Tpull's Weekly Marvel Comics Review – Part 1
The Amazing Spider-Man 620
by Dan Slott, Marcos Martin and Javier Pulido
We run through the motions, with much of the time spent setting the stage for the various villains. While the dialogue is as witty as usual, the fight scenes can border on the ridiculous, as Spidey jumps into an army of goons, many of whom seem to be pointing their guns straight in the air. The art is low on detail, and beginning to make me wonder if I should drop the title, honestly. The drab, all-red or all-brown backgrounds are not worth my money.
The plot is simple, Spidey shows up and wades into everybody, and manages to get a ton of people arrested. Mysterio gets away, and is recruited by Chameleon in the end, just as we knew he would be. It’s a little lame, being billed as part of the great “Gauntlet” storyline, as these issues have mostly mirrored many other Spider-Man issues. How many times have we seen him plow through a different member of the rogue’s gallery each month? The only difference is that we know they will all come back again for a finale. All of the interesting Parker sub-plots have disappeared, with no room for them this issue. The art makes it average, and the dialogue isn’t enough to save it. We need better.
New Mutants 10
by Zeb Wells, Paul Davidson, David Lopez, and Alvaro Lopez
Did I mention I hate repetitive, bland backgrounds? The field team works against a backdrop of the ocean, so there’s a big blue canvas there, with an entirely unnecessary two-page splash of Sauron smashing stuff. Then we keep switching back to Cyclops and Emma at Utopia, in a room where there is supposed to be sophisticated equipment, but is rendered for panel upon panel in a blended blue. Way to give us an exciting environment, people. And they wonder why Blackest Night is kicking their butt…
Emma figures out that Scott is looking for a future leader for the X-Men, but the New Mutants act like rookies. Sunspot spends a lot of his time screaming for back-up, which he doesn’t really need. There are only four opponents, and Doug is keeping one busy by dodging his every blow. The guys get slimed and held under Worm’s control, and Dani has to rescue them. The Mutates agree to return to the Savage Land once they see that Magneto is not in charge, and is in fact working with the other X-Men.
We switch yet again to just another shade of blue to have Cyclops tell Emma that the future leader will not necessarily be Cannonball. This has been telegraphed almost since the series started, and Zeb Wells is steering the ship so we can have another Batman/Captain America stereotype: that of someone without any powers calling the shots. It’s not the worst idea in the world, but the way he accomplishes it is by setting up a boring fight with villains who have a poorly thought-out plan, and artificially having Dani be the one who makes the right call.
Why do I say artificially? Because Sam trained under Cable and by the time he was done, they had a solid team, well-versed in tactics and strategy. The Beast commented once that they had more actual battle strategy than the original X-Men did, after all they had been through. In order to clear the way for Dani to assume the leadership spot, Wells has to dumb down Cannonball until he forgets all of his training and battlefield experience. In short, Wells is regressing most of the characters, making them seem more like amateur newbies than the hardened veterans they really are. With three different artists on the title, I expected more than a bunch of blue backgrounds. Yuck. If I have to keep dropping Marvel titles, I won’t have anything left to review…
Ultimate Spider-Man 7
by Brian Bendis and Takeshi Miyazawa
A kid named Rick creates a scorched circle in his backyard, then goes into a coma. Fast-forward six months to the present day, and Rick wakes up. He happens to live right across from Peter Parker, how’s that for a coincidence? Really brilliant story development there, kids. Just have anything interesting happen right across the street from your protagonist! Brilliant!
The art is boring yet again, with all sorts of things you could show at a food court for a couple pages, and all we get are some ill-defined, blurry storefronts in the back, and a ton of blank, boring colored backgrounds. Seriously, brown and gray? At least in the old days, the panel would turn orange or green. It might not makes as much sense, but they were still better color choices if you were going to have absolutely nothing else behind the character. Aunt May learns that Rick has some kind of power, and asks Peter and his friends to get involved. The Human Torch and Iceman come along and startle the kid, causing a manifestation of his powers.
Johnny finally figures out what happened, that the Watchers chose a herald six months ago. They picked this kid… Rick Jones. Nice to know that they’re trying something genuinely new in their “ultimate” universe. At least in the regular one, we’ve never had stories about Rick Jones being imbued with cosmic powers. Wait, we have? That’s right, we’ve had a TON of those stories. Remind me why we have an Ultimate universe anymore?
Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.
