Whoa... this is FUN!! I am no Marvel expert and have absolutely no idea how this fits into Marvel continuity or anything like that, but I am definitelWhoa... this is FUN!! I am no Marvel expert and have absolutely no idea how this fits into Marvel continuity or anything like that, but I am definitely enjoying myself. As far as updated origin stories go, I don't think it gets much better than this. I mean, Miles Morales must be one of the greatest teen characters in superhero history: his attitudes, the way he talks, his facial expressions - it's all spot-on. Bendis took a close look at Lee's original run, shuffled things around a bit, turned a few screws... and voila, we have a Spider-Man story that feels contemporary, relevant, fresh, lively, sweet, and works for all ages - no easy feat! I already ordered volumes 2 and 3 in my library.
Merged review:
Whoa... this is FUN!! I am no Marvel expert and have absolutely no idea how this fits into Marvel continuity or anything like that, but I am definitely enjoying myself. As far as updated origin stories go, I don't think it gets much better than this. I mean, Miles Morales must be one of the greatest teen characters in superhero history: his attitudes, the way he talks, his facial expressions - it's all spot-on. Bendis took a close look at Lee's original run, shuffled things around a bit, turned a few screws... and voila, we have a Spider-Man story that feels contemporary, relevant, fresh, lively, sweet, and works for all ages - no easy feat! I already ordered volumes 2 and 3 in my library....more
Lemire and Smallwood make the most of what Marvel's "Moon Man" has to offer, exploring complex topics such as identity and mental illness while still Lemire and Smallwood make the most of what Marvel's "Moon Man" has to offer, exploring complex topics such as identity and mental illness while still playing by the rules of the genre. The story ultimately isn't all that deep, but it manages to make a few valid points ("Is this real? All I know for sure is that the rain feels real as it hits our face. Real enough, anyway. And that's good enough for us.") and is generally well-conceived and -executed. Not essential Lemire, perhaps, but pretty darn good superhero fare!...more
This second volume jumps frantically from one of our hero's various personalities to the next, but it all feels a bit shallow to me - which is rare foThis second volume jumps frantically from one of our hero's various personalities to the next, but it all feels a bit shallow to me - which is rare for a Lemire book. Not as sharp and inventive as the first volume....more
One of Lemire's more charming superhero efforts: lively yet devoid of fight scenes, bonkers yet all too relatableOne of Lemire's more charming superhero efforts: lively yet devoid of fight scenes, bonkers yet all too relatable...more
With its critical, abstract, ambitious reflections on the history and ideology of Black Panther comics, Black Panther: A Nation under Our Feet might hWith its critical, abstract, ambitious reflections on the history and ideology of Black Panther comics, Black Panther: A Nation under Our Feet might have worked as an academic essay. As the superhero title it is, however, the book makes for a rather difficult, frustrating, slow and ultimately boring read. 1.5 stars, I’d say....more
Sweet! I have no clue what the X-Men are up to these days (didn’t even know the old Wolverine was dead, RIP…)Meet Laura Kinney, the All-New Wolverine!
Sweet! I have no clue what the X-Men are up to these days (didn’t even know the old Wolverine was dead, RIP…), but my first encounter with X-23 aka Laura Kinney aka the All-New Wolverine has been a pleasant surprise.
Centered on corporate clones trying to take down their evil masters, the plot is rather heavy on action and a bit on the generic side. It’s also more relevant today than ever before, though, looking at our own corporate masters' increasingly menacing reign of evil.
The pacing is crisp, the dialogue often funny: "What? Who needs a doorway to horrors in their living room? You couldn't hang a picture or something?" And last but not least, the story features some of the most winning and just plain awesome clones I have ever met - what's not to like?
I’d recommended All-New Wolverine: The Four Sisters to anyone looking for old-school superhero action with a heart (cloned or not), a sense of humor, and a great, convincing, strong, likable, slightly identity-confused female protagonist!...more
“Your daughter started cursing in Latin and walking like a spider? Things are coming out of your dreams aThe Strange, the Weird & the All-Too-Familiar
“Your daughter started cursing in Latin and walking like a spider? Things are coming out of your dreams and trying to kill you? Your dog keeps screaming at you to strangle your neighbors? There’s this guy in the Village you should talk to. He helped my cousin Joey when the walls of his condo started bleeding.” Yep, the guy from Greenwich Village might be able to help. His name is Stephen Vincent Strange, aka Doctor Strange.
