The inaugural Book of the Week (I'm looking to do this every week) is New Avengers: Illuminati 4.
The issue opens up with an awesome few pages where the Illuminati members (Dr. Strange, Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Namor, Charles Xavier, and Black Bolt) lamenting over woman troubles of varying degree. It showcases a rarely seen humor in Black Bolt, but is made very awesome by the stand-off between Reed and Namor about Sue, Reed's wife. (See, Namor fancies Sue for himself, but alas, she loves Reed... for some reason. Even Namor can't figure it out.)
From there the conversation shifts to the matter at hand: Noh-Varr, Marvel Boy. Created by Grant Morris (which should tell you something), Noh-Varr is a Kree experiment gone haywaire. He declared war on the Earth and made it perfectly clear that he plans to build a new Kree empire atop our ruin. That just will not do at all, now will it? They hope to bring him to side of the angels (he's already in prison, so his ststaus at large is not the issue. It's more like being proactive), so after Xavier refuses to simply reprogram him, they decide a "chat" is in ordrer.
That "chat" involves the heroes each appealing to Marvel Boy's sense of honor by showing them what the Kree have actually meant to the Earth and Atillan (the inhumans' home city) inbetween bouts of Namor kicking the shit out of him because 1, He can, and 2, Namor's kind of a dick. Stark invokes an awesome image of Noh-Varr in Mar-Vell's old costume as Captain Marvel and basically asks him how he really wants to live his life.
He seems receptive, but they leave him the Cube prison, telling him he must earn his freedom. What this means by and large is somewhat up for grabs. The whole Illuminati mini is set in the past, this issue taking place likely just before the events of Disassembled (I put that together with contxt clues, kids!). However, last we saw Marvel Boy in regular continuity was in the Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways mini, where he was still a bit of a badass what with the murdering, escaping, and once again spouting plans to rebuild the Kree empire and all.
Either way, this book was great all-around from dialog to the beatiful art with some really great two page layouts from Jim Cheung.
Now for the bad. The inaugural "Three Dollars Better Spent on Soap" award (whcih I do NOT hope to do every week, mind you) goes to New Warriors 3
Other than my inability to leave an arc unfinished, there is NO reason for me to continue buying this book. It's not Wolverine: Evolution (which thankfully sputtered to sucktastic end last week) bad; I just don't like it. I'm not sure who this book is for, but it's most certainly not me. I really don't give half a shit about any of the characters involved. So I'll finsh out the arc, and barring some unforseen badassery, drop it like a bad habit.
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