Stuff I Read This Week: Episode 3 or Maybe It's Not Too Late for Disney to Buy DC Comics, Too....

Superior Spider Man #4: For those of you who've kept up, I've had a running deal with a friend of mine that I would give Dan Slott four issues to make lemonade from the lemon that is the Spider Man franchise's current direction. After that, I'm washing my hands of the whole thing until the story returns to status quo (which we all know it's headed towards). It's the fourth issue and this title receives a stay of execution...just barely. We see the return of Massacre, a bush league baddie from "Amazing" who isn't terribly spectacular. Apparently, his gimmick is that he is biologically devoid of human empathy....which is completely different from most other psycho killers. It doesn't matter much that Massacre is only an inch above average, anyway. He's just a device to advance the current character conflict: It turns out that Otto Octavius in Spider Man's body is more like....well, Batman.

On the plus side, Giuseppe Camuncoli's visuals are some of the best I've seen from the SM universe in the past five years or so. It delivers a sort of balance that creepy when need be as well as light hearted at times. Slott even manages to sneak in some truly comedic gems like Otto's reaction to Peter Parker's level of education. The fundmental problem is still the same is its been, though. No matter how good the small laughs and easter eggs thrown in are, it's still an attempt to put strawberries in a shit sandwich. It's kind of like putting The Rock in a G.I. Joe movie....wait.

Bottom Line: Decent kicks, decent villain, great pencils, but it's still an awful state of affairs. But the small reveal on the last page has bought this book a few more issues in my rotation. 7 out of 10.


Justice League of America #1: Okay, I received some feedback from a couple of readers complaining that I haven't reviewed any DC titles yet. There's a reason for this: a majority of them are fucking terrible which makes if perfectly appropriate that the Justice League titles would be the flagship books of the "New 52" initiative (By the way, a year and a half later, can we go ahead and stop calling them the 52 new?). In this series, the government has decided that the "Big Seven" is too much of a wild card to go unchecked, something that I could almost swear had been decided ages ago. As a response, Amanda Waller and Steve Trevor assemble eight B and C students of superheroism to be accountable to the government or, if need be, take the JL down. Because if anyone could take down people like Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman....it's Vibe and Katana. First of all, I'm pretty sure DC tried to sell us this same Kool Aid with Justice League International with minimal success if any at all. And that one had Batman in it. Between Steve Trevor behaving like a jilted Twilight character over Wonder Woman and Hawkman being portrayed as crooked asshole space cop (which, sadly, is STILL better than the first two issues of Savage Hawkman), DC's forced attempt to Marvel-ize their continuity is so sad and unreadable, if you hold it up to your ear, you can almost hear Geoff Johns saying "Oh, fuck it....why not?"

Bottom Line: This book is the summation of virtually everything that's wrong with the majority of rebooted DC books. 4 out of 10.

Stuff I Read This Week: Episode 2 or Maybe Brian Michael Bendis Should Just Write ALL of the Books

Red Team #1: I haven't always been a fan of Garth Ennis' style of storytelling (despite his Punisher arcs being awesome), but it worked for me in this crime drama tale of four top cops who turn to street justice to get the job done with a criminal the system couldn't eliminate. The premise is intriguing enough to keep you turning pages for a bit, but it has its problems. First of all, there's not much action in this issue. It's easy enough to see Ennis is trying to build tension, but it is a difficult sell when the format is based around a principal character telling us what's going to happen on the first page. In fact, most of the book is based around a lot of talking. A lot. There are some writers who do well pulling this off, but in this particular case, Ennis skated by.

Bottom Line: The payoff at the end is marginally sweet and it's worth sticking around for another issue or two, but this first installment could have been so much more than it turned out to be. 6 out of 10.


Daredevil End of Days #5: It's more than clear by now that there are two franchises that Brian Michael Bendis can write like nobody's business: Spider Man and Daredevil. His epic run on DD left fans and non fans alike salivating and his return to the character has not changed a thing. And technically, Daredevil isn't even in the damn book! This issue of End of Days sees one of the most powerful moments yet in an exchange with Ben Urich and the Punisher, who spends the better part of this issue restrained in his seat. It's almost wrong to call what Bendis does "dialogue" because it's too natural to have such a technical term. You're not reading two characters using words to advance a story so much as a character study of two people revealing who they are. It's conversation plain and simple. And there simply isn't enough praise in existence for the art. Every page done by Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz leaps forward and pulls your attention inward with every detail.

Bottom Line: This book is one issue closer to one of the greatest Daredevil stories ever told. Ever. 9 out of 10.

All New X-Men #7: "If you shoot me, it won't hurt me and I will cut off your hands. I'll go back to wherever I came from and you won't have hands."

 Brian Bendis' take on the X Franchise has been possibly the most refreshing since Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men. The premise we're given in the inaugural story arc is interesting enough. Beast goes back in time and brings back young Scott Summers from the first days of the team and places him in the present, hoping the current Cyclops will go back to being the idealistic asshole we love instead of the colossal asshole he's being. This issue puts young Scott together with the usually devious Mystique for an interesting dialogue for those who are familiar with the character. We also see Kitty Pryde coming into her own as she begins training the rest of the original five X-Men which makes for a fun moment so the story doesn't read as all "doom and gloom." David Marquez' pencils are a great fill-in for Stuart Immonen. He seems to do a good job of retaining a similar style so the change isn't so drastic, lining up well with Bendis' scripting. My only complaint is that young Cyclops may be....young, but he isn't SO gullible that he would be this accepting right away of someone like Mystique. Other than that, this is grade-A X-Men.

Bottom Line: Dramatic yet fun scripting....appealing artwork....Bendis is definitely doing top notch work on the book. 8.5 out of 10.