comic book quickies 16/7/12

Aye well I kind of gave up back there for a while. Not really sure what happened. The reviewer soul just sort of left me. Don't know what happened. Think it might have been the relentless march of time. Dark times. But fear not. I see ware I went wrong. So I set forth to set things right. I secluded myself in a cabin down in the woods then I grew a damn narly beard. Then all I did was chop wood all day long. Training for this day. Montaging. So iv shaken off my funk. Lets talk aboot comics !

SUPERBOY #11

written by Scott Lobdell art R.B Silva

Aye it was gid. My Reviewer powers have returned ! Well to be fair this months issue was pretty fun. IT HAD A GIANT ROBOT. Love me some giant robots. So bunker from the teen titans was guest staring this month hanging out with superboy. They fight crime together. You could almost say they were buddy's. Buddy cops ! Supes gets that S tattoo that he was sporting on the cover of teen titans #1 waaaaaaaay back when the world was young. So that's nice. Only took them them about a year. Really I had completely forgotten aboout that wee detail it was sooo long ago. Nice comic though. It had a nice summers day vibe to it and it definitely had plenty of fighting in it. Well maybe it didn't. But fighting a giant robot counts for double if not triple the amount of awesome points fighting some other random dude would.

FRANKENSTEIN AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E #11

written by Matt Kindt art by Alberto Ponticelli

Wellity welliity. Mad mystery stuff going on here likes. Fairly tempted to say mad mystery shite. Its that mad. Well its not mad. We've all seen madder is what I'm trying to say. We do live on there internet after all. Quite like me some Frankenstein. Plenty of action to be had and franky is such a bad ass lad. Sure there's some times wares he's a bit to grumpy for my likening but I guess that's the character. I still here from certain peoples that they still just don't like the art. Fair enough likes its not for everyone though I do think it fits the tone of the book pretty perfectly. Really it could only be better for me if it was drawn in the 70s scooby doo style. Ayes id pay good money to see that.

BATMAN #11

written by Scott snyder art by Greg capullo

Its the big final of the night of the owls. Batman busts out his special no your insane technique Lets meet back here in a month to see what the worlds like post owly night.

A VS X THE FIGHTS #4

fight 1 written by Rick Remender art by Brandon Peterson

fight 2 written and art by Kaare Andrews

Gotta say I quite like the the fights. Why wouldn't aye. ITS ALL FIGHTANG. Some of the match ups werny the ones I was waiting on the egege of my seat to see but the book knows what its and isn't trying to be anything else's and its definitely got the right SOUL to it. Fight one was damn decent with daredevil vs psylock.e Nice fighting but it did bring up the fight that the x-men are full of shite with the psychic ... eh shite. Psylocke canny mind crush dare devil because of his super senses. So would that protect every avenger with powers like that ? Like would spider-man be able to power through with his spider sense ? Interesting to think about at least. Fight two was bull. BUUUUUUUUUULLLLLL MAN. Thor vs god damn Emma frost. Who really likes Emma frost ? Fan service aye I get that. But DAMN shes HATEFUL. Is that the point internet ? Are we meant to hate her ? Is that the point ? TELL ME !

DEATHSTROKE #11

written and art by Rob Liefeld

The 90s ultra lad dose not disappoints. Well actually to be fair now aye its terrible. But that's fine. I still like it. Yeah the arts probably worse than it was back in the day. Fair enough. The plots dumb and a wee bit boring and contradicts itself every other page. Aye those are totally accurate things about it. But cooooooooooome oooooooooooooooooooooonnnnn its the big lad liefeld ! There's really not much more I can say to convince you. Well I could but they'd be terrible terrible lies.

Short and sweet this week. Gotta relearn my killer skills and develop a work ethic. See ya next time !

Comic Review: Spider-Man #1 and #2 (1990)

Today's review takes us back to the early 1990's, when comic books were at their most popular. Comic issues were selling more than they ever had before, and the industry was beginning to focus on gimmicks such as re-numberings and poly-bagging to increase sales in an increasingly speculative market. As we all know, in the next few years the bubble would burst spectacularly, but that's a whole other article. One of the great success stories of this period was the artist Todd Mcfarlane, who in the late 80's had a run as artist on Amazing Spider-Man. So popular was his work on the title, it was decided that he would be given creative control over a new Spider-Man ongoing, simply titled Spider-Man, which he would write and create art for.

The plot focuses on Calypso possessing the Lizard in order to kill Spider-Man, effectively turning it into a zombie. Spider-Man marked Mcfarlane's first attempt at writing comics, and it definitely shows. The narration is awkward and pretentious, and at multiple times switches between first and third person, which is a very jarring problem, especially when it happens frequently. However, the banter between Peter and Mary-Jane is decent, and they're believable as husband and wife. Issue 1 sees the Lizard reborn, and issue 2 a fight scene, which provides decent pacing.

As you would expect from a Mcfarlane comic, the art is mostly excellent, especially in regards to Spider-Man, the Lizard and the environments. New York is successfully made to appear darker and edgier,more akin to something like Watchmen, and the sheer detail of the Lizard impresses.  Running throughout the art is a visual representation of Calypso's controlling of lizard, appearing as 'DOOM' across the art. The effect works well, especially in the second issue as we see Spider-Man poisoned and in increasing desperation. On the minus side, the normal humans look sub-par compared to the rest of the art and a couple of INCREDIBLE silly mistakes are made, such as Mary-Jane's eye colour changing from blue to green in 2 pages.

The comic as a whole is a decent enough read, but you can't shake the impression Mcfarlane simply set out to make a Watchmen styled Spider-Man comic, and it just doesn't really work, especially when all the plot seems to be a catalyst for cool art for Mcfarlane to draw. If he truly wanted a dark, edgier Spider-Man, more effort should have been put into making the plot more complex and engaging, instead of making an incredibly basic comic book plot pretentious, as he manages here. All in all, the comic is definitely a product of its time, comic in between the dark age and the consumer obsessed 90's, which means it ultimately comes across as rather confused.  Although, when it was released, Spider-Man #1 became the highest selling comic book of all time, with 2.65 million copies sold, so what do I know, right?

HIS NAME -- SPIDER-MAN!
HIS POWERS -- EXTRAORDINARY!
HIS WEBLINE -- ADVANTAGEOUS!!

Right on, Todd.