Tpull's Weekly Marvel Comics Review – Part 1

March 21, 2010 2:38 AM | Comments:

The Amazing Spider-Man 625

by Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara

Let’s start with the good news: Marko Djurdjevic gives us a cool cover. Also, Fiumara is a big improvement over the last two artists. He is still not the choice I would make for this comic, but when you hit bottom, you take any steps as good ones. The bad news might be that six people from my comic store have already dropped the title, due to the obscenely poor issue #624. Whatever good things might come next, Marvel put out such a lousy product last time, many fans are giving up.

I think the larger lesson is that the experiment in multiple teams on the same title in a rotating fashion is a failure. This entire journey started because Quesada was very loudly proclaiming that Peter Parker had to go back his roots, but that goal has been betrayed time and time again. Mephisto broke up his marriage for the sake of Aunt May, who has been absent far too many times, and played such a small supporting role in others, the entire thrust of One More Day has been a let-down as far as Aunt May goes. Throw in Peter’s sudden reversal in fortunes of love, going from his old days of never getting the girl to always hooking up with… shall we say, women who are more liberated with their charms… The final thread was Peter’s betrayal of his moral values, a direct betrayal of the core principle of this character: that he learned the lesson of making the wrong choice when his Uncle Ben was murdered. The rotating Brain Trust simply can’t keep all of the balls floating in the air at once without the story suffering, something highlighted by the delivery of absolutely nothing during the fabled “Gauntlet” storyline, which ends with this issue.

So let’s cover this issue. Peter has become famous for his photography fraud decision, and Mary Jane shoots down his request for a shoulder so he can have a good cry. Norah throws him a bone for a photo assignment, which conveniently turns into the time and place where the new Rhino confronts Sytsevich. For the new Rhino to feel legitimate, he wants to have a horn-to-horn fight to establish his supremacy over the original Rhino. Aleksei agrees in public, planning to run in private. True love has bit him, and he will go anywhere, do anything, to keep his beloved Oksana safe.

It doesn’t work. The new Rhino finds him and kills Oksana, and in a repeat of a recent story in Daredevil with another huge bald villain, Aleksei reverts to his old ways and utterly destroys the new Rhino. While the story mostly works, it’s a reversal of the only character growth Rhino has ever had. When we first were given this story, Aleksei was turning over a new leaf for love, something that actually can happen in this rotten world. I praised it as one of the precious few times we saw genuine change in one of Spidey’s rogues.

Although this new story works, it reverses all they have done, which I think is a mistake. It reinforces the belief that even for minor characters, writers cannot handle change, and all the pieces they touch have to be returned to their proper places, so the next writer can do the same old thing with them later. It makes for a bunch of repetitious storylines, and coming so close on the heels of an almost-exact story for Kingpin, it feels less original than usual. So while the story and art are both better than the last couple weeks, the title and overall direction still feels broken.

Dark Avengers 15

by Brian Bendis and Mike Deodato

Bendis is stuck on the Sentry, and they might as well have just called this title “Dark Sentry, sometimes guest-starring the Thunderbolt rip-offs.” We flash back to previous events to tell us what we already knew: the Sentry is Osborn’s weapon, he’s incredibly powerful and unstable, and did we really need to do that yet again in the same freaking series?

The story in and of itself is not bad, and gives Bullseye an opportunity to remind us how much of a remorseless killer he is. Does he have a certain courage, to be able to kill Bob’s wife Lindy? To face Sentry later and act like she committed suicide? Or is he just so far gone in his insanity that it doesn’t occur to him to be afraid? Deodato’s art does a superb job to save some of the repetitious aspects from being boring, with skillful depictions that always captivate the eye.

Victoria Hand gets an understanding here of the depths of Osborn’s personality, yet we know she continues to serve his interests. What does this say about her? While I could enjoy this comic as a standalone story, it feels like one of the filler issues that ran rampant throughout many titles during Secret Invasion: too little revealed for the space it takes up. I am more than ready for the Sentry to go away, as he has overstayed his welcome, and it is resulting in a broken record of stories. “He’s too powerful, everybody stare at him and hope he doesn’t go crazy and kill us all. Oh, whatever will we do?” how many treatments of his condition are we going to have to sit through before Bendis understands that we all get it, and he really really really needs to move on to something else?

