Dread
TMNT 1984-2009
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Quite a short week for comics for me, and next week might be even shorter. This means one thing. There are 5 Wednesdays this month, and I imagine two of them will be quite heavy to make up for the light weeks. Feast or famine publishing at it's finest. As always, spoilers and rants are unfiltered.
Dread's Bought/Thought for 3/3/10:
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #24: After 5 issues, Tony Stark finally awakes from his coma. He sends the Ghost packing and seems set to make a new suit of armor. Stunning stuff, no? No.
This marks two fill years that Fraction/Larroca/D'Armata have collaborated on this series without running late or needing a fill in artist. While it's no record set to challenge Lee/Kirby on FF or Bendis/Bagley on USM, but it still is a commendable feat in today's day and age. Larroca and D'Armata are solid as always on art, and to be fair, these "psychic metaphor" issues have really played to some of the artistic strengths of this team. Unfortunately, while Fraction is often great with individual moments and lines, but on this title has seemed to stretch his last two arcs at least one issue too long, and "Stark Disassembled" qualifies. This entire exercise has been to cleanse Tony Stark of his sins from CIVIL WAR and INITIATIVE. To purge him of memories and urges and have him go, "oh my god, what have I done, I am so sorry, now let's be a straight up super hero again". Can you tell a movie is coming out? But, in all seriousness, it doesn't go as far as, say, ONE MORE DAY went with Spider-Man, as all of these events still happened. It made perfect, honorable sense for Stark to do anything possible to prevent Osborn from gaining access to his weaponry, or the data in his own head. It also made dramatic sense for Stark's solution to "revive" himself didn't go according to plan; Dr. Strange had to try to give him a poke with magic, basically.
(Marvel is still woefully inconsistent with Dr. Strange these days. While all parties agree he is no longer the Sorcerer Supreme, none agree on his power level. In some books, Stephan can barely cast a low level spell. In others, like a JMS issue of THOR, he basically has the same power level, just lost the fancy title and some of his artifacts. In these issues, Fraction writes him a bit in-between. He still can perform any magical feat the story requires, but he isn't quite up to old Defender levels. The irony is THIS has always been the problem with Dr. Strange, and Marvel's heavy handed, scorched earth solution to his dilemma has done absolutely NOTHING towards correcting it, because the flaw was in editorial guidance, not in the character.)
At any rate, the Ghost finally finds the comatose Stark, but takes his time just killing him. True, he is distracted by Potts, and Hill, and Dr. Strange's fisticuffs, but it does seem wholly obligatory that Stark has the time to recover. Naturally, in his mind, Stark is confronted with his dead friends (like Happy) and the legacy of blood that his family has, and vows to do better. These are central themes to the character, although they are hardly new ones.
Part of me thinks that resurrection stories have become so drawn out and melodramatic, that I would actually like to see the reverse happen at some point. Say, someone wants to resurrect Namorita. Rather than it becoming some 5-6 issue angst ridden melodrama, it works within ten pages, everyone is pleased, and they go out for brunch. I think that reverse tract would seem more original, and at least play to reader experience and expectation. C'mon, just once.
Still, there are those good moments with Hill, Potts, Strange, and even Ghost himself. Between this and THUNDERBOLTS, the Iron Man C-Lister has started cementing himself into B-List status. I actually don't care for his weird helmet, but at least it makes him look more distinct. He'll be the only mainstay in the next squad of THUNDERBOLTS, and they haven't had one of those in a while, since Moonstone left. It does tie in well with THUNDERBOLTS, which 'ported Ghost back into Asgard with the rest of his squad. It does seem weird that Stark would be thrilled with Ghost being in the next T-Bolts squad led by Luke Cage, but then again, it's weird that Crossbones and Man-Thing will be there, too. Jeff Parker is either a genius, or losing his mind.
At any rate, the issue ends as expected, some fine moments but no real surprises. I think Fraction has to start to edit himself to be a bit more concise. Still, new armor next issue, and in May, "IRON MAN 2".
