Tpull's Weekly Marvel Comics Review – Part 1

January 31, 2010 2:12 AM | Comments:

The Amazing Spider-Man 619

by Dan Slott and Marcos Martin

We’re still getting credits twice, with them on the recap page and the splash page, so maybe Marvel is trying to make up for the old days when they had few credits by issuing the credits twice from now on. I’m still trying to get into Martin’s art, but the second page has nothing but drab gray for a background, and what’s left on the page isn’t gripping enough. We get a peek behind the curtain and see that Karnelli has hired Mysterio in a plot to control the Maggia, and Mysterio has a virtual reality get-up that allows him to control Silvermane, who is really a robot.

Myterio stages it so Spidey hits a mobster and apparently kills him. In a bit of unbelievable coincidence that we have to let Slott get away with, Carlie Cooper recognizes the dead mobster as one that her dad worked on years ago. After yet another death-filled disaster orchestrated by Mysterio, Spider-Man pulls the mask off the only living bad guy left, to see the face of Captain Stacy. That did the trick a little too far, and Spider-Man finally picks up on the fact that Mysterio is playing games with his head.

Finally, Mysterio has Silverman kill Karnelli right in front of all of his men. None of them know Silvermane is a robot, as Karnelli didn’t trust any of his guys with that small fact. It always makes me wonder how people can belong to an illegal outfit: if the guy next to you is a liar and a thief and a murderer, how can you really trust him? Karnelli seemed shocked that he was being double-crossed. It is shaping up to be one of the better Mysterio stories I have read, but I still feel Marcos Martin’s style is not conducive to the larger-than-life environment that belongs to Spider-Man.

Guardians of the Galaxy 22

by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Brad Walker

The disturbing cover is creepy and spooky, and guaranteed to grab your attention as you look over the comic racks. A pregnant Moondragon grins, seemingly knowing the horror that lies within. A creature from out of the Fault has found its way inside her, and the Universal Church of Truth has grabbed her to give up their life forces to it, so it can be birthed in this universe.

The recap page should tell you something is up: it lists five people who have already died to stop Warlock’s evil alter ego, the Magus, from staying around in our universe. One or two characters I could see, but you just know most of them will somehow come back. There’s just too much potential there to be wasted.

In a nice, somewhat unexpected maneuver, Starlord has used Knowhere as a ramming vessel, stolen it from its place on the edge of the universe, and turned it into a weapon! Just the idea of the severed head of a Celestial being used as a weapon is the definition of coolness. There’s a big difference between this, and a stunt like, shall we say, having a red Hulk go punch a Watcher? But I digress…

The Luminals arrive to help the Guardians finish the fight, and it is (purposefully) reminiscent of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and for a nice splash page, you almost feel like you’re revisiting part of the Great Darkness Legion story. The Luminals have a lot of potential to be fleshed out and made dear to our hearts, much as DC has managed to develop the Green Lantern Corps. There’s more that happens here, proving how much they manage to pack into one issue, but another cool thing is the appearance of the Magus on the last page, and the five allegedly deceased Guardians held prisoner behind him. I figured they would be back, but not that we would see them this issue. That’s good work, and I still can’t figure out why more people are checking out this title.

Wolverine: Origins 44

by Daniel Way and Doug Braithwaite

Ruby Thursday is the key ingredient to a cocktail that Wolverines wants to make, all to destroy Romulus. Cloak teleports him into the Raft, only to be affected by power dampeners. Luckily, the warden is smart enough to call off the response forces once he sees it’s Wolverine, but before he can figure out how to defuse the situation, he gets a call from none other than Romulus. The big bad guy manipulates the flow of events to steer the heroes into position. Ares and Skaar face off during the escape attempt, but in the chaos, Romulus ensures he is at the right place to knock out Ruby Thursday. Now what’s Logan gonna do?

