hee! ita's behind the times. Don't worry, odds are it won't last.

There was an interview with Scott Allie, the editor of Dark Horse's horror line (and Conan), here at the Pulse. Most of the interview deals with the Conan relaunch, but he had this to say about the upcoming Tales of the Vampires:

THE PULSE: What's coming up in Buffy?

ALLIE: The new thing is a series overseen and partly written by Joss called Tales of the Vampires. All the writers on the series are from the TV show, and we're telling stories of vamps throughout the ages. After that, Joss is gonna give us some direction on where to take the comics series after Season Seven, but we haven't worked that out yet.

Annotations for 1602.4? What's up with the black cat with fangs?

I'm going through the annotations, and:

"He could not, however, “make people see things that are not there.”

Xavier can't do that? Ever?

Is anyone going to explain the X-verse? I've been reading Grant Morrison's New X-Men tpbs, and we recently picked up an Uncanny X-Men tpb which appears to be marginally related, at best (not to mention, is rather crappily written).

Are annotations for 1602.4 up yet? (Just got it at lunch. Very confuzzled.)

Trying to explain the X-verse is like trying to catch an otter with an oiled up pair of barbarecue tongs. The best you can hope for is that one series when written by a single author is consistent, that's about it.

Uncanny and X are written by two different authors, usually, and usually try to focus on different team members. Uncanny usually tries to focuse on the old-school members and the X-men tries to focus on the X-men in general...

There's also at least one other x-verse, where some of the characters are younger, and one where Prof X is a captive of Magneto's.

Ultimate X-men, I think. The Ultimate series of titles are reconceptualizations of core Marvel characters in the modern day. For instance, Ultimate Spider-Man has Peter Parker still in High School, and so on...

What's the one where Spidey's young, and meeting Wolverine for the first time? Too many adjectives.