MIGHTY AVENGERS #34: Easily overshadowing IIM this week, Dan Slott and fill in artist Neil Edwards (alongside two inkers, often a sign of rush) wrap up the final issue before the SIEGE tie-in's start. While AVENGERS and a relaunch of NEW AVENGERS are confirmed, Brubaker's SECRET AVENGERS is also confirmed and some sort of relaunch of Christos Gage's A:TI (possibly as "AVENGERS ACADEMY") has been rumored, there has been nothing but dead silence about the possibility of Slott doing an Avenger title beyond May. In that case, these last few issues until #36 right really be it for the Dan Slott run. That finality may be a bad thing, but they do add some intensity to the issues. This issue wraps up some subplots from his run before Ultron seems set to wrap it up.
I've been more than opinionated about how the whole situation with Thor, Loki, and Balder has been depicted and executed by JMS and others. To restate it in a concise matter, I don't have a problem with Loki living up to his name and tricking/manipulating Thor. My problem is that Thor and Balder are never suspicious enough, nor to they ever try to follow up or investigate anything on their own, so it makes them look dumber while making Loki's trickery less impressive. To use a crude example, it is akin to the cartoon WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN trying to establish Wolverine as a good leader by bending over backwards to paint Cyclops as a walking pile of faults. The problem is that if Wolverine's feat is merely overcoming someone incompetent, then his feat loses luster. Thor and Balder should assume that nothing Loki ever says is the truth, and that nothing he does is for any motive beyond his own personal advancement, often at the expense of others. It is all he is, was, or ever shall be.
Slott to his credit does handle that pathos fairly well. When Loki begs Thor to "save him" from the Mighty Avengers, Thor is skeptical and more than once describes Loki as a thorn in his side. At the same time, Hank Pym manages to weird out everyone in this issue, and to be fair, Thor does walk into a situation that he wouldn't, and doesn't, condone.
Since the start of Slott's run on the title, Loki has manipulated the Avengers, irked that he accidentally led to the team being formed in the first place and this time wanting a squad he can manipulate directly. To that end he has posed as Scarlet Witch, and while not quite getting the roster he wanted, and while he has directed them towards legitimate threats like the demon Chthon, Loki has steered them towards his own ends. The last two issues painted that perfectly, with him using the MA as pawns to manipulate Osborn a bit more. He also sought to kill both Stature and Quicksilver when they got too close to discovering his ruse (along with the rest of the Young Avengers like a raving lunatic). In this issue, Pietro finally learns the secret about "Wanda", and doesn't take it well at all. The Avengers head to a realm which Loki annually visits, and after spanking some trolls, Pym constructs a machine that not only traps Loki, but tortures him. While Pym is willing to zap Loki to try to get answers out of him, Pietro takes things too far, and is all but willing to kill Loki to get answers that may not be there. Loki admits to merely taking Wanda's form, not personally having anything to do with her.
Loki tries to turn the team against each other, and to a degree has a point about the balance of power shifting if a "mortal" like Pym can build a machine that turns gods into slaves. Pym justifies it by stating he works for Eternity, with Loki trying to claim credit for that as well. Thor arrives, and is appalled at the Avengers torturing his brother (or any captive really), but the idea of Pym "sullying" the name of the Wasp, which Thor takes very seriously (as he respected Janet). The rest of the team, namely Stature, also disagrees with the idea of torture. Guess they don't watch "24". While Thor has usually allowed Loki to be punished by Loki or any other Norse mythological deity or being if it came to it, and has killed Loki once himself, he does take some offense at Pym and Pietro being the ones to do it. This subplot of even Thor having a bit of "godly arrogance" to him, thinking mortals should have their place, popped up for a moment in Giffen's THOR issues with Dr. Doom, and Slott seems to pick up that ball here. If anything, one could argue Thor would be especially sensitive about Pym's treatment of Loki given what he saw Doom doing to other Asgardians, even making a bastard version of the Destroyer armor. Way back when, Iron Man even made a "Thorbuster" armor with some magical crap thrown in (that lasted about as long as all of Stark's "Hulkbuster" armors, maybe 12 seconds).
