Posts Tagged quick comic rewind

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Quick Comic Rewind: Ultimate Spider-Man #43

by on November 4, 2018 at 10:26 pm
Posted In: Homepage, Scott

I’m reading Ultimate Spider-Man #43 tonight as winter is creeping up on us. This book is from September 2003, which makes it already 15 years old, and that’s freaking me out a bit. Fifteen years ago would mean I was 25 years old when this book was published, and I can barely remember being that young.

This book was celebrated. It had loyal fans that adored it, but for some reason, the book never stuck with me. I read the Ultimates, I could read Ultimate X-Men, but Ultimate Spidey just seemed redundant. It’s odd because, for the most part, I liked Brian Michael Bendis’ writing and I had a soft spot for Mark Bagley’s art, (mostly because of his story. Bagley broke into comics by completing the Marvel Try-Out book, and impressing an editor enough to get a few gigs.)

Bendis, for the most part, is on his game for this issue. Spidey meets Storm, Jean and Kitty from the X-Men, and there is good banter between them. It’s light and fluffy, but it’s also fun reading. Bagley, on the other hand, is a sloppy mess. some of the art is just flat out bad here. It’s lazy and distracting. Bagley is better than this, usually, at least I think he is. I dunno. There are panels speckled throughout the book that are just jarringly awkward. It’s a shame. I know that he and Bendis put together a record run working together on this title, so I understand why he might have been rushed to get the pages done, but if that was the case then editor Ralph Macchio should have stepped in to have the art sent back and fixed up.

Then again, there is an ad for “Trouble #1” in this issue, so who knows what editorial was thinking in these days. Fuckin’ Bill Jemas.

There is also an ad for a DVD of the Dini-verse Justice League, which seems like a bit of a coup to have a full page spread featuring Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in a Marvel comic. I don’t think we’d see something like that happening nowadays. Especially since we’re talking about great DC video content, because goddamn that Justice League cartoon was good. It’s like how “Batman and Robin” made me so mad because “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm” was so good, that Dawn of Justice was terrible because I’d already seen such good Justice League stuff on tv.

Talking about the ads, the other thing that’s batshit crazy is how much Hulk advertising is in this book. Full page ads here for the Hulk cartoon on DVD, Hulk selling padlocks for Master, Hulk selling popsicles, a 7″ Marvel Select Ultimate Hulk action figure, then Hulk Underoos. Thirty-two pages in the whole comic, and five of them are ads with the green monster. It’s bizarre why they wouldn’t use Spider-Man himself for this.

Anyways, I’m up way too late and I still haven’t tracked down any ultimate milk yet, so I bid you adieu.

–Scott is a writer and founder at 9to5. He’s a host on The 9to5 Entertainment System and does a lot of the graphic design around these parts.

–Quick Comic Rewind is brought to you monthly through the love of our supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to join them in helping us out, please visit www.patreon.com/9to5cc and be sure to check out how your donations help us out and get access to additional bonus content from the 9to5 crew.

 

 

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Quick Comic Rewind: New Thunderbolts #14-15

by on October 9, 2018 at 10:38 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Scott

New Thunderbolts, issues 14-15.

Written by Fabian Nicieza, with art by Tom Grummett and Gary Erskine (issue 14) and, Rick Leonardi and Cam Smith (issue 15).

For me, at least, 2006 was a weird time in comics. Throughout the years, there has always been an ebb and flow in terms of my interest and investment with the funny books, and these issues were happening as I was on a peak. The Bendis era was running full steam as he had disassembled and reformed the Avengers and Civil War was looming.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Quick Comic Rewind: WildC.a.t.s Covert-Action-Teams #1

by on August 21, 2018 at 3:51 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Scott

It’s 1992! The world of comic books is both chaotically upturned and at the same time, the sales are fiery hot. Single issues are selling in the millions, money is rolling in, and the top seven creators in the field have left Marvel in order to found Image Comics.

