Marvel Pick Of The Week – August 31, 2016

ThePick Of The Week brings back the best of the 90s – get ready for chokers, music festivals, and tasteful oversized weaponry.

Pick Of The Week: X-Men 92 #6 by Chad Bowers, Chris Sims, and Alti Firmansyah

Pick Of The Week

The 90s get a bad rap. Some of it is well-earned. For comics, this was an era of ridiculous heroes with “BloodDeath” in their names or guns the size of your local post office. But it was also an area of creative explosion, like the expansion of the X-Men line into the popular Saturday morning cartoon that brought my generation into reading comic books in the first place. For people in our thirties, our X-Men team of choice is usually the group we cheered for on the weekends, with Storm and Wolverine and Jubilee. Sims and Bowers understand this, and they refuse to oversimplify. X-Men 92 #6 takes Pick Of The Week because it recognizes how silly the creative era was and because it loves it anyway.

This is a book that doesn’t just rely on nostalgia. The team has a fun story to tell and a powerful artist to tell it. This week’s issue follows the X-Men team as they work security for Lila Cheney’s “Lilapalooza” music festival. The wicked Upstarts are watching them, and Fabian Cortez hijacks the rock goddess’s teleportation powers to boot the team into the Brood’s neighborhood.

From an X-Men standpoint, this book is lovingly proposing 90s redesigns for modern characters like Abigail Brand of SWORD:

Yes, it’s silly, but for an alien hybrid with green hair, adding fishnets and extraneous thigh belt pouches is kind of tame.

And the love for 90s music! This issue has guest stars like the Flaming Lips:

And the Toadies:

(Fun fact: The Toadies headlined the first music festival I ever went to, BuzzFest 1996.)

And if you got through those last two pictures without humming or Googling, then we have never met. This was an era of a Woodstock revival and the Lilith Fair and the Warped Tour and Lollapalooza, and X-Men 92 taps perfectly into what it felt like to hang out on a grassy hill with your best friends and try to remember which act is up next.

And the fashion! I’m fine leaving looks like this for the old time capsule and occasional theme party. But man, these were some iconic outfits and make people my age smile to see again:

Read this issue with Poe’s first album. You’re welcome.

Honorable Mentions:

Rocket Raccoon And Groot #8

Poor Rocket’s awkward stereotyping is  perfect comedy timing in a comic book layout.

Spider-Man #7

Umm, yes, the inspirational quotes don’t really count until you do something inspiring. Like staying out of prison.

Guardians Of The Galaxy #11

Oh, Angela! With your awkward sex positivity and disregard for social convention! Never change.

Civil War II: Choosing Sides #5

Not only is dreamboat guest star Justin Trudeau on the right side of the Civil War II argument, not even curmudgeon Puck can resist his YouTube charisma.

Amazing Spider-Man #17

Even the bad guys have Pokemon Go addictions.

Catch up on previous Marvel Picks of the Week here!