But the real show stopper is in the final pages, when despite picking a fight with the FF, making out with Jocasta, taking his wife's codename and whatnot, finally accomplishes the feat of repulsing the members of Pym's team. In fact this is the second version of this review I have written and I still am not entirely sure how I think about it; Pym offering Loki a legitimate spot on the team. While he has a point of Loki always being a part of the equation, part of it read as shocking for the sake of being shocking. If Osborn is a madman for trusting Loki so much, how can Pym be much better for even opening that door (although to be fair, Osborn is a madman for many other reasons)? Pym mentions villains becoming Avengers before, but none were on the level of Loki. Off the top of my head, the worst I can think of was Sandman, and that was brief, and he was trying to genuinely reform at the time (working for Silver Sable's Wild Pack for years). The Avengers have accepted aid from Kang or Immortus at times, but they've never been actual members of the team. Wonder Man technically started out as member of the Masters of Evil (and a white collar criminal), but that's small fish compared to Loki (and besides, Simon really wasn't evil like the Masters, and sacrificed himself immediately when we saw their scheme to kill the Avengers in full). Loki did try to kill teenage heroes in cold blood for nothing more than inching close to unveiling his ruse (neither Stature or Barton knew "who" Scarlet Witch was; for all they knew it was Mystique on MGH). On the other hand, this is supposedly a new Hank Pym, who doesn't seek to answer for his weirdness, but embraces it. The downside of that is being, well, weird.
The move backfires, and everyone leaves the squad except for Jocasta, and technically Jarvis (the butler who can throw a mean uppercut if he has to). Which is naturally at the worst time, as Ultron is set to awaken once more. With the MA roster dwindled to two, that actually creates a lot of suspense for the Ultron issues. Normally, beating Ultron has required an entire team effort; even for the "Lady Ultrona" version Bendis created, and especially after ANNIHILATION CONQUEST. Naturally, Hercules and Cho are busy with their own book. The interesting thing is that all of these members who walked off, including Walker, who Osborn "fired" last issue, appear in THUNDERBOLTS. I am curious how it ties in. I suppose it works that if Cho got a signal like he did in issue #140, he would leave Pym out of the loop after this while assembling the members he could. I mean, why not? He did assemble the Renegades. I imagine the SIEGE issues may have Slott's side of things in that matter as well.
The artwork is fine, although the two inkers seem to have distinct inking talents and one can tell some difference in the inks of some pages. If this will be the end of Slott on Avengers, I am curious how he intends to wrap things up in two issues. That said, and while I have enjoyed Slott's Avengers run (more than any Bendis Avengers run), I have found Gage's A:TI more consistent overall since he has run it solo. If faced with a world without either, I think I would actually miss A:TI more, and that's really weird to think for me. Just not as weird as offering Loki an Avengers membership.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN BRAND NEW DAY YEARBOOK #1: About two years old, but who is keeping track? This is a one-shot that has a "saga" that summarizes the first "season" of BRAND NEW DAY, as well as 22 pages of Handbook bio's featuring many of his new enemies as well as updates on old ones, such as Eddie Brock and Hammerhead. There are a a few random villains who seem to have gotten an update by virtue of popping up in The Bar With No Name, but I certainly don't mind them. $5 is a bit steep for something like that, especially with many outright Handbook editions still selling for $4, but that was the main reason I dug this up, and so far I haven't been disappointed there.
Of course, the first half of the special is a summary of basically ASM from BND to the end of SECRET INVASION. At best, I can say it reads like a bit of a well intentioned mess. The infusion of new characters to the supporting cast is nice, and some new villains, and even some bits with the old cast like J.J. losing control of the paper and Flash going to Iraq, but frankly all of that could have been done without OMD with very minor re-writes. Considering MJ is estranged from Peter but remains aware of his secret ID, I remain convinced that OMD would have been better executed had Peter and MJ just outright divorced. It would have been more realistic, no less "final" than a death or a magical annulment, and may not have so angered a portion of the fan base. Even if it's only, say, 5% of ASM's fans (and that is a low ball sum), if you want to boldly relaunch something, why alienate even 1% deliberately? That said, the angle of Jackpot seems to have been both a tease and a wasted opportunity. The concept of MJ gaining super-powers of her own and interacting with Spider-Man, while keeping her distance from Peter, is a sound one. Alas, while fans were drug along for a year, she turns out to be some random poser. Anti-climaxes barely work in prose novels, and almost always fail in film; for