At the exact same time, I have to admit I liked most of it. Hm.

Guardians of the Galaxy 24

by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Wes Craig

Wes Craig is back, and the title immediately suffers. The first few pages, far from being exciting, are drawn with drab brown backgrounds that serve no purpose to help the story. Even the narration panels feel bored and falsely-informative. About eight pages of fighting villains that we will never see again or care about, all to have Maelstrom appear to Phyla and manipulate her again. Some people just never learn.

Elsewhere, Star-Lord and his group repel an attack on the Galactic Council, and Wes Craig’s art seems to improve. In a clever thought, Star-Lord has Groot act as the delegate from Planet X, gaining the Guardians a legitimate seat at the table for the diplomats. At the end, Phyla is persuaded by the mental visitation of Maelstrom in her head to slice open a healing cocoon to free someone. She jumps to the conclusion Adam Warlock is in the cocoon, but since they advertised it so early, we kind of know already it’s Thanos. It’s an interesting way to bring him back, but it’s hard to recommend the book when Craig is at the bat for the art duties; I just can’t appreciate half the stuff he draws.

Nova 35

by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Mahmud A. Asrar

Everybody figures out that the younger Sphinx in possession of two Ka Stones is a recipe for disaster, and even the opposition forces from last issue decide to tackle him. I want to take quick time-out here to discuss a budding talent. Asrar’s art is credible, but he seems to have reached a plateau: his style is good, but contains not much in the way of individualized coolness. The lack of imagination keeps the scenes from having an extra oomph; it shows that he is drawing what the plot calls for, but not thinking hard enough to use his imagination and add in anything extra. You know that worker that puts in a solid day’s effort, but you can tell he has figured out exactly how much to do to avoid complaints, and he goes no farther? That’s what it reminds me of. If he’s not careful, he’ll pull a Sean Chen and start drawing stock faces and cutting corners. I hope he finds his passion and tries to find his true style, so he will not hover in place at his current skill level. I think he has the potential to do better.

Reed Richards figures out that the Sphinx is creating a magical place within the Fault that allows the paradox of the existence of the same Ka Stone as two separate entities; the Sphinx will master the power and be able to translate his control into the rest of reality, rendering the impossible as the new status quo. Without the Worldmind available, Nova has to rely on Reed to calculate the coordinates for a gateway, which prematurely pulls the Sphinx into regular reality. This happens before the Sphinx can affect things well enough, and the impossibility of his world causes a disruption that sort of breaks him apart, and reality resets, throwing every person back to their “proper” place in space and time… except for one.

Nova manages to grab Namorita, and she is stabilized with him in the present. Except she’s supposed to be dead. Chris, aka Darkhawk, knows this and tells Rich “…this isn’t right. This is going to come back and bite you on the ass.” Nova knows, but still doesn’t care; he’ll take her as long as he can. At the same time, my brain sides with Chris, just as my heart would probably side with Rich. The reader already has a sense that this imbalance will be adjusted later, and a foul sense of foreboding ends the issue. Consequences might be delayed, because the re-emergence of Thanos is about to cause trouble in all of Marvel’s ‘galactic’ titles.

This series has maintained a strong story, and I hope it gains new life in the trades for years to come. This cosmic saga has been one of the true gems, and represents DnA at their writing best.

Wolverine: Origins 45

by Daniel Way and Doug Braithwaite

Romulus captures Ruby Thursday and she spills all of Wolverine’s plan. Logan bluffs her enough to cause her to panic and lash out, and she gets thrown through Cloak back into prison. Wolverine reveals to the group he has assembled that the Answer gave Logan that plan, all calculated to get his love, Ruby, out of prison. There seems to be a theme lately that women drive men to do crazy things.

