Leave Your Spandex @t the Door: Early Bird Reviews 3.5.06

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Welcome to the 16th installment of the new Leave Your Spandex @t the Door! Wednesday is Comic Book Day in the U.S., and LYS@D is here again with this week’s Early Bird Reviews, so you can catch up on what rocks and what flops this week before you head to your local LCS! I’d like to thank Travelling Man Manchester for providing me with the advance look copies for review!

This week: exploding schoolkids, suicidal warriors, die-hard evil twins, undead uncles, shot mothers, death lovers and the gay lesbian sex (totally death-unrelated!)

Thing #6
Marvel
Writer: Dan Slott
Artist: Kieron Dwyer

Review Content: This is Dan Slott’s world, we’re just laughing in it!

Also: How cool is Dan Slott! There’s only four Marvel titles that are my current must-buys and they bring a smile to my face every time I see them on the shelf: Dead Girl, Runaways, Thing and She-Hulk. I’m anxiously waiting every month to read a comic starring the THING!

Yes, it’s the Thing, you’d think he’s been done to death, he appears in 4 monthlies, he’s gone through every possible transformation and ordeal, he’s been bled dry of interesting stories.

Dan Slott proves you wrong. The Thing is a true Marvel classic and one of the strongest deepest characters in their artillery. And in the right hands he gets to shine.

So the issue opens up with Thing punching Sandman. “Been there, done that”, right? Shut up already and pay attention”¦ The fight and the issue is filled with fun gags, witty banter, nods to continuity for the marvel zombies, and innovative solutions to villain-busting that make this a classic fight. Where else can you see Sandman vomiting Sand at his opponents and then Thing saving the day by mixing the villain with Quick-set cement?

Spider-man is this mont’s guest hero team-up. Maybe the title could sell more if it was called ‘Marvel Two-in-one’? And again, at the risk of repeating myself, this is a classic team-up. Sure, we’ve seen it before, but never was the chemistry between these two characters more strong.

Kieron Dwyer picks upthe duties of regular penciller this month after the departure of the great Andrew DiVito who is now only handling the covers. I wasn’t enthused when the change was announced since Dwyer was average at best during his first stint on Avengers with Busiek a few years back. On this title he is a different artist! Gone are the stiff emotionless characters of the past, and instead we get a more ‘animated’ design, with the cutest and most expressive Ben Grimm since Dean Haspiel’s mini series. For anyone who has doubts, the ending scene featuring an exchange between Alicia and Ben will surely win you over.

The bottom line? This is the type of comic Marvel should be concentrating on producing instead of senseless Bendis crossovers, but it is in danger of cancellation. Do yourself a favour and pick an issue up today!

Plus: how cool is Dan Slott!!

Grade: A

Civil War #1
Marvel
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Steve McNiven

Review Content: All the wait”¦ for this?

Newsarama was the first to run advance reviews of this issue, all shining, followed by SBC’s more critical look and CBR’s response. People were claiming this issue marks the event of the year, it ends in a fingernail-gripping line, it features the best fight scene in comics ever, blah blah blah.

It sucks.

It’s a taboo word for a self-respecting reviewer, but I’ll back it up. First of all, I am not negatively prejudiced against Mark Millar or McNiven. I adore Millar, I love his work on Authority, all the Ultimate titles, Chosen, you name it, and I’ve met him personally and had some drinks, he’s a bang-up funny guy and he even tried to hook me up with a new boyfriend too. The prologue is necessary so people don’t mark me as a ‘millar-bashe’ when they scroll down and realize I gave this issue an F.

Does it deserve an F? Is it really the worst comic I’ve ever read?

No, don’t be silly. It’s an average issue, but I am grading bearing in mind the scale of this event. This is what Marvel is considering their best series of the year. So I will judge it on that scale and be more strict (and give it an F).

What happens? I usually avoid spoilers, but Marvel has seen to it that I don’t need to, as they have leaked all the important info. New Warriors go on a mission for their reality program, they f**k up and Nitro blows up 800000 schoolkids (and Speedball). Mass anti-superhero paranoia ensues, the US government wants to superheroes to register and become accountable, and the superheroes meet to choose what they do. Cap is against, Ironman is pro. And then you get the ‘to be continued’ blurb.

What is wrong with the issue?

The New Warriors are rookie inexperienced heroes who only care about the ratings. Speedball is leading the team and making rude jokes. They’re all shallower than X-Statix on their worst day, and they all die without anyone shedding a tear. Millar was looking for some amateur heroes to shoehorn into the role of ‘superhero f**k-ups’ and chose the Warriors in random, disregarding any previous appearance and paying no respect to characters that have been around for well over 15 years.

800000 kids are killed, but the angry mob outside Washington protests about only one of them. Seriously now. I understand the writing device of focusing on one victim in a big tragedy to get an emotional response, but I didn’t expect the mob mentality to encompass that.

The art is”¦ unfortunate. Although McNiven shines during the fight-scene in the middle of the book (well-choreographed and fast-paced), the rest of the book is filled with conversation and some quiet moments that require the artist to instill some emotion in the characters. Yet they all look stiff as frozen fish, sporting distracting five o’clock shadows and generally looking quiet plastic and fake.

The pacing is uneven as the public discomfort escalates within one scene. The Civil War ‘schism’ that is announced on the last page comes completely unexpectedly and isn’t rationalized, as IronMan and Cap don’t actually have any argument or conversation during this issue to justify them turning against each other with such determination. It feels all these characters are turning against each other because that’s what the Bullpen wants them to do to get some numbers. When I reached the last page I just wondered if I had skipped some pages inbetween.

