Review # 174: "The Ultimates"

With over a decade behind it, you have to make the argument that "The Ultimates" by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch is the most culturally significant comic book story so far this century. It reads like a movie blueprint, and - while its eventual adaptation for the big screen was not note-for-note - many of the Marvel heroes we see on the big screen today are influenced more by the incarnations seen here than the ones who had been around for decades previous.

Review # 163: "Avengers Assemble by Kurt Busiek Vol. 4"

Kurt Busiek's Avengers team has tackled a strong share of world crises. Some external, some internal, some mystical, some technological.

Now... it's time to get cosmic.

Review # 158: "Civil War"

Loved by the casual audience and despised by many long-time readers, Marvel's "Civil War" is as polarizing to fans as the Superhuman Registration Act is to the characters.

Review # 133: "Age of Ultron"

"Age of Ultron" is a poorly-executed, confusing mess of an event comic with a misleading title that - for whatever reason - I found to be incredibly gripping from start to finish.

Review # 125: "Avengers West Coast - 'Vision Quest' and 'Darker Than Scarlet'"

Talk about a great Comiccon find: the out-of-print "Avengers West Coast" run with John Byrne as writer/artist for 30 bucks. I like ordering online, but there's something to be said about shelf-diving.

Review # 122: "Avengers Assemble by Kurt Busiek Vol. 3"

These days if a comic book writer wants to explore a character in a team book, it seems like most of the time they get added to a team without subtractions. It raises the question of what the point is of having some characters around if they're no longer serving any purpose.

Review # 108: "Avengers Assemble by Kurt Busiek Vol. 2"

Is it fair to call a robot crazy?

Review # 91: "Avengers Forever"

To borrow a phrase I read somewhere, picking up a copy of "Avengers Forever" is the closest you will ever get to taking a university course in Avengers appreciation. It's a monumental celebration of 35+ years of history, takes major cues from the likes of "The Kree-Skrull War" and "Celestial Madonna," and eclipses them both. It's my pick for the greatest Avengers story ever made, and I'm willing to give Kurt Busiek, Carlos Pacheco and Roger Stern that honour on ambition alone.

Review # 9: "Fear Itself: Avengers Academy"

Sometimes it's fun in an ensemble comic to take a bunch of combustible characters and throw them together in an environment that could explode - both literally and figuratively - at any time. Born in the wake of Dan Slott's run on "Mighty Avengers" that centred on Hank Pym, we get Christos Gage's "Avengers Academy" where a group of young students are told they have the potential to be first-class Avengers and get instruction from a faculty that only an insane person would put together.

Review # 2: "The Trial of Yellowjacket"

Up until last year, my collection of comic trades and hardcovers was almost exclusively X-Men. Yeah, there was some Batman in there, "Watchmen," and a lot of company crossovers but outside of Marvel's mutants I hadn't really dabbled in very much else.