Braithwaite’s art is very proficient, making good use of shadow and substance, and the fight between Wolverine and Ruby is pretty cool. He can do better to give each character’s face its own expression, but the surprise at the end is that Logan chose to have a backup plan, the real plan, and the author of it was someone else, so that Romulus would have no chance to counter it. Romulus is always three steps ahead of Logan, to the point that as soon as Logan went to spring Ruby, Romulus was there to stop him. Logan has to have a plan that is sufficiently divorced from himself to have a chance at succeeding. The author of the real plan? Deadpool!

Deadpool seems to be everyone’s ace in the hole lately, bordering on the absurd in most situations. I hope that he will be treated more substantially here, in keeping with the more serious story. Not that we can’t handle a few Deadpool jokes and lunacy, but for it to devolve into yet another Deadpool acid trip would be a disservice to the ongoing journey. Overall, a nice job this month.

X-Men: Legacy 234

by Mike Carey and Yanick Paquette

Paquette seems to have improved in style since the last time, giving us some good angles and fleshed-out visualizations for the story. We open with Rogue attempting to fit into her new role as a teacher. She is called away to siphon off some of the powers of the Cuckoos, so they can conduct a ‘passive scan” for the Phoenix Force, trying to give Cyclops some intel on the status of such a powerful force.

Rogue learns how to handle the telepathic triple-play as she goes, but it does result in a somewhat embarrassing projection of her loving times with Gambit, telepathically broadcast to many mutants in the surrounding area. It’s deliciously naughty and embarrassing and funny. Next, she ends up kissing Magneto! He figures out that she is feeling his attraction for her, then sending it back to him with the Cuckoos power, creating a feedback loop. It allows for a dramatic moment between them that has a foot in reality, but does not cheapen her history with Gambit, all while demonstrating that she is still trying to figure out a good way to control her new power status. To accomplish all of that, I have to give some major props to Mike Carey.

The end result is that the Legacy title is still my favorite X-book to read, and that has been consistent for several months.

