Nice week, so far. IC -- excellent. Ultimate X-Men -- excellent. Teen Titans -- not half bad. I do feel kinda vaguely skeeved, so I guess it's time for Nightwing.

Jesus fuck, people, you didn't tell me there were new 100 Bullets and Fables in addition to everything else! I had a lot to read.

The Pulse was good. I think Bendis is drawing from a lot of his Ultimate Spidey continuity, which I missed, but luckily, I could catch his Daredevil continuity. It's weird cause I can never keep track of who knows what secret identities. Cause, well, we know all of them.

Nightwing wasn't as good as the last one. The best bits were Amy's protecting Dick with red tape. And I think some of you are going to have a fit over the whole marriage thing.

100 Bullets was a bit hard to follow, since I don't remember where we last left off with Wylie (though I do have the Six Feet trade; I should check). But mmm, things are heating up.

Fables has a revelation I'm going to have to Google to truly appreciate, and a cliffhanger that makes you go, "Wha? Did he just do--cliffhangers are supposed to be in big splash pages, fool!"

And finally, Identity Crisis. Now I feel like I am paying the price for not knowing the DCverse so well. I'm just taking it all on faith. But what was I supposed to get out of that scene in the satellite with all the supervillains? Was that the hiring of Deathstroke? Who was talking? Dr. Light? And Meltzer pulls out a nice cliffhanger to make me want issue 3 right now.

P-C, it wasn't Dr. Light talking, because the narration takes place before he stumbles in. I think annotation on that scene will be interesting, but not vital. Deathstroke's the most interesting of the villains, and I think you'll find out what you need to know in due course. As basic background, he's a highly-skilled, highly-paid assassin without depth perception -- he goes way back with the Teen Titans -- one of his kids was a member, and he recently tried to kill them again. He has extra strength and super-reflexes due to serum tests from illicit medical testing.

Looking at October's previews and... WHY THE HELL ARE THEY LETTING WILLINGHAM TOUCH BATMAN???

Ahem.

Just had to get that out.

Quick IC note: The narrator on the villains' sattelite is Merlyn the Archer, an old Green Arrow foe.

Do you think that will have meaning later, Victor?

I just got the text on the front cover of Nightwing. I don't usually pay attention to the cover art until after I read ...

Do all the Ultimate titles do like X-Men and not show scenes, just character poses on the covers? They're very pretty. But the X-Men art is very pretty inside too, this month especially.

I realise I can't forgive the art because I need the art to support the mood of the words. Even when I skim a comic page, and lose narrative because I'm moving too fast (text or image narrative), I need the mood to work for me. The mood in UX is palpable -- when Angel faces Sinister, or when Rogue gets a bead on Sinister, I look at the picture first, get an impression, read the text, and then look at the picture again, as best I can break it down. If the get-impression stage is broken by clumsy articulation or mucky colouring, it's probably too late for me.

The Nightwing cover cracked me up. The story -- well, I felt like it was just filling time until the crossover starts.

Teen Titans #13 just fucking ruled. Shrift totally could have written the part where Kon goes to Gotham looking for Tim and is all pissed when he encounters Steph-as-Robin. It made me squee a little. I totally loved Raven getting a tattoo. I have no idea why that particular part of the issue grabbed me. But it did.

IC #2 -- verrrry intriguing. I read it, then re-read #1, and then read #2 again. And I still have no idea what's coming.

Do you think that will have meaning later, Victor?

Possibly. It looks like tensions are set to boil between the heroes in villains--probably mostly in reaction to Sue's death and maybe the fact that multiple villains were lobotomized being discovered. I'd bet Merlyn's going to play a major role in there, somewhere.

Do all the Ultimate titles do like X-Men and not show scenes, just character poses on the covers?

"Iconic" cover art is all the rage right now.

I love the iconic look, except I have to pay extra attention to which titles I've already bought -- I have three duplicated Ultimate X-Men issues -- all Wolverine covers, because that's the sort of twitch I have.

In IC#2, I loved the Dr. Light is only NOW a moron explanation -- because I sure wasn't buying their fear of him. I thought the story was pretty horribly (as in well) done, and so was the tension it brought into present day. I can't wait to see who else has been neutered.

Unrelatedly -- in Nightwing, Dick gets a call, and in the last Batgirl (don't know when that came out), Batman ducks away for a second -- are those two related? I'm assuming with the multitude of Bat-titles each may have been explained elsewhere. What's the dealio?

Oh, and Batman has a pretty clear Rogue's Gallery profile -- his is the most distinctively patterned of the major heroes, isn't it? Apart from, I guess, the tendency for groups to face off with groups and solo or solo/henchman villains to go mano a mano with solo heroes.

Ita said this spoilery thing: I can't wait to see who else has been neutered.

Me either, but I'd place good money on the Flash's Rogues Gallery.