Home
D&D
Music
Banner Archive

Marvel Comics Timeline
Godzilla Timeline


RSS

   



May 1, 2002

Alias 9
Deadline 2
Fantastic Four 55

Also:
Call Of Duty part 1
Jay Leno & Spidey part 1

Alias #9
Brian Michael Bendis/Michael Gaydos

Well, he's not a skrull, but it's still in continuity. Phew!

And we're back up to full speed after last month's treading water issue. Great dialogue, the resolution of two cases tied together (somewhat conveniently), and a good character moment for Jessica at the end.

It's a valid complaint that all the characters sound the same. Actually, it's more than that. The talking heads spread on pages 8-9* is a device he uses a lot (in fact, i'm pretty sure he stole it from Frank Miller). It's very effective for conversations in comics because you can get a lot of back-and-forth moments, whereas normally conversations in comics are a pair of monologues thrown back and forth maybe once. It also gives the artist a chance to work on the subtle diffences in position and facial expressions. So it's fine to use that, and similar, devices repeatedly. I like reading conversations, and I like Bendis' books because they are full of people having believable conversations. The problem is that every character (or, at least, in this book, Jessica, Malcom, and Carol Danvers, and then all the characters in Goldfish) has the same tone, the same expressions, the same damn voice.

The basic complaint is sort of like "All of John Byrne's characters have the same face." Bendis is Conversation Guy. That's what his books focus on. But if that is going to be his focus, he needs to work on the dialogue a bit more. Or, conversely, maybe the problem is that his characters don't have well defined personalities. Maybe if Bendis were to write a conversation between, say, Ben Grimm and Reed Richards (as opposed to Carol Danvers, who has always been a bit of a cipher), we'd see that the problem isn't an issue of tone, it's an issue of character depth.

Honestly, the book is very good, and i wish more books had dialogue like this, but i do feel like i am reading Bendis conversations, and not Jessica conversations.

Malcom seems a bit unrealistic, but maybe we should trust Bendis with that for now...?

The art is the same as always, which means that i like it but priscilla will still be disappointed that "everyone is ugly". I'm still not sold on the muddy colors, but i can't quite picture this art being colored brightly, either.

*My one complaint art-wise is the layout of the spread on pages 8-9. I'm sure it looked fine when the artist drew it out on one big piece of paper, but once it gets put onto two pages, with the fold in the middle, it becomes difficult for me to know which way i'm supposed to read. Normally i read one page, and then the next page. How am i supposed to know that this time i'm supposed to read all the way across? This happens to me a lot on Bendis books so maybe Bendis is dicating and it's not the artist's decision? It doesn't work.

Deadline #2
Bill Rosemann/Guy Davis

This book veers weirdly off into parody early in this issue. I mean, i guess it is hard to bring Batroc into a book and not make fun of him (though the character can be interesting when written well), but the solution to that is to not bring him in. Of course there's nothing wrong with parody, but i don't think it fits well with the book's tone in general.

Speaking of "in general", there's a lot of things i don't like about this book. A lot of things that would seem to fit better in the DC universe, or in the Tick. Things like:

  • Calling the superheroes "capes".
  • The tattoo parlour that all the villains go to.
  • The doctor that all the villains go to.
  • The bar that all the villains go to (i know that's a left-over from Mark Grunweld's crappy run on Captain America, but did it really need to be brought back?)
  • The fix-it guy that all the villains go to (again, the Tinkerer has been around since the beginning, but he wasn't quite the guy that random people off the street brought their image inducers in to for repair)
I just feel like we're reducing the Marvel Universe, which generally speaking a lot of work has been put into to make it feel a little more like "the world outside your window", compared to, say, Metropolis, into something more convenient so that it's easier for Kat to move the plot along.

I don't like Kat's snarky tone, and i don't know if i'm supposed to. ("What's your malfunction?!"). I like her misconceptions about the the marvel super-heroes, but after seeing the human torch as an irresponsible drunk in the first issue, i wonder if the writer thinks they are misconceptions.

I definitely like the concept of following the life of a normal person in the marvel universe, and obviously a good way to do that, to really get them involved in the marvel universe, is to have them be a reporter that ends up covering a super-crime, but it all feels too shoehorned in. Possibly because of all the things listed above (this isn't the Marvel Universe i know and love), and the fact that the Judge is a brand new character. It feels like the writer had a story he wanted to tell, and plopped it in on the MU without going back and really fine-tuning it.

The Judge needs to do something more than show up, act mysterious, drop a minor clue to move the plot along, and then disappear again.

A lot of work is put into Kat's facial expressions, and they look really good. The other characters (Betty Brant, the Tinkerer) look a bit lifeless, and some panels look downright sketchy. I'm not a big fan of the Judge's character design, but at least it is fairly unique in the MU.

I should probably drop this, but i may just plow through the remaining two issues.

Fantastic Four #55
Karl Kesel/Stuart Immonen

A HA! I knew they should've just let Kesel plot all along! This is good. A great character driven issue. A development on the relationship between Ben and Johnny. A scene where Reed isn't the neglecting husband. Forget Waid, keep this guy on the book. (The only other thing i've read by Karl Kesel was his run on Daredevil some time ago, and it was good: funny, a good story, a good sense of continuity. Waid i don't trust since i tried his JLA and got some Silver Age "super-heroes get trapped in a Brother Grimm's Fairytales book" nonsense.).

The art was pretty good, too.

The only thing marring my enjoyment of this book was that i was that so sure the mystery villain was really the impossible man, and i hate the impossible man. But it wasn't!

Extra Stuff!!!

In the back of two of my books (Fantastic Four and Deadline, respectively) were the beginnings of serial stories. I forget if i read that these are meant to be promos for new books, or just freebees. Judging by the quality, i can't imagine they are meant to try to get me to pick up other books i don't normally read to get the next part.

The Call Of Duty part 1
Chuck Austen/David Finch

Some exposition about firefighting. Actually not that bad, because of the narrator's tone. And then a scene at the end where they tell me that if there was sound, creepy music would be playing. It's a good thing they told me, too, cause the art certainly wasn't showing anything creepy (looking back i can see that the fire is staying away from the girl, but at first i had just assumed she'd ducked into the area with the least amount of flames. I think i would have preferred a straight short story about firefighters without the supernatural thrown in, but we'll see how this goes.

Jay Leno & Spider-Man part 1
Ron Zimmerman/Greg Capuillo

"Hey Spidey, er, Peter, can you tell Spider-man that...".

Nah, doesn't work.

I don't think there's anything wrong with people thinking that Peter Parker is a photographer that actively seeks out pictures of Spider-Man, possibly because he knows that he can sell 'em to JJ. However, when people start realizing that Parker and Spidey have some sort of "special relationship", it makes them look like idiots to not fill in the remaining pieces.

That's ok. This story would be crap without that.

For some reason, Jay Leno is in this series. I'm not familiar with Jay Leno, but i know he has a talk show, and i know he's a comedian. The guy in this comic strip is not funny. Neither is Spidey. I only mention this because the full title of this strip is "One Night Only! (Don't Forget To Tip Your Waitress)". I assume that's supposed to indicate that we're going to be getting something like stand-up comedy here. So far, i don't have high hopes.

Failing at comedy, this story seems absolutely pointless. Hopefully, it'll be another dream.

Back to Reviews