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

The Amazing Spider-Man 625 \n\n by Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara \n\nLet’s start with the good news: Marko Djurdjevic gives us a cool cover. Also, Fiumara is a big improvement over the last two artists. He is still not the choice I would make for this comic, but when you hit bottom, you take any steps as good ones. The bad news might be that six people from my comic store have already dropped the title, due to the obscenely poor issue #624. Whatever good things might come next, Marvel put out such a lousy product last time, many fans are giving up.\n\nI think the larger lesson is that the experiment in multiple teams on the same title in a rotating fashion is a failure. This entire journey started because Quesada was very loudly proclaiming that Peter Parker had to go back his roots, but that goal has been betrayed time and time again. Mephisto broke up his marriage for the sake of Aunt May, who has been absent far too many times, and played such a small supporting role in others, the entire thrust of One More Day has been a let-down as far as Aunt May goes. Throw in Peter’s sudden reversal in fortunes of love, going from his old days of never getting the girl to always hooking up with… shall we say, women who are more liberated with their charms… The final thread was Peter’s betrayal of his moral values, a direct betrayal of the core principle of this character: that he learned the lesson of making the wrong choice when his Uncle Ben was murdered. The rotating Brain Trust simply can’t keep all of the balls floating in the air at once without the story suffering, something highlighted by the delivery of absolutely nothing during the fabled “Gauntlet” storyline, which ends with this issue.\n\nSo let’s cover this issue. Peter has become famous for his photography fraud decision, and Mary Jane shoots down his request for a shoulder so he can have a good cry. Norah throws him a bone for a photo assignment, which conveniently turns into the time and place where the new Rhino confronts Sytsevich. For the new Rhino to feel legitimate, he wants to have a horn-to-horn fight to establish his supremacy over the original Rhino. Aleksei agrees in public, planning to run in private. True love has bit him, and he will go anywhere, do anything, to keep his beloved Oksana safe.\n\nIt doesn’t work. The new Rhino finds him and kills Oksana, and in a repeat of a recent story in Daredevil with another huge bald villain, Aleksei reverts to his old ways and utterly destroys the new Rhino. While the story mostly works, it’s a reversal of the only character growth Rhino has ever had. When we first were given this story, Aleksei was turning over a new leaf for love, something that actually can happen in this rotten world. I praised it as one of the precious few times we saw genuine change in one of Spidey’s rogues.\n\nAlthough this new story works, it reverses all they have done, which I think is a mistake. It reinforces the belief that even for minor characters, writers cannot handle change, and all the pieces they touch have to be returned to their proper places, so the next writer can do the same old thing with them later. It makes for a bunch of repetitious storylines, and coming so close on the heels of an almost-exact story for Kingpin, it feels less original than usual. So while the story and art are both better than the last couple weeks, the title and overall direction still feels broken.\n\n\n Dark Avengers 15 \n\n by Brian Bendis and Mike Deodato \n\nBendis is stuck on the Sentry, and they might as well have just called this title “Dark Sentry, sometimes guest-starring the Thunderbolt rip-offs.” We flash back to previous events to tell us what we already knew: the Sentry is Osborn’s weapon, he’s incredibly powerful and unstable, and did we really need to do that yet again in the same freaking series?\n\nThe story in and of itself is not bad, and gives Bullseye an opportunity to remind us how much of a remorseless killer he is. Does he have a certain courage, to be able to kill Bob’s wife Lindy? To face Sentry later and act like she committed suicide? Or is he just so far gone in his insanity that it doesn’t occur to him to be afraid? Deodato’s art does a superb job to save some of the repetitious aspects from being boring, with skillful depictions that always captivate the eye.\n\nVictoria Hand gets an understanding here of the depths of Osborn’s personality, yet we know she continues to serve his interests. What does this say about her? While I could enjoy this comic as a standalone story, it feels like one of the filler issues that ran rampant throughout many titles during Secret Invasion: too little revealed for the space it takes up. I am more than ready for the Sentry to go away, as he has overstayed his welcome, and it is resulting in a broken record of stories. “He’s too powerful, everybody stare at him and hope he doesn’t go crazy and kill us all. Oh, whatever will we do?” how many treatments of his condition are we going to have to sit through before Bendis understands that we all get it, and he really really really needs to move on to something else?\n\nAt the exact same time, I have to admit I liked most of it. Hm.\n\n\n Guardians of the Galaxy 24 \n\n by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Wes Craig \n\nWes Craig is back, and the title immediately suffers. The first few pages, far from being exciting, are drawn with drab brown backgrounds that serve no purpose to help the story. Even the narration panels feel bored and falsely-informative. About eight pages of fighting villains that we will never see again or care about, all to have Maelstrom appear to Phyla and manipulate her again. Some people just never learn.