In case you didn’t know, Doctor Strange serves as our planet’s Sorcerer Supreme, “Earth’s first defense against all manner of magical threats.” You see, just like our bodies—on a microscopic level—have been colonized by millions of parasites, our souls—on a mystical level—attract… you guessed it, inter-dimensional bacteria. They are for the most part perfectly harmless, mind you, “but every now and then you see something that just should not be here”: something that brings the Good Doctor to the scene.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering: being a Sorcerer Supreme ain’t no joke. In fact, it requires a constitution of super-heroic proportions: “I sleep three hours a night, because any more than that and the nightmares would drive me crazy. If they haven’t already. I have ulcers the size of subway rats. I cough up chunks of my own soul at least twice a day.” And yet, as you can tell, Aaron and Bachalo are clearly having fun with the character—the kind of fun that is infectious.
The plot, on the other hand, should feel all too familiar to anybody who remembers Aaron’s Thor: The God Butcher with its “What in all the cosmos has the power to execute the most powerful gods known to man?” story line, as Doctor Strange: The Way of the Weird asks a very similar question: “What in all the cosmos has the power to execute the most powerful sorcerers known to man?” Magic has replaced religion, but otherwise it's basically the same story. And by the way, I haven’t read Aaron’s Original Sin, but isn't that one about the question “What in all the cosmos has the power to execute the Watcher?”
Bottom line: Doctor Strange: The Way of the Weird is another cosmic, darkly humorous, highly entertaining superhero title by Jason Aaron. Seriously, though: No more “What in all the cosmos has the power to execute..."-type stories for a while, please! ...more
Whoa, that was fun! I mean, what a character, just listen to the guy: “To assert as truth that which has n“I Have Said It. Therefore It Is Confirmed.”
Whoa, that was fun! I mean, what a character, just listen to the guy: “To assert as truth that which has no meaning is the core mission of humanity.” Or: “Hmmm, yes, this is typical of most human endeavors. They change but they do not change.” Or: “The pursuit of a set purpose by logical means is the way of tyranny... The pursuit of an unobtainable purpose by absurd means is the way of freedom. This is my vision of the future. Of our future.” I hear ya, Vision, I hear ya...
Seriously, though, this is good stuff, the perfect vehicle for the character! I loved how accessible, well conceived and precisely executed everything was, loved the crisp pacing, the soap opera, the little cliffhangers, loved that there was hardly any fighting in the book. But I think at the end of the day what really won me over was how the story kept undermining its own tidy, well-adjusted, perfectly unsuspicious surface with a sardonic sense of humor and a chilling sense of doom. I don’t know, feels contemporary, I guess.
Granted, the blackmailing father didn’t really work as a character (and there may have been a few more weak spots in the book’s second half), but what the hell—this was still a great read, my favorite new superhero title since... Aaron’s early Thor run, probably (not that I’ve read all that many since). The whole thing feels fresh and exciting (and inviting) enough for 4.5 stars... rounded up because, in the words of Vision: “I have said it. Therefore it is confirmed.”...more
So, like, uh, the Silver Surfer bends the fabric of space, the story becomes a Moebius strip, and everyone gets stuck in this annoying time loop of enSo, like, uh, the Silver Surfer bends the fabric of space, the story becomes a Moebius strip, and everyone gets stuck in this annoying time loop of endless invasions. The invaders finally jump to a place beyond the Giraud Expanse, while our heroes become prisoners of a sentient pleasure planet. Well, and then the shit really hits the fan when all of existence is suddenly being torn apart (it’s crossover-event time!)—but fear not, true believer: the Silver Surfer and Dawn simply outsurf the wave of universal destruction, find the Land of Couldn’t-Be Shouldn’t-Be, and use the power cosmic to remake the universe! Hooray for Dawn & the Silver Surfer!!
