Just because this week is Christmas doesn’t mean everyone is on vacation. Case in point, your friendly neighborhood folks at Marvel Comics who’ve got some great comics for you coming out this week, just in time for your last minute shopping needs.

This week we’re particularly interested in the Captain America Reborn: Who Will Wield the Shield, the latest Punisher Max, a new New Avengers and the latest Secret Warriors. As always, be sure to check out cover art for some of these books after the break. Happy holidays!

Comics On-Sale:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #611 2ND PRINTING VARIANT
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #612 2ND PRINTING VARIANT (GNTLT)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #616 (GNTLT)
AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #31 (S)
BLACK WIDOW & THE MARVEL GIRLS #2
CAPTAIN AMERICA REBORN: WHO WILL WIELD THE SHIELD?
CAPTAIN AMERICA REBORN: WHO WILL WIELD THE SHIELD? DAVIS VARIANT
CRIMINAL: THE SINNERS #3
DARK AVENGERS: ARES #3

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WARNING – This article does, in fact, contain spoilers regarding recent comic book releases. If you have not read your comics, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

In this day and age it is very hard to keep things secret for too long. The secret cameo in Zombieland or the end of the fourth Twilight novel or that Bruce Willis is a ghost in the 6th Sense just to name a few. The big surprises are not longer allowed to surprise us because some people insist on ruining them for us because they want to show off that they were the first in the know.

Still other times, we often experience inadvertent spoilers because of marketing efforts. This is especially prevalent in comic books where the description of a comic in Previews gives enough information most times to allow the reader to know the end result of the current story arc as the next is already being promoted. Recent “big moments” like Magneto’s return to the X-Men series were ruined for anyone who picked up previews to see his face on the cover of an issue still two months from release.

It can be said though that someone is reading Previews “at their own risk” knowing that there may be spoilers within by the nature of the publication.

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Welcome to another edition of The Pull List Comic Reviews! This week we have a shorter list, but as you know, it’s about quality, not quantity. Besides, all of your favorites are here, including a couple of surprises. As always, WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

PULL OF THE WEEK:

Wolverine: Under The Boardwalk one-shot
Marvel Comics – $3.99 US
Writer: Stuart Morre
Artist: Tomm Coker
Score: 8.5

About to board a plane for Alaska, Wolverine receives a mysterious text message asking him to go to Atlantic City instead. Stranger still is the reference to a man Logan hasn’t seen in 40 years, Phil De Blasio, a mafia underboss who tried to kill him last time they met. What transpired on that boardwalk all those years ago has found a way to catch up to him, much to Logan’s chagrin.

In this latest one-shot focusing on Wolverine, writer Stuart Moore crafts a mystery that takes the character from Atlantic City to Coney Island, searching for answers while being reminded that most of his memories contain violence for a reason. Where Moore differed from other recent writers of Wolverine-centric one-shots, however, is what made this issue work, and that is the fact that the writer never lost sight of how a haunted character like Wolverine really shouldn’t experience peace and closure.

Complimenting this wonderful story is the art by Tomm Coker. The artist, hands down, drew the nicest issue I’ve seen this week. A noir vibe that pulsates throughout, the art is every bit as scratchy and slashy as the character’s past has shown, and while the story centers more on inner reflections and whatnot, there’s still the occasional action shot that mirrors Wolverine’s famous savagery. Beautiful in every way, the art within this issue should not be passed up.

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First off I just wanted to thank Dave and John for handling last week’s The Pull List as special guest reviewers. They did a great job, and I’m glad I’ve got backup when I need it!

Pull of the Week:

Giant-Size Wolverine: Old Man Logan One-Shot – Marvel – $4.99

Score: 9.0

Anyone who has read the Pull List knows I am not a huge fan of high priced comics, especially when that higher price only comes with a sketchbook or a reprint of an old issue. But this issue, the conclusion to Millar and McNiven’s “Old Man Logan” eight part story was beyond worth it and easily the best $4.99 issue of the entire year. If you hadn’t been following this story, shame on you.

Fifty years in the future and unlike any other seen in Marvel like “Days of the Future Past” or the time-line Bishop traveled from, the villains have won. In one fell swoop, the villains of the world under the leadership of the Red Skull came together and wiped out all the heroes of the world with only a few survivors, most notably Hawkeye and Logan, who is no longer calling himself Wolverine. After a cross country journey to earn the money he owes the Hulk Gang, the descendants of Bruce Banner, Logan returns to find out he was too late to save his family.

This issue gives what looks to be the final showdown between these age old foes. With nothing left to lose, Logan decides that if Banner is responsible for taking away his family, he will return the favor in kind.

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For yesterday’s The Pull List, go here.

New Avengers #55 – Marvel – $3.99

Score: 7.5

Though beaten out by another Marvel team book this week for Pull of the Week, New Avengers is still a great read. Coming off the “Who is the next Sorcerer Supreme?” storyline, this issue finds the Avengers back in New York where they continue their gauntlet with the Hood’s forces. As dissension grows amongst the Hood’s forces, the Wrecking Crew vocally airs their disappointment in their current arrangement. The Hood defends his position along with the help of his girlfriend, Madame Masque. Another of the Hood’s men, Chemistro, finds a piece of Stark-tech that would effectively disable the heroes powers, had it not been destroyed in their battle with the New Avengers.

