Web of Spider-man #4 consists of three short stories:
Gauntlet Origins: Mysterio by Fred Van Lente and Barry Kitson.
This story was pretty good. It is set right before Mysterio becomes a criminal, showing us what inspired him and in the meantime giving us an unexpected Dr. Strange story. I liked this one quite a bit.
The Spectacular Spider-Girl in They First Make Mad by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz.
This story ends the "goblin" arc. It is not great.
Hammerhead in Western Promises by Frank Tieri and Eric Canete.
This is a really good short issue. It gives Hammerhead a bit more depth and I also like that the title is a little homage to the great movie "Eastern Promises".
Web of Spider-man #5 consists of three short stories:
Gauntlet Origins: Vulture by Fred Van Lente and Francis Portela.
Another solid story. Van Lente does a great job of making his villains be much more than their caricatures. Adrian Toomes (the vulture) really seems like a very intelligent guy in this story. Quite good and at the same time quite dark. I liked it.
The Spectacular Spider-Girl in Choosing Sides by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz.
The more I read Spider-Girl, the more I wish I was able to skip the story and read the next. For some reason, even if I don't like something, I have a tough time not reading it, if it is inside a book I care about. Something I should fix if I want to read more anthologies.
Ben Reilly in Nobody by J.M. DeMatteis and Chad Hardin.
A pretty good story. It must be tough being a clone, feeling like you are nobody. This short story explores that as well as you can in 10 pages. I want more Ben Reilly stories.
Web of Spider-man #8 by Fred Van Lente and Javier Rodriguez with a back up story called "Un Nuovo Inizio" by J.M. DeMatteis and Val Semeiks.
In this issue, Web of Spider-man changed its format. In a way losing its anthology status and just giving Van Lente a comic where he can tell Spider-man stories. This issue starts the first part of "The Extremist". The Extremist is a villain that believes that the world is black and white, either you are good or your bad. He hates gray areas and wants to eliminate them. In this issue he attacks a pundit who bashes superheroes. He believes superheroes have made the right choices and that it is wrong to humanize them and make them seem less good, in other words, he hates people putting in gray areas when they should be all white.
I liked the story a lot, looking forward to the rest of the arc.
The backup story was another Ben Reilly story. It was really good. It is nice to have a Peter Parker character which is not as balanced morally as the normal Peter Parker. Ben Reilly is very happy with a new beginning, shaping his life in nice ways, living in Rome. However, his lack of past creates troubles when he starts "dating" a daughter of a powerful man. It is interesting how Ben reacts to this. I really want to read more about Ben Reilly, I hope they put more back up stories about him in the series.
Web of Spider-man #9 by Fred Van Lente, Javier Rodriguez, Patrick Olliffe and Nick Dragotta with a back up story called "Jackpot Reflections" by Marc Guggenheim and Sana Takeda.
The main issue is the second part of "The Extremist". The issue explains a bit about the past about The Extremist. It is a really good villain. He is powerful and interestingly, his motives, while crazy, aren't specially evil. What he does is evil, but he really thinks he is doing the right thing. His motivations are not greed or power, they are quite different. This might be the best new Spider-man villain in over 10 years. Spidey had amazing villains in its early run, but it seems that most Spidey villains were created back then, whenever a new one would come, it wouldn't be a very good villain.
I have to talk about the art too, as I liked it a lot. The last third of the issue is drawn by Nick Dragotta and I thought he is excellent at drawing Spider-man. Javier Rodriguez did a great job with the last issue and with half of this issue, but I liked Dragotta more (of course, I am not sure how well he draws Peter, but he is excellent at drawing Spidey.
The back up tale was pretty good, even though it was about a character I care almost nothing about (Jackpot). I thought Jackpot had died in a Spidey Annual a couple of years ago and I don't even remember who she was. I just know that it teased us for a while making us think she was Mary Jane. Even with my indifference for the character, the cool drawings and the self contained story entertained me quite a bit. It ends in a "To be continued" and I want to know what happens (although, I prefer having a Ben Reilly story in the next issue).
Overall, I am glad I have been reading this series. The new format is excellent as now I get to read Fred Van Lente writing Spidey stories instead of just little origin stories about villains. Looking forward to more from this series.
