Posts Tagged comic books

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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.

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Quick Comic Rewind: Grimjack #10

by on May 17, 2018 at 12:44 am
Posted In: Homepage, Scott

Before I get to the comic, I just want to take a moment to talk about my comic shop. Librarie Astro is a used bookstore on St. Catherine street in downtown Montreal, but they also had a good stash of comics and a great staff for handling pull lists. They’ve been my comic shop since 1996, and I learned not too long ago that they will be closing up in the summer due to issues renegotiating their lease with the new building owner.

This news hit me pretty hard. Over two decades of going there, it’s been an island of stability in my life. Whatever schooling or job, I’ve always had comics waiting for me there on Wednesdays. I’m really gonna miss that place, and Quick Comics rewind owes Astro’s many back-issue sales it’s existence.

Grimjack #10, published by First Comics in 1985, and written by John Ostrander with art by Timothy Truman. Ostrander is probably best known for his work on DC’s “Suicide Squad”, while Truman would work as an artist and writer on books like Johna Hex, Turok and Conan, along with a bunch of Star Wars titles.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Grimjack is a pan-dimensional bounty hunter, a gritty gunslinger who’s short on words in a wild-west world. He’s there to catch a weapons dealer who has been smuggling future hardware, Uzis and assault rifles, into the west. He finds her, a femme-fatale with a bad attitude named Spook. Running afoul of a crooked sheriff and an evil businessman, They get captured together. They escape, hijacking a train with everyone hot on their tail.

The plotting is not high art. The script is just as… Grimjack.

Truman is just as rough on art duties. In the opening pages, Grimjack is shown holding a rifle, then it disappears so he can quickly draw a pistol to show how badass he is. I guess he dropped the rifle he was holding so he could surprise the bad guys with a smaller gun? I dunno. The anatomy is all over the place as well. But the grit? The grit per square inch is off the charts. We’re talking Lenil Yu levels of face lines here. It’s sandpaper.

This book is bad, but it’s 1985, and it’s a step towards the great books of 1986. It’s dark, it’s adult, and in that way, it is showing that comics can be more. But it’s also a small stem, appealing to the 15-year-old in place of the 10-year-old who wants X-Men and Teen Titans. A few years from now, DC will toss Jonah Hex to Truman, and it’ll be this great space cowboy book, and Grimjack comes close here, but this issue just isn’t made for anyone but teens in the 80’s. I had a hard time getting through this one issue, so it shocked me to find out that Grimjack lasted many years and had over eighty issues, plus a web-comic revival in the 2000s.

 

–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: Gødland: Hello Cosmic!

by on January 4, 2017 at 12:38 am
Posted In: Homepage, Scott

I’m back for another quick, dirty, and outdated review of a comic book! 2017 is the perfect time to look back at comics that are already 11 years old!

godlandGødland vol.1: Hello Cosmic! (Collecting issues 1-6)

Written by Joe Casey, art by Tom Scioli

Image Comics

January 2006

Joe Casey and Tom Scioli look back at the history of comics and say to themselves if Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are the best comic collaborating creators of all time, then why not make more comics like “The Man” and “King”?

Thus Gødland.

While I will get in to the plot a little bit later, in all honesty, the plot is secondary to the project of trying to recreate the magic of the early years of Marvel Comics, especially in the first six issues of the series. There is almost no doubt that the book was conceived for Joe Casey to use the bombastic dialogue characterized by Lee and allow Tom Scioli’s already Kirby-rific pencils to ape/honour Kirby unabashedly. There are some themes that are updated for a modern audience (A BDSM super-villainess, a high-functioning addict chasing the ultimate high), but in an odd way, the seem more like 70’s counter-culture slammed into a 60’s comic than an edgy plot for a 2006 book. It seems like it should be a hot-mess, but the creators run at full speed fueled by sheer enthusiasm, and you can’t help but be dragged along into enjoying the ride.

