I love webcomics. I have a section in my Google Reader that has at least ten webcomics that I follow regularly, and I constantly look for more to read. I have no preference for what I read, so long as it keeps me interested. The idea of taking ones thoughts and putting them, no matter how irrelevant, or offensive, into a form is always intriguing to me, which is part of the reason why, prior to this being a blog, I had actually set this up to have many bad webcomics on here. In time I might repost them, in a separate section, as they were popular among my friends. But I think they’re rather unfunny, for the most part. Enough about me, let’s talk actual ones.

There are plenty of them out there, each with their own ideas, from xkcd and its general decision to veer away from being an intelligent, albeit sarcastic and sometimes interestingly viewed comic on math and romance and language (as it so claims to be) and generally just be a Geek Culture (whatever you consider that to be) comic, that focuses on very simple math and trying to garner more views and income from referencing obvious internet memes and things of that sort. I actually have every intention to, soon, write an article on them as I am doing with this comic. There’s also Questionable Content and Something Positive which feature a sometimes surreal viewpoint on the reality in which they live. It’s a moment in their lives, no matter how odd their lives happen to be.

There’s also Least I Could Do written by Ryan Sohmer, and has gone through a few different artists, and general visions, and is part of the reason I’m even talking about webcomics. LICD is one of those comics that didn’t immediately appeal to me. I’m not a fan of mindless sex jokes, or anything like that, and it wasn’t until the second artist, into the third, that I realized that it’s not a bad comic. It’s actually pretty interesting. The manipulation of Rayne Summer from just a whore into an extremely nerdy, satirical whore was was something that I enjoyed watching. Sohmer’s writing is something that I deeply enjoy, and that’s why I decided to follow, after seeing him mention it, Gutters a webcomic written by him, and drawn by basically everyone.

Gutters can easily be described as a sort of editorial comic of the Comic Book Industry© itself. The very first strip using LICD artist Lar Desouza to poke fun at the oddity of Steve Rogers and Bucky in a post Captain America: Reborn universe. From there, a number of other artists (from webcomic cartoonist Scott Kurtz to a number of other artists of both The Industry and other things such as Tommy Patterson) have taken the reigns and they’ve delivered quite a number of really interesting things to show. Sohmer enjoys what he does, you can tell. And that comes out amazingly.

Perhaps one of the more amusing, and more biting, strips in the obviously short (this strip only started about five weeks ago as of this writing) was one done as a dig at writer Garth Ennis, who I take some issue to at times, but still enjoy. What was surprising to me, once I read this strip (this one being the first I actually read of the the series) is how surprisingly accurate it was. Sohmer’s take on the sometimes cardboard-copy setup of his stories (I managed to successfully refer to his “Avatar Press” series Crossed as “An Ennis story” that was met with complete understanding. I’m vaguely depressed whenever a writer gets so pigeonholed, but I believe Ennis doesn’t entirely mind.) was something that made me think this is going to be a series that I certainly view as worth watching. Each subsequent post, and follow-up newspost about the story and artist, just really makes it worth reading. From the way he digs on Ennis, to the as-of-now current strip poking fun at Green Lantern and the two events of Blackest Night and Brightest Day.

If Sohmer didn’t love comics so much, this would come off less like playfulness and chiding and more like an angry nerd telling you why everything going on in comics nowadays is wrong, and the only way to fix it is to follow the steps that he has listed accordingly. Given the option between the two, I’ll take Kyle Rayner happily cheering “It’s here! The Brightest Day!” then it gets dark and he goes “Oh no! Blackest Night!” It’s playful, like his other work, and that’s something that really helps this. It’s definitely the kind of comic I don’t mind following, or even looking forward to, just because I know it’s gonna be something good, and the art is going to be great.

That’s the other part I need to mention, while I’m thinking of it. The art of this comic is great. Since there is a rotating selection, each comic is drawn differently, feels differently, and seems to express just what it wants to express in a different way. Lar’s Captain America is completely different from Kurtz’s DC Comics staff, who are all completely from the superheroes and everything else that is going on in these comics. You need to read this one if you’re a fan of comics, really. It’ll make you feel better, and then you can check out his other stuff, and realize that Sohmer seems like a pretty cool guy. Like a lot of people who work in Webcomics and it’s more than MegaMan sprites thrown on ComicGenesis or DrunkDunk templates.

In case you missed it, Gutters. Check it out.

Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon are brilliant storytellers are artists, crafting for us something that I couldn’t have even imagined reading even a year ago, in terms of the nature of the story. This ten issue mini-series published by Vertigo isn’t the sort of story that tells you everything outright. Not entirely. We’re told a story, a simple story, but we’re told it in different ways, at different times. It’s all part of it.

The two of them, at the end of the first issue, decide to give us a bit of a rundown as to what they came up with whenever they started the idea of “Daytripper”

The first time were asked what DAYTRIPPER was, we simply said, “It’s about life.” To which we heard a blunt “That’s it?”– followed by mutual silence. “You’re gonna need a much better answer than that,” the other person concluded.

[…]

Have you ever realized how our lives can change at any given moment? How you noticed how we can plan ahead all we want, but we’re always surprised by the unexpected? And that, afterwards, we end up with a sum of moments, both good and bad, that really define who we are, what we want, and what we love? Well, such roller coasters of ordinary life happen every day, and that’s what DAYTRIPPER is about.

Cut to one year later, and here we are. Time to stop telling and start showing. Let us all now meet Brás de Oliva Domingos, wannabe writer, and follow him around as he tries to figure out his life. Let’s put ourselves in his shoes and see where they take us.

[…]

And so, “Daytripper” is a story about the life of a man named Brás. An obituary writer who longs for something more in his life, but is gunned down on his birthday, at the age of 32. He’s killed in a bar, a rather meaningless death, “a senseless waste of human life” as it were. He was killed simply because the circumstances of that situation caused him to be there. He could have been elsewhere, but he wasn’t. Such was that trip in the day of Brás.

It sets the scene for the entirety of the book, of the story that we’re presented. This is not the adventures of the man, as the creators tell us. No, there is no capes, no evil men that need a punch to their face or wrongs that need writing with force. This is just life, in all of its essential melancholy and tedium. It just so happens that at the end of every aspect of this story, our protagonist happens to die in a way that is someone less-than-pleasant. But that is all part of it.

The day trips, you might say, help bring us closer to Brás, help us to understand just who he is, and where he comes from in his life. At age 32, he lives under the shadow of his father, a successful writer, as he desperately works on a novel that he knows he will never successfully finish, only to meet his end uneventfully in a bar just outside of the party he left to go get matches.