Showing posts with label Tom DeFalco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom DeFalco. Show all posts
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Recent Spider-Man Issues
Amazing Spider-Man #622 by Greg Weisman, Luke Ross, Fred Van Lente and Joe Quinones.
I love the TV cartoon "Spectacular Spider-Man" written by Greg Weisman, I was happy to find that his TV writing translated well into a great story about Flash Thompson. In the last couple of years, there have been a couple of very good Flash stories in the Spider-Man comic and I am happy to have them. We get Spidey three times a month, so I don't mind this issue not having the presence of Spidey be important. However, for those that would get bothered by this, there is a nice back up issue written by Van Lente, a writer I love when it comes to Spider-Man.
I should also point out that the art by Luke Ross was very good. Luke Ross was a great penciller for Spider-Man in the early 90s and while his style has changed, he still draws a great Spidey.
Amazing Spider-Man #623 by Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta with a great Michael Lark cover.
The cover for this issue is wonderful. It is my favorite Spider-Man cover. The issue itself is pretty good. I don't like how Azaceta draws Spidey, but he draws good sequences and he does a great job drawing the Vulture. This issue is the first of a two-parter.
Amazing Spider-Man #624 by Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta.
This issue is the second part. We get to see how Spidey defeats the Vulture (mostly by convincing him to stop attacking him and J Jonah). The second half of the issue has Peter losing his job and his reputation after J Jonah denounces him for fraud in a picture that Peter PhotoShopped to save J Jonah's political situation. It was interesting to see an honest side to J Jonah, including how bad he felt over the aid that lost his life to protect him. However it was very sad to see Peter go down so low, over a small mistake.
I am looking forward to the next issue, however I didn't renew my subscription in time, so the next issue I will receive is supposed to be #627, I already got my comic book store to order #626, but #625 is out of print, so I'll have to find it somewhere.
Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #61 by Paul Tobin and Christian Nauck.
I have been enjoying this series very much up to the last couple of issues. This issue explains why Chat has been acting so weird and in doing so makes the rpevious issues a bit better. The comic is going from being $2.99 to $3.99 and for the jump they are going to renumber, which makes this the last issue of this series. The issue was pretty good, but it wasn't what one would expect of a final issue (the numbering is also weird in that respect). The next issue, which will be labeled #1, is meant to follow the story developing here, but they did manage to make it more accessible to new readers by having Peter no longer in a relationship.
I like how this comic dealt with Emma Frost and I really like the character of Chat. I am looking forward to more issues of this comic.
Web of Spider-Man #6 by Fred Van Lente, Jefte Palo, Ron Frenz, Tom DeFalco, Zeb Wells and Xurxo Penalta.
The first story is about the origin of the Lizard. I thought the story was pretty good, not great, but not bad. The art was very good and that made it worthwhile. The Spider-Girl story was average. I want to know more about Black Tarantula, he is an interesting guy. The third story was a prelude to a Lizard story to come in Amazing Spider-Man. The issue was average. Maybe I made a mistake by coming back to buying this series after I left it for two issues (I skipped issues 4 and 5).
Web of Spider-Man #7 by Fred Van Lente, Phillipe Briones, Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, Joe Casey and Jim Mahfood.
The first story is pretty good. I have high expectations for stories written by Van Lente as he has written some of my favorite Spidey stories this year and he wrote a cool origin story for Rhino. This Kraven story wasn't great.
The Spider-Girl story is actually good, with an interesting villain called "Wild Card". Wild Card seems like a cool guy and somehow I think it is Peter Parker trying to get his daughter out of the gang war. This issue really makes me consider buying Spider-Girl #1. In fact, I think I will.
I was excited to see that the last story would be about PaperDoll. While the paparazzi arc in the #560s of Amazing Spider-Man wasn't critically acclaimed, I really liked it. I loved the art, I thought the villain was interesting, and I loved seeing the ethical issues for Peter in working as a paparazzi. With all that in mind, I was looking forward to reading this story by Joe Casey. While the story wasn't bad, the art threw me out of the story often, as the art is very strange. One thing I liked about the art was the sound effects, specially the "Twip" for when Spidey is throwing webbing.
