The Very Best for Last: A Review of Spider-Man/Superman #1

written by Brad Meltzer (main story), Dan Slott, Joe Kelly, Geoff Johns, Louise Simonson, Stephanie Phillips, Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Aaron, Jeph Loeb

drawn by Pepe Larraz (main story), Marcos Martin, Humberto Ramos, Gary Frank, Todd Nauck, Phil Noto, Sara Pichelli, Russell Dauterman, Jim Cheung

colored by Matt Wilson (main story and one back-up story), Muntsa Vicente, Edgar Delgado, Brad Anderson, Rachelle Rosenberg, Phil Noto, Federico Blee, Jay David Ramos

lettered by Clayton Cowles (main story), Joe Caramagna

Well, Marvel actually went and did it. They took this expensive anthology format in which all of the recent Marvel/DC crossovers have been published and produced a book that, in my humble opinion, at least, deserves a perfect ten.  I didn't think it possible, but I'm happy to have been proven wrong. 

The main story, featuring Spider-Man and Superman, opens with our heroes caught in an apparent death trap set by Lex Luther and Green Goblin, and with a big chunk of Kryptonite having incapacitated Superman, Spider-Man struggles to keep the death trap, from crushing them. Not all is as it seems, however, and the plan hatched by the villainous purple-and-green clad duo may prove to be even more catastrophic than Peter Parker and Clark Kent could have imagined! Will the red-and-blue clad pair of heroes manage to save the day?

Backing up this absolute gem of a story are some really fun stories of varying lengths, including a retro adventure featuring Spider-Man Noir and 1938 Superman, an entertaining conversation between Gwen Stacy and Lana Lang, a Thing/Superman story, a Supergirl/Ghost-Spider team up, a meet-up between Superman from his trunks-less, New-52-era and Miles Morales, and many more.   

Every single story has A-list caliber talent working on it. I know I said something similar about the DC published Superman/Spider-Man, but in the case of that book some of the talents were clearly outshone by the others, and the score I gave the book was mainly on the strength of the main story by Mark Waid and Jorge Jimenez and the novelty of seeing Jim Lee draw Spider-Man. 

Brad Meltzer, a DC superstar whose only previous work on Marvel that I know of was a brief Spider-Man story in the Marvel #1000 anthology from a few years back, and his collaborator Pepe Larraz, the current main artist on The Amazing Spider-Man, are still very much the stars of the show.  Their story has action, humor, and some nice character moments between Peter and Clark.  Mild spoiler alert: I really like Meltzer's somewhat novel take on why Peter does what he does, basically taking the trope that Peter acts purely out of guilt and chucking it out the window. Meltzer, in my humble opinion has just made the case for a regular gig writing The Amazing Spider-Man; he truly gets the character in a way quite a few writers and more than a few editors over the last few years have failed to do.  His pairing with the outstanding Larraz was inspired, and I will grudgingly give it to Marvel editorial for making that call. Also, this story is a couple of pages longer than the main DC story, which gives it yet another advantage. 

The backup stories are uniformly excellent, with highlights for me being the story by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank featuring the Fantastic Four's Thing and other Marvel and DC heroes who team up to rein in an out-of-control Hulk. It was a short but sweet story about finding civility in a world eternally at conflict, and Johns and Frank, who actually worked on an Avengers story over two decades ago, made more than a few fans, myself included, wistful for their return to the House of Ideas. I for one, would love to see them do a run on the Fantastic Four monthly book.  They captured the essence of Ben Grimm in their brief story, and given that the Thing is often the beating heart of the team, I think they'd do a bang-up job on Marvel's First Family. There are plenty of other treats, like Dan Slott's and Marcos Martin's 1930s noir caper, and Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman's lavishly illustrated Jane-Foster-Thor and Woman Woman team-up.  Like I said; every back-up story has A-list quality, which is not something I could honestly say about the stuff over in the DC counterpart.  

With this, I'm guessing Marvel and DC are done with crossovers for the time being (maybe), but even though I preferred oversized, prestige format works like the mammoth Justice League/Avengers crossover, for the most part, I quite enjoyed this latest batch of company crossover comics. While I think they got off to a sluggish start with Deadpool/Batman, at least Marvel finished off on a nice, strong note with this modern classic. 