\n\nElsewhere, Star-Lord and his group repel an attack on the Galactic Council, and Wes Craig’s art seems to improve. In a clever thought, Star-Lord has Groot act as the delegate from Planet X, gaining the Guardians a legitimate seat at the table for the diplomats. At the end, Phyla is persuaded by the mental visitation of Maelstrom in her head to slice open a healing cocoon to free someone. She jumps to the conclusion Adam Warlock is in the cocoon, but since they advertised it so early, we kind of know already it’s Thanos. It’s an interesting way to bring him back, but it’s hard to recommend the book when Craig is at the bat for the art duties; I just can’t appreciate half the stuff he draws.\n\n\n Nova 35 \n\n by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Mahmud A. Asrar \n\nEverybody figures out that the younger Sphinx in possession of two Ka Stones is a recipe for disaster, and even the opposition forces from last issue decide to tackle him. I want to take quick time-out here to discuss a budding talent. Asrar’s art is credible, but he seems to have reached a plateau: his style is good, but contains not much in the way of individualized coolness. The lack of imagination keeps the scenes from having an extra oomph; it shows that he is drawing what the plot calls for, but not thinking hard enough to use his imagination and add in anything extra. You know that worker that puts in a solid day’s effort, but you can tell he has figured out exactly how much to do to avoid complaints, and he goes no farther? That’s what it reminds me of. If he’s not careful, he’ll pull a Sean Chen and start drawing stock faces and cutting corners. I hope he finds his passion and tries to find his true style, so he will not hover in place at his current skill level. I think he has the potential to do better.\n\nReed Richards figures out that the Sphinx is creating a magical place within the Fault that allows the paradox of the existence of the same Ka Stone as two separate entities; the Sphinx will master the power and be able to translate his control into the rest of reality, rendering the impossible as the new status quo. Without the Worldmind available, Nova has to rely on Reed to calculate the coordinates for a gateway, which prematurely pulls the Sphinx into regular reality. This happens before the Sphinx can affect things well enough, and the impossibility of his world causes a disruption that sort of breaks him apart, and reality resets, throwing every person back to their “proper” place in space and time… except for one.\n\nNova manages to grab Namorita, and she is stabilized with him in the present. Except she’s supposed to be dead. Chris, aka Darkhawk, knows this and tells Rich “…this isn’t right. This is going to come back and bite you on the ass.” Nova knows, but still doesn’t care; he’ll take her as long as he can. At the same time, my brain sides with Chris, just as my heart would probably side with Rich. The reader already has a sense that this imbalance will be adjusted later, and a foul sense of foreboding ends the issue. Consequences might be delayed, because the re-emergence of Thanos is about to cause trouble in all of Marvel’s ‘galactic’ titles.\n\nThis series has maintained a strong story, and I hope it gains new life in the trades for years to come. This cosmic saga has been one of the true gems, and represents DnA at their writing best.\n\n\n Wolverine: Origins 45 \n\n by Daniel Way and Doug Braithwaite \n\nRomulus captures Ruby Thursday and she spills all of Wolverine’s plan. Logan bluffs her enough to cause her to panic and lash out, and she gets thrown through Cloak back into prison. Wolverine reveals to the group he has assembled that the Answer gave Logan that plan, all calculated to get his love, Ruby, out of prison. There seems to be a theme lately that women drive men to do crazy things.\n\nBraithwaite’s art is very proficient, making good use of shadow and substance, and the fight between Wolverine and Ruby is pretty cool. He can do better to give each character’s face its own expression, but the surprise at the end is that Logan chose to have a backup plan, the real plan, and the author of it was someone else, so that Romulus would have no chance to counter it. Romulus is always three steps ahead of Logan, to the point that as soon as Logan went to spring Ruby, Romulus was there to stop him. Logan has to have a plan that is sufficiently divorced from himself to have a chance at succeeding. The author of the real plan? Deadpool!\n\nDeadpool seems to be everyone’s ace in the hole lately, bordering on the absurd in most situations. I hope that he will be treated more substantially here, in keeping with the more serious story. Not that we can’t handle a few Deadpool jokes and lunacy, but for it to devolve into yet another Deadpool acid trip would be a disservice to the ongoing journey. Overall, a nice job this month.\n\n\n X-Men: Legacy 234 \n\n by Mike Carey and Yanick Paquette \n\nPaquette seems to have improved in style since the last time, giving us some good angles and fleshed-out visualizations for the story. We open with Rogue attempting to fit into her new role as a teacher. She is called away to siphon off some of the powers of the Cuckoos, so they can conduct a ‘passive scan” for the Phoenix Force, trying to give Cyclops some intel on the status of such a powerful force.\n\nRogue learns how to handle the telepathic triple-play as she goes, but it does result in a somewhat embarrassing projection of her loving times with Gambit, telepathically broadcast to many mutants in the surrounding area. It’s deliciously naughty and embarrassing and funny. Next, she ends up kissing Magneto! He figures out that she is feeling his attraction for her, then sending it back to him with the Cuckoos power, creating a feedback loop. It allows for a dramatic moment between them that has a foot in reality, but does not cheapen her history with Gambit, all while demonstrating that she is still trying to figure out a good way to control her new power status. To accomplish all of that, I have to give some major props to Mike Carey.\n\nThe end result is that the Legacy title is still my favorite X-book to read, and that has been consistent for several months.\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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