This third volume still had its moments of sweetness and earthbound romance, but much of it may have been a tad too cosmic for my little head. Like that Founder dude in the story, though, I “put on a brave face. At least for the children...”...more
I guess the idea behind a superhero crossover event is to bring a wide range of characters together in a single story—characters that usually feature I guess the idea behind a superhero crossover event is to bring a wide range of characters together in a single story—characters that usually feature in their own, individual titles. What superheroes do best is fight, of course, so a good crossover event must provide them with a convincing reason to fight side by side or against each other or both. For Marvel’s popular 2006-07 crossover event Civil War, writer Mark Millar came up with the following premise (quoted from an interview reprinted in the back of the hardcover edition):
“Civil War is about what happens when the Marvel heroes are forced to grow up. It’s as simple as that. The public need and want the heroes. They couldn’t survive without them in a world filled with super villains and alien invasions. However, the wild west fantasy these guys have been having, where they put on a mask and fight whoever they like just doesn’t cut it in the modern world. Real people are getting hurt here and, for the first time, the heroes are being asked to come over onto the side of law and order in an official capacity so these guys can be properly regulated. Some are happy about this and others feel it’s compromising everything they stand for.”
Disagreement on the role of the superhero quickly turns into conflict, and voilà, we got ourselves a superhero fight big and spectacular enough to be marketed as a full-fledged “war,” that is, a bona fide crossover event—mission accomplished. According to Millar, though, Civil War does more than just set the stage for battle; it also provides meta-commentary on the genre from a contemporary perspective by raising the question: Is it really okay for superheroes to place themselves above the law and “fight whoever they like”?
Unfortunately, the story turns out to be far too busy with its battle scenes to actually explore this question in any depth—not sure to what degree it is explored in the flood of tie-in issues I have not read (in The Road to Civil War or Civil War: Captain America/Iron Man, for example). Based on the event’s core mini-series alone, I have no idea why any of these characters are either for or against government control, and Millar himself doesn’t seem to have given the issue much thought: “It just kind of evolved naturally... Cap is a natural, of course, because he’s all about freedom and civil liberties and Iron Man just seemed like the only guy with the weight and the authority to disagree with him.” Disagreement for disagreement’s sake, which makes the whole story a bit of a contrived, shallow affair.
Still, Civil War certainly delivers what is expected from this kind of story. As much as Millar’s writing fails to develop its own themes and characters, it is surprisingly sharp and effective when it comes to the battle and its immediate context, and McNiven's detailed widescreen artwork, realistic and spectacular at once, perfectly compliments a story that claims to confront the Marvel Universe with real-life concerns. Bottom line: Civil War isn’t really the revisionary text it purports to be, but as an event-type spectacle it works quite well....more
Still targeted primarily at children, most pre-Watchmen superhero comics are a bit on the cheesy side, and Mark Gruenwald’s 1985 maxi-series Squadron Still targeted primarily at children, most pre-Watchmen superhero comics are a bit on the cheesy side, and Mark Gruenwald’s 1985 maxi-series Squadron Supreme is generally no exception to the rule—at least as far as characterization, dialogue and plot development are concerned. On a conceptual level, though, Squadron Supreme stands out as an early attempt to deconstruct the superhero paradigm in a real-world setting, raising questions along the lines of: Wouldn’t beings with superhuman abilities get tired of cleaning up our mess? Wouldn’t they take control of the world’s governments and run the planet at their discretion? What would such a totalitarian world look like? Recommended to anybody interested in the history and ideology of superhero comics!...more
The roller-coaster ride continues, as Spidey 2099 drops by from the future, Horizon Labs implodes, Otto Octavius defends his dissertation, and his oldThe roller-coaster ride continues, as Spidey 2099 drops by from the future, Horizon Labs implodes, Otto Octavius defends his dissertation, and his old flame Angelina Brancale comes out of her coma to confront the man she holds responsible for the death of her beloved Otto: Spider-Man. But wait, her beloved Otto now is Spider-Man... Much like in the previous volumes, Dan Slott can be counted on to deliver the twists and turns that move the story into the craziest, silliest, zaniest direction possible, and I love him for it! Superior Spider-Man equals superior high-octane fun!...more
Originally published under the title “Marvelman” from 1982 to 1984 in the pages of a British black-anThere Are Men, and the Men Mean Nothing to Him...
