Tags Matching: spider-man

Not so Maximum.

By admin | Published December 13, 2010

Disclaimer – I have a huge collection of trade paperbacks / graphic novels / whatever you want to call them. This includes some great, some good, and some very bad. I was recently traveling and there’s no better time to plug your headphones in, pull out a trade and re-read then on a plane. Talk about needing escapism – much needed on any and all flights, at least in my opinion.

The best experience I’ve ever had speaking with a stranger (aka… overly talkative, bored, forgot to buy a magazine and needs to chat) was with a women that a friend and I nicknamed “bucky” (teeth joke, no cap reference here) who was on her way to meet her boyfriend, who lives in New York, and she was thinking about moving there. Oh by the way… this was the first time she was meeting him. Amazing.

Anyways, as much as a stomach punch as it is thinking about internet relationships, the Spider-Man “Maximum Carnage” collection makes it seem like an enjoyable experience. I went into this revisit with no sense of expectation other than “hmm, I don’t remember this storyline at all.” I went in low, and got knocked even lower. Let me give you one full page of dialogue. (Oh yeah, click the link and buy it so we can all read along.)

First issue of the collection, page 3.

CARNAGE: You test tube jockies are all the same! Can’t accept the truth when it’s spitting in your eye! The monster is far more than a wild pair of long johns! It’s become a living part of me – and we were merely biding our time! Hey Resnick — ! Remember how I said I’d go easy on you?

CARNAGE: I LIED! You should have known better than to trust a raving lunatic ! I am the ultimate insanity! I AM CARNAGE !

DOCTOR: Call Security– ! Get some reinforcements down here!

CARNAGE: Oh, goody! I could use a few more victims! These are all used up! There are just you two doctors left!

– Notice anything weird! I don’t! It seems totally normal — even in a comic book — to use exclamation points all the time! Amiright!

Joking aside, this was astonishing. 16 sentences, 15 exclamations. And the reason I mention this is not because it was the exception; this was the rule. In the first two full pages, 28/29 sentences were exclamations (So a grand total of 34/36 sentences ending in an exclamation point for three pages.) Really. This was not all that unusual in comics, but it certainly was in full display here. I won’t pull the punches, this is really an ugly collection, perhaps Spider-Man at his worst. A not so concise plot (“THAT’S THE POINT!” exclaims Carnage…) that is riddled with poor character development and a bad time for the supporting cast in general, so there’s nowhere to look besides the feature storyline. Here – choose your own adventure out of these gems.

A. Richard and Mary Parker are back from the dead… and cranky!

B. Felicia Hardy and… Flash Thompson!?!

C. Mary Jane Parker takes up smoking – and Peter hates it!

D. Aunt May joins the WNBA at point guard for the New York Liberty!

E. None of the above.

And I only made up one of those. Mix in some good art (Mark Bagley delivers, Sal Buscema does his thing, and Ron Lim is 50/50) some meh art (Ron Lim hit the wall and sometimes draws Mary Jane looking like a fish, Tom Luly?, Alex Suviak?) and a whole lot of “why is this story taking 14 issues?” and “why did Cloak/Dagger/Morbius/Iron Fist/DEATHLOK?/Captain America/Firestar show up?” and we get this pile of crap. What’s worse is that many of the writers behind this particular story have done work that I do really enjoy. Wrong time, wrong place, I guess.

All that said – I’d say just go ahead and buy the video game, it was fun.I always played the Genesis version, but the SNES version was just cooler looking here.

Random Comic Book Friday: Vinyl Edition.

By morgado | Published December 3, 2010

This weeks selections could have fit right in over on Vinyl Noize, which makes sense, since I had just been searching for records to post there when I realized it was time for a Random Comic Book Friday post…

Plastic Man AND Metamorpho, sharing a record? I kind of need to hear that.

Great Rhino, Garbage Mysterio.

By admin | Published November 29, 2010

Spider-Man is magical, I think most comic fans will agree. The formula was simple, and executed perfectly from the start – a simple everyman with a moral compass with just enough pratfalls and tragedy… voila. Amazing. But as such simple formulas tend, the dust of the years has occasionally not been so friendly to Peter Parker (see: the 90′s). But recently there’s been a good smattering of quality webhead… like the first of the two stories collected in “The Gauntlet volume 2″, featuring the Rhino.

The Rhino. I’m not on some weirdo fanboy kick with this character like I might be with other villains (Baron Zemo, Hobgoblin, Dormammu, N’Ashtir…) so I feel confident saying without bias this was a well crafted story. A beaten and removed from action Rhino is the feature as Spider-Man makes a pretty limited appearance, especially given its his book. A ‘new’/nu Rhino comes looking for trouble, needing to best the original to rightfully claim the title. For some reason this nu Rhino reminds of a pathetic Power Rangers castoff, but that’s really secondary. The rest of the first half of this trade hits every note – nice little summary original piece by Stan Lee (a really smart, quick, and witty read that reminds you this is the guy who created 90% of the Marvel landscape) right into a two/three parter that immediately sucks the reader in. I’d say that this is one of my favorite Spider-Man stories in the past 30 years. Cool read.

And to the flip side… the second part of the book. Mysterio – not a bad villain. Not a bad character. But wow, what happened here? This storyline just never turned over – imagine a brand new car sitting in your driveway that won’t start. I kept waiting for it to pull me in, as the story directly preceding it, sharing the billing of this collection, had. But it never did. I found myself thinking, hoping maybe, ‘wait, is the Rhino story going to kick back in?’ and unfortunately, it just came to an ending as unappealing as the start. The art was there – it was just that the story had a bit too much exposition and no hook.