Braithwaite is excellent with his choices, playing well with where he uses darkness and shadows. The story itself is not bad as a stand-alone, but for Romulus to be so connected and capable of tracking Logan wherever he goes, when he can be anywhere with Cloak’s teleportation, is stretching it a little bit. The plot is not the most fluid either, with easy confusion resulting from trying to keep track of the different stratagems of Logan and Romulus, and trying to figure out which element is being pulled off by which person, and why Wolverine still plods ahead when he encounters something that should smell fishy.

X-Factor 201

by Peter David and Bing Cansino

The story is sort of interesting, but the character use is flawed. Monet has lost any hint of her national origin, and acts and talks just like a spoiled American teenager. Peter David continues to make with the gay humor, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but is the snarky gay joke going to be the main thing he does with every single issue? Because that can get tiresome after a while.

Cansino’s art won’t win any awards, but it’s good enough to get the job done. The thing, in particular, looks hard for him to pull off correctly, making Ben Grimm look more misshapen and monstrous than usual, and inconsistently distorted.

Madrox uses the clue Layla gave from Longshot’s weird conversation to steer them to Latveria via Shatterstar’s ability, then to a missing person’s case that leads them straight to a cemetery, where they dig up the real Reed Richards. Observant readers would have spotted by last issue that Reed wasn’t himself at the Baxter Building, but David weaves the suspense fairly well, making you wonder if it will be Reed or Sue in the grave. So it’s a fun little mystery, and it makes me want to continue to see what happens.

X-Force 23

by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Clayton Crain

Another cover that doesn’t relate well to the insides of the book. We’re stuck in this story that just won’t end, plodding ever onward as slowly as the suggestive zombie-ness of the characters suggests. Hrimhari makes a wise decision with Hela’s offer, choosing neither Rahne nor the baby in her womb to save, but rather Elixir, who will then be able to save them both. How often does Hela get outsmarted? That’s about the only cool thing in the entire comic.

The too-dark art loses definition on the next few pages, as nobody bothers with identity captions, so if you’re not an expert on the mutants, you don’t know everyone who’s fighting, which means you probably could care less what happens for the next half-dozen pages. Blink destroys Archangel’s wings, only to have them fully grown back by the end of the issue, so why not just have yet another fast-healing mutant on the team? Because Logan and X-23, plus Elixir as their own healer just wasn’t enough healing ability!

Wolverine acts like a lunkhead, trying to stab mutants he already knows to have been dead. How many times in this Necrosha storyline is he going to attack someone and have no effect, and actually learn from it? It’s stupid and sloppy writing, and boringly depicted, besides just being boring itself. Showing exactly how stupid the writers need Wolverine to be, when the bad guys are gone, he turns to Cyclops and says, “What the hell just happened, Summers?” And this is the guy you put in the lead of your killer team.

Sigh. Not sure what else I can say, but please let the pain end. Clayton Crain needs to learn how to use a light source.

X-Men: Legacy 232

by Mike Carey and Clay Mann

Mike Carey makes lemonade out of lemons, providing more entertainment in his part of the Necrosha crossover than Kyle and Yost can manage in X-Force. The first page showing the mutants on the run is fun, and the dramatic entrance of Rogue in the place of Nightcrawler is neat. Carey really knows how to utilize Rogue; not just in her powers, but in how to capitalize on her use of them for dramatic purposes.

Proteus has reformed, and he discovers he can manifest in multiple bodies simultaneously now. The story is fairly straightforward, with him pursuing the X-Men team as they try to escape the island. You know life is bad for mutants when Proteus reforms as an accident on account of all the other (censored) that’s going on, and it wasn’t even planned by the main bad guys.

Clay Mann does well with the characters, and includes backgrounds a lot, but some pages get lazy, as he gives us a couple pages straight of mostly drab grey. He should study some of the masters of the art, of yesteryear, who at least threw in some other colors, just to break up the monotony, even if it wasn’t a precise match for the environment. Magneto tries launching a dirtball into space, with both himself and Proteus on it. If he pulls this off, Cyclops better start cutting him some slack over in Uncanny! Good job all around.

Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

The Amazing Spider-Man 619 \n\n by Dan Slott and Marcos Martin \n\nWe’re still getting credits twice, with them on the recap page and the splash page, so maybe Marvel is trying to make up for the old days when they had few credits by issuing the credits twice from now on. I’m still trying to get into Martin’s art, but the second page has nothing but drab gray for a background, and what’s left on the page isn’t gripping enough. We get a peek behind the curtain and see that Karnelli has hired Mysterio in a plot to control the Maggia, and Mysterio has a virtual reality get-up that allows him to control Silvermane, who is really a robot.\n\nMyterio stages it so Spidey hits a mobster and apparently kills him. In a bit of unbelievable coincidence that we have to let Slott get away with, Carlie Cooper recognizes the dead mobster as one that her dad worked on years ago. After yet another death-filled disaster orchestrated by Mysterio, Spider-Man pulls the mask off the only living bad guy left, to see the face of Captain Stacy. That did the trick a little too far, and Spider-Man finally picks up on the fact that Mysterio is playing games with his head.\n\nFinally, Mysterio has Silverman kill Karnelli right in front of all of his men. None of them know Silvermane is a robot, as Karnelli didn’t trust any of his guys with that small fact. It always makes me wonder how people can belong to an illegal outfit: if the guy next to you is a liar and a thief and a murderer, how can you really trust him? Karnelli seemed shocked that he was being double-crossed. It is shaping up to be one of the better Mysterio stories I have read, but I still feel Marcos Martin’s style is not conducive to the larger-than-life environment that belongs to Spider-Man.\n\n\n Guardians of the Galaxy 22 \n\n by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Brad Walker \n\nThe disturbing cover is creepy and spooky, and guaranteed to grab your attention as you look over the comic racks. A pregnant Moondragon grins, seemingly knowing the horror that lies within. A creature from out of the Fault has found its way inside her, and the Universal Church of Truth has grabbed her to give up their life forces to it, so it can be birthed in this universe.\n\nThe recap page should tell you something is up: it lists five people who have already died to stop Warlock’s evil alter ego, the Magus, from staying around in our universe. One or two characters I could see, but you just know most of them will somehow come back. There’s just too much potential there to be wasted.\n\nIn a nice, somewhat unexpected maneuver, Starlord has used Knowhere as a ramming vessel, stolen it from its place on the edge of the universe, and turned it into a weapon! Just the idea of the severed head of a Celestial being used as a weapon is the definition of coolness. There’s a big difference between this, and a stunt like, shall we say, having a red Hulk go punch a Watcher? But I digress…\n\nThe Luminals arrive to help the Guardians finish the fight, and it is (purposefully) reminiscent of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and for a nice splash page, you almost feel like you’re revisiting part of the Great Darkness Legion story. The Luminals have a lot of potential to be fleshed out and made dear to our hearts, much as DC has managed to develop the Green Lantern Corps. There’s more that happens here, proving how much they manage to pack into one issue, but another cool thing is the appearance of the Magus on the last page, and the five allegedly deceased Guardians held prisoner behind him. I figured they would be back, but not that we would see them this issue. That’s good work, and I still can’t figure out why more people are checking out this title.\n\n\n Wolverine: Origins 44 \n\n by Daniel Way and Doug Braithwaite \n\nRuby Thursday is the key ingredient to a cocktail that Wolverines wants to make, all to destroy Romulus. Cloak teleports him into the Raft, only to be affected by power dampeners. Luckily, the warden is smart enough to call off the response forces once he sees it’s Wolverine, but before he can figure out how to defuse the situation, he gets a call from none other than Romulus. The big bad guy manipulates the flow of events to steer the heroes into position. Ares and Skaar face off during the escape attempt, but in the chaos, Romulus ensures he is at the right place to knock out Ruby Thursday. Now what’s Logan gonna do?