But with the next issue, we go back in time to a young, 21-year-old Brás, who drowns during a festival in Salvador while trying to find a woman who he had found particularly interesting earlier. Again, just another day, showing us just how quickly life can end if things change just ever-so-slightly. And this is the story of our character, our man who isn’t the hero of the day, fighting the man with the gimmick.

We see him at 32, 21, 28, 41, 11, 33, and 38 so far. Where the other three years could be I have no idea. But that isn’t really the point with a story like this. Here we aren’t talking about just how he died. In fact, how he died is always, typically, the last panel of the last page, with a small obituary caption telling us briefly about the man he was just then during that point in his life.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this series, of these stories, is that even though they are all different points in his life, wherein every single one ends with his death, they are all still connected somehow. There is a continuity among them all. At 33, there was a plane crash that traumatized his friend. He died on the way to meet him. At 38, years later, he gets a postcard from that friend, and finally goes to meet him after not seeing him for years, only to die at his hands. “He died because he believed in friendship.” as it says at the end of the issue. So we come to notice that, even though he dies at the end of every issue, that is only one way the story could go. There are, obviously, so many other ways.

That, too, I believe is part of the point of the story. It is, as they said in the beginning, about life. And we’re witnessing life as we go.

But, of course, this raises a rather interesting question: Is there a real life for Brás? And if so, did it end during one of the currently seven issues out there? Or is this all just a series of what-ifs in his mind or in his heart? He could have died that day, that could have been him. The same line of thought that gave us Jorge, living out in the desert, and in his altered state killing Brás and himself from the inability to cope with the trauma, and the grief of everything that encompassed him involving the plane crash so many years ago. Perhaps he actually died as he did in issue five, a young boy of 11. The windows into his life that we see both before and after that are merely wishes of a life that could have been– something that was given to him by loved ones.

Or maybe none of the deaths that we have seen, or will see in the last issues of the comic, at his deaths. Maybe his real death is still one to come, one we don’t see because it isn’t the one we were meant to see. Because the deaths, as I said in the beginning, maybe aren’t the key to this story. Maybe the deaths are actually just showing us the fragility of life and all. The kind of things that could kill us at any moment, showing us just how easily our life could be snuffed out. But at the same time, there is a certain amount of humor involved with the notion that in issue #6, he’s killed going to see his friend, only to die, in the immediate issue after, by his friend after five years between the two issues. All the while, he seems to have no acknowledgement of these things.

Save for a few instances, as well, we never actually see him in a state of dying. Most of the issues simply close on the thing that killed him, whatever it might have been, and we’re given the obituary, and we acknowledge that he is dead. It’s just the way the situations are set up– that, in this instance, this moment, this thing is what killed him.

It may be difficult to say, given how there are issues still to be published, but I think this may very well be one of my favorite things to come out of Vertigo in a while. Out of comics, for that matter. It’s a wonderful, touching collection of things that are simply a day in the life of a man, and the things that shape him into who he is and, sometimes, kill him. It’s life, it’s death, it’s love. It’s humanity represented so basically, so plainly, in just 28 wonderfully drawn pages.

I forgot to talk about the art. Silly me.

The art of this comic is also wonderful. It almost looks like watercolor painted over something that is so strikingly different from modern artists like Jim Lee, Stuart Immonen, and others. This isn’t a good thing, nor is it a bad thing, as the superhero artist just would not work with this sort of thing. The characters are all stunningly average in their build and appearance, which lends credence to it all. That the people have nothing spectacular, but have some of the best use of shadows, shading, and appropriate overlays of color, make some scenes infinitely more memorable than others.

The colors aren’t particularly vibrant, except when they need to be, otherwise everything blends nicely, and, as I said, feels not unlike a painting.

But I would certainly not want this artist doing a traditional superhero comic. While I love the style, and I love superhero comics, his is suited for storytelling, and for people. Not for the posturing and the near-arrogance that seems to come from superhero comics. It would cheapen the art, almost.

In the end, you should get this comic. Not just get it, but follow it, for these last issues, and see just how great it is. You surely won’t be disappointed, and if you are, then maybe you look for different things in comics outside of “quality storytelling” and instead would want to pick up something like anything by Rob Liefeld.

Daytripper at Heavy Ink.

If you’re curious about this movie, you should know that the previews are a little misleading. This is not, entirely, a fun happy action comic book movie that will make you feel good. For one thing, Mark Millar (who wrote the eight-issue series this is based on) does not write feel-good material. Looking at his past work, we have The Ultimates (1 and 2), Superman: Red Son, and a number of other books that generally leave you feeling bothered on some level. The Ultimate incarnation of Captain America, as presented by Millar, is an angry soldier who is the epitome of manly manhood, and that’s exactly what he wants it to be. Millar exists in a kind of universe where this violence is casual, almost, and it’s presented in a way that makes it enjoyable. The comics, as well as this movie (for the most part) don’t take themselves that seriously, and it’s something that seems to get lost in the observations and the reviews of materials from people not familiar. I understand I may come off as a little elitist, but I’ve been reading various reviews by people who are acting like a little girl swearing and killing people in an action movie is easily the worst thing to happen to modern media since Hitler. But it really isn’t. Comic books, as a whole, haven’t been for children since the 1970s, and it’s time people start remembering this fact.

But with all of that out, let’s talk about this movie.

Kick-Ass starts off by asking us the very simple question “Why has no one ever decided to be a superhero?” and answers it over the course of the movie in an increasingly absurd way as is Millar’s tendecy. We follow the named-after-a-real-life-dude Dave Lizewski as he ponders the reality of the question with his various friends in the middle of their comic book shop. Not that they own it. Dave and his friends are high school kids and comic book nerds. Every scene features them, as a whole, generally talking or reading a comic book. References to Spider-Man, Batman, and other characters are name-dropped in both these scenes and others involving people in a way that serves as both a way for comic book nerds like them to poke fun at themselves for having the equally inane discussions (There is a scene where we interrupt them having a discussion about a Batman/Joker fight involving things like force-fields) and to humor people who may not have had these kinds of talks in public areas. As the story progresses, we see Dave becoming increasingly agitated with the way his life is going– various muggings have become almost causal encounters.

In the end, Dave decides to dawn a suit he bought online and become a superhero of sorts. Or, rather, he tries. His first encounter leaves him stabbed by the muggers he was going after, and hit by a random driver who runs off to avoid anything. Things become interesting because he continues in an ignorant obsession, mirroring the compulsions of people like Peter Parker and other heroes who continue because they “have” to. Dave, filled to the brim with screws and plates and suffering nerve damage from his assaults, take this as a point of pride and continues on, utterly failing to properly grasp not only the scope of what he’s involved himself with, but also that he may be seen as some kind of twisted inspiration for other people.

