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Reviews and commentary by Tony Isabella
"America's Most Beloved Comic-Book Writer & Columnist"
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for Thursday, February 7, 2008
The Dreaded Deadline Doom is upon me, necessitating a few changes in the TOT schedule for this month. I'll have more on this in the "Bloggy Bits" department of today's column, following a pair of guest reviews.
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CIVIL WAR: PETER PARKER, SPIDER-MAN Guest review by Jim Bosomworth
If you're like me, you worry about compilations of major storylines, especially compilations of the peripheral titles. The bigger the crossover, the more likely individual characters get lost. This's not the case with Civil War: Peter Parker, Spider-Man [Marvel $17.99].
Reprinting Sensational Spider-Man #28-34 - written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa - the storyline begins with Parker going public, and for the most part the stories are about how both Parker and Spider-Man are perceived by others. The first story - art by Clayton Crain - is told through the eyes of a high school student who shares similarities with the young Parker, including a love of science, a delayed growth spurt, and a crush on a girl he believes he will never get. Fans of Kurt Busiek's Astro City will like this one.
The rest of the stories - art by Angel Medina, Sean Chen, and Scott Hanna - are good but a bit formulaic: villains know hero's identity and attack his family. This doesn't mean the issues are simply a running fight scene; there's a good mix between fighting and background character development. My biggest complaint here is with Aunt May, but I admit she has never been a favorite of mine. The sampler scene did make me laugh out loud, though.
One complaint: as I wasn't following Civil War while it was running, the switch from issues 31 to 32 was jarring. Between those two issues, Spider-Man changed his costume and his loyalties in the war with no explanations given, at least not in this book. A short explanatory paragraph would have helped, and maybe sparked enough interest for a casual reader to want to pick up more of the Civil War collections.
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SPIDER-MAN: FERAL Guest review by Kurt Wilcken
It started with the animals. All the monkeys at the Bronx Zoo went crazy, started attacking each other, ripping each other apart. Two rhinos began ramming the concrete walls of their enclosures, beating themselves to death. Then it spread. Curt Connors, the Lizard. John Jameson, the Man-Wolf. Even Peter Parker's lovely wife MJ found themselves assailed by unreasoning, uncontrollable aggression. And it was spreading.
Just another ordinary day for our favorite wall-crawler.
Sensational Spider-Man: Feral [$13.99] reprints a story arc from The Sensational Spider-Man #23-27, taking place shortly before the events of Civil War. I have never been a close follower of Spider-Man. My knowledge of the character comes from his appearances in other media, from reading the occasional reprint and from gossip I've picked up about current events. For the most part, this book does an adequate job of bringing the casual Spider- fan like me up to speed, though a person who knew the web-slinger solely from movies or the old cartoons might easily be confused. Wha-ha-ha? Aunt May knows he's Spider-Man?
The story by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is an enjoyable enough ride as it follows Peter's pursuit of his friend Curt Connors, who has once again transformed into the Lizard and who has also changed his 13-year old son into a Li'l Lizard. The trail leads him to the source of the feral influence which threatens to regress all of New York City into a primal, antediluvian state.
Yes, I like the word "antediluvian" and I use it whenever I can. Antediluvian.
Angel Medina's art is lively and energetic, injecting a touch of cartoon-ness that I appreciate more than the standard modern-day worship of detail. He pays loving attention to the curve of MJ's fanny and the way her sweatshirt clings to her chest, and you can "blame" him as well for the dripping fangs and shredded clothing of the Lizard and furry musculature of the Man-Wolf. In a few places, most notably close-ups of Aunt May, where lines on her face seem more like cracks in porcelain than wrinkles in skin, it doesn't quite look right, but, for the most part, I enjoyed Medina's work in these issues.
Once I grew accustomed to it, I also appreciated the art of Clayton Crain, who drew one chapter in the middle of the story. Crain's pages were painted, rather than the traditional pencil and ink of Medina's issues. This resulted in some moody, atmospheric pages which fit the suspenseful tone of the chapter, as it built up to a climactic confrontation, though it did clash stylistically with the look of the previous and the final chapters.
I don't care a lot for painted comics. This is a prejudice of mine. Yeah, Alex Ross can pull it off, but, even in his case, the result tends to look more like static images with word balloons attached rather than pictures in motion. But Crain's work had a lot of action in it and worked well. I particularly liked his rendering of the Puma, a character with whom I was unfamiliar.
My main problem with Feral was the things I noticed in re-reading. There were too many things that, when I thought about them too much, didn't make sense. Like the bit where police are investigating a crime scene and a cop tells the detective in charge of the investigation that "bite marks and saliva samples indicate an animal did this. The saliva's not mammalian,, it's reptillian."
I can buy a cop recognizing the bite marks of an animal; this is Marvel New York, after all. But how in the name of CSI do the police instantly analyze and identify lizard spit?
Okay, that's a nit-picky detail. The one I had more trouble buying was the threat's basic premise. "First the animals then the monsters then everyone else." The implication is that characters like the Vulture and the Lizard and the Black Cat are affected by the influence because they are more animalistic to begin with. Except that Vulture doesn't really have innate Vulture powers, he's just a guy with a suit. Likewise, Black Cat's powers aren't really feline in nature, she just has that name. Lizard and Man-Wolf and Vermin are already beast-men to begin with; but the story as it unfolds does not follow the logic that it claims to.