Back to the earlier question: is it really that bad to warrant a lowest score? The book does have a few good things going for it. The scene with Tony Stark outside the church has great dialogue, and Millar adequately explains the attacke’s reasoning for attacking Stark, although the art again ruins any emotional impact in the scene. Then once more, when Cap is on board the SHIELD Helicarrier, the exchange between Cap and the Director makes sense and is functional (something that couldn’t be said for the recent Illuminati special) and the fight scene is one of Milla’s finest.

None of these are enough though for what is tagged as the ‘series of the yea’. The series hype creates expectations and in the absence of any Infinite Crisis-level moments in the scale of ‘last time you inspired anyone’ and Superman E2 breaking through the barrier on the last page, I will call this issue a failure.

The Final Word: it may be Marvel’s Event of the Year/Decade/Millenium, but that doesn’t make it a good read. Victim of its own hype.

Grade: F

X-Men The End: Men and X-Men #5
Marvel Comics
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Sean Chen

Review Content: Hold on, just a bit more, it’s over in one issue!

Chris Claremont’s long and overdrawn Closing Opus to the X-Saga has reached critical mass with (almost) all the protagonists together in space duking it out. Although the series started out slow, the last few issues have been nothing but explosive bloody action. All the various plot threads have come together and the X-Men are caught between some of their greatest enemies: the Brood Queen, Cassandra Nova and the Dark Phoenix! I have to admit, the end couldn’t have been more climactic than this. Where it does fail is in emotional impact. Even as we see X-man after x-man fall in combat I don’t feel any connection to them.
When all is said and done, this series will be forgotten well before the end of the year.

Grade: D

Y the Last Man #45
DC
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Pia Guerra

Review Content: Yorrick and Agent 355 continue the search for Ampersand, the last male cappucin monkey who has been absconded by the leader of a brothel, while Dr Mann confronts her mother and learns she knows more than she lets on.
Y the last man started off as the most promising and exciting new Vertigo property, but things have gone a bit slow as of late. The series is nearing its conclusion in a yea’s time, the secret of how Yorrick and his monkey survived the ‘apocalypse’ has been revealed and there’s only one big glaring secret left to discover: the origin of the plague. And while the search for answers has been sidetracked by the monkey’s abduction, this reade’s interest has begun to wane as the series goes into another repeating pattern of new characters being introduced, betrayed/betraying and then getting offed.
What gives this issue its shining ‘B’ is the ongoing characterisation of Agent 355 which finally climaxes this issue into “¦ well, read the issue, why don’t you!

Grade: B

Annihilation: Silver Surfer #2
Marvel
Writer: Keith Giffen
Artist: Renato Arlem

Review Content: Silver Surfer flies over the ruins of an annihilated planet, finds a survivor and then joins up with two more of Galactus’ heralds to fight the same cosmic-powered genetic baddies from last issue and their cosmic puppies. Meanwhile Thanos teams up with Annihillus, and Terrax becomes doggie-food.

This issue doesn’t offer much in the way of new developments and thrills. If someone enjoyed the last issue, then it is a bit more of the same as the plot crawls slowly to the eventual clash between Thanos and the Surfer.

Grade: D

Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man #8
Marvel
Writer: Peter David
Artist: Mike Wieringo

Review Content: Ok, I’ll just go ahead and spoil it: Uncle Ben returns this issue! But how, when and most importantly”¦ what if?!?

Superboy’s punches must have gotten so strong they even broke through Marvel’s adamant(sic) ‘Dead means Dead’ policy.

Bad jokes aside, the issue starts with a classic and tried What If scenario of ‘what if Aunt May had died instead of Ben?”, but soon the walls of alternate realities become a bit too thin, and Uncle Ben finds himself face-to-face with our own Iron Spider, and an even more peculiar visitor from”¦ the future?

Peter David’s writing the best Spider-man book of the last few years (although, honestly, the competition isn’t of such high standard). He’s escaped the expected confines of a spidey title and has provided fun and entertaining stories, revamping some familiar and favourite old supporting characters, introducing new exciting villains and most importantly taking chances with storytelling, may that be telling a story that spans from the beginning of spider-man’s career to a time after his passing (as in the much-loved spider-stalker issue from early this year) or utilising alternate past and future realities.

Grade: B

Paris #4
SLG
Writer: Andi Watson
Artist: Simon Gane

Review Content: Paris has been the romance story set in 1950s Paris between Juliet, an American painter and Debs, a prim and proper English girl visiting the city of light. Juliet is hired by Debs’ grandmother to paint her portrait. As the two girls flirt and fall in love, Debs’ gran is preparing an arranged marriage for her. The romance has been subtle and tumultuous at the same time, and the two become separated by the end of the last issue.
This issue opens with each girl in her respective home, Juliet coming to terms with living and working with her parents again and trying to forget Debs, while Debs prepares for a marriage she doesn’t want, while continuing to search for her girlfriend.
Paris has been a very sweet and touching story. The finale is touching and a good pay-off for the series.
The art by Simon Gane is very appropriate, as the background locales are as much a character in this story as the girls themselves. Gane manages to bring the contemporary setting of 50s Paris and America to life amazingly, with rich in detail backdrops and a plethora of background characters that each seem to have their own story to tell.

Grade: A

Aaaaand that’s a wrap for this week! I’m waiting your comments and feedback through email to Manolis@gmail.com. If you self-publish your own comics or represent an indy comics company, add me to your press release list, and I will run your news in this space every week.

Manolis Vamvounis
a.k.a. Dr. Dooplove

ah, the good old Dr Manolis, the original comics Greek. He's been at this for sometime. he was there when the Comics Nexus was founded, he even gave it its name, he even used to run it for a couple of years. he's been writing about comics, geeking out incessantly and interviewing busier people than himself for over ten years now and has no intention of stopping anytime soon.