While this is going on, the characters Hit Girl and Big Daddy are being formed. Their story is altered somewhat from that of the comic, here, the story is that he is an ex-cop, who is going after a drug lord because he is directly involved with the suicide of his wife. The crime lord also sent Big Daddy to prison. In the comic, he’s just an accountant. This secondary story to Dave’s is an unusual one because it presents a lot of the most disturbing aspects of the movie– specifically the ones I mentioned up in the previous paragraphs. Hit Girl, in her opening scene (her name is Mindy, in this) is shot in the chest by her father (Nicolas Cage) as a training exercise, and they go to the bowling alley afterward. It’s a casual, near gallows-humor moment that even in the comic left me amused. There’s an almost endearing quality in watching the little girl maintain a, well, little-kid fascination and joy out of something as morbid as the murder of various people like her father encourages her like she’s just getting a puppy or something. But, as I’ve said, it’s the atmosphere of the comic, and it’s a Mark Millar work. It’s just par for the course in this universe.

Meanwhile, in movie-land-main-story, Dave is now the gay BFF of the clear love interest in the movie. Gay, because rumors are starting that the reason he was naked in his accident was because he was gay or something like that. So the girl, who Dave was crushing on entirely too much, takes him as a friend and Dave attempts to use this to eventually get in her pants. Things start to branch away from the comic here, but I’ll save that for later.

The movie continues in a flurry of action scenes and people discussing the life and actions of comic books in an almost surreal manner, with the son of the drug lord dude becoming a superhero himself to initiate a team-up and get Kick-Ass taken out. All the while Big Daddy and Hit Girl are the ones actually engaging in all of the violence, killing people and so forth. Then, just before Big Daddy, Hit Girl, and Dave go to beat The Bad Guy, Dave confronts the girl, tells her he’s not gay and they start having a lot of sex which is totally how that works.

The end starts coming after this. Big Daddy is killed after being tortured on screen following his capture at the hands of Red Mist (the team-up kid) at an attempted unmasking of Kick-Ass. Hit Girl and Kick-Ass back to the their headquarters and weapon-up for The Last Fight. They go, and Hit Girl deals out a lot of punishment before getting the shit knocked out of her by the crime lord whose name isn’t important enough to remember. Dave shows up with a thing so far removed from the comic book ending that it’s almost ridiculous, but I loved it. In the end, Dave is still with the girl, Hit Girl is in his school, and they all lived happily ever after. Except for Red Mist who is gonna be the bad guy in the next movie because why not.

The movie is basically fight scenes. Outlandish, almost absurd, fight scenes. But that’s a Millar book so that’s what I went in expecting. Some of the changes that were made were changes I didn’t really like. I felt that the almost happy ending kind of defeated the overall down-note feel of the book: Dave not only doesn’t get the girl, but she hates him now, and Dave’s gruesome torture scenes from both the first and last issues of the book are removed for something a lot more subdued. I mean, Dave gets his nuts zapped with electricity through jumper cables. That’s just fucked up. Big Daddy actually being a cop was a touch that, while unsurprising, was something I didn’t really care for. However, it’s not really bad enough for me to complain. So he’s not a boring accountant, meh.

The last fight scene is so ridiculous that I’m not going to even begin to describe it, you should go just for that last scene. It’s ridiculous on every possible level, and is a lot more like Frank Miller than it is Mark Millar. It’s not how it ended in the comic, at all, but it was fantastic all the same and I really can’t find anything to actively complain about with it.

There weren’t a lot of changes made to the costumes. Big Daddy’s outfit was changed to a more armored, The Dark Knight-looking costume, and is actually referenced as looking like Batman a few times. The Red Mist goes from looking very generic to something like an emo kid with red everywhere, and it’s a touch that I think fits the character a little more. Kick-Ass’s costume is still just as bad as the comic, and Hit Girl’s isn’t very different.

On the whole, despite the major differences, it was still a great movie, and something I intend on actually buying once it comes out. It’s making me look forward to not only the eventual home release, but the both the comic book and movie sequels that are planned. I can’t wait to see just where they’re gonna take this universe that is being constructed. I just hope that the sequels don’t take it too far, or lose the kind of dark humor that makes me enjoy these.

If you aren’t too bothered by obnoxious levels of violence befalling little girls, and bad language coming out of their mouths, go see the movie. If you’re a fan of comic books, you need to see this movie. It’s probably nowhere near as good as Iron Man 2 is going to be, but that’s just something we have to deal with. And I figure neither of these movies are going to be as good as the Avengers movie.

So, the book itself is something like a steampunk pirate adventure/fantasy story with various anthropomorphic animals. If you were to tell me that alone, I wouldn’t consider this book. Generally speaking, these aren’t the sorts of books I look at, mostly because I tend not to like anthropomorphic animals. Talking animals by themselves are fine, or talking animals that are animals are also fine. However, I’ve never really enjoyed seeing what amounts to buff dudes with fox faces and tails. It’s part of why I never play the Argonian or the Khajit in The Elder Scrolls games, the races, being animal with human builds, make it slightly more difficult to directly relate than an elf or some other archetype of fantasy stories. There were a lot of anthropomorphic animal things in Anime Boston, now that I think about it.

I’m also not particularly fond of Steampunk, just because it’s become trendy, and a lot of people don’t tend to do it right. Pirates are okay.

Clearly this is not the sort of book I should like, but what I found rather interesting was that I kept reading. The story, while not immediately engaging, was something that I felt like I should keep reading. I wasn’t swept up in the battles and things of that sort, but I was still curious, and interested in the characters that existed. They seemed fleshed out, though still hovering close to just being the typical characters that might exist in a story of this level (or just general pirate-fantasy stories). But I read the book, and after I finished it I found myself surprised that I was wanting more of these people. I wanted to know more of their past, and I wanted to know the future. I, simply, wanted to know what was going to happen next. And, best I can tell, I’m not actually going to get to know that.

But, I suppose you may want to actually know the story. The story is focused around Tobin Manhein, a half-elf pirate captain who was once apparently in the military; his anthro-bear comrade-in-arms Bryan; as well as a absurdly high-tech-for-the-period woman named Gearz and their adventure. From what I could gather story involved Tobin attempting to get some stuff for easy money, and then being entangled in the comic’s weird magic religion thing.

