Comic Book Club: Live!

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #597 – Is this the best Spider-Man has ever been? I’m going to go out on a limb and say, “possibly.” Spidey goes up against the Dark Avengers, and it ain’t pretty. Joe Kelly knows how to ratchet up the danger to Pete, which he does quite well in this issue. And Marco Chechetto’s art is great, reminiscent of Phil Jimenez without feeling derivative. Plus, we get a clue about what’s going to go down in ASM #600, and it’s both blindingly obvious, and a completely fun idea. Can’t wait.

BETA RAY BILL: GODHUNTER #1 – I want to ruin absolutely nothing about this book, because it came as a total surprise to me. It’s well written, well drawn, and you get a bonus “origin of Beta Ray Bill” reprint. Pick this up.

ENDER’S GAME: RECRUITING VALENTINE ONE-SHOT – I’m still having a hard time getting a handle on the Ender’s Universe, having never read the books, but holy crap, Timothy Green II’s use of light in the art in this issue is stunning. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so cinematic in a comic book before. Whatever I think about the story and plot elements of these Enders books, Marvel is putting an incredible amount of talent on them.

FANTASTIC FOUR #567 – Why? Why must this book be so pretty, and yet so dumb. So unrelenting dumb? So incredibly dumb, it hurts my brain to think about. I love Mark Millar. I love his big, silly over the top action set pieces. And Bryan Hitch’s art is classic. But I wish it wasn’t tied to stories so stunningly un-original, they feel like something I came up with at age ten after reading comics, then playing with my action figures in the yard. “No, Doctor Doom isn’t the bad guy! This He-Man action figure is the real bad guy! And the only one that can stop him is… Rodimus Prime!” Sigh.

GENEXT: UNITED #2 – While reading this issue, I was thinking about the differences between Claremont’s approach to this, ostensibly the future of the X-Men, and X-Men Forever, which you could easily call the past of the X-Men. And he’s taking entirely opposite approaches to the two titles. Where X-Men Forever (and granted, this is based on one issue) feels like it’s purposely going against what would have ACTUALLY happened in issue #4 of X-Men back in the 90s (and will only go further against it from there), GeneXt is almost stubbornly not pushing the idea of the X-Men forward. And just in case it isn’t clear, I’m totally cool with that. This was a review of X-Men Forever, right?

LOCKJAW AND THE PET AVENGERS #2 – Ms. Lion is the most important new character in the Marvel Universe. I’m glad I said what we were all thinking.

PUNISHER: FRANK CASTLE MAX #71 – There’s nothing terribly wrong with this issue in particular, other than the fact that it’s a Punisher MAX comic not written by Garth Ennis. Oh, and the Punisher spends the entire issue doing absolutely nothing except squinting his eyes and wondering if anything is wrong. Which is what we all want out of a Punisher comic, right? Frank Castle thinking real hard like?

UNCANNY X-MEN #511 – Love this comic, love what Matt Fraction is doing with it, love some of the plot twists, do NOT like the rushed, ambiguous conclusion. YOu should pick it up anyway, though. It’s original, fun X-Men stories, and how long has it been since we had those. Forever. X-Men Forever.

WAR OF KINGS: SAVAGE WORLD OF SKAAR ONE-SHOT – If you like War of Kings, and also like Skaar, you are one of the ten people in the very small Venn Diagram of comic book readers who will by this book. Congratulations, I hope you like continuity headaches.

WOLVERINE #74 – I can take or leave the first story in this book, which plays exactly like each of the fifteen thousand Wolverine one shots that have come out over the past month. But the second story continues to be one of the best Wolverine stories… Ever. No joke. And the Wolverine/Spidey relationship continues to be totally delightful, even if it smacks of “hey, let’s take the two most marketable characters at Marvel, and put them together to make money I MEAN GOOD STORIES.” Anyway, it should be a law somewhere that only Jason Aaron is allowed to write Wolverine comics.

X-FACTOR #44 – Layla and Madrox together totally creeps me out. That’s all I’ve got.