This Week on Marvel Unlimited: 07/22/2020

We’re back to 1 weeks of books, 11 total, this week. We get a lot of Empyre, a couple of Dawn of X books, and a few new arcs. No retro review, but a good amount of recaps from last week’s books.

New This Week
Amazing Spider-Man: Sins Rising Prelude #1
Daredevil #21
Empyre #2
Empyre: Avengers #1
Empyre: X-Men #1
Hellions #2
Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling #1
New Mutants #11
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #2
Wolverine #3
X-Men/Fantastic Four #4

Notes: Empyre reading order this week: Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling #1, Empyre #2, Empyre: Avengers #1, Empyre: X-Men #1 (according to the checklist, Empyre: Spider-Man #1, X-Men #10, Captain Marvel #18, Empyre: Thor #1, Empyre: Captain America, and Empyre: Stormranger should come before Empyre: X-Men #1)…Amazing Spider-Man: Sins Rising Prelude sets up the next big arc for Spidey…X-Men/Fantastic Four #4 ends the mini-series…Daredevil #21 starts a new arc

Best of the Week
Amazing Spider-Man #44 – With Sins Rising coming, I decided to jump into Spider-Man for the first time since JMS wrote the book. It was a little confusing, but I’m chalking that up to the Inception storytelling. Spidey is a fun character and hopefully the book gets a little less confusing as I get into it.

Avengers #34 – Part 2 of Age of Khonshu and I’m still not sure on this one. The book started with Moon Knight seemingly unaware that someone was raising mummies and taking out heroes; it was almost like he wanted to find out who was doing it. A dismayed Khonshu further added to the questions. After the Mephisto visit, it was back to Moon Knight and Khonshu being responsible. I’ll stick with the book, for now.

Captain Marvel #17 – I miss the days of one and done books, and this was a good one of those. Captain Marvel is having poker night with Wolverine, Spider-Woman, Spectrum, and Hazmat when Ms. Marvel shows up for “game night”. Since Ms. Marvel is a minor and wants nothing to do with poker, she gets the others to reluctantly go to an Escape Room. We’ll just say is doesn’t go perfectly. The dialogue was fun and the book was a great issue, even if the villain seemed a little forced.

Empyre #1
Empyre: Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four #21 – I’ll lump these together since they are all tied together. In Empyre: FF, the team is trapped on a casino planet, where they rescue a Kree child and a Skrull child who are forced to reenact past Kree/Skrull battles. When they are returning to Earth, they encounter the Kree/Skrull armada heading for the moon, to battle the Cotati. The kids (including Franklin and Valeria) are sent to earth. Empyre starts the battle with the FF investigating what is going on with the Kree/Skrulls and the Avengers ready to defend the Cotati. Except the Cotati reveal they want to take over all organic life. FF 21 goes to Earth with the kids, who need help of the New Fantastic Four (or at least Wolverine and Spider-Man) to keep the Kree/Skrull children from fighting. We also learn that human worshipers of the Cotati need the Kree/Skrull children to help the Cotati on the moon. Right now, the FF side story is a little more appealing of these books, but we’ll see where this story ends up.

Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1 – A one and done issue with Magneto doing a favor for the White Queen; she needs an island for the Hellfire Trading Company away from Krakoa. Magneto knows an island and waits for the owner to arrive. We come to find out the island belongs to Namor; he’ll agree to terms as long as Magneto helps him find a missing group of Atlantian scientists. It’s a solid issue that continues some side stories for various mutants. Granted, we don’t know what’s going on with the story they started for Storm.

Guardians of the Galaxy #4 – The new Guardians are trying to stop matter destroying energy technology from being used for a businessman to sell energy to planets by destroying others. The old Guardians are hired by the businessman to kill Rocket Raccoon. The 2 teams battle. Having the 2 teams is an interesting dynamic. The new Guardians are trying to save the galaxy, while the old Guardians are trying to avenge Peter Quills death. Why do I have a feeling that they’ll eventually team up when they discover Peter isn’t dead?

Spider-Woman #2 – Spider-Woman is sick and she doesn’t know why. Night Nurse discovers that part of her genetic makeup is gone and that Jessica’s new employer is the cause. His daughter had cancer and he used some incomplete research that created Spider-Woman. As a result, he altered her to be the cure for his daughters condition by stating the Jessica’s son would probably face the same fate. It’s a good book and I’ll be sticking with it.

Strange Academy #2 – Day one of school and the kids learn a lot, including that there is no cost to them of using magic on the campus. That fact is made to seem pretty shady by how it comes up and the staff discussion later in the book. It was fun and this could be the next Runaways for young readers. I’m in.

Venom #26 – Symbiotes make my head spin, but I decided to read this book anyways. Eddie Brock has a son that has awareness of symbiotes and he’s having dreams about Knull. To get answers, Eddie and Dylan go to the Maker and learn that he’s created a symbiote like that from his universe that Dylan nor the Venom symbiote can detect. It leads to a fight with Virus, an Iron Man knockoff on a goblin glider. It wasn’t a bad book, and I really like the idea of the Maker (I haven’t read much with him, something I’m going to rectify) and bringing back his version of the symbiote. Eddie ends up in a parallel universe with Dylan, so we’ll see where this goes.

X-Force #10 – Marvel Girl, Sage, and Black Tom have to rescue Wolverine, Domino, and Kid Omega from Terre Verde. We learn that Beast is responsible for what has happened there and Jean is not to happy about it. X-Force has been one of the best books in the Dawn of X line; the dilemma about what they are doing is probably one of the strongest storylines they’ve been using. The Jean/Logan hookup at the end was a little weird though.

Retro Review: None this week. I struggled this week to make it through these books, while reading Dune at the same time.

Don’t forget, the Krakoa Mutant Tracker is updated weekly as new books come to Marvel Unlimited.