The book contains elves, dwarves, anthro-animals, the cyborg woman, and other races that really help establish it firmly in the fantasy/adventure genre. The dwarves that do show up tend to be typical dwarves, having features like the Svirfneblin and the dwarves of the Weiss/Hickman “Dragon Gate” books and other fantasy stories. That is to say that the only dwarves that are regularly seen are, short with beards, and tend to have a strong focus on machinery, as they work only with the instances of engines and things like that within the book.

The book also features other standard operating practices for fantasy stories such as guilds and things like that, but on the whole these things don’t really detract from the story, since they’re side details that would only really be a bother if you were looking for something to pick at.

The story itself actually feels unfinished. The main conflict with the magic religion thing is ended by the end of the story, but there’s still a lot to tell, which is what I mentioned earlier. The relationship between Tobin and Gearz, which is one that is suggested had been done before, needs elaboration and things of that nature. What happens next? They don’t tell us. We’re just given a tease in a one page epilogue after everything, as though that is adequate. An epilogue that has, quite frankly, as little do with the parts I’m interested in reading, to paraphrase a “Sandman” line, as I have to do with Hedgehogs.

The ending suggests that there’s simply going to be a resuscitation of the conflict that just ended, and we’re going to have to deal with something along those lines, which starts to drag it back into basic fantasy territory. It’s not something I’d like. Were they to continue beyond these issues (they might have already, I don’t know) I’d like to see something that related to the previous issues.

It was, though, a good story. After all, I wouldn’t be wanting to read more if it were bad. Even if, sometimes, I had a bit of difficulty following it immediately.

My primary complaint with this story isn’t actually the story, but rather the style of the art. The art, while not bad, is very rough compared to some things. It feels very much like something that was originally printed up in the web, but not like Ellis’ “Freak Angels”. It didn’t have the refined feel of some of the more professional web comics out there for obvious reasons. The art did not immediately detract from my enjoying the story, but there were times where, had they made a few changes it would have been much more enjoyable.

Another frustrating part was that the person who did the caption boxes used the exact same style for every person’s thoughts, as well as scene descriptors. As this comic is in black and white, it would take me a moment to try to figure out just who was thinking or if this was a situation where “later that day” was just a scene change. This is just something that appears to have not been considered as something that would be a problem and isn’t really an issue for me, but just was annoying in a few scenes.

Gearz herself was a rather confusing character to me, mostly because in an incredibly steampunk world, her technology was something more akin to a quasi-cyberpunk setup. The woman had mechanical arms and had a “War Mode” that activated at one point in the story, which featured a nicely distinct caption indicating that sort of thing. She also had this weird beam that would come out of her arm that functioned not unlike a sword and a shield when used in different features.

The complaint here is that, really, she isn’t driven by steam, or anything like that. And steampunk technology cannot do that sort of thing. She’s a higher instance of science fiction than the rest of the story and, had she been properly utilized, would have possibly broken the entire established rules of the world created.

Perhaps the most jarring thing about this comic for me is one that’s actually kind of silly. The art, I feel, doesn’t mesh with the materials of the story that are presented. Let me explain. As I said in the beginning, there are a number of features within this story that do are pretty unorthodox for a western comic– at least, a recognizable western comic. I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying that Steampunk Pirates And Bear-Men With Shotguns isn’t the most predominant thing out there.

Oh yeah, the bear dude? Has a shotgun. Honestly, that’s on my list of coolest things ever.

Anyway, I feel like this story would be better suited as a more eastern-styled comic. I’m not saying, at all, that it should have the minimalist easternized style that gave is the crap look of the Teen Titans show, or the majority of the modern comic book cartoons out today, I mean a fully fleshed out manga comic style. Yeah, that might make it feel a little more generic at first (I saw a lot of anthro-animal manga in the same room) but the story itself feels like something that was originally written with this in mind, but shifted to a more western art. Of course, given the tendency for a lot of really bad manga-type things, I almost don’t want to immediately recommend that because there SO much out there (given the increasing fandom of Japanese materials) but at the same time if it might work I can’t… not… recommend the idea.

There were, however, a few particularly well-drawn panels that were in the comic. The artist took a lot of time drawing a few of the face-focused panels, giving them an incredibly detailed and emotional feel that seemed to make some of the more rushed-looking aspects a little disappointing.

In summary here, since I’m rambling a lot more than I intended to, this is a good story. The art is slightly off for what’s being told, and I have really only minor complaints about the entire thing. I would read a sequel to this story any time it was made available, and I’d probably enjoy it just as much as I did this one. I hope that at some point I can find a sequel, if they made it, or they do make one so that I can find out what’s going to happen next. This is a universe, something that has been established in the five issues of this trade paperback, and it’s something I could really stand to see more of.

I want to know more about these anthro-wolves, and bears, and cats. More about the elves, and the dwarves. I want to know how Gearz manages to exist in this continuity. I want to see what’s going to happen. I want to do what’s happened in the past, without it just being told to me in a panel. These people have so many stories to tell, if only they can get told by the people involved in the creation of the stories.

You can find the comics at their website here or by going to the Free Lunch Comics website.

“Ultimate Comics” as I mentioned in my discussion of Ultimatum some 300 years ago, starts about six months or so after the events of that mini-series. Things have changed, we don’t entirely know why, and some things are starting to be uncovered in a way that makes it understanding. Sometimes we don’t really understand.

I’m going to talk about these in a few paragraphs, because they’re all very early books, so I can’t really talk about them at length.

Spider-Man

Right off, I dislike the art on the early issues. Parker’s head, in the mask, is eerily round and disturbing. However, I am certainly amused and intrigued by the introduction of Mysterio (though I thought he showed up in Ultimate Spider-Man Annual 3, unless that’s a different version) and the modifications made to his costume are something that I rather enjoy. The fire is, really, a lot nicer to look at than the fishbowl head. He also looks a lot more intimidating, and a lot more like a villain.

I’m not sure how I feel about the apparent death of the Kingpin, but he was never really the same threat that he was in the 616 universe, so I can’t complain too much.

The introduction of a new hero was something that intrigued me as well, though I really found the distinction that it was merely Kitty Pryde to be a little disappointing. Especially given the already Harem of Superheroes feel that UCSM is giving off in all of these issues. And while I love Bendis, very much, I am more or less done with the constant awkwardness between Mary Jane and Parker (this may have changed with the issue that arrived either this week, or the previous, however, I haven’t read it so I don’t know). I understand that shit happened during the break between books, but we don’t need it constantly referenced. That’s Loeb stuff, and I’m gonna complain about him soon enough.

Ultimately (see what I did there?) I’m gonna keep reading this. Ultimate Spider-Man has been a very refreshing and entertaining story for me, and I really do want to see where all of this goes. Plus, dude, Bendis.

