Some minor spoilers follow ...
Amazing Spider-Man #601
So, in this issue Pete gets drunk and (apparently) has a one night stand? I'm guessing that some fans will be outraged by all this, but I honestly like it. It's realistic and the whole thing is dealt with in a light manner. I'm not sure how the writers can use MJ practically, especially if she remembers the whole spider-marriage (we find out here that she at least still knows that Pete is Spidey). Mario Alberti's art is nice - kind of like Tim Sale on steroids. The Bendis /Quesada back-up is neat enough - I think the use of old Ditko art is a cute if not a terribly original trick. I'm not so hot on what Bendis seems to be setting up though - Alias was one of my favorite series from the last 10 years and I think Jessica Jones works best as a jaded former superhero rather than just another costume.
Captain America: Reborn #2
I can't help but feel a sense of deja-vu this issue. The whole "Cap reliving past battles" plot was also a big part of Brubaker's early Cap issues. Anyway, this issue is well done, with nice Hitch/ Guice art - it's amazing how similar their styles actually are. I'm enjoying the current depiction of Norman Osborn throughout the Marvel Universe as some sort of polished Bush-era political megalomaniac, but it seems a bit of a stretch to me that he would think it was a good idea to try and work with a nazi like the Red Skull.
Captain Britain And MI13 #15
A great final issue that ends the Vampire State story on a high note. I was only a mild fan of this series up until this arc, but I think that Cornell really hit gold with his use of Dracula as a racist, military-minded super-villain, and I hope to see the character used in that vein again. The surprise guest-stars are also a treat - hopefully at some point in the future Cornell will work on a project that can make use of them again.
House of M: Masters of Evil #1
I am a big fan of Christos Gage and I loved the original House of M: Avengers mini-series, but this issue left me pretty cold. It's just that the set-up here is not sufficiently different to what's going on in the main Marvel Universe - the Hood basically has the same gang doing the same things in numerous other books. There are hints at the end that Gage is going to explore a different angle - the Hood becoming a popular figure among humans chafing under mutant dominance, but its really not enough of a hook to get me excited at this point. The art by Manuel Garcia is pretty good though.
Nice reviews. I thought, though, that the point of this Billy Pilgrim/Captain America thing was to clear up some of the odd flashbacks that Captain America was having way back in the first Brubaker story arc - so it's not doing it again, per se, it's STILL doing it? nice to see groundwork being laid so far in advance, and a creative team staying on board long enough to capitalise on it, I thought.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure the earlier flashbacks had something to do with the Red Skull's use of a new Cosmic Cube, and and so they were completely separate from what is happening now.
ReplyDeleteI could be wrong though - I'll have to go back and check. If you are right and that stuff was all foreshadowing for this current storyline, then it's pretty impressive planning all right.
yeah my memory of it is that the implication was that the missed memory was cosmic cubey, but then that part of the plot was never resolved (i don't think - i mean it didn't seem to tie into the whole "i'm in the russian businessman's brain and i'm gonna blow stuff up to fuck with you" scheme), so when this whole "unstuck in time" thing came up I just figured they were related.
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