Pick of the week: Fantastic Four # 571 by Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham.  I’ve never been a Fantastic Four man, but this issue captured my imagination. From what I understand, Fantastic Four has always been about family and the impossible.  I don’t think it can get more imaginative or impossible that Reed Richards creates this machine that sends him to an extra dimensional  plane where the Reed Richards of parallel universes meet and help change everything.  In this issue our Reed helps kill Galactus, with an army of other Reeds armed with Ultimate Nullifiers.  He helps create a planet full of feed that will feed starving planets, and performs surgery on the universe.  Its a wild, beautiful look into Reed Richards and what he does to save everyone, including his relationship with Sue. To be honest, I wasn’t a Fantastic Four guy before, but I’m locked in from now on. Rating: 9.0

Superman Secret Origin #1: This is like Geoff Johns doing his take on Smallville. I feel like every once in a while DC allows a writer to present their take on the origin of Superman.  Mark Waid did his take with the awesome Leinil Yu with Birthright, John Byrne did his seminal retake and now a couple years later, Johns gets his. Which is cool for people to come in and see Johns do this. Its just not that interesting, and doesn’t need to exist.  Though it does give a great explanation for the glasses, and that is kind of adorable. What can I say? I’m a softie. I don’t want to spoiler but that was pretty creative with the glasses handling the heat vision. Rating: 7.0.

Captain America Reborn # 3: Brubaker is a slow burn kind of guy.  He starts out very slow, but usually by the end, you see that its worth it. His entire run on Captain America and Daredevil has been just like that, and those are easily the best superhero comics out there today. So there is no reason to lose faith on that when coming into this title.  However three issues in and we’re still on the same thing.  Steve Rogers is Quantum Leaping through his life and Norman Osborn is after Bucky, Falcon, Reed Richards and the rest. That’s been beaten like a dead drum for three issues and the only thing that has moved the story forward is it being revealed to the media that Sharon Carter was the second shooter. We don’t get any repercussions of that and its just the third straight issue of, you guessed it, Steve Rogers is Quantum Leaping and the Thunderbolts are out to kill Bucky and Black Widow.  Sorry, you gotta advance the story a little bit more than that for me. Butch Guice is nice to look at though. Rating: 5.0

Planetary #27 preview. This was in the back pages of Ex Machina #45.  It has the main characters talking about building a Time Machine, and in typical Planetary fashion, building the time machine that is already laced in popular culture. The one from H.G. Wells book, and also my favorite sci fi novel ever.  Time travel, and especially interpretations on Wells’s book, has always tickled my stomach.  Both amaze me even to this day.  So the fact that one of the best books ever written and drawn tackling something in regards to Wells’ Time Machine is something I can’t wait for. Planetary #27, the final issue hits stands Oct. 2.

With Ex Machina ending and the final issue of Planetary coming out, I can’t help but say those are the last two books from Wildstorm that I still read.  So…I’ll be interested to see what Wildstorm does when these two books end.

Wildstorm has your preview. Its alot of talk of time travel, alternate universes, and genre commentary. Which is all of which we expect coming from Planetary. When the book finishes, I’ll probably have some kind of retrospective.  Speaking of…(goes to bookshelf to dig out the books).