Ultimate Avengers

I want to just type in big letters “Fuck Yeah Mark Millar” and hope that you get my idea. You may not, so I’m going to have to actually sit here and tell you just why I felt such joy reading all of the issues of this series. Aside from the fact it meant that Loeb was not writing this particular incarnation of the Ultimates/Avengers.

Simply put, as I mentioned in my initial discussion of this, everyone is back. The Ultimates books were books that engaged in needless violence, but in a way that was not so much vulgar as it was hilarious. Captain America, a World War II hero, yelling at people “Does this letter on my head stand for ‘France’?” and everything else, happening in a manner that is completely ridiculous and over-the-top, and probably one of the greatest stories I’ve read.

With Millar back, we have Captain America back from being the one-note “Golly, Miss” from Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum into something a lot more “I’m sorry that you suck so much, I’m gonna go punch people in the face. Have a nice day.” The man said “What kind of girl gets stopped by a bomb?”

Hawkeye has moved on from his dead family– at least, moved on enough to stop talking about them every time he’s in the comic. All of the characters have returned to their, not quite deep and meaningful, but at least not one-note incarnations. We’re also introduced to a new Wasp, a “Nerd Hulk” and a number of others things.

Also, the Red Skull is in this comic, and he’s Captain America’s son. He’s also about as much of a bastard as you’d expect from someone being called The Red Skull in the Ultimate Universe. He’s the perfect kind of villain for Millar, horrendously violent, sociopathic, and almost making murder into an art. It’s like “Kick-Ass” but somehow even more hilarious entertaining in how sheerly morbid the entire thing is.

I can’t stop reading this series, and I desperately want Millar to make more of them, right now, to counter act some of the other things that are going on in comics.

Armor Wars

I’m a needlessly huge fan of Warren Ellis. He’s probably one of my top-five favorite writers, and I immensely enjoyed his take on Tony Stark and The Hulk in the “Ultimate Human” mini-series a while back. So I was curious, and excited to see what he was going to do with Tony this time, as Ellis’ primary traits in comics seem to involve incredibly advanced technologies, sarcasm, and explosions. Just look at, well, everything he’s written recently. This is not, in itself, a bad thing by any means. Merely something that I’ve noticed in my readings. Actually, knowing that he has recurring traits like that, to me, makes it more enjoyable.

Anyway.

Armor Wars tells us the story of Tony Stark attempting to come to terms with the fact that not only does he not have as much money as he used to, but the plans for his Iron Man armors have gotten out onto other markets, and people are more or less using them to their own advantage. Something that upsets him. In an effort to quell as much damage as he can he attempts to go back to his buildings and get plans and everything else.

He meets, in this, Justine Hammer and the ultimate incarnation of Ghost. He also sees that the police in Britain are using modified versions of his armor in an attempt to maintain order and so forth, and becomes increasingly bothered by all of this and desperately wants to end all of this presumably to go live with Justine and have a lot of drunken sex.

However, we learn at the end that the actual person behind all of this stuff was Tony’s father, wasn’t so much dead as he was turning himself into a robot thing. Tony is rather distraught by this. His father tells him that he wants the inside of some box that he’s been going after, and whenever he opens it, he sees the head of Tony Stark in another universe.

Ultimate Tony tells us that this is from an alternate universe, obviously, and that one of the interesting things about it is that the head has a security measure where it shuts down the nanofleets inside people. This bit all ends with Tony indicating that he was safe, but a cut back shows that everyone else– Justine (who had been outed as a spy of Tony’s Father), his father, and various robots had all be dead or destroyed by the head.

Tony ends up being drunk, in Berlin. I was actually kind of depressed by how short this was. I knew it was only four issues, but I barely got a chance to properly feel sympathetic for Tony and his plight. I’ve always been a fan of this incarnation of Iron Man– he’s, well, nicer. And he constantly, like the other, gets shit on and attempts to make it through. I can only hope that Ellis writes another Iron Man book in this universe.

Ultimate Enemy

An ongoing mini series right now, there isn’t much to talk about with this one. We’re introduced to the remains of the Fantastic Four– Sue and Ben Grimm– and we learn that Ben has loved sue, but she doesn’t love him. Ben is still a part of SHIELD and that everything seems to going okay, except for this really weird monster thing that is showing up and causing a huge ruckus.

The only thing that’s really interesting about this book as that it looks like it’s going to be a Samuel L. Fury centered one, which I generally enjoy because Fury is always an entertaining character when written properly, even in 616. I’ve generally enjoyed how completely and utterly annoyed he is by everything that goes on, and the use of that looks like it’s going to be something that I won’t be able to get enough of.

I’m curious to see what this mysterious monster thing is, and where this series is going, however, it looks like it’s not going to be too much of a disappointment, given that the monster has some sort of connection to Fury, and whenever that happens, you know these things tend to be interesting.

Ultimate X

Of course, not all of the comics are good comics. Ultimate X is the first of two Jeph Loeb comics that are in the Ultimate Universe. This one specifically features someone who we more or less find off right away is Wolverine’s son. He has the same bone claws as Wolverine, and his healing factor. Though this kid, whose name I can’t be bothered to remember, features the ability to coat his claws in some form of metal that we can only assume is adamantium. So apparently there’s that as well.

The book, like the next one, is only on Issue #1, however, I’m already incredibly annoyed by it.

Specifically, Ultimate X feels like an incredibly convoluted resurrection attempt on the part of Loeb to bring Wolverine back– given the indication at the “burial” of Wolverine during… I believe X-Men Requiem that there was no DNA of the man left on there, so they couldn’t clone him. Given that he has a son, that’s sharing his DNA, that leads me to believe that Loeb is going to attempt, or at least be involved with, the resurrection of Wolverine.

And here I was hoping that after he killed off 90% of the mutants, I wouldn’t have to deal with this crap.

I am like to keep reading this series, at least reading it in the shops to determine if it’s even worth my time, but this is not, unless it becomes exceptionally better, a book I’ll be buying any time soon. Especially if we’re bringing back Wolverine.

New Ultimates

You know all of that praise I just had for Ultimate Avengers? Yeah, forget that. There isn’t really a lot of substance going on in the first issue, but it’s the first issue. One of the more interesting things to note is that Loeb is attempting to bring back Thor. Thor who has apparently stopped speaking in the really dumb Iambic Pentameter thing for Ultimate Thor. He’s always spoken in modern English until Ultimates 3.

We start off with Hawkeye going right back into “my children are dead and I am depressed” and other things that make me ultimately really not care about the character. Captain American reverts to his previous Loeb incarnation and the book really feels like a disappointment.