Originally published under the title “Marvelman” from 1982 to 1984 in the pages of a British black-and-white comic-book anthology called Warrior, Alan Moore’s Miracleman re-imagines a lighthearted, rather juvenile Captain Marvel knockoff from the 1950s for the much darker, much more cynical 1980s. It marks the end of the innocence for the superhero, and the beginning of the so-called “British Invasion” of American mainstream comics: From 1985 on, “Marvelman” would be reprinted as Miracleman (in order to stave off threats of legal action from Marvel Comics) for the American market.
Until Moore’s “Marvelman” came along, superhero comics had been targeted almost exclusively at children (despite Marvel’s promotional claims of the 1960s to be producing “pop art” for college hipsters). They had been designed to deliver, rather than undermine, power fantasies, and the inevitable clashes between heroes and villains had always abode by the unwritten yet pleasantly familiar rules of the genre: “It was almost as if we were all playing a game, a game which neither side took entirely seriously.” In Moore’s fictional world, however, there is nothing playful or pleasantly familiar or reassuring about a superhero fight:
“There is a passion here, but not human passion. There is fierce and desperate emotion, but not an emotion that we would recognize... They are titans, and we will never understand the alien inferno that blazes in the furnace of their souls. We will never grasp their hopes, their despair, never comprehend the blistering rage that informs each devastating blow... We will never know the destiny that howls in their hearts, never know their pain, their love, their almost sexual hatred... And perhaps we will be the less for that.”
Moore’s superhero has lost touch with humanity. We learn that his semi-mystical, Captain Marvel-inspired origin is merely a computer program the military secretly installed along with the super-powers. The idea was to create the ultimate weapon, and to keep this weapon in check with the help of an artificial consciousness created along the lines of simplistic superhero tropes. As it turns out, though, Marvelman is far too powerful to follow man-made rules of any kind: “Out of the dark, he is coming... There are walls, and he does not care about the walls. There are men, and the men mean nothing to him. There are snares... and the snares are not worthy of his contempt.”
Casting the superhero as a dangerously naive power fantasy we should have outgrown a long time ago, “Marvelman” is an early expression of Alan Moore’s frustration with the comic-book industry as well as with the rise of neoliberal politics. To Moore’s mind, the continued dominance of the superhero genre not only stifles the medium’s evolution but also promotes faith in redeemers from above--the kind of faith that appeared increasingly problematic at a time when Thatcherism and Reaganomics were starting to dismantle the welfare state for the sake of corporate profits.
In terms of storytelling, “Marvelman” is still a bit of a bumpy ride: it jumps around rather wildly in places, gets unnecessarily difficult here and overtly wordy there, and is generally not yet as convincingly conceived and elegantly executed as Moore’s later anti-superhero masterpiece Watchmen. That being said, “Marvelman” features some of the most stunning scenes Moore has ever created, and it certainly stands head and shoulders above your typical comic book from the early 1980s.
What bothers me about this book is something else: Couldn’t Marvel Comics, the very publisher that enforced the name change from “Marvelman” to “Miracleman” in the mid-1980s, have returned to the original title and character name now that they own the rights? Couldn’t they have reprinted the story in its original British format instead of forcing it into the American one? Couldn’t they have put a few more than 113 pages of actual story into a hardcover book priced at US$30? And last but not least, did they really have to digitally color the beautiful original black-and-white artwork by Garry Leach and Alan Davis? Oh well, at least “Marvelman” is finally back in print......more
This second volume opens with an updated Beetle origin story that has potential but ends up a bit on the slow and clunky side, partly due to inferior This second volume opens with an updated Beetle origin story that has potential but ends up a bit on the slow and clunky side, partly due to inferior fill-in artwork. Then regular artist Steve Lieber makes a welcome (if all too brief) return, and by the time the disembodied yet always feisty head of Mafioso Silvio Manfredi is insulting our friend Shocker, writer Nick Spencer has found his groove again. I generally enjoyed the (lack of) team chemistry and the various misadventures that followed, especially those involving Boomerang.