comics that require an investment of over $30 a year, it never, ever is remembered well. I feel irritated having seen the potential for Jackpot so wasted, and I just read it in summary. I can't imagine how people strung along for issues of ASM and about 1-2 Jackpot mini's felt. While the Anti-Venom angle I found myself liking more than I expected (the idea of Brock being a "lethal protector" or the cancer retcon pre-dated BRAND NEW DAY, just Slott and others found a way to condense it), "Freak" is an absurdly silly villain, who would be a punch line if he were created in the 70's or even 90's. I also am amazed by how many children Kraven the Hunter had, and how he must have been some father because they all want to avenge him to the death. On the whole, though, the summary made me feel that the first year of BND was to revive the late 1970's status quo only to add modern trappings like room-mate drama, the struggles of print media and obsessed tabloids. Could Harry have been revived mysteriously without a global mind-wipe from Mephisto? Yes. I was convinced that whatever problems there were with the Parker Marriage or his continuity, that ONE MORE DAY was a drastic overcompensation, and I remain convinced of that. Marvel seems to have an editorial problem of both taking years too long to properly diagnose a problem, and then taking a course of action that either misses the point or throws the baby out with the bathwater. This has been done with mutants (M-Day), done with Dr. Strange, and done with Spider-Man. It is akin to missing a minor skin infection until it becomes gangrene, and then choosing to cure it by strapping one-self to a nuclear war-head, then detonating it. Many of the positive elements of BND could have been done without as much of a harsh bleach as OMD, just with a little more care and tweaking. Instead I think Marvel wanted a splashy quick fix in the height of "crossover" fever, and this is the result. While it is a commercial success, a healthy minority of fans under 30 don't take it seriously, and see it as appealing to fans old enough to have not read "THE DEATH OF GWEN STACY" in a reprint. DC has caused a great deal of problems sacrificing young adults for their "Centrum Silver" readership and I think this is an area where Marvel has followed suit. For anyone reading or watching Spider-Man since 1984, MJ was part of him. Demonically saying it never happened is basically telling a fan who is, say, 20-21, that what they grew up with was rubbish, and things will be best if they let it go, which is NOT the best way to entice them to then buy ASM thrice a month ("The last 20 years don't count, but THIS does, and we totally won't undo it when it becomes convenient, either! Buy buy BUY!"). Marvel really needs to stop editorially trying to kill gnats with napalm.
DC did some internal promotions to add some new blood to higher offices, and I do think after over a decade, Marvel could use a little of the same.
Dread's Bought/Thought for 3/3/10:
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #24: After 5 issues, Tony Stark finally awakes from his coma. He sends the Ghost packing and seems set to make a new suit of armor. Stunning stuff, no? No.
This marks two fill years that Fraction/Larroca/D'Armata have collaborated on this series without running late or needing a fill in artist. While it's no record set to challenge Lee/Kirby on FF or Bendis/Bagley on USM, but it still is a commendable feat in today's day and age. Larroca and D'Armata are solid as always on art, and to be fair, these "psychic metaphor" issues have really played to some of the artistic strengths of this team. Unfortunately, while Fraction is often great with individual moments and lines, but on this title has seemed to stretch his last two arcs at least one issue too long, and "Stark Disassembled" qualifies. This entire exercise has been to cleanse Tony Stark of his sins from CIVIL WAR and INITIATIVE. To purge him of memories and urges and have him go, "oh my god, what have I done, I am so sorry, now let's be a straight up super hero again". Can you tell a movie is coming out? But, in all seriousness, it doesn't go as far as, say, ONE MORE DAY went with Spider-Man, as all of these events still happened. It made perfect, honorable sense for Stark to do anything possible to prevent Osborn from gaining access to his weaponry, or the data in his own head. It also made dramatic sense for Stark's solution to "revive" himself didn't go according to plan; Dr. Strange had to try to give him a poke with magic, basically.
(Marvel is still woefully inconsistent with Dr. Strange these days. While all parties agree he is no longer the Sorcerer Supreme, none agree on his power level. In some books, Stephan can barely cast a low level spell. In others, like a JMS issue of THOR, he basically has the same power level, just lost the fancy title and some of his artifacts. In these issues, Fraction writes him a bit in-between. He still can perform any magical feat the story requires, but he isn't quite up to old Defender levels. The irony is THIS has always been the problem with Dr. Strange, and Marvel's heavy handed, scorched earth solution to his dilemma has done absolutely NOTHING towards correcting it, because the flaw was in editorial guidance, not in the character.)
