DC’s New 52 is really starting to stall and this week wasn’t much better. In fact, there is only one title from DC I felt was worthy to talk about and since there was a very strong Indie push this week, we’re spotlighting two Indies and one DC title. Marvel maintained the course and was solid, but not spectacular in many ways this week. So, without further ado, here is this week’s pullbox!

1) IDW – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #6: A mysterious French parkour ninja is hunted down by the Foot Clan as the Turtles continue to recon this threat. Meanwhile, Baxter Stockman begins to pull out all the stops to help Old Hob catch the Turtles and Splinter and reveals a redesigned blast from the past that should make all TMNT fans jump for joy.

A lot of pieces begin to fall into place for the future of this monthly as the Foot Clan finally reveals itself to the Turtles, Casey Jones and April O’Neil meet for the first time, and Baxter Stockman unveils a new generation of Mousers that look to no longer be the jokes they once were for the Mean, Green, Fighting Machines. If you haven’t been picking up this monthly, now is the perfect time to jump on board because business looks like it is about to pick up.  Kevin Eastman continues to remind us what made the original Turtles great with this series as it balances great humor with superb action on a consistent basis.

2) Comix Tribe – SCAM #1 (of 5): A group of conmen with some extraordinary powers are set up in what was meant to be the heist of their lives. Forced to scatter to the winds after being betrayed by one of their own, they come back together for one more gig in the hopes of sticking it to the man who stuck it to them and still get that legendary heist they were all waiting for.

This comic has everything you want from a first issue and the premise feels like Ocean’s Eleven meets the X-Men as you have a bevy of con-artists with superpowers in Las Vegas. Great art tempered with action, thrills, and a brilliant set-up makes this everything you’d want for $3.99. And amazingly enough, it all comes from one man as Joe Mulvey makes his big debut in comics with a splash. If the rest of this series is anywhere as good as this first issue, Mulvey is going to be a writer/artist to watch in the future in the comics industry for sure.

3) DC – Green Lantern: New Guardians #5: Kyle Rayner and the rest of the lantern color spectrum representatives finally begin to explore the traveling solar system that has revealed itself and are shocked at what they find. Even more surprising though is the reaction the lanterns receive and a new enemy who looks to rise up and make his presence felt by the lantern representatives.

With all the power being wielded between these new lanterns you need a threat that is worthy of them, and a hostile, traveling star system, and its crazy guardian that lives within its sun is a good way to start, so I’m all for a new villain in this case. The big question now though is what will DC actually do with him. This could be when this series really starts to ramp up its action and we finally start to get some answers, but if DC really starts to drag this out, it could get stale fast. One thing is for sure though, this issue is definitely good enough to warrant picking up this month and next month at least to see what happens.

4) Marvel – X-Men Legacy #261: An old foe returns to harass Wolverine and his new school in Westchester as it seems the school has the biggest target in the universe painted on it as they can’t go a week without being threatened with their untimely demise. After harrowing another threat though, Wolverine realizes he may have accidentally shifted that target to Cyclops and Utopia and so now the school has its first official road trip to help out their former teammates.

So as you can tell by the cover, the old foe is of course Exodus and his tremendous psychic abilities always make him an Omega level threat to whomever he should target. The unexpected humor of this issue though was a pleasant surprise as finally after talking Exodus down from his attempted mind wipe of the entire school to force them to unite with Utopia, they then have to follow Exodus as he flies off towards San Francisco to attack Cyclops and his X-Men instead. My only problem with that is that it seems to be bringing the two teams together a bit too soon after they separated so this is a tenuous situation that Marvel needs to handle properly so as not to undo everything that has been done in recent months.

5) Marvel – Astonishing X-Men #46: Cyclops takes on the mantle of leader once again as he and his multi-verse team finally learn that the Savior is his universe’s Charles Xavier. With some interesting drama between Cyclops and the multi-verse Wolverine, all out action then breaks out as they begin their attack on Savior’s tower in the hopes of escaping back to their own realities. 

The action is really the highlight of this issue as it builds to an interesting conclusion as Savior uses the services of Storm and a few other X-Men that he employs in his service to try to hold Cyclops, Wolverine, Emma Frost, Nightcrawler, and Shadowcat back to continue to power his universe’s bio-force. If you haven’t been reading this comic, now might not be the time to jump in as it’s the middle of a very deep story arc, but this continues a great run that Astonishing X-Men has been on since its inception (minus a random gap between issues about a year ago).