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Quick Comic Rewind: No Comics?

by scott on March 27, 2019 at 6:27 pm

My comic shop closed last year. I’ve spoken about that before, but it happened and I’ve not gone out to find a new one.

My kid is almost six years old now, and he’s only shown a passing interest in superheroes as a genre. He can take or leave most hero cartoons, preferring entertainment that creeps towards the supernatural than the super. Scooby-Doo, Haunted House and Ghostbusters all get frequent play in our place, while there is pushback to The Brave and the Bold and Spider-Man.

It is what it is, but the side effect of all of this is that it’s nearly the end of March I’ve not read any comic books in 2019.

I know. I think it’s weird too.

On the other hand, because of the times we live in, I am still immersed in comic book culture, through the movies and television that is constantly flooding the market. Some may worry about hero-fatigue, but I’m actually quite happy that there is enough out there that I no longer feel the need to have to support every show in the genre just to show that there is an audience for the material. If something doesn’t grab me, I can let it slide.

So former mainstays like Agents of SHIELD, Gotham and even Arrow have slipped off my radar and have been replaced by The Umbrella Academy and Titans. I’ve not seen Captain Marvel or Shazam yet, but I have adored Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

If you haven’t seen Into the Spider-Verse yet, make sure you make it next on your list. We’ve spoken about it on the podcast a few times, but I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed this movie. It’s smart and fun and gorgeous to look at. It won the Academy Award for best-animated feature up against Pixar and Disney offerings, and it wasn’t even close. Black Panther was up for best picture, and in my eyes, Spider-Verse was a superior offering. Jake Johnson and Shameik Moore deliver top-notch performances and the supporting cast includes Nic Cage, Hailee Steinfeld, Lily Tomlin, John Mulaney, Chris Pine and Liev Schreiber all bringing their A-game. Do you know how rare it is that Keith, Jon and I all agree that a movie is great? Pretty damned rare.

I have a huge watchlist as well. I want to see season two of The Punisher, The new Doom Patrol show, the third season of Young Justice. I have Aquaman, Teen Titans Go to the Movies and I Kill Giants queued up. I am trying to catch up on The Flash. Avengers: Endgame is coming out soon, and I’m looking forward to it. I need to check out Justice League Action and the new Harley Quinn animated series. I’m sure there’s more out that that I haven’t even heard about yet that would be right up my alley, especially since DC pumps out animated straight-to-video features all the time, and with their new streaming service out in the United States, they’ll surely be looking to produce more content than ever.

It’s an embarrassment of riches for me, and I love it.

–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.

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└ Tags: comics, flash, into the spider-verse, netflix, spider-man, superheroes, the flash, titans, umbrella academy

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Quick Comic Rewind: Ultimate Spider-Man #43

by scott 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.

└ Tags: brian michael bendis, comic books, mark bagley, marvel, quick comic rewind, spider-man

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Quick Comic Rewind: Fantastic Four #347

by scott 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.

└ Tags: comic books, fantastic four, Hulk, marvel, quick comic rewind, spider-man, wolverine

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Talkin’ Toons: Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The X-Men Adventure

by scott on May 29, 2016 at 3:34 pm

Posted In: Homepage, Scott

One of the best things about having a kid is getting to share with him all the stuff that you loved as a kid.

It is the privilege of the age in which we live that we are able to seek out and find any and every thing that was ever on television, and as such, I’ve been watching “Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends” with Archer for the last week or so. And we’re coming up on “The X-Men Adventure” soon.

You should watch it now, because we’re gonna get all spoiler-y below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX23QBCl7Cc

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

└ Tags: 80s cartoons, amazing friends, cartoon, firestar, spider-man, x-men

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Old Cartoons: Spider-Woman

by scott on March 4, 2016 at 12:39 pm

Posted In: Homepage, Scott

All right! Time to watch some cartoons!

My son is turning three soon, and he likes to watch super-hero cartoons, but a lot of the new animation is pretty violent for him. He picks up on it easily, and then it’s nothing but punches and kicks for the rest of the day. As a response to this, I’ve taken to pulling up older cartoons from the 60’s and 70’s where the violence was more strenuously moderated, so he and I can enjoy it without getting into a brawl at the end of every episode.

We have watched a bunch of Superfriends and Spider-Man ’67, where the bad guys get tied up rather than knocked out. But I like to keep an eye out for other stuff to watch, because we watch stuff over and over (and over) so adding something new into the mix will stop me from going bananas. That’s when I found the 1979 Spider-Woman cartoon.