One of the only interesting things to find is that Tony Stark and Carol Ferris (the acting head of SHIELD, I guess) are involved in a relationship.

Of course, while Ultimatum and Ultimates 3 featured gratuitous amounts of violence on almost a 1990s scale– all of the cannibalism, and everything else– this comic decides to go the opposite direction and work something more like the beginning of Ultimates 3– needless amounts of sex. I really don’t need to see this random woman in Valhalla get all naked for Thor, nor do I need to see Carol mostly naked on the last issues with Tony.

I, being human, have the ability to infer things about people, which is something that Loeb seems to have forgotten as he’s moved to Marvel. Like with Ultimate X, I’m not really looking forward to these issues, but I’m reading them at least for the sake of understanding just what’s going on in the Universe.

Although, interestingly enough, Loeb seems to basically be completely disregarding Ultimate Avengers whenever he’s writing this, so I don’t really know what his plan is or anything.

In Summary

Read Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, and Ultimate Comics: Ultimate Avengers. You should also buy Armor Wars. Ultimate Enemy might turn into something good, so keep an eye out for that. Just basically ignore anything with Loeb directly attached to it, since it all just reverts back to Ultimates 3 level ridiculousness and not really anything worth reading.

Okay, so, I haven’t really been keeping up with Marvel comics. I’ve been busy trying to read the Civil War, while they’re already three events ahead of me: Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and the newest one called “Siege.” From what I can gather, Dark Reign has been about Norman Osborne fucking shit up, and Siege is about further shit being fucked up. If you’ll excuse the incredible crude, and base, description of it all. At some point during this, Tony Stark fell victim to something, and has been out of commission. Which seems kind of odd, but they always have plans for this.

So, to celebrate Tony coming back from the brink of whatever, they’ve decided to give him some new armor, which looks roughly like this

That’s not a particularly bad design. One of the designers, who happens to be involved with both the upcoming Thor and Iron Man movies, Matt Fraction, had this to say:

“The inspiration for the new design came from thinking about a sleeker, leaner, tougher Iron Man,” revealed Fraction. “If technology is increasingly getting smaller and lighter it seems like the Iron Man should do the same: ergonomic and aerodynamic. We were looking for something that felt as sleek and glossy as a sports car Tony Stark would covet. I love what we’ve come up with. It feels like the next evolutionary step in the Iron Man’s design.”

Which is a good idea, really, and shows that they aren’t complete idiots whenever it comes to character determination for things like this– costumes and so forth– it’s an interesting design, I’ll say that much. However, I’m not entirely sure how to react to it as a whole. I feel like the drawing itself that’s been given to people isn’t entire complete in its idea. There’s something about it that’s missing. While it may be true that technology, as it advances, compresses so to speak (look at the evolution of the television from the large rotary ones to the fact that you may very well be reading this on a phone about the size of your hand and thinner than a checkbook) there is still the issue of the armor. Of course, given the fact that Marvel exists in a universe where a fictional, indestructible metal called “Adamantium” exists, this isn’t really an issue so much as it is an inconvenience and an excuse for people to complain. Some of these lights look a little superfluous, but this is comic books and superfluousness is something that exists in large heaping masses.

Of course, there is still Ultimate Comics: Iron Man: Armor Wars and the, what I believe was called “iMan” if you want absurdly streamlined technology for your comic books.

For now, I’ll support the costume change, though I think Ultimate Iron Man probably has the best Iron Man suit.

I am fairly certain, from reading #3, that the person involved with this storyline has never actually read Marvel 1602, and has no idea what he’s doing. I mean that with respect, of course. I say this because Henri Le Pym, the Hank Pym analogue for this story who works for “Baron Octavius” the obvious Doc Ock analogue (who seems to have tentacles, or at least his hands bear suction cups similar in nature to an octopus) has a man in his captivity named “McCoy” who looks not unlike some kind of feral, beast like animal. McCoy describes himself as one of the greatest minds of the era, and a number of other things. However, there’s an issue here.

There was already a Beast analogue– Hal McCoy of the Witchbreeds led by Carlos Javier– and this man was not any kind of philosopher or anything of the sort. He was also Beast without any kind of major mutations. Simply the original form. This new McCoy lacks the large hands and feet and stature, and instead just looks like a rather hairy individual. So, either we’re to believe that Hal was kidnapped and believes himself to be something else entirely, or this is an instance of someone wanting to bring in a character, and couldn’t find some way to shoehorn the guy in there. It’s disappointing, really, that the person couldn’t be bothered to remember that McCoy already existed, and wanted to bring in Wasp, Ant Man and a bunch of other people who weren’t entirely Spider-Man oriented.

They’ve also brought in the Watsons– here “Watsonnes”– with Marion Jane as an actress. I understand that sometimes names need to be changed for the sake of the literature, however, “Marion”? The name “Mary” existed then, and if anything, why not call her “Miriam” or something like that? Are we channeling Maid Marion here? And furthermore, why bring in any kind of analogue to Mary Jane, but not bring in Gwen Stacey? Who was, really, a much more significant character in Parker’s life. Unless Virginia Dare, in this instance, was taking her place.

Perhaps the only thing worth looking at in this comic is the use of Kingpin and Bullseye. Specifically, these two are now pirates– The King’s Pin (I am not entirely sure what that means. I would have simply used his real name.), and Bull’s Eye– and they are probably the best translated to the new universe. Specifically Bullseye. This new incarnation is a tattooed pirate, with a white bullseye on his forehead. He keeps his knife throwings and everything, and seems to be rather focused on killing Peter Parker. Which is interesting, because he’s a Daredevil villain and Murdoch doesn’t exist in this book (though he could easily fit).

I don’t know what’s going on with this story to be perfectly honest. I’ve tried, several times, to read through these first three issues in an attempt to make sure I follow it, and I can’t. It’s just not good. There’s too many things that don’t fit the universe, and too many instances of the writer simply leading me to believe that he doesn’t care about the story. I won’t keep reading this so don’t expect anything more detailed than this in the future.

It’s just disappointing that 1602 has been reduced to this. It was rather promising.

I’ve been following the Justice League since I first got into comics in 2005. The first JLA books I read were “Year One” and the “Tower of Babel” arc from the actual series “JLA”. It was a piece of art, to say the least. The wonders that Batman had come up with in an effort to take down his teammates, and the fallout in “Divided We Fall” were all wonderful to read and I was completely engrossed with every incredibly epic (used here in the sense of “dealing with this on an epic scale” not in the sense of “EPIC WIN!”) page and story. I followed it up until the Crisis of Conscience, and the Infinite Crisis connections. The last issues of the book were disappointing to say the least, and the not the kind of thing that even really FELT like the Justice League.

