Thursday, May 22, 2008

Snap Judgments: Dead, She Said #1, Amazing Spider-Man #560 and More

Short comic reviews based on initial, lizard-brain opinions. There are probably some spoilers herein. Arranged from BEST to WORST.

Dead, She Said #1 gets an A from Albo
The more of Steve Niles' work I read the more I like the guy. I picked up 30 Days of Night when it was on the stands back in the day and came away feeling it was a little thin. But Simon Dark, among other things, has made me take another look. This horror noir story starts with a private dick waking up and cracking his way out of rigor mortis... That's right, he's "dead," shot through the belly and he's determined to figure out why. Giant ants may be involved. Smart, original, well worth your dollars.

Reviews for Amazing Spider-Man #560, Mighty Avengers #14, and Fantastic Four #557 after the jump!

The Amazing Spider-Man #560 gets a B from Albo
Not much more to say that I didn't say in last week's review of #559. Just a solid Spidey story from Dan Slott with killer art from Marcos Martin. We learn a little more about "Paper Doll" this week, and she's turning out to be a pretty cool villain. Different, at least. Also this ish contains the return of a major Spidey character we haven't seen since this whole Brand New Day stuff started...

The Mighty Avengers #14 gets a B from Albo
Frank Cho being so slow of an artist forced Bendis to approach his Avengers books in an interesting way--he was trying to thread the two books into one ongoing story, but since Mighty was taking so much longer than New he ended up creating a lot of flashback stories as filler for New in order to keep the books on roughly the same timeline. Well now that's become a real style of his, as most of his Secret Invasion tie-in stories skip around in time more than a season of LOST. I say it works, even if it does get a little tough to put all the pieces together in my head. This ish in particular is about how the Skrulls have approached the "problem" of the Sentry, and it's a testament to the new era of comics that their solution isn't just "hit him really hard," because as we (and they) know, that never works for the bad guys. Well, except maybe Doomsday.

Fantastic Four #557 gets a C from Albo
Ahem. To defeat a giant robot that pummeled every Marvel hero in existence and destroyed dozens of military complexes around the globe, Mister Fantastic builds a bigger robot (which he inexplicably dubs "Anti-Galactus"... wtf?) in an AFTERNOON and bases his whole battle strategy on the ASSUMPTION that the robot's creator included him in a list of people that it couldn't harm. When he could have, oh I don't know, CALLED HER JUST TO MAKE SURE. Lazy storytelling from a guy that's probably too busy out promoting the movie adaptation of Wanted to give a damn. On a positive note, there is a really sweet scene at the end (which I woulda given an "A" if it were a standalone story) where Reed takes Sue out on an anniversary date--back in time to the moment they first met. And as a gift he gets her a ring with a "stone" that's actually a micro-galaxy with "over forty trillion couples ... all loving each other like I love you." What kind of softy have I become when I open a comic and prefer the date scene to the giant freaking robot fight?! Am I losing my Geekanerd touch? Or is Millar just better with character moments than action?

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