At any rate, the Ghost finally finds the comatose Stark, but takes his time just killing him. True, he is distracted by Potts, and Hill, and Dr. Strange's fisticuffs, but it does seem wholly obligatory that Stark has the time to recover. Naturally, in his mind, Stark is confronted with his dead friends (like Happy) and the legacy of blood that his family has, and vows to do better. These are central themes to the character, although they are hardly new ones.
Part of me thinks that resurrection stories have become so drawn out and melodramatic, that I would actually like to see the reverse happen at some point. Say, someone wants to resurrect Namorita. Rather than it becoming some 5-6 issue angst ridden melodrama, it works within ten pages, everyone is pleased, and they go out for brunch. I think that reverse tract would seem more original, and at least play to reader experience and expectation. C'mon, just once.
Still, there are those good moments with Hill, Potts, Strange, and even Ghost himself. Between this and THUNDERBOLTS, the Iron Man C-Lister has started cementing himself into B-List status. I actually don't care for his weird helmet, but at least it makes him look more distinct. He'll be the only mainstay in the next squad of THUNDERBOLTS, and they haven't had one of those in a while, since Moonstone left. It does tie in well with THUNDERBOLTS, which 'ported Ghost back into Asgard with the rest of his squad. It does seem weird that Stark would be thrilled with Ghost being in the next T-Bolts squad led by Luke Cage, but then again, it's weird that Crossbones and Man-Thing will be there, too. Jeff Parker is either a genius, or losing his mind.
At any rate, the issue ends as expected, some fine moments but no real surprises. I think Fraction has to start to edit himself to be a bit more concise. Still, new armor next issue, and in May, "IRON MAN 2".
MIGHTY AVENGERS #34: Easily overshadowing IIM this week, Dan Slott and fill in artist Neil Edwards (alongside two inkers, often a sign of rush) wrap up the final issue before the SIEGE tie-in's start. While AVENGERS and a relaunch of NEW AVENGERS are confirmed, Brubaker's SECRET AVENGERS is also confirmed and some sort of relaunch of Christos Gage's A:TI (possibly as "AVENGERS ACADEMY") has been rumored, there has been nothing but dead silence about the possibility of Slott doing an Avenger title beyond May. In that case, these last few issues until #36 right really be it for the Dan Slott run. That finality may be a bad thing, but they do add some intensity to the issues. This issue wraps up some subplots from his run before Ultron seems set to wrap it up.
I've been more than opinionated about how the whole situation with Thor, Loki, and Balder has been depicted and executed by JMS and others. To restate it in a concise matter, I don't have a problem with Loki living up to his name and tricking/manipulating Thor. My problem is that Thor and Balder are never suspicious enough, nor to they ever try to follow up or investigate anything on their own, so it makes them look dumber while making Loki's trickery less impressive. To use a crude example, it is akin to the cartoon WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN trying to establish Wolverine as a good leader by bending over backwards to paint Cyclops as a walking pile of faults. The problem is that if Wolverine's feat is merely overcoming someone incompetent, then his feat loses luster. Thor and Balder should assume that nothing Loki ever says is the truth, and that nothing he does is for any motive beyond his own personal advancement, often at the expense of others. It is all he is, was, or ever shall be.
Slott to his credit does handle that pathos fairly well. When Loki begs Thor to "save him" from the Mighty Avengers, Thor is skeptical and more than once describes Loki as a thorn in his side. At the same time, Hank Pym manages to weird out everyone in this issue, and to be fair, Thor does walk into a situation that he wouldn't, and doesn't, condone.
Since the start of Slott's run on the title, Loki has manipulated the Avengers, irked that he accidentally led to the team being formed in the first place and this time wanting a squad he can manipulate directly. To that end he has posed as Scarlet Witch, and while not quite getting the roster he wanted, and while he has directed them towards legitimate threats like the demon Chthon, Loki has steered them towards his own ends. The last two issues painted that perfectly, with him using the MA as pawns to manipulate Osborn a bit more. He also sought to kill both Stature and Quicksilver when they got too close to discovering his ruse (along with the rest of the Young Avengers like a raving lunatic). In this issue, Pietro finally learns the secret about "Wanda", and doesn't take it well at all. The Avengers head to a realm which Loki annually visits, and after spanking some trolls, Pym constructs a machine that not only traps Loki, but tortures him. While Pym is willing to zap Loki to try to get answers out of him, Pietro takes things too far, and is all but willing to kill Loki to get answers that may not be there. Loki admits to merely taking Wanda's form, not personally having anything to do with her.