\n\nBraithwaite is excellent with his choices, playing well with where he uses darkness and shadows. The story itself is not bad as a stand-alone, but for Romulus to be so connected and capable of tracking Logan wherever he goes, when he can be anywhere with Cloak’s teleportation, is stretching it a little bit. The plot is not the most fluid either, with easy confusion resulting from trying to keep track of the different stratagems of Logan and Romulus, and trying to figure out which element is being pulled off by which person, and why Wolverine still plods ahead when he encounters something that should smell fishy.\n\n\n X-Factor 201 \n\n by Peter David and Bing Cansino \n\nThe story is sort of interesting, but the character use is flawed. Monet has lost any hint of her national origin, and acts and talks just like a spoiled American teenager. Peter David continues to make with the gay humor, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but is the snarky gay joke going to be the main thing he does with every single issue? Because that can get tiresome after a while.\n\nCansino’s art won’t win any awards, but it’s good enough to get the job done. The thing, in particular, looks hard for him to pull off correctly, making Ben Grimm look more misshapen and monstrous than usual, and inconsistently distorted.\n\nMadrox uses the clue Layla gave from Longshot’s weird conversation to steer them to Latveria via Shatterstar’s ability, then to a missing person’s case that leads them straight to a cemetery, where they dig up the real Reed Richards. Observant readers would have spotted by last issue that Reed wasn’t himself at the Baxter Building, but David weaves the suspense fairly well, making you wonder if it will be Reed or Sue in the grave. So it’s a fun little mystery, and it makes me want to continue to see what happens.\n\n\n X-Force 23 \n\n by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Clayton Crain \n\nAnother cover that doesn’t relate well to the insides of the book. We’re stuck in this story that just won’t end, plodding ever onward as slowly as the suggestive zombie-ness of the characters suggests. Hrimhari makes a wise decision with Hela’s offer, choosing neither Rahne nor the baby in her womb to save, but rather Elixir, who will then be able to save them both. How often does Hela get outsmarted? That’s about the only cool thing in the entire comic.\n\nThe too-dark art loses definition on the next few pages, as nobody bothers with identity captions, so if you’re not an expert on the mutants, you don’t know everyone who’s fighting, which means you probably could care less what happens for the next half-dozen pages. Blink destroys Archangel’s wings, only to have them fully grown back by the end of the issue, so why not just have yet another fast-healing mutant on the team? Because Logan and X-23, plus Elixir as their own healer just wasn’t enough healing ability!\n\nWolverine acts like a lunkhead, trying to stab mutants he already knows to have been dead. How many times in this Necrosha storyline is he going to attack someone and have no effect, and actually learn from it? It’s stupid and sloppy writing, and boringly depicted, besides just being boring itself. Showing exactly how stupid the writers need Wolverine to be, when the bad guys are gone, he turns to Cyclops and says, “What the hell just happened, Summers?” And this is the guy you put in the lead of your killer team.\n\nSigh. Not sure what else I can say, but please let the pain end. Clayton Crain needs to learn how to use a light source.\n\n\n X-Men: Legacy 232 \n\n by Mike Carey and Clay Mann \n\nMike Carey makes lemonade out of lemons, providing more entertainment in his part of the Necrosha crossover than Kyle and Yost can manage in X-Force. The first page showing the mutants on the run is fun, and the dramatic entrance of Rogue in the place of Nightcrawler is neat. Carey really knows how to utilize Rogue; not just in her powers, but in how to capitalize on her use of them for dramatic purposes.\n\nProteus has reformed, and he discovers he can manifest in multiple bodies simultaneously now. The story is fairly straightforward, with him pursuing the X-Men team as they try to escape the island. You know life is bad for mutants when Proteus reforms as an accident on account of all the other (censored) that’s going on, and it wasn’t even planned by the main bad guys.\n\nClay Mann does well with the characters, and includes backgrounds a lot, but some pages get lazy, as he gives us a couple pages straight of mostly drab grey. He should study some of the masters of the art, of yesteryear, who at least threw in some other colors, just to break up the monotony, even if it wasn’t a precise match for the environment. Magneto tries launching a dirtball into space, with both himself and Proteus on it. If he pulls this off, Cyclops better start cutting him some slack over in Uncanny! Good job all around.\n\n\nTpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.

Tpull's Weekly Marvel Comics Review – Part 1

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