There are also a few plot points that are just plain sloppy. Early on, there's a scene in which Peter's riding a subway and his spider-sense is triggered by a little girl who has smuggled a puppy onto the train. A cute, adorable puppy in the arms of a dewy-eyed little girl. I was waiting for the puppy to go all Cujo on Peter, or to come back as a danger in another scene. Nope. Nothing like that happened. The point of the scene seemed to be that Peter's spider-sense was going wonky, pinging off of things that weren't threats, the result of him being affected by the malign influence. But, by the logic of this story's premise, that puppy should have been a potential danger! The animals are affected first, right? So the puppy should have been acting aggressively. The scene made no sense in the context of the story.
Other parts I liked. I liked the interactions between Peter and his family. The characterizations seemed spot on. I like the idea that Peter has a loving, stable family to come home to and I loved the bit early on where Peter, taking a break during his nightly patrol, calls MJ to talk about how things are going. And I absolutely loved the scene in which MJ is menaced by Man-Wolf and Aunt May, bless her, comes to the rescue!
Midway through the story, Spider-Man changes into his new suit of power armor, built for him by Tony Stark when Spidey joined the Avengers. I'm not sure how I feel about the new suit. The fact that it seems to keep anticipating his needs reminds me creepily of his infamous "black symbiote" suit. And the bits where Peter keeps thanking Stark for building this neat-o armor are rather weird, considering Stark's later actions in Civil War.
The bottom line...Feral is a enjoyable ride as long as you don't think about it too much.
******
BLOGGY BITS
"Life comes at you fast," says the TV advertising campaign for an insurance company. In my own life, seven weeks into 2008, I can confirm that the hits just keep on coming.
Things were already plenty stressful around me when I had two more professional setbacks. On Monday, I turned down a comics gig because the contract for the story wasn't acceptable. For a small paycheck for the amount of work involved, I would have had to sell all rights of every kind to an original story that owed nothing to any previous works. It wasn't the fault of the publisher. It was in the company's contract with the owners of the property they are licensing. The owners wanted all rights to my story, presumably so that they could utilize it in other media as they had done with many other stories they had come to own in this manner - but sans even the smallest scintilla of additional financial reward for the writer of the story.
It would be one thing for me to sign away all rights to, say, a Daredevil story. No matter how blindingly original my Daredevil story might be, it stems from the character as owned and published by Marvel Comics for over four decades. But that wasn't remotely the case with this new story of mine. So, reluctantly, I withdraw my story from the publisher.
On Tuesday, I received an e-mail from one of my few remaining steady accounts informing me that, for budgetary reasons, they were cutting back on my work by 30%. I understand tightening one's belt as well as anyone, but my understanding doesn't replace the loss of that income to my household.
Life comes at you fast, indeed.
Despite the funk I'm in at the moment, this won't affect TOT to any great extent this month. I was planning to write 20 columns in February and, instead, I'll be writing 19.
I'll still be posting weekly Tony Polls questions every Tuesday through the end of the month. After all, we just began our wacky presidential campaigns. It'd be downright un-American for me to pull the plug on those.
The Tony Isabella message board will remain up and running as long as I can manage to keep it up and running, though my presence there may diminish come March. Hopefully, the community I've built there will keep the fun going even if I move on.
But, as of now, March will see a drastic reduction in TOT, the polls, and anything else that doesn't bring a check into my house. I'll continue to post the director's cuts of my Comics Buyer's Guide columns here, as well as my "Tony's Back Page" sidebars. I'll continue presenting and commenting on the results of our "Tony Polls" questions, though I'll no longer be posting new questions weekly. I need to free up time for me to pursue other work, even if that work consists of selling stuff on eBay.
How many new TOTs appear in March depends entirely on how much I receive in "Tip The Tipster" donations this month. I set an absurdly low goal for how much I wanted to receive in January and came up 36% short. At this writing, several days into February, I have not received even one donation. It makes me wonder if I have overstayed my welcome.
This feels like I'm coming to the end of some roads I've been traveling all my life. I'm hoping some new and exciting roads make themselves known to me. I'd like to think I'm a long way from the end of my journey.
It's too bad life doesn't come with a GPS.
Thanks for spending a part of your day with me. I'll be back soon with more stuff.
Tony Isabella
<< 02/05/2008 | 02/07/2008 | 02/08/2008 >>
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THE "TONY" SCALE
ZERO: Burn your money before buying any comic receiving this rating. It doesn't *necessarily* mean there's absolutely nothing of value here - though it *could* - but whatever value it might possess shrinks into insignificance before its overall awfulness.
ONE: Buy something else. Maybe I found something which wasn't completely dreadful in the item, but not enough for me to recommend it when there are better comics available. I only want what's best for you, my children.
TWO: Basic judgment call. I found some value, but not enough to recommend it. My review should give you enough info to decide if you want to take a chance on it. Are you feeling lucky today, punk? Well, are you?
THREE: This denotes something I find perfectly respectable. There are better books out there, but I wouldn't regret buying this item. Based on my review, you should be able to determine if it's of interest to you. Let the Force guide you.
FOUR: I recommend anything earning this rating. Unless you don't like the genre, subject matter, or past work of the creators, I believe you'll enjoy this item. Isn't it uncanny how I can look right into your soul that way?
FIVE: Anything getting this rating is among the best comicdom has to offer. You should buy/read this, even if the genre/subject matter doesn't appeal to you. It's for your own good. Me, I live for comics and books this good...but not in a pathetic "Comic-Book Guy" sort of way.
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