If you're new here, you may want to add some dickery to your feed reader by subscribing to my RSS feed. High five!

From the Book of Jeremiah: “Go up, my warriors, against the land of Merathaim and against the people of Pekod. Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you,� says the Lord. Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction. Babylon, the mightiest hammer in all the earth, lies broken and shattered. Babylon is desolate among the nations! Listen, Babylon, for I have set a trap for you. You are caught, for you have fought against the Lord. The Lord has opened his armory and brought out weapons to vent his fury. The terror that falls upon the Babylonians will be the work of the Sovereign Lord of Heaven�s Armies. Yes, come against her from distant lands. Break open her granaries. Crush her walls and houses into heaps of rubble. Destroy her completely, and leave nothing! Destroy even her young bulls, it will be terrible for them, too! Slaughter them all! For Babylon�s day of reckoning has come. Listen to the people who have escaped from Babylon, as they tell in Jerusalem how the Lord our God has taken vengeance against those who destroyed his Temple.

Wow. The Lord sounds pissed. This passage is apparently the inspiration for DC’s teaser image this week, which was emailed to various comics news websites and publications with the subject line “Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction…”

The mysterious image shows a dozen living DC characters, including a supposedly Barry Allen Flash, a Batman from another world, and an emo Superman, and four dead characters. Five, if you count that tiny little hand between Blue Beetle’s knee and Black Canary’s foot. Probably The Atom.

Popular speculation indicates that this image validates the return of DC’s Multiverse. More than likely, it does. It sure is fun for interwebs fanmen to talk about it and find clues within the image as to what DC is planning for our wallets. Whatever the truth is about this image, judging from the sheer smite-icity of the quoted Bible text, it’s going to be a fun and emo ride for the DC legion of superfreaks. And Superman’s going to cry. Again.

And now, for this week’s un-emo haul:

52 #38: DC is doing a fine job at showing the horror of cancer. And it’s also doing a fine job at killing a cult-favorite character, The Question. Apparently, he dies in this issue. He even appears as a corpse in the DC teaser I just talked about. But having witnessed the “deaths” in 52, I’m not entirely convinced that we’ve already read the last words of The Question.

It’s heartbreaking to see a lesbian woman drag a terminally ill dude in a faceless mask up a snow-covered mountain. Really, it is.

And oh yeah, the three Horsemen created by the mad scientists? Frickin’ awesome. But we only get introduced to War, Death, and Pestilence. The fourth Horseman, Famine, was apparently released earlier. Hence, a new mystery for us fandudes: who, what, and where is Famine? Dun dun dun duuunnnnn!

I give this 3 out of 5 golden mechanical bugs.

Civil War: The Return: It won’t make sense if a give you a spoiler alert right now as to who actually returns in this one-shot, eh? Yes, that is the original Captain Marvel. The one who died from cancer several years ago in Marvel’s first large-format graphic novel, The Death of Captain Marvel.

Due to an anomaly in Mr. Fantastic’s construction of portals to the Negative Zone, Cap from the past was sucked into the current day. And he knows his final fate, which basically makes his upcoming adventures in the yet-to-be-released Captain Marvel #1 interesting, at the least. Also, The Sentry incinerates the Absorbing Man. Yawn.

I give this 2 out of 5 million exploding suns.

Doctor Strange: The Oath #4: Once again, Brian K. Vaughan shows us how interesting and badass the doctor can be. Doc fights a monster who kicked the asses of past Sorcerer Supremes. But the doctor, and Vaughan as well, defies all expectations.

A little romance is thrown into the mix with the doctor and his “Watson”, Night Nurse. It was sweet enough to drive home the idea that there’s something between the doctor and the nurse, yet subtle enough not to be cheesy.

And by the Fangs of Farallah! The last page is a shocker that sets up the final chapter of this awesome mini-series next month. This got me more excited about Doctor Strange joining the New Avengers after Civil War. And I hope Vaughan will do more Doctor Strange (with Night Nurse) after this mini because, by the Hoary fucking Hosts, it’s awesome.

I give this 5 out of 5 bullet shots from Hitler’s Gun.

Punisher War Journal #3: Frank Castle may be a sociopathic badass son of a bitch, but the guy knows how to respect people who deserve respect, and who deserves more respect than Captain America? We get to see how Castle’s respect goes back before the Vietnam War.

In the present, the Punisher gets smacked around by Cap for killing two D-list villains right in front of a crowd of superheroes. He never fights back, which earns my respect. And apparently, Spider-Man’s as well.

After getting his ass handed to him by Captain freakin’ America, Frank leaves the Civil War to continue his punishing ways. Next on the list? The Rhino. Frank shoots him in the face (in the freakin’ face!), and then he punches him (in the fuckin’ face!) with the Satan Claw. The Punisher’s back, baby. And I’m gonna be there to watch him hit people in the face!

I give this 4 out of 5 incomings!

Wolverine #50: That wrap-around cover is sooo wallpaper-worthy. It looks more amazing in sketch. Simone Bianchi rocks.

As for the story, I was expecting to be bored to hell since this is the bajillionth time we see Wolverine take on Sabretooth. But I wasn’t. Well, okay I was, but just slightly.

So far, Jeph Loeb hasn’t shown us anything new about this done-to-the-death classic brawl. And speaking of classic brawls, there’s a back-up story re-telling the first fight between the Hulk and Wolverine, which is drawn spectacularly by Ed McGuiness. That brawl ends in a nice shout-out to the Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk mini-series. Nice and nasty. Drool-worthy art for this issue, but I guess I’ll have to wait for next month’s issue to see if I’ll be adding Wolverine to my pull list.

I give this 3 out of 5 raped then killed Silver Foxes.

X-Factor #15: Madrox the Multiple Man: Agent of Hydra. Sounds nice. This is the best Multiple Man story I’ve read so far. He’s brainwashed by Hydra to be their new weapon of mass destruction. But Madrox, subconsciously, foils their plans. Did I just say “foils”?!

Madrox kills dozens of Hydra agents and he doesn’t feel remorse. He’s one scary muthafucka. And apparently, he’s more than a guy who produces duplicates of himself because as the story suggests, he can also duplicate the stuff he touches. Yeah, imagine him holding a bomb. Then imagine him duplicating and duplicating and duplicating and duplicating. You can have a “one-man” army of suicide bombers! Frickin’ sweeeeet.

Madrox isn’t the only hardcore member of X-Factor. Siryn and M are in Europe, enjoying the shopping, the coffee, and flinging pieces of jail bar towards an asshole mutant-murderer. Kudos to Peter David for another awesome X-Factor issue!

I give this 5 out of 5 Hydra tentacles.

Mostly a good week, but it could’ve been better. I should have gotten Silent War, but I think I’ll just wait for the mini to finish before I get the trade. I hope next week we’ll get to see some kind of explanation for that DC teaser image and why the hell Superman is crying all the time. What a wuss.

• One Year Later