That’s when I found out that Brad Meltzer, who had written one of my favorite arcs in the Green Arrow book, as well as Identity Crisis, would be doing the first several issues in the newest JLA book, and it would go back to the name “Justice League of America”. I was excited. I anxiously read through issue #0, taking in the different aspects of the Yesterdays and Tomorrows of the different artists under him, wondering which aspects would be true. I hoped that, while it would not be the same creature of Morrison and Waid, that it would hold its own well.

Then I read the first issues. I was blown away with The Tornado’s Path. The agony of the tragedy of Red Tornado is something that still, ever so slightly, makes me feel for him. Meltzer’s characters have always had a human quality about them that I found particularly enjoyable. I felt for Reddy, as he went through a number of new experiences in his human body, only to have it all ripped away from him by a newly developed Solomon Grundy as his friends attempted to beat an Amazo who hadn’t quite had all of his memories of Red Tornado removed.

And in the end, Reddy was a robot with a soul again, but now he had the knowledge of what it means to be a human. And he really would never recover. Meltzer made a point of showing that. He had seen the other side, and he was slowly becoming detached from it all. Perhaps a kind of depression.

“The Lightning Saga”, combined with the wonder Geoff Johns’ Justice Society was another fantastic story that also brought the human emotions that DC characters sometimes lack and that Johns and Meltzer can sometimes bring to a story. Watching the Legion talk, and recover, and wondering just who it was they were going to bring back. And seeing the disappointment in the eyes of the old leaguers whenever, once again, Barry Allen stays dead, is something that strikes me.

However, Meltzer really left after all of these. He moved on to other things and other writers took over. We were introduced to a new Injustice League, and while it was nice to see a new Injustice thing, for the sake of the story, it felt kind of out of place compared to the rather personal stories that had just taken place. And on the whole I feel like this was the beginning of the end of the League.

The one arc that saved it, in a unique was, was the Anansi arc that took place just before the big stuff that’s going on now, if memory serves. Vixen (who had recently had a number of issues with her powers) met up with the African trickster entity Anansi, here declaring that he was the one who developed her powers, and had connections to Animal Man. Reality was being altered by the Spider, because all stories are Spider stories, to indirectly quote Neil Gaiman.

The Anansi arc was interesting in different respects. There was no Luthor or anything, and it felt a bit like “Divided We Fall” in the way it was. Anansi shifted the truth into new stories, and we watched as characters changed. And sometimes in rather interesting ways that I would actually like to see done.

In particular: Bruce Wayne underwent a rather drastic change. As we all know, following visit to see The Mask of Zorro, Bruce’s parents were killed. Well, in the New Story, it was a western, I believe. And Bruce, in turn, killed the person who murdered his parents. Instead of Batman, he became Paladin. And he was a killer.

He was a fugitive, a kind of Punisher in old-west gear and it was interesting to read and I wondered just how much more you could work with a man who killed his enemies. You would need a mini series, obviously.

Other characters changed, Superman and Wonder Woman married, and so forth. In the end, this storyline ended much too soon.

Of course, it’s not just storylines that have had issue. Black Canary, at the beginning, was made the chairwoman of the JLA, something that she took great pride in, and something that was slowly subverted by the Trinity (one of the given names for Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman) with the three of them going so far as to develop a pocket dimension wherein they could hold meetings. Canary found out about this, and this, along with general poor writing and wishes for various paths, led to the breakdown of the League almost completely after the events of Final Crisis.

The original team was gone. Black Canary still led the team, but it wasn’t entirely something worth leading. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a few others were gone. They had left for various reasons. Instead, the team still contained Vixen and Red Arrow (Roy Harper, who was once Arsenal and Speedy. Not my favorite choice, as I thought Arsenal was a fine character type, but there’s been a need for Johns and Meltzer’s stories to kind of bring Kingdom Come into continuity despite it being a part of the multiverse) however they were greeted with the arrival of the female incarnation of Dr. Light and a few other people.

The team was no longer the A-Team or even the B-Team. It was a collection of B and C level characters, some of them who had last existed in a League book whenever was the Justice League International. The only major characters who were involved were Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and Black Canary. But even then there was trouble, as Arrow and Lantern defected and gave us the wholly forgettable mini-series “Cry for Justice” wherein we watch as a bunch of wonderfully drawn panels tell a story that I honestly can’t remember anything about after having read all that’s come out.

Things have gone on in this book for a while, and I’m hoping that, soon, things will work out and the League will turn into what it was. However, what it is happens to be something that’s barely worth reading. The most recent issue of the book is issue number 40 as of this writing. It consisted of Vixen, Black Canary, an incredibly deformed Plastic Man (I actually missed issues 37-38, and have difficult remembering before then, so I’m not sure what Eel is doing there), Doctor Light, another female I can’t remember, and then Zatanna all being attacked by the various Black Lanterns that have formed from the old rogues.

One of which is your friend and mine, the original Doctor Light. Dead-Light decides that the best course of action would be to attempt to rape Living-Light because obviously the guy does nothing but want to rape women, talk about rape, and do rape-y things because this is character development as opposed to beating a dead horse. So the issue ends with a bunch of broken Black Lanterns, a naked Living-Light, and all of the other people from there looking all distracted and worried and serious and in all honestly it’s something I would have rather not read, however, I keep hoping that this series will start to get better.

I don’t know when I’ll stop following it, if I will. The stories are incredibly disappointing anymore, with, as I said, the Anansi arc being the best one that existed after Meltzer left the book. I don’t expect Meltzer to join back onto it, but can we at least get something worth reading again?

Zatanna and Black Canary are both supposed to be incredibly strong characters. Not necessarily physically, but Zatanna is one of the greatest magic users in the DCU. Canary is a fantastic martial artist and was part of the Birds of Prey setup for a while. Vixen has the ability to call upon animal spirits and so forth to give her the ability to PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH AMAZO. Why are these women being written like helpless little girls?

Why has Doctor Light been written like a housewife who can sometimes make bright things happen with her hands? These aren’t these characters.

Is it too much to ask that the characters be written like superheroines?

…but all in good time. Let’s get down to business, shall we?

THE RESISTANCE
The first album up for review is the newest offering from Teignmouth, UK’s number one collection of prog/gloom rockers Muse. The long-awaited follow-up to 2006′s iconic Black Holes & Revelations, Muse’s The Resistance has arrived to a storm of hype, a viral internet game, a tour with U2, and a gnashing of teeth by those nice people at Pitchfork waiting desperately to chew Matthew Bellamy to pieces. But aside from all of that, how does The Resistance stack up as an album? Well.

