Voting Releases Wolverine - Beyond Tannhauser Gate

Daily Ramble 221: Voting Releases Wolverine

I’m really enjoying the All-New Wolverine and with another issue released this week on Marvel Unlimited I was prompted to get into the next book. Following the weekly releases has been a good idea since I’ve found a few titles that I’ve really come to appreciate. Over the next few days I’ll be looking for issues to read in May and these releases give me some good ideas. Speaking of May, the MMO Book Club voted this weekend and will be headed into Lord of the Rings Online this month and I’m looking forward to digging into that game with them.

First Look at All-New Wolverine #2

By Tom Taylor, David Lopez, and David Navaroot. Published by Marvel Comics, 2015.
As we saw in the first issue, Laura Kinney (aka X–23) has taken up the mantle of Wolverine and she’s hoping to be a kinder, more gentle weapon than the man she was cloned from. We’ll see how that goes as she finds out that someone has cloned her and is using those clones as assassins.

Some corporation named Alchemax Genetics actually did the cloning and they want their “property” back since apparently they’ve gone rogue and destroyed one of their labs. By bringing in Laura, the company figures she’ll be able to capture the clones quickly and they can get back to business. Of course they neglect to realize that Wolverine does whatever she wants, however she wants.

Tracking down the sisters was harder than Laura expected but she finds them and they explain their side of the story…of course they didn’t burn down any lab, it’s Alchemax that’s evil because they took all feeling away from the girls, even pain.

But as hard as it was for Wolverine to track the clones down, Captain Mooney (Alchemax’s head of security) finds the 4 of them pretty quickly and barges in on them shooting. Guess he didn’t expect Kinney to defend them. As she and the clones knock out the 20 or so soldiers that came to capture them, one of the sisters prepares to kill the Captain but Laura stops her. That’s when a surprise guest shows up and…

It was another fun issue though a bit less engaging than the first. I suppose that had to do with the fact that we got more explanation of what’s going on in this issue than the first, but it was still enjoyable. I’m still not completely sold on a Wolverine that is so much in control of herself but things make sense even though she seems to be the only one in the story who doesn’t want to kill someone. The art is beautiful and while there is no killing, there is definite violence being portrayed in the fight scenes.

I rater this issue a B and know I’ll keep coming back for more as the story is definitely intriguing.

Marvel Unlimited New Weekly Releases

Marvel releases comics to the Unlimited platform about 6 months after they come out in paper format so this week we are seeing comics from October 25, 2017. In an effort to try to read some more “modern” issues, I’ve been tracking what’s currently being released and trying to catch up from recent number ones…we’ll see how that goes.

Here’s what I’ve found this week that were released in October 2017:

All-New Wolverine #26
Amazing Spider-Man #790
America #8
Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider #9
Black Panther #166
Captain Marvel #125
Daredevil #28
Despicable Deadpool #288
Guardians Of The Galaxy: Telltale Games #4
Jean Grey #8
Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur #24
Silver Surfer #14
Star Wars: Jedi Of The Republic – Mace Windu #3
Thanos #12
The Punisher #17
Thor: Where Walk The Frost Giants #1
U.S.Avengers #11
Weapon X #10
X-Men: Blue #14

Last week’s releases can be found here

Lord of the Rings Online wins MMO Book Club May Selection Vote

There was quite a variety of options available for the May (Cycle 12) voting for the MMO Book Club. Games ranged from continuing Eve Online for another month to starting up in the upcoming release of Bless Online. And just as I was skeptical about the group starting up Eve Online in April, I really don’t think, now that people have had a chance to play it a bit, that they’ll vote to keep playing the game. The is not because Eve isn’t any fun – there’s tons to do and I’ve had a lot of fun every time I’ve played it, but I think it’s because of the complicated nature of the game and the lack of game driven direction. The book club seems to like to have guidance in what to do in a game and most MMOs have that with leveling and such. Eve on the other hand pretty much leaves it all up to the individual – no real leveling, no real end game, and the big goals you can set take actual time, they can’t really be power leveled without $$$.

Here are the options that were available…

Eve Online – continue
Path of Exile
Albion Online
Secret World Online
Aion
Everquest II
Lord of the Rings Online
Bless Online

For me, I was pretty much game for anything though I’m glad Albion was not a finalist…I think I played myself out of enjoying that game since there was just not enough to it. A sandbox that had too many constraints just was not my cup of tea. As for the others, I’ve never played Path of Exile or Everquest 2 but would have enjoyed giving those a try and it’s been forever since I tried Aion – I actually played for a bit when the game came out years ago.

In the end, the runoff vote was between LOTRO, Bless, and Secret World Legends and I missed out on voting due to… I forgot. Regardless, I was gonna be happy with whichever of the 3 won the month.

And the winner was LOTRO.

Of course the club is gonna run on the Brandywine server so I’ll have a completely open selection of character slots to play with since that’s one of the few servers I’ve never tried to play on. But in reality, I’m really excited to have some impetus to push forward in the game. Now I just need to figure out what class I’d like to try out.