"No longer like a toad in these foul cellars will I secret the venom of hatred -- for you shall bring me love!" - Erik
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July 03, 2002
Alias 11
The recent holiday screwed up my schedule, so even though there’s only four books, we’re going to do this Savage Critic style, so i can get on with my life.
Alias #11
Well written, realistic small town detective work (but not a Detective Story, in the genre sense). Very good. There’s little here that requires that the story take place in the marvel universe (just a snippet of conversation and the cliffhanger reveal), which confirms my opinion that the The Call books ought to have left out the supernatural stuff and just concentrated on writing good stories about police, firefighters, or whatever that just happen to take place in the MU. And for what it’s worth, this issue was printed on regular newsprint instead of that glossy garbage they usually use, and it looks much better. The colors blend into the paper much nicer (it may help that this story is not taking place in the city, and so brighter colors can be used). Very good
Avengers #55
More downtime stuff from Busies, which has by far been where his strengths have been on this run. Unfortunately, this issue gets very sappy. It’s a well written sort of sappy, but it’s definitely still sap. Oh and anyone who thought there was any sort of tension in Warbird’s court martial scene must normally read only Hallmark cards for entertainment. If you are going to address an issue, don’t just gloss over it in the next panel. A critical analysis of Warbird’s actions during the Kang War could have made for a very interesting story, but this just feels like a quick tying up of a loose end. The fill in artist is competent and often good. His style reminds me of early Bagley at times. Awful
Elektra #12
While i’m still utterly unconvinced by Elektra’s complete breakdown due to her newly revealed addiction to violence, this issue was better than the previous Rucka issues. Elektra has never been portrayed as a “good” character, and what we have here is Elektra being forced to come to terms with her amorality. On the other hand, there’s a few problems with the premise here. For one thing, Rucka himself recently took great pains to make the distinction between Elektra being a murderer and an assassin, and yet here she is very definitely shown to be a mass murderer. Other than the times she has been brainwashed/possessed by The Hand, i don’t know of any on-panel depictions of Elektra having mowed through a cadre of innocent people, guards or otherwise. She’s also worked with the likes of SHIELD, Wolverine (in his later days), and Daredevil, none of whom would tolerate that sort of behavior (in fact, if SHIELD was aware of the fact that she killed police or soldiers or whatever they were, i would think that hunting her down would be a top priority, instead of hiring her, which is what they recently did). So i’m not sure if this is really accurate. But…. this is just the sort of nitpicky continuity stuff that people complain restricts the creators from telling their stories, so maybe i should just let it go. Taken by itself, this is a good, well paced story. Eh
X-Factor #3
It’s a shame that this is a mini-series that most fans of the X-Men won’t read. This story is exactly the sort of thing that belongs in the core X-Books. The fact that the X-Men themselves rarely appear in the story, and at times appear downright foolish when they do, just makes it better. This is a story about two very real people with distinct viewpoints on mutants, and manages to tackle the issue of mutant politics without one single fight with a giant robot. Amazing. Very good |