The short answer is stupid, overblown and pretentious and most importantly, stupid. But if you’re a fanboy, you probably want the long answer.

I’ve probably listened to this album more times than I care to admit, but that’s not due to any kind of real enjoyment that comes from the experience; it just makes good background music for killing the shit out of mobs in Guild Wars. In fact, that’s probably what the majority of this album could be described as: soundtrack music.

The LP opens up with the Blondie/Dr. Who shout-along “Uprising,” with a hint of Marilyn Manson’s “Personal Jesus” cover thrown in for a bit of extra bite. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this, and while the track is nothing spectacular, it does give a strong opening hook for the album to play from. Plus, who doesn’t love a good faux-punk shout-along track on a swing beat?

Once we get to the titular “Resistance,” though, the whole thing starts to fall apart. Between the turgid U2-isms, the idiotic, overwrought 1984 lyrics, and a chorus that drags on for just a bit too long, Resistance quickly murders any momentum Uprising built beforehand. The album limps from there through “Undisclosed Desires,” a clear attempt to re-capture the R&B syncopated glory of Black Holes & Revelations’ “Supermassive Black Hole,” only without the cutting riffs that made the latter such a pleasure to listen to. From there we get to the viral marketing ploy/Queen tribute/Oh-God-Bellamy-put-the-fucking-tinfoil-hat-down anthem “United States of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage).”

And the worst part about this overwrought, unapologetic orchestral-rock-opera-the-government-is-coming-to-destroy-you-and-murd er-your-children mess? It’s probably the best track on the album. Queen comparisons go here.

After that comes “Guiding Light,” which is basically Bellamy masturbating onto recording tape with his synthesizer while trying to pull off his best Vangelis impression. At this point I’m convinced Muse would be a pretty good hair metal band.

Things finally pick up again with “Unnatural Selection,” a straight-up rocker that confirms that Muse have finally stopped ripping Radiohead off and taken to ripping themselves off instead (see also: “New Born”). Despite the copy-paste riff, the bland vocals and the bizarre organ opening, the song itself does have a few good hooks and can make a fun listen, if you don’t take it very seriously. “MK Ultra,” aside from having one of the best song titles ever, does have a certain Dream Theater-esque charm, though by this point the lyrics have already gone back to the Alex Jones News Story of the Week in thematic terms.

If by this point you haven’t given up on this album or were too busy merc’ing the Lich in Hell’s Precipice to Guiding Light, there’s one more song and a final, exhausting run through a three-piece “symphony” that closes the album in a bugged-out, new-prog space-rock (?) mess. First comes the sleazy “I Belong To You,” perhaps one of the more creative songs on the album, complete with an ill-advised clarinet solo (seriously?), a ballad-y, unholy attempt by Bellamy to sing in French, and some less-than-stellar piano acrobatics.

Then comes the Final Boss of the album, Exogenesis: Symphony.

The first part isn’t bad. After some sweet string melodies, followed by Phillip Glass-esque scales, the song finally introduces itself with some space-y guitar work and undeniably vapid lyrics (“Who are we? What are we? Why are we?”). It’s theatrical bordering on the maudlin. Again, this is something enjoyable to listen to if you don’t take it very seriously.

The second part banishes the oh-so-pretty strings in favour of Bellamy’s desire to show off his Rachmaninoff-esque piano noodling. Only instead of adding any flavour of technical virtuoso to the track, it comes off as completely directionless. Then there’s some epic opera rock about spreading codes to stars, but by this point I’ve become so inundated to this kind of bullshit that I’ve just given up trying to make sense of this album.

Finally comes a Chopin/Liszt-style piano piece about forgiveness and starting over. Saccharine and mostly forgettable.

So, towards the end of the review I was working out a long-winded essay on why I’ve been a Muse fan all of these years, but after enduring this album (and writing this review) it’s not hard to say that I’ve found my ‘Guiding Light,’ which is telling me to never spend money on a Muse album again.

I rate this album one poorly-written libretto out of five.

To use the Marvel phrase “What if the heroes all first came about in 1602?” And it was a marvelous little piece of work, if you were into it. I loved seeing just how everyone had been manipulated, forced into a situation that was wholly unnatural, even for Marvel. Nick Fury as military man under Queen Elizabeth, and so on. It was a fantastic little thing that made the universe seem very real.

As it’s been known to happen, following Neil’s work, a number of spin-offs came about. One of which was like “1602: New World” and the other was “1602: Fantastick Four”. Each of them introduced a few new characters such as Namor, and Iron Man (though the 1602 incarnation of Iron Man seemed significantly more implausible than his mainstream counterpart, simply because of Marvel’s tendency to develop absurdly advanced science even in the 1960s.) as well as others that I’ve likely forgotten because the stories themselves were wholly forgettable.

However, this year, someone apparently decided to revive the franchise of 1602 by creating a Spider-Man mini series in the universe. So, the first issue is out, and I’m curious as to if it’s got any promise in this issue. I have my doubts, but it’s mostly because New World and Fantastick Four were, essentially cash-in books (I mean that as nicely as that kind of thing can be said).

And, truth be told, with the first issue down, so far that’s really all it feels like. There seems to be something lost in the transition between the writers. The writers of New World and Fantastick Four lacked the kind of whimsy that made Gaiman’s 1602 so appealing. Everything now seems to be a cross between attempting to shoehorn in various people from the Marvel universe, sometimes in unsavory ways, while other instances just seem to not make sense.

The biggest issue I’ve found so far is with costumes. Parker wears basically his regular clothes and a Spider-Man mask. There’s no attempt to make it even appear to be fitting into the era, it’s simply the same Spider-Man mask that he always wears. The covers to the comics give the impression that he has an outfit that vaguely resembles the Spider-Man costume were it placed in 1602, but he doesn’t wear that.

Ultimately, I feel like this comic is gearing up to be a disappointment. 1602 is really awkward kind of setting, since if you don’t do it right, you’re going to end up annoying everyone because you just have established something in an already decent continuity, but it’s somewhere so far removed from the original vision that you might as well make something else entirely.

However, a few of the interesting things established in this are the introduction of who I believe to be Doctor Octopus, as well as The Wasp. The Wasp being a victim of an experiment gone wrong, and in a jar. I’m curious enough about these characters, and if Spider-Man actually gets a new costume, to keep reading this series. Once it’s finished I’ll give a full write up, but at the moment it’s not something I’m really looking forward to finishing.