Loki tries to turn the team against each other, and to a degree has a point about the balance of power shifting if a "mortal" like Pym can build a machine that turns gods into slaves. Pym justifies it by stating he works for Eternity, with Loki trying to claim credit for that as well. Thor arrives, and is appalled at the Avengers torturing his brother (or any captive really), but the idea of Pym "sullying" the name of the Wasp, which Thor takes very seriously (as he respected Janet). The rest of the team, namely Stature, also disagrees with the idea of torture. Guess they don't watch "24". While Thor has usually allowed Loki to be punished by Loki or any other Norse mythological deity or being if it came to it, and has killed Loki once himself, he does take some offense at Pym and Pietro being the ones to do it. This subplot of even Thor having a bit of "godly arrogance" to him, thinking mortals should have their place, popped up for a moment in Giffen's THOR issues with Dr. Doom, and Slott seems to pick up that ball here. If anything, one could argue Thor would be especially sensitive about Pym's treatment of Loki given what he saw Doom doing to other Asgardians, even making a bastard version of the Destroyer armor. Way back when, Iron Man even made a "Thorbuster" armor with some magical crap thrown in (that lasted about as long as all of Stark's "Hulkbuster" armors, maybe 12 seconds).
But the real show stopper is in the final pages, when despite picking a fight with the FF, making out with Jocasta, taking his wife's codename and whatnot, finally accomplishes the feat of repulsing the members of Pym's team. In fact this is the second version of this review I have written and I still am not entirely sure how I think about it; Pym offering Loki a legitimate spot on the team. While he has a point of Loki always being a part of the equation, part of it read as shocking for the sake of being shocking. If Osborn is a madman for trusting Loki so much, how can Pym be much better for even opening that door (although to be fair, Osborn is a madman for many other reasons)? Pym mentions villains becoming Avengers before, but none were on the level of Loki. Off the top of my head, the worst I can think of was Sandman, and that was brief, and he was trying to genuinely reform at the time (working for Silver Sable's Wild Pack for years). The Avengers have accepted aid from Kang or Immortus at times, but they've never been actual members of the team. Wonder Man technically started out as member of the Masters of Evil (and a white collar criminal), but that's small fish compared to Loki (and besides, Simon really wasn't evil like the Masters, and sacrificed himself immediately when we saw their scheme to kill the Avengers in full). Loki did try to kill teenage heroes in cold blood for nothing more than inching close to unveiling his ruse (neither Stature or Barton knew "who" Scarlet Witch was; for all they knew it was Mystique on MGH). On the other hand, this is supposedly a new Hank Pym, who doesn't seek to answer for his weirdness, but embraces it. The downside of that is being, well, weird.
The move backfires, and everyone leaves the squad except for Jocasta, and technically Jarvis (the butler who can throw a mean uppercut if he has to). Which is naturally at the worst time, as Ultron is set to awaken once more. With the MA roster dwindled to two, that actually creates a lot of suspense for the Ultron issues. Normally, beating Ultron has required an entire team effort; even for the "Lady Ultrona" version Bendis created, and especially after ANNIHILATION CONQUEST. Naturally, Hercules and Cho are busy with their own book. The interesting thing is that all of these members who walked off, including Walker, who Osborn "fired" last issue, appear in THUNDERBOLTS. I am curious how it ties in. I suppose it works that if Cho got a signal like he did in issue #140, he would leave Pym out of the loop after this while assembling the members he could. I mean, why not? He did assemble the Renegades. I imagine the SIEGE issues may have Slott's side of things in that matter as well.
The artwork is fine, although the two inkers seem to have distinct inking talents and one can tell some difference in the inks of some pages. If this will be the end of Slott on Avengers, I am curious how he intends to wrap things up in two issues. That said, and while I have enjoyed Slott's Avengers run (more than any Bendis Avengers run), I have found Gage's A:TI more consistent overall since he has run it solo. If faced with a world without either, I think I would actually miss A:TI more, and that's really weird to think for me. Just not as weird as offering Loki an Avengers membership.
