Showing posts with label paul azaceta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paul azaceta. Show all posts

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.

Recent Single Issues from BOOM Studios

Irredeemable #12 by Mark Waid and Peter Krause.
This issue was quite good. Every time I have hope that Plutonian will be good again, I get to see him do something terrible. However, the comic is more about the Paradigm, then Plutonian and the Paradigm gets in deep trouble now that the US military is going against them. We find out there is a way to defeat the Plutonian (even though, Survivor already thinks he can do it himself) and that Bette knew all along. She feels guilty about not saying it before, having the weight of millions of deaths on her shoulders must be tough to overcome.
The comic continues to be great. I love it.

Codebreakers #1 by Carey Malloy and Scott Godlewski.
The issue is a strong first issue. There's good dialogue and the art is very good. The issue is about a group of FBI agents whose job is to crack codes. One of them killed himself in the middle of the issue and the boss doesn't think that makes sense, so he goes out to look for him, believing he was kidnapped. It was a very good first issue, but it came out in the same week as Turf and Shield, two comics that were even better.

Irredeemable: Special #1 by Mark Waid, Howard Chaykin, Paul Azaceta and Emma Rios.
This special issue contains three stories involving characters in the "Irredeemable Universe". The first story is about Hornet, which is kind of a Batman analogue in this world. In the first issue of Irredeemable he gets killed and we finally find out a little bit more about this character here. It was nice to get to know the character if only for eight pages.
The second story is about Kaidan. It was not great. It had the standard idea of self sacrifice being the key to defeat a villain. The third story was about Max Damage, the main character in the spinoff series "Incorruptible". Here we get to find out how Max and Jailbait got to meet each other. It was an okay story, but since I don't read Incorruptible it wasn't that important to me.
The issue is not worth checking out, in my opinion. The only story that enhances the story in the Irredeemable comic is the Hornet story, but I imagine that the key point in the story will be revealed in the main series anyway.