Unfortunately, the silly fun doesn’t last. About halfway through the book it becomes obvious that Spencer and Lieber are running out of gas, as their storytelling is now so sloppy that it just isn’t funny anymore. The last 40 pages are written and drawn by various fill-in creators—with rather inconsistent and dispensable results. Hmm, it didn’t take Marvel’s notorious deadlines long to turn a little engine that could into a train wreck, did it? Bummer, I was really looking forward to this after enjoying the first volume....more
“I wonder If Anybody’s Ever Been Fired from the Avengers Before”
In this second volume, Clint Barton aka Hawkeye struggles with personal and profession“I wonder If Anybody’s Ever Been Fired from the Avengers Before”
In this second volume, Clint Barton aka Hawkeye struggles with personal and professional/super-heroic issues that don’t differ all that much from those he experienced in the first volume, yet the storytelling felt less organic to me this time around. Tone, style and even content change rapidly from one page to the next in places, partly as a result of fill-in artwork. I also didn't find this second volume as funny as the first one, and so I eventually found myself wondering: Why does everybody love Clint Barton so much? Could the success of the series have more to do with its updated hero concept than with anything else?
Let’s see, Clint Barton gets pushed around and exploited a lot (“I need your help again.”), lacks “job” security (“I wonder if anybody’s ever been fired from the Avengers before.”), lives in a dinky apartment (“Who still has an answering machine?”), likes to watch TV (“Gaah spoilers spoilers shut up. I got the whole season on this DVR at home.”), has no interest in political economy (“I don’t know anything about Wall Street.”) and generally lives what he refers to as a “car-crash life.” It's a scenario, in short, that probably does not feel all that far-fetched to many young people these days.
And yet Clint Barton is clearly awesome, isn’t he? He’s athletic, handsome, funny, charming, fights crime, rescues a dog, does good in the community, and beautiful women fall for him left and right (even if he is unaware of it and “the thought of a serious relationship makes [him] nervous”). When it comes to problems, humor takes the edge off, and we are given no reason to believe that the world of Wall Street Clint Barton knows nothing about could have anything to do with them. In fact, the only people who shout “We! Are! The ninety-nine percent!” in this book are terrorists. And fear not, true believer, the Avengers and a reliable police force quickly arrest those troublemakers: “No you aren’t. Shut up. Gahhd.”
Bottom line: Hawkeye's hero concept is designed as wish-fulfillment personified for increasingly marginalized young North Americans who already grew up in a largely corporate-controlled environment that promotes commercial culture over political awareness, and whose suicide rates have increased four- to five-fold since the 1960s. To troubled young men in particular, the series sends the reassuring, apathy-inducing message: You may hold very little political and economic power, but don’t you worry your little heads about that—you can still be “real men.” Just, you know, learn to roll with the punches, put on a few tough-looking band aids, be a good sport, develop a pacifying sense of gallows humor, keep watching TV, and for God's sake don't even think about rocking the boat! You'll see, everybody will love you for it: It's the new brand of masculinity!
Anyway, that's my attempt to make sense of the Hawkeye phenomenon, and you’ve probably gathered from the previous paragraphs that I’m not a fan. I realize not many (none?) of you share my ideological concerns, but I think they are a big part of what has prevented me from enjoying the series as much as everybody else.
PS: I did enjoy this volume’s final issue which is narrated from the perspective of a dog and manages to be both sweet and a little artsy....more
The showdown between our teenage protagonists and their parents is entertaining enough, if a bit on the generic side. The mole affair in particular coThe showdown between our teenage protagonists and their parents is entertaining enough, if a bit on the generic side. The mole affair in particular could have been handled more convincingly, I thought. Still a fun read, don’t get me wrong, just not quite as original, radical and daring as I had hoped based on the previous two trades. I’ll keep reading, though, especially since the final issue collected here marks a promising return to form. Who knows, maybe our teenage heroes still have bigger fish to fry!?...more
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