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN BRAND NEW DAY YEARBOOK #1: About two years old, but who is keeping track? This is a one-shot that has a "saga" that summarizes the first "season" of BRAND NEW DAY, as well as 22 pages of Handbook bio's featuring many of his new enemies as well as updates on old ones, such as Eddie Brock and Hammerhead. There are a a few random villains who seem to have gotten an update by virtue of popping up in The Bar With No Name, but I certainly don't mind them. $5 is a bit steep for something like that, especially with many outright Handbook editions still selling for $4, but that was the main reason I dug this up, and so far I haven't been disappointed there.
Of course, the first half of the special is a summary of basically ASM from BND to the end of SECRET INVASION. At best, I can say it reads like a bit of a well intentioned mess. The infusion of new characters to the supporting cast is nice, and some new villains, and even some bits with the old cast like J.J. losing control of the paper and Flash going to Iraq, but frankly all of that could have been done without OMD with very minor re-writes. Considering MJ is estranged from Peter but remains aware of his secret ID, I remain convinced that OMD would have been better executed had Peter and MJ just outright divorced. It would have been more realistic, no less "final" than a death or a magical annulment, and may not have so angered a portion of the fan base. Even if it's only, say, 5% of ASM's fans (and that is a low ball sum), if you want to boldly relaunch something, why alienate even 1% deliberately? That said, the angle of Jackpot seems to have been both a tease and a wasted opportunity. The concept of MJ gaining super-powers of her own and interacting with Spider-Man, while keeping her distance from Peter, is a sound one. Alas, while fans were drug along for a year, she turns out to be some random poser. Anti-climaxes barely work in prose novels, and almost always fail in film; for comics that require an investment of over $30 a year, it never, ever is remembered well. I feel irritated having seen the potential for Jackpot so wasted, and I just read it in summary. I can't imagine how people strung along for issues of ASM and about 1-2 Jackpot mini's felt. While the Anti-Venom angle I found myself liking more than I expected (the idea of Brock being a "lethal protector" or the cancer retcon pre-dated BRAND NEW DAY, just Slott and others found a way to condense it), "Freak" is an absurdly silly villain, who would be a punch line if he were created in the 70's or even 90's. I also am amazed by how many children Kraven the Hunter had, and how he must have been some father because they all want to avenge him to the death. On the whole, though, the summary made me feel that the first year of BND was to revive the late 1970's status quo only to add modern trappings like room-mate drama, the struggles of print media and obsessed tabloids. Could Harry have been revived mysteriously without a global mind-wipe from Mephisto? Yes. I was convinced that whatever problems there were with the Parker Marriage or his continuity, that ONE MORE DAY was a drastic overcompensation, and I remain convinced of that. Marvel seems to have an editorial problem of both taking years too long to properly diagnose a problem, and then taking a course of action that either misses the point or throws the baby out with the bathwater. This has been done with mutants (M-Day), done with Dr. Strange, and done with Spider-Man. It is akin to missing a minor skin infection until it becomes gangrene, and then choosing to cure it by strapping one-self to a nuclear war-head, then detonating it. Many of the positive elements of BND could have been done without as much of a harsh bleach as OMD, just with a little more care and tweaking. Instead I think Marvel wanted a splashy quick fix in the height of "crossover" fever, and this is the result. While it is a commercial success, a healthy minority of fans under 30 don't take it seriously, and see it as appealing to fans old enough to have not read "THE DEATH OF GWEN STACY" in a reprint. DC has caused a great deal of problems sacrificing young adults for their "Centrum Silver" readership and I think this is an area where Marvel has followed suit. For anyone reading or watching Spider-Man since 1984, MJ was part of him. Demonically saying it never happened is basically telling a fan who is, say, 20-21, that what they grew up with was rubbish, and things will be best if they let it go, which is NOT the best way to entice them to then buy ASM thrice a month ("The last 20 years don't count, but THIS does, and we totally won't undo it when it becomes convenient, either! Buy buy BUY!"). Marvel really needs to stop editorially trying to kill gnats with napalm.
DC did some internal promotions to add some new blood to higher offices, and I do think after over a decade, Marvel could use a little of the same.
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