Stephen's Secret Stash for 9.10.09

• G-Man Cape Crisis #2 - tons of fun! I think it's very indicative of my comic mindset right now that I was gunning for pure, all ages goodness above all else this week. The variant cover to G-Man #2 featured above will be available on Saturday, October 24th during the G-Man's Greensboro Cape Crisis event at Acme Comics! That's the first ever Acme exclusive variant cover, the brainchild of Jermaine and I as an homage to Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-man, and so beautifully transferred from our rambling e-mails to the page by Chris Giarrusso!

• Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men Exodus - this took my completely by surprise as I was mainly reading it as a prerequisite for the List at this point. If you look back in the previous weeks' threads I've been pretty underwhelmed with the story, but this final issue had everything I felt the others were lacking and left me chomping at the bit for Dark X-Men: the Confession and Dark Reign the List Uncanny X-Men.

• Dark Reign the List Avengers - this was another great read. I had been complaining all day on Thursday how Dark Avengers and Dark Reign hadn't really interested me for the last...5 months? But this really got me. I thought there were a lot of great moments. And best of all I feel like we saw Marko Djurdjevic come into his own as a penciller with a flair of his own mixed with Mark Brooks, Jim Cheung, and Mark Bagley. Or maybe it was Mark Morales's influence, too. The List Uncanny preview in the back by Alan Davis looked great, but I think the DD List might be make or break for me and Andy Diggle's upcoming run.

• Kick-Ass #7 - I'm done. Does anyone need first printings of the issues for #1-7? There was a lot of talk around the store about Chew this week, and what was setting it apart. My answer was that a lot of crazy stuff was going down, but it was never mean spirited. They were never needlessly sticking it to the characters or the readers, but I feel like in Kick-Ass's case that's all that's happening.

• Nomad: Girl Without a World #1 - a lot of exposition, but I appreciated it and it probably needed to be there to get people caught up on a character that's been out of circulation for about 15 years. I think that when her "brother" John was passing her a note that he would be asking her out to add another level of awkward and maybe fun to it, but that probably says way more about me than the characters and I'm sure that Sean would agree.

• Adventure Comics #2 - Ultimate Comics Spider-man and this book right here are the two that are pulling my heartstrings for the last two months and I hope they'll continue to, even with the change-up on Adventure after #6.

• Green Lantern Corps #40 - I was a little disappointed that this ongoing Lantern book started to make with the formula of the minis so strongly (main characters fight the dead characters from their past), but elements like the Alpha Lanterns dropping by and the Krib quest really kept me in there.

• Amazing Spider-man #604 - really glad to see this story done. The last five pages or so were my favorites. Is that a character aspect of the Chameleon that's always been there, or is that something new?

• Blackest Night Batman #2 - pas mal.

• Marvels Project #2 - the Nick Fury scene was my favorite.

• Incredible Hercules - this was the first issue of this story that won me over (isn't only the second issue?). I think what they're doing right now would be stronger if they kept the bi-weekly schedule they're running and told 10-12 pages of Herc's story and 10-12 pages of Cho's in each issue like they did in Hulk #7-10 rather than alternating entire issues worth of material. Mainly cause I don't think Amadeus can carry a book.

• Thunderbolts #135 - I was right at the part when they show up at Yankee Stadium when I had to stop and watch Derek Jeter become the all-time hittingest Yankee. It was pretty serendipitous. Overall this was a super issue that doesn't really tie-in to Secret Warriors in a big way, but I think SW might come back to it hard in the next issue.

• Ultimate Comics Avengers #2 - this issue really reminded me how Millar's Ultimates were supposed to work as opposed to the scattershot stuff we've had from Loeb over the last few years. I like Pacheco's art better than in #1 as well. The Gail stuff was killer.

• War of Kings: Who Will Rule - I thought that this was the best issue of the series with a lot of cool moments like Medusa's freakout, but it wasn't enough to make up for what we'd had before in the main six issues and wasn't enough to make me check out anything that's coming up afterwards except continuing with Guardians of the Galaxy.