Instead of giving the tech to his boss, the Hood, Chemistro takes it to Doctor Harrow hoping to reverse engineer it for their own purposes. The issue also follows up on the actions of Clint Barton after having called out Norman Osborn to the world as the former Green Goblin who has now been placed in charge of the nation’s security. A meeting of the Avengers has been called and Clint apologizes for his actions and going about them without talking to the team first. He then throws down his endgame plan… to kill Norman Osborn. This idea becomes the focus of the discussion between the underground Avengers until they receive word that a villain is letting loose in Times Square, Chemistro.

Coming off the not so surprising choice of Brother Voodoo as the new Sorcerer Supreme, this issue acts as a link back four issues before all the magical nonsense took place. The New Avengers are still up against this generation’s Masters of Evil, the Hood’s gang, and the events from a previous battle between the two have started to show some repercussions. No huge revelations occur within it but New Avengers #55 acts as a great setup issue for what is to come in the series. Solicits have shown that something big is going to happen between these two factions (don’t worry, we won’t spoil what they are) and this issue, from Bendis’s great dialogue amongst the Hood’s gang to the bleak cover showing a pile of New Avengers corpses laid out do a fantastic job of continuing the hype machine behind this series.

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As we get back to normal (whatever that is) now that Comic-Con has ended, let’s not forget that one of the great things about the Con is all the comics you can read and purchase. Marvel certainly had its share of books at the Con but it still found time to have a whole bunch more ready to come out this Wednesday, July 29th.

Following is a list of all the Marvel comics on sale this week via the official press release. Plus, covers from some of the new books after the jump.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #598 2ND PRINTING VARIANT (DR)

DARK REIGN: HAWKEYE #4 (DR)

DARK REIGN: LETHAL LEGION #2

DARK REIGN: THE GOBLIN LEGACY ONE-SHOT

DARK REIGN: THE HOOD #3

DARK REIGN: THE SINISTER SPIDER-MAN #1 2ND PRINTING VARIANT

DARK REIGN: THE SINISTER SPIDER-MAN #2

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Due to the holiday, this week’s books were out yesterday and the publishers treated us to a huge week of new top titles. Choosing this week’s Pull of the Week wasn’t an easy choice.

Pull of the Week:

Wolverine #72 – Marvel – $2.99
Score: 9.0

This is the Wolverine we know and love. Despite being fifty years down the line and having lived through one of the most traumatic experiences ever when he was tricked into killing his own teammates years ago by Mysterio, this issue of the “Old Man Logan” story proves that some people never really change. Logan is the best at what he does and this issue proves that even as an old man, he will still be the best.

The issue starts with a grim flashback of the day the villains won as the Red Skull explains to Captain America how he united the world’s super-villains in an effort to finally take over. There’s something very eerie about the Red Skull as he stands over the fallen Bucky-Cap, knowing that in this world, he has taken out both Steve Rogers and his successor successfully. Now, fifty years later, Skull stands in his trophy room surrounded by weapons and pieces of costume from various iconic heroes (including the costume and cape of the Sentry, giving me hope that he can be killed off and never brought back), reflecting on his successes as his minions bring him the corpse of Hawkeye and what they believe to be a dead Logan.

What comes next is one of the best fight one on one fight scenes in recent memory as Logan and the Skull take to each other using the weapons of the fallen heroes. Even knowing that this is an alternate reality, it’s still somewhat heart wrenching to see Logan forced to fight for his life and that of his family around the trophies the Red Skull had claimed off his former comrades. But like much of the rest of Logan’s life, the issue ends in tragic fashion before a very stark and powerful two page spread. Never before have two pages with literally no illustration on them been as meaningful as they are in this issue.

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This is the first part of John’s pull list comic reviews for the week. The second part follows tomorrow.

Pull of the Week:

New Avengers #52 – Marvel – $3.99
Score: 8.5

If there was ever a team book that could get away with next to no-action and still consistently be the best read of the week, it’s the New Avengers. Brian Bendis knows these characters and knows how to bring them to life. The amazing part is that he does it with brief action sequences and is able to dive into the personalities of the New Avengers by simply sitting them down at a dinner table and meet as a team.  Everyone fits a role whether it be a cool and collected leader, a partially insecure spaz, the quiet bad ass or the person everyone thought was dead but was actually only just abducted and replaced by a Skrull. The magic is that Bendis has such a grip on these characters that his conversations between these characters feels like they have known each other for years.

The story revolves around the team being filled in by Doctor Strange, the former Sorcerer Supreme, about the attack he suffered at the hands of the Hood. Mystical cameos seemingly abound in this issue, the New Avengers head south to find another magical character who may be the next Sorcerer Supreme (who wasn’t actually who the reader was suspecting from the clues given pages before).  Bendis exhibits great understanding of character building and does it in an entertaining way in this issue.

This truly is a book that could still be enjoyable to read even if no action took place much like Bendis’ control over the characters has proved time and time again. Also, like the last issue, the dual art teams give the book a feel all of its own. Having two art teams seems like it’d be disjointed in the story telling but by splitting the teams between the conflict of Strange and the Hood and the other team working on the rest of the book, it only helps the “magic” of storytelling.

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