That’s where my dive into the back issue bins takes us today. Smack into the dizzying, confusing, and amazing high of comics in ’92. Because I have in my hands a copy of “WildC.a.t.s Covert-Action-Teams #1” by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi.WildC.A.T.s #1

I was nervous about picking this one up. I was 14 years old when this book came out, so it was essentially conceptualized, created for and marketed to me and my comic book reading buddies. I loved Jim Lee’s previous work on X-Men, The Punisher and Wolverine and I was practically salivating at the thought of seeing what he would do now that the shackles were off. The effort that Jim Lee had put in was succesful, and I loved this book. I loved it. It looked cool, the story was badass, and the new characters were awesome, had cool powers, and yet also held an air of mystery about them that made me hunger for more.

So reading this book up again as a grown man was, is in a way, a challenge to my younger self; 14-Year-Old Scott, how dumb were you?

There was trepidation. I’ve done this before, and not just with comic books. Old movies, television shows, even novels I adored in my youth have not held up well, and I’ve often looked back and asked: “What was I thinking?”. There are exceptions, of course, but for every Terminator 2, there are a half-dozen Passenger 57s. Batman the Animated Series started in 1992, but that year also had King Arthur and the Knights of Justice.

But WildC.a.t.s Covert-Action-Teams #1 is fine. It’s good. It’s a good book that could be better, but it also really tries to be better than it should be.

First off, the art by Lee is great. It’s probably too much “tits and ass” for my liking now, but there are great splash pages, crazy panel work, action, detailed costumes and backgrounds, and characters that don’t all look alike. You can really tell that Lee was putting it all out there. Oddly, this book is printed on newsprint, so he’s dealing with that, but colourist Joe Rosas and inker Scott Williams really help him out, and the book looks great.

The writing in this one is… okay. I say that knowing that the book isn’t for me. “Now-me” at least. I’m 40. I have Netflix and HBO and I know that writers need to bring their A-game to get me really saying wow. But there is a lot going on in this issue. All of the heroes, supporting cast, and villains need to be introduced, explained, and shown how to interact with one another in a brand new fictional universe. That’s not easy to do, and Choi and Lee do well enough. Marlowe is a drunk dwarf billionaire, Void is his mystic/cyber Merlin. Grifter and Zealot are tough fighters, Warblade and Maul are basically Johnny Storm and the Thing. And Voodoo? Well, she’s a psychic stripper, kinda? She’s pretty awful here.

But the book is a good read. It also has 2 collector cards inside it. I love collector cards. I miss collector cards.

Spartan Collector card

So yeah, read WildC.a.t.s Covert-Action-Teams #1. It’s like fifty cents if you catch it in a long-box at a con. There are literally millions of copies floating around out there.

 

–Scott is a writer and founder at 9to5. He’s a host on The 9to5 Entertainment System and does a lot of the graphic design around these parts.

–Quick Comic Rewind is brought to you monthly through the love of our supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to join them in helping us out, please visit www.patreon.com/9to5cc and be sure to check out how your donations help us out and get access to additional bonus content from the 9to5 crew.

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Quick Comic Rewind: The Punisher Armory, Volume 2

by on June 24, 2018 at 4:30 pm
Posted In: Homepage, Scott

The Punisher Armory; volume 2 is the weirdest fucking comic book.

I know what I’m talking about here. I’m an expert, and I’m telling you, this single issue is the weirdest fucking comic book. I’m sure there are other books out there that have tried to be bizarre, but that effort alone takes them down a notch. The Punisher Armory; volume 2 is trying to be good, shoots a few wisecracks fails, gets turned around, and ends with such a morbid gut punch that it no longer makes any sense at all.

The year is 1991. The Punisher is still a hot book, but this year also has Jim Lee on X-Men, Rob Liefeld on New Mutants and Todd McFarlane on Spider-Man. They are selling actual millions of books. The cover price for the average Marvel issue is 1$, US funds. The Punisher Armory; volume 2 is priced at 1,75$ and features no ads, publishers notes or letters pages, it’s just 32 pages of pictures of guns and Frank Castle’s musings.