Overall, the issue wasn't great. I won't stop buying this comic, mainly because it is changing its style from #8 forward, by no longer telling origin stories and going more for new stories.
I love the TV cartoon "Spectacular Spider-Man" written by Greg Weisman, I was happy to find that his TV writing translated well into a great story about Flash Thompson. In the last couple of years, there have been a couple of very good Flash stories in the Spider-Man comic and I am happy to have them. We get Spidey three times a month, so I don't mind this issue not having the presence of Spidey be important. However, for those that would get bothered by this, there is a nice back up issue written by Van Lente, a writer I love when it comes to Spider-Man.
I should also point out that the art by Luke Ross was very good. Luke Ross was a great penciller for Spider-Man in the early 90s and while his style has changed, he still draws a great Spidey.
Amazing Spider-Man #623 by Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta with a great Michael Lark cover.
The cover for this issue is wonderful. It is my favorite Spider-Man cover. The issue itself is pretty good. I don't like how Azaceta draws Spidey, but he draws good sequences and he does a great job drawing the Vulture. This issue is the first of a two-parter.
Amazing Spider-Man #624 by Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta.
This issue is the second part. We get to see how Spidey defeats the Vulture (mostly by convincing him to stop attacking him and J Jonah). The second half of the issue has Peter losing his job and his reputation after J Jonah denounces him for fraud in a picture that Peter PhotoShopped to save J Jonah's political situation. It was interesting to see an honest side to J Jonah, including how bad he felt over the aid that lost his life to protect him. However it was very sad to see Peter go down so low, over a small mistake.
I am looking forward to the next issue, however I didn't renew my subscription in time, so the next issue I will receive is supposed to be #627, I already got my comic book store to order #626, but #625 is out of print, so I'll have to find it somewhere.
Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #61 by Paul Tobin and Christian Nauck.
I have been enjoying this series very much up to the last couple of issues. This issue explains why Chat has been acting so weird and in doing so makes the rpevious issues a bit better. The comic is going from being $2.99 to $3.99 and for the jump they are going to renumber, which makes this the last issue of this series. The issue was pretty good, but it wasn't what one would expect of a final issue (the numbering is also weird in that respect). The next issue, which will be labeled #1, is meant to follow the story developing here, but they did manage to make it more accessible to new readers by having Peter no longer in a relationship.
I like how this comic dealt with Emma Frost and I really like the character of Chat. I am looking forward to more issues of this comic.
Web of Spider-Man #6 by Fred Van Lente, Jefte Palo, Ron Frenz, Tom DeFalco, Zeb Wells and Xurxo Penalta.
The first story is about the origin of the Lizard. I thought the story was pretty good, not great, but not bad. The art was very good and that made it worthwhile. The Spider-Girl story was average. I want to know more about Black Tarantula, he is an interesting guy. The third story was a prelude to a Lizard story to come in Amazing Spider-Man. The issue was average. Maybe I made a mistake by coming back to buying this series after I left it for two issues (I skipped issues 4 and 5).
Web of Spider-Man #7 by Fred Van Lente, Phillipe Briones, Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, Joe Casey and Jim Mahfood.
The first story is pretty good. I have high expectations for stories written by Van Lente as he has written some of my favorite Spidey stories this year and he wrote a cool origin story for Rhino. This Kraven story wasn't great.
The Spider-Girl story is actually good, with an interesting villain called "Wild Card". Wild Card seems like a cool guy and somehow I think it is Peter Parker trying to get his daughter out of the gang war. This issue really makes me consider buying Spider-Girl #1. In fact, I think I will.
I was excited to see that the last story would be about PaperDoll. While the paparazzi arc in the #560s of Amazing Spider-Man wasn't critically acclaimed, I really liked it. I loved the art, I thought the villain was interesting, and I loved seeing the ethical issues for Peter in working as a paparazzi. With all that in mind, I was looking forward to reading this story by Joe Casey. While the story wasn't bad, the art threw me out of the story often, as the art is very strange. One thing I liked about the art was the sound effects, specially the "Twip" for when Spidey is throwing webbing.
Overall, the issue wasn't great. I won't stop buying this comic, mainly because it is changing its style from #8 forward, by no longer telling origin stories and going more for new stories.
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