Avengers the Initiative

I'm up to Issue 7 and this book is kind of dark. People are dying, the Initiative consists of a bunch of scared shitless teens with powers who are just happy to make it through the day alive and Hank Pym being something of a dick. The story is good so far, it has genuine twists that are well built up without being completely obvious (That's part of the advantages of having a universe like Marvel's) and Tony Stark is being a massive dick.

Well yeah, Tony's fresh off of the Civil War. His dickishness doesn't really wear off for a couple of years.

I knew this was fresh off Civil War but that doesn't mean Tony Stark has a reason to be dickish.

Tony Stark is a dick because Tony Stark sucks... in Civil War.

I stopped reading Civil War about 20 issues in because it was so goddamn boring.

Also because I don't know half the heroes that appear in it.

You didn't miss much. Civil War was boring, poorly written and completely unwarranted. A collection of OOC moments / derailments.

What are good event stories?

Not many of the big events are good. Some off the top of my head are Annihilation, Infinite Crisis and Sinestro Corps War. I think Siege was pretty alright, but mostly for the tie-ins. Event-esque stuff like Curse of the Mutants and the Batman R.I.P. storyline are good reads too.

Hey, I guess this is as good of place as any to ask this, but playing MvC3 has peeked my Marvel curiosity. I saw a torrent with like every Ultimate comic. Would that be a good series to check out for a comic book newbie?

Ultimate universe is perfect for newbies. Basically every major Marvel character has some role in it, so you can find your favorite character and go to a main series from there.

Sweet, thanks. I'm gonna get at that.

But the Ultimate universe is a separate universe than 616, the main one. It's like the difference between Teen Titans and Young Justice. Usually the thing to do would be to start with your favorite character(s), find out what stories are crucial to "getting" them and branching out from there into other stuff. Ultimate starts out decent enough because it was designed for newcomers, but eventually it jumped the shark by creating intrinsically different versions of characters just to be doing it. Hippie Uncle Ben is okay. Eddie Brock with cancer is fine. Mr. Sinister as a gangster? No. It doesn't help that it's still recovering from Loeb's attempted murder.

But the heroes are mostly the same which is what really matters.

Perhaps.

I'm still gonna go with it cuz its so neatly packaged with a convenient reading order.

Savage∞ wrote:

Not many of the big events are good. Some off the top of my head are Annihilation, Infinite Crisis and Sinestro Corps War. I think Siege was pretty alright, but mostly for the tie-ins. Event-esque stuff like Curse of the Mutants and the Batman R.I.P. storyline are good reads too.

Thats really not that good there's only a couple of really good moments in it, i.e. prime going mental and flash showing up. Its also a complete cluster fuck of characters and there's 4 supermen at least.

There's only Kal-El and Kal-L in Infinite Crisis, unless you're counting that one panel with the different Superman screaming in agony.

Savage∞ wrote:

There's only Kal-El and Kal-L in Infinite Crisis, unless you're counting that one panel with the different Superman screaming in agony.

I was counting the superboys to