Frank really tries to ham it up in his notes. He’s cracking jokes left and right.

 

Oh Punisher, you so funny.

 

And so it goes for 31 pages. A picture of a gun with some technical musings and a joke from the murder-man. Sometimes the guns are shown with breakfast, because The Punisher is always ready to kill someone, even if it’s before he’s had his coffee.

 

 

And then, page 32.

The darkest, most morose, bleakest page of a comic I’ve ever read. One without warning or resolution. The purest “what the actual fuck?” I’ve ever exclaimed, especially for a 1991 Marvel book.

That’s how the issue ends. Why? It’s such a downer, and the last line has me utterly confused.

What does that mean? Has he used his son’s toy to kill someone? It’s just a plastic cap gun.

That’s it, the issue is over, and for some reason, Marvel made 8 more issues of this title. This wasn’t even the big finish. It was just a horrible cliffhanger. Because this issue is the weirdest fucking book.

 

–Scott is a writer and founder at 9to5. He’s a host on The 9to5 Entertainment System and does a lot of the graphic design around these parts.

–Quick Comic Rewind is brought to you monthly through the love of our supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to join them in helping us out, please visit www.patreon.com/9to5cc and be sure to check out how your donations help us out and get access to additional bonus content from the 9to5 crew.

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Quick Comic Rewind: Fantastic Four #347

by on April 17, 2018 at 11:05 pm
Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Scott

I listen to a podcast called “The Baxter Building” where two guys are reading through the entire run of Marvel’s “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine”, The Fantastic Four. They’ve been working on this project for years, offering expert and cantankerous opinions on every single issue. The latest episode included issue #347, which I happened to have lying around the office, so I pulled it out to review for you.

This issue is done by Walter Simonson and Arthur Adams, two big names in comics, and two of my favourites of all time. Simonson had a legendary run on Thor in the 80’s, basically creating the modern definition of the character. Art Adams’ art in Uncanny X-Men Annual #12 remains to this day some of my all-time favourite comic book work and visually defining the look of the X-Men in my mind’s eye. Having them work together on the FF should be epic.

Doubling down on the awesome, this issue also introduces the “New Fantastic Four”, the 90’s-tastic team of Spider-Man, Hulk, Ghost Rider and Wolverine.

Despite all this, this book is deeply flawed.

–


The story begins with an alien ship crashing on earth, revealing its lone passenger to be a beautiful green-haired stranger. We then get two pages of life in Four Freedoms Plaza, checking in with Sue, Reed and Franklin, Sharon (the She-Thing) and Ben, and Johnny and Alicia. Then it cuts to a group of skrulls on their way to earth hot on the heels of De’Lila, presumably the alien lady that crashed at the start of the book.

All of this happens on the first five pages of the book. Breakneck speed storytelling.

De’Lila shape-changes her way into the FF’s base and then zaps all of the team unconscious. The skrulls think they’re tracking her, but their sensors instead take them to Monster Island, where they run into the Mole Man’s monsters, and use a device to take control of the giant beasts. Mole Man, unseen by the aliens, swears swift retribution. The skrulls make the monsters attack mankind all over the world.

De’Lila, now disguised as Sue Storm, sends out a distress call to the Hulk, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider and convinces them the source of the monster attacks is an alien device, that the skrulls already killed the FF, and the four random heroes need to find the device for her in order to stop the attacks, the alien invasion and get justice for her slain family.

They agree.

–

This comic was a big deal when it came out. The “New” Fantastic Four was made up of the hottest characters Marvel had at the time, and was met with a lot of hype in the comics media. People bought this book. Even now, fans look back on these issues with fondness. I get it, it’s a fun idea, it’s got a beloved group of creators, it’s ridiculous.

But man, issue #347 is a bad book with middling art and a lot of pacing issues. It’s not really worth tracking down, and even quarter-bin comics can give you more bang for your buck.

