CBR Live! Archive
King Size Spider-Man Summer Special Super Awesome Mega Total Review, Oh Yeah!
- by Brad Curran
- in General
Were there enough adjectives in there?
It's always weird when you disagree with a reviewer you have an unhealthy fixation on respect a lot, especially one who is pretty much you has such similar tastes. Such is the case, however, with this comic, and I'm gonna figure out why via blogging, damn it.
So, this her Spider-Man comic, it's not bad. Let's establish that. And hey, if you're the kind of person who enjoys the Andi Watson-esque spare line cartooning of Coleen Coover (I do, with some exceptions I'll get to) , a breezy script from her beau Paul Tobin, and are the kind of person who really wants to still be able to pretend that Peter and MJ's pretend marriage in a pretend history of pretend importance is real, then this is absotively, posolutely the Spider-Man comic this fortnight for you, because that's the lead story right there.
However, I did not love this story, or the issue really. Which jives neither with Sims honoring it with Book of the Week nor with the fact that I like to believe I do have joy in my soul. I mean, c'mon; She-Hulk, a suspisciously animated Starfire esque Scarlet Witch, Clea, and Millie the Model (among others) team up with MJ to take on a bemused Enchantress. That sounds cooler to me than I found the story, which was perfectly fine mind you, but didn't really jazz me up. Coover's squat, totally cartoony Spider-Man, who recaps his origin so close to the bone it draws marrow on the opening page and goes chair shopping with MODOK? That I loved, but not enought overcome how underwhelming the rest of the issue was.
Keith Giffen and Rick Burchett (et al.; there were more names credited, those are just the ones I can be bothered to remember) deliver a solid Spidey/Falcon team up, even if I can't figure out what continuity it could possibly fit in. I mean, in the final analysis I don't care, but I can't remember the Falcon ever capping people with rubber bullets or being such a stern jerk, you know? I missed a lot of his appearances between the Stan Lee era Cap and Brubaker's though. This was perfectly good, too, but was basically an inventory issue of Marvel Team Up.
There's a Chris Giarusso Mini-Marvels Strip to cap the whole thing off. Now, I generally love those, but: 1. I'm sure I've already read this online and 2. These things lose a little charm when they become longer than a page, I think. Also, I just drowned a sack full of puppies taped to kittens reading Peanuts, so maybe I'm just not in the mood for the aesthetic it represents. I am generally happy that Giarusso is filling Fred Hembeck's void so well, though.
So, this fits what I think the general, nebulous definition of what fun comics are on the internet, so by all means pick it up if it sounds like you'd like it more than me. It's just, when I usually blindly buy stuff Sims raves about on his blog, I don't feel betrayed by Judas disappointed in doing so. I think maybe if I'd just grabbed it off the rack, I probably wouldn't have expected it to, I dunno, make TNA Wrestling less dumb or perform instant painless liposuction on me, or whatever it is this perfectly good comic didn't do that made it such a let down to me. Well, beyond cost $4.99.
P.S.- I also picked up the extra priced "Brand New Day/Hey, Spider-Man Comics Don't Suck So Much Now Cash In" hulabaloo when I was at the shop getting this, because holy hell Marcos Martin drew something in it, so we'll see how I like that one. Expect a scathing review if it isn't on the short list of the Nobel Prize for literature. Also, I got that Hack/Slash back issue with Milk and Cheese. I'm sorry if I sounded too ashamed for liking the trade I got at Half Priced Books the other day, guy who created it and anyone else whose opinion on the matter means a whole lot less to me!
- Posted on August 11, 2008 @ 02:39 PM
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8 Comments
Rich
August 11, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Aw, I thought the Coover/Tobin lead in this was a lot of fun. I'm a sucker for Coover's art though, so that's no surprise. The MODOK story was cute.
I'm with you on the rest, for the most part. The Falcon/Spidey team-up was fine but that's about all. I have no idea when it could have taken place either, but that's alright. After all, the first page said explicitly not to get hung up on that stuff. Heh. The Mini-Marvels bit was fun, but I was also sure I'd read at least part of it before. Was it online? I'm curious -- was this the first time a "grown up" (Green Goblin) appeared in one of Chris G.'s Mini-Marvels? I can't remember seeing one before, but I may have missed a strip here or there.
I don't know what I would have given 'Best of the Week' though. None of the handful of books I bought last week really blew me away.
Stephane Savoie
August 11, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I would buy a monthly book by Tobin/Coover, and this was my first exposure. Where else have their work appeared?
salamurai
August 11, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Coover's art has been appearing in some issues of X-men First Class. I haven't paid attention to who wrote those. Probably Tobin because Scarlet Witch had the same personality.
The Mini-Marvels story previously appeared in the first Mini-Marvels comic book special several years ago, and in the recent (still on sale!) digest.
I found the Falcon story to be fun. However, like a lot of recent out-of-continuity Spidey stories, his joking personality is overdone. I remember it originally being a defense mechanism, taunting the bad guys he was fighting so they'd get pissed and make mistakes. I don't remember many team-up stories where Spidey was so flip with the person he was partnering with.
Doug Atkinson
August 11, 2008 at 5:59 pm
"I’m curious — was this the first time a “grown up†(Green Goblin) appeared in one of Chris G.’s Mini-Marvels?"
I don't know if the three-panel strips have any, but the longer ones (as contained in the digest-sized paperback that came out a couple of weeks ago) have Green Goblin and J. Jonah Jameson as adults, as well as assorted background characters (such as a supermarket clerk and security guard in the one where Wolverine tries to buy cereal).
Rich
August 11, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Coover has done art for a number of short stories that appeared in Marvel's all-ages books. A search on the Grand Comic Database reveals a list. She also did the 'Banana Sunday' comic for Oni that's now out of print and a strip (with Tobin) in Papercutter #2. Uh, also a "porno comic for girls" called 'Small Favors' that I haven't seen. Doesn't sound like my kinda thing.
Tobin and Coover are also both working on the 'Age of the Sentry' mini coming from Marvel soon.
Matt K
August 11, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Falcon was using rubber bullets in the short lived Captain America & Falcon series
Nick Marino
August 12, 2008 at 7:18 am
I have to disagree, Brad. I thought the Tobin / Coover was absolutely incredible, and the Giarusso piece was excellent as well.
I'm a huge Falcon fan, so getting this short story stuck in the middle was a nice surprise. I know it's supposed to be a continuity-free context, but I just can't shake the fact that this Falc / Spidey team-up makes next to no sense in the Marvel U. The first time the two met was when Falcon went off to prove he could be tough without Captain America and tried to take down the fugitive Spider-Man on his own. Plus, this Sam we see here is a huge jerk and that doesn't really jive with his character. To top it off, the dialogue in that story was really disorienting (though it was ambitious at times, I'll give it that).
But my impression of this issue was the opposite - an excellent beginning and end with an okay story sandwiched in the middle. If Marvel put out one of these a month (especially with the cartoon content like this issue) I would buy them, without a doubt.
Dan Bailey
August 14, 2008 at 7:24 am
Thanks loads for spotlighting this -- I'd completely forgotten that the comic would feature Coover & Chris G stories, so I was able to snag a copy yesterday, a week after it came out. (I don't give a hang about Spider-Man otherwise ... last time I bought a new ish featuring the character, we were still pretty early in Jimmy Carter's presidency.)
Otherwise, Nick Marino's final paragraph sums up my sentiments exactly.