And thus we come into the problem with books with a constantly rotating creative team – as the thrice monthly Amazing Spider-Man book employed, having just changed over to a steady writer this month. Too many voices lead to an uneven level set for the quality and pace of the book. But look at it this way – I would say one perfectly crafted story and one meh is worth the price of admission. Give this one a shot.

A tale of two Bagley pages…

By admin | Published November 26, 2010

Two original art pieces here from Mark Bagley, the Cal Ripken of mainstream comics. An artist who’s style is and always has been very smooth, clean, and detailed without needing too much in the way of superfluous line work. He’s evolved a little bit over the years, but he’s got a trademark style that is as much it’s own as Alan Davis, an artist who I would compare with Bagley in many ways. Let’s get started.

The cover art from Mighty Avengers #8. A venomized Wasp. Great clean shots of Ms. Marvel, Iron Man, and the Sentry. Would love to have this piece, but $3000 is heavy. That said, this is a cover piece, and everyone knows that covers will demand the most value and attention. Do I see this piece retaining value? No. But do I think this will be a piece that changes hands often regardless? No.

This piece, an interior page from Ultimate Spider-Man, is the opposite as far as price tag. Another page that has a nice smattering of characters (Spidey, Moon Knight, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Iron Fist) and while the “ultimate” version of Danny Rand leaves something to be desired, this is a really cool piece. Classic Bagley, and the price is right… no bids? Really?

Oh Comic Noize, I Neglect You So…

By morgado | Published November 18, 2010

It’s not fair, I know it’s not. But can I help it that posts for sites like TeeTillDeath eat up so much of my time? I’ll try harder, I swear. In the mean time, here’s a glow in the dark Ghost Rider shirt and a sweet white Spidey crewneck to make up for it… and to further tie things to TTD, of course.

Random Comic Book Friday!

By morgado | Published November 12, 2010

Good morning, and welcome to another Random Comic Book Friday.

That first auction is cool, albeit a strange choice to eBay rather than recycle or use in your fireplace come winter. I mean, I don’t think there’s a huge market for old yellowing Sunday comics pages… but still, the Spidey newspaper strip was a favorite of mine growing up, and while Dick Tracy wasn’t in my local paper, I discovered a few collections when the Warren Beatty movie came out and was hooked. So this is a pretty cool auction for me to see. The 2 X-Force comics that make up the 2nd of our two random comics… yeeeeeahhhh, not so much.

Car Problems got you down?

By admin | Published November 10, 2010

Well I know they’ve got me down. Brought my truck in to get some routine brake work taken care of (nothing crazy – brakes weren’t even squeaking…) and next thing you know the job goes bad and I’m back to the auto shop three days in a row.

If you’re feeling this like me, shout out to Superman’s first appearance (did you know these reprint issues go for money??) and a Todd McFarlane homage during his Amazing Spider-Man run.

SPIDER-MAN, MANSLAUGHTERER!

By pkindlon | Published October 19, 2010

Have we covered this gem here at Comic Noize? It’s on my mind because a coworker recently asked me if Spider-Man had ever killed anyone. This book sprung to mind instantly. It must have made a big impression on me in my youth.

We’ve got everything you could need in an 80′s comic book. Spider-Man, Wolverine, and the cold war. Put it in a tumbler, shake it up and you’ve got magic in a bottle. Written by Jim Owsley (the man now known as Christopher Priest) this book was concise and fun. How often are those two things paired these days? Also, Spider-Man killed someone.

Sometime soon I’m going to do a Owsley/Priest super-post because this dude is a real firebrand. The comic book profession is so full of wingnuts and nutjobs that I have to wonder where Priest falls in the spectrum. A quick bio would lead one to believe Priest is a benign weirdo, but perhaps he’s a raging psycho. Further exploration of his work/personal history will be needed before a definitive classification can be leveled against him.

The Zombie thing is pretty played…

By admin | Published October 19, 2010

But this is the season, right? Regardless, A funny zombie sketch is always cool to me. I wonder if this is what “Mark” was thinking of when he asked Arthur Suydam, artist of the Marvel Zombies homage covers, for a “Zombie Spider-Man” sketch. This one is certainly more Fred Hembeck than you might’ve expected from Mr. Zombie himself.

Wait, Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy?

By admin | Published October 5, 2010

One of the weakest storylines in the history of Spider-Man. It’s ugly.

Essentially, Norman Osborn aka the Green Goblin had a brief encounter with Gwen Stacy, and she had twin children. The twins had the tainted Osborn blood, sought out Spider-Man for revenge, etc… none of it was all that cool. I remember the outrage when the story was fresh and it was just nothing that got me riled up. But in the wake of it now, what a waste of a story. Do some research for yourself and you’ll quickly find that J. Michael Stracyznski had this to say about the story in it’s whole.

In an e-mail to popular comic book website Newsarama, Straczynski claimed that he regretted the version of Sins Past that went to press, and that he had hoped to “retcon” it out of continuity during the events of the recent One More Day storyline: “I wanted to retcon the Gwen twins out of continuity, which was something I always assumed I could do at the end of my run. I wasn’t allowed to do this, and yes, it pissed me off. I felt I was left holding the bag for something I wanted to get rid of, and taking the rap for a writing lapse that I had never committed.”

Oof. Well here’s a trade, on the cheap, of the second half of the Osborn Twin saga. Why would I even post this? Because it’s such an abomination that it almost needs to be read.