Reviewer: Paul Sebert
Story Title: Roaming
Written by: Fiona Avery
Penciled by: Mark Brooks
Inked by: Jaime Mendoza & Victor Olazaba
Colored by: Udon’s Larry Molinar
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
Publisher: Marvel Comics
It’s not Spider-Girl yeah, I hear this line a *lot* whenever any discussion of this book, and well to be honest, it just doesn’t make any sense to me that people get so worked up over. I mean it’s not like Spider-Girl is Watchmen by any stretch of the imagination. Hell it’s not even a Young Justice.
But to be fair, I’ve put together a simple, fair, and balanced scale to determine if this title is as good, if not better than Spider-Girl. I’ve established a three point scale for doing this.
- Is the Dialog For the Book Written by Tom Defalco?
No, it is not and since Tom Defalco does the most headache inducing cornball dialog in comics that’s a good thing. Not that Fiona Avery’s script is perfect but well, it doesn’t feel like it was left over from 1982, unlike a certain title.
- Does the character have an origin?
You know it really amuses me how some folk complain that Anya Corazon has a cliched origin. Really is there an influx of characters who walked in on modern day shaman rituals that I don’t know about? And at least she has an origin. Spider-Girl’s origin consists of “Hi I’m Spider-Man’s daughter, I think I’ll put on Ben Reilly’s costume and fight crime.” “Hi I’m the Green Goblin’s grandson and I’m crazy! Let’s fight!”
- Is the book drawn by Mark Brooks?
Yes, and no offense to Pat Olliffe, but Mark Brooks really is one of the most talented artists to come out of the Udon stable and I expect him to have a very bright future. How bright? Well I predict in 5 years the guy’s going to be an A-lister.
Ok there we go a completely objective standard of judgment to prove this title’s better than Spider-Girl. But how good is it?
Well to right to the point, the pleasures of this book are mild but real. It’s not the best book on the market, but it’s an enjoyable ride of a book comparable to a summer movie. In this issue it seems that Anya has been sent out in the desert to pass some mysterious ritual known as “Trials.” What are The Trials? Well it somehow involves Anya fighting a pack of demonic wolves. Or perhaps they’re just the regular non-demonic kind of wolves. Or perhaps still they’re just a hallucination? But well who cares, it just looks damned cool.
Oh, and in this issue we see Anya finally get around to using her super powers and well, they’re certainly not quite what I expected. To make the long story short, Fiona Avery’s my new heroine for fitting a Kamen Rider homage in to the Marvel Universe. Which gets this book an automatic thumbs up.