–

–Scott is a writer and founder at 9to5. He’s a host on The 9to5 Entertainment System and does a lot of the graphic design around these parts.

–Quick Comic Rewind is brought to you monthly through the love of our supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to join them in helping us out, please visit www.patreon.com/9to5cc and be sure to check out how your donations help us out and get access to additional bonus content from the 9to5 crew.

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Quick Comic Rewind: Ghost Rider v3 #32

by on November 11, 2016 at 11:12 pm
Posted In: Homepage, Scott

I know, I don’t write enough anymore. I got a lot of stuff going on, most of it is your standard job/husband/dad stuff, but that does eat up a surprising amount of time and energy.

That being said, I do want to write for you all. So I’ll be starting a small, semi-regular series I’m calling “Quick Comic Rewind”.

The short idea is that I own a lot of comic books. Very many thousands of them. I read them all the time. New ones, yes, but also a lot of old ones. Comics from before the internet. While the newest comics are reviewed everywhere and in depth, I’m planning on writing and reviewing, quickly, books from the 70s, 80s and the dread 90s. Maybe it’s be plot and art related, but maybe I’ll get autobiographical in talking about a book, of philosophical. Who knows?

Tonight, Ghost Rider #32.

Ghost_Rider_Vol_3_32Written by Howard Mackie and drawn by Bret Blevins. Blevins is a guy I know and like from his work on New Mutants and Sleepwalker, and while I’ve heard a lot of people complain about his style, I’ve always liked it. I never knew he had worked on Ghost Rider, but this comic has been in my collection for probably at least 15 years.

Blevins drawing Ghost Rider and Doctor Strange is a hit. It’s weird, it looks dangerous, and it looks like black magic is everywhere on the page. He really kills it here.

So, about last week I pulled a run of the 90s Ghost Rider books out of a box. I did this for a few reasons; Ghost Rider is on Agents of SHIELD this season, that I like the art of Mark Texeira (who works on the issues before this one), Doctor Strange is in theaters right now, and the box with these books in them is under my desk at the moment.

The run, as a whole, is pretty much crap. The writing and pacing is terrible and it’s so very full of itself. There is no insight, theme or thought into these books, but rather they are filled with page after page of “badass-ery”. I blame Wolverine and the Punisher for this, but what can you do?

Anyways, getting into #32, Danny Ketch was nearly killed, and turned into Ghost Rider so he wouldn’t die, but they became separated because of evil magic or something. Doctor Strange is brought in to rescue Danny’s spirit, as Dr Bruckner waits for Danny to return to the real world to surgically save his life. Johnny Blaze is there too, watching over things.

A, I dunno, shady evil corporation called The Firm wants to steal Ghost Rider’s body, which is comatose during Strange’s magicial intervention, so they send a bunch of paramilitary security agents to kidnap him and kill everyone else, but Johnny Blaze shoots a few of them with his shotgun that shoots hell-fire, but other agents in The Firm go rogue, and they kill there own guys. It’s pretty dumb.

As that is happening, Strange finds Danny in a magical dimension between the real of Nightmare and death, and Danny’s all fucked up. He’s half hell-tainted, and Strange has to magic the magics to fix him. It’s weird, but the art here is worth it, as Blevins has always done this sort of messed up stuff well.

In the end, Doc Strange saves the day, Doc Bruckner works to save Danny, and the book ends letting me know that after this ordeal, that neither Danny Ketch or Ghost Rider will ever be the same again.

That’s pretty much it. Oh, and there are like 6 pages of ads for a boardgame called Dragon Quest. It’s even mentioned on the cover. The photos make this look like the most boring, D&D derivative and needlessly complicated game ever created.

So yeah, that’s a quick comic rewind Of Ghost Rider, volume 3 issue 32 from December 1992. It’s probably in quarter bins around the world, and while it’s no classic, at least it was fun.

 

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