Adam Archer was the last surviving astronaut on a failed mission to Mars when he stumbles across an ancient artifact that reveals a universal consortium of galactic sages. They bestow upon Archer powers of near-godly scale; teleportation, flight, invulnerability, power-blasts, and so-on. He is returned to Earth to jump-start human evolution to prepare for admittance to the community of the universe and all its advanced culture, but the United States government mostly just uses him as a cross between secret agent and super hero, keeping him in a downtown compound with his three sisters. Neela was also an astronaut, but her career was nerfed with the discovery of advanced inter-stellar life. Stella is dutiful and computer and communications-savvy, and Angie is a punk-rock rebel pilot. They have interpersonal dramas as the main plots roll. Archer saves a green dog space prophet, fights the aforementioned drug-addict villain, and rescues Crashman, America’s favorite hero, from torture and death.

I have just re-read “Hello Cosmic!” for the third time, and each time reads more smoothly than the last. The dialogue is loud, the art pops and jumps and punches, and the book is homage, parody and love-letter to Stan and Jack’s Fantastic Four/Iron Man/Avengers work together. I give it four Johnny Storms.

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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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Quarter Bin Crazy: Part 2

by on December 14, 2013 at 12:14 am
Posted In: Homepage, Scott

I took some time off from work in November, and during that time I went to Cuba. It was awesome, but the weather at home turned cold, and when I got back, I wanted to spend the rest of my vacation time huddled in my shack for warmth. Since I was inside anyways, I figured I’d take a crack at sorting my comic book collection. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I found some pretty weird and random stuff. Here is some more of my findings.

Again, I feel I need to stress that I own these books. At some point, I thought “Yes, I will take this home with me.”

 

Man-Eating Cow #4

I have no idea what this is even about, and aside from an implied association to The Tick, I can seen nothing redeeming about this book. It scares me.

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Quarter Bin Crazy: Part 1

by on November 29, 2013 at 5:07 pm
Posted In: Homepage, Scott

So I’ve been on vacation for the past couple of weeks. For the first week, my wife Marisa and I took our son on a beach vacation in Cuba, which was lovely. This past week, I’ve taken the time to go through a few of my comic books. Well, a few thousand of my comic books. This was a preliminary attempt to organize and sort some of my collection. I probably sifted through about a third of my collection over three days, sorting and arranging about 6 or 7 long boxes.

It was very gratifying, and I feel accomplished. I put together a lot of complete runs of books that had been scattered in different boxes, and found a few hidden or lost gems.

But I also found a lot of straight up crazy comics. Stuff that I have little recollection of purchasing, and yet, they are here in my house.

I present to you now some of the more crazy comics I have found that I own.

Geronimo: Last Apache Warrior

I have no idea about this book. It’s a trade paperback, and I’ve no memory of ever seeing it before. I think someone snuck it into my house.

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Batman: The Widening Gyre

by on August 8, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Posted In: Scott

 (This review will contain spoilers. Be warned.)


I like Kevin Smith. I think he’s funny. (Not as funny as Scott Mosier, but that’s neither here nor there.) I listen to his podcasts weekly, and watch his movies. This is all to say that I would categorize myself as a fan of Kevin Smith.

Kevin also writes comics. My favorite comic work of his was his run on “Green Arrow“. It was a great read, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, I would recommend it, as I find it has held up well over the last ten years. It’s a little bit silly, but it also so a great appreciation for the character of Oliver Queen and his place within the DC Universe.

I heard that Smith had done a Batman book. I had heard that it was critically panned, and Kevin mentioned it himself in a podcast, defending his work against the critics. And there were critics. John Barringer from A Comic Book Blog said:

“Kevin Smith, at least for me, has pushed Batman’s character past his envelope.”

Chris Simms at Comics Alliance was less charitable:

“Kevin Smith‘s Batman stories are the worst Batman comics I’ve ever read, and while I haven’t actually read them all, I’ve read enough that I’m pretty comfortable in declaring them the worst Batman comics ever.”

Now, I like to think I march to the beat of my own drum, and I can get behind some projects that maybe are not the most popular. That, and since I generally enjoy the work that Smith has done, in and out of comics, meant that I would happily give “The Widening Gyre” a shot, and I ordered the hard cover and read the book.

I came to my conclusions about this book almost immediately, and I put off writing this review for almost a month after having put it down, hoping to temper them with time.

That didn’t really happen.

“The Widening Gyre” is the worst Batman comic I’ve read. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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