10/10

A Wonderful Confection: A Review of Superman/Spider-Man #1

written by Mark Waid (main story), Tom King, Christopher Priest, Sean Murphy, Matt Fraction, Jeff Lemire, Greg Rucka, Gail Simone (back-up stories) 

drawn by by Jorge Jimenez (main story), Jim Lee and Scott Williams, Daniel Sampere, Sean Murphy, Steve Lieber, Rafa Sandoval, Nicola Scott, Belen Ortega (back-up stories)

colored by Tomeu Morey (main story), Alex Sinclair, Alejandro Sanchez, Simon Gough, Nathan Fairbairn, Ulises Arreola, Marcelo Maiolo, Jordie Bellaire

So far, I have had mixed feelings about this new wave of DC/Marvel crossovers. I hated last year's Deadpool/Batman published by Marvel, but enjoyed the DC-published counterpart, Batman/Deadpool.

Well, so far, the third crossover book, Superman/Spider-Man, is the very best of the bunch.

The main story features Clark Kent aka Superman, and Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, going up against their long-time foes Braniac and Doctor Octopus, who have teamed up to help Braniac unload corrupted code from his system into the brains of humanity.   Doc Ock has agreed to help Braniac in exchange for the chance to travel to worlds that will appreciate his genius. The plan to dump this toxic code into people's brains, of course, will have catastrophic consequences for humanity, and must be stopped. Can Supes and Spidey save the day?

As main stories go, this one is as strong as it gets, with a tight, entertaining script by Mark Waid, who knows his way around both Marvel and DC characters, but also with some astonishing art by Jorge Jimenez, who has, in my opinion, just made the case for a regular gig drawing Spider-Man, assuming DC ever lets him go. Even though I've kept abreast of the emergence of new artistic talent over the years, Jimenez has flown under my radar for a while since he's done mainly DC stuff, while I'm mostly a Marvel guy. Like his fellow DC exclusive artists Dan Mora and Sean Murphy, this is someone I would love to see working on a Marvel book in the future.     

The back-up stories, ranging from four to nine pages, also feature Superman and Spider-Man and their supporting cast, like Mary Jane Watson, Lois Lane, J. Jonah Jameson, Perry White, Jonathan Kent, Ben Parker, Jimmy Olsen, Superboy Prime, variants of the characters like Spider-Man 2099 and Batman Beyond, other characters like Power Girl and the Punisher, and even villains like High Evolutionary and Carnage.  There's even a walk-on from arguably one of the most hated characters in Spider-Man's history, Paul Rabin. While some stories are better than others, there is not a single lemon among any of these stories.  Every single one is worth reading. 

It should be emphasized that none of these stories, main or backup, are canonical, which, as I understand it, is in keeping with the very first crossover back in 1976 (50 years ago now). There's no effort to explain how these characters occupy the same universe, which was done rather laboriously in the 1990s DC vs Marvel crossover and the JLA/Avengers crossover in the early 2000s.  Non-canonical, to my mind, is the way to go.   One story in particular (no spoilers, I promise) really runs with this non-canonical premise and delivers a tongue-in-cheek shocker that I'm frankly kind of amazed DC editorial greenlit (you'll know which one it is when you see it).

Next to the main story, which I absolutely loved and give a full 10/10, the other highlight of this anthology is some very nice wish fulfillment that's been decades in the making for me: I finally get to see Jim Lee drawing a Spider-Man story, which is something for which I have been pining since he  broke out in the 90s, even before his Image and DC-exclusive days. Sure, it's only nine pages long and doesn't have any real money shots like a two-page spread of Spidey swinging or anything like that, but at least it's an itch scratched after a really long time.  It's also worth noting that in the Tom King/Jim Lee story, Mary Jane is wearing what clearly looks like a wedding ring on a necklace, which means that in that little pocket universe, Peter and MJ are still married, so it's wish-fulfillment in more ways than one.  On that note, the brief Paul Rabin appearance (in the Power Girl/Punisher backup) is just as insulting and demeaning as it needs to be.

Comic books being as pricey as they are nowadays, it's hard to recommend to people to go out and buy one, but in my humble opinion, this one is definitely worth the money. 

9.5/10

 

Hickman's Brilliance: A Review of Ultimate Spider-Man Issues #18 to #24

 written by Jonathan Hickman

drawn by David Messina and Marco Checchetto

colored by Marcio Menyz

It's been challenging to pick up comics in the last year or so, but of the backlog I've accumulated, easily the best issues to read have been the remainder of Jonathan Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man, which wrapped up its first mega-arc with issue #24.

So to make a long story short, Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, and his family have survived attempts on their lives by the likes of Ultimate Kraven and Ultimate Sandman, and Peter, his son Richard and Richard's new female friend Felicia Hardy, are now ready to take the fight to the architect of all their misery, the lethally dangerous crime boss Wilson Fisk (aka the Kingpin), who is now allied with the equally deadly Martin Li (aka Mister Negative). Will Peter and his family prevail, or will the combined might of the Kingpin and Mister Negative prove too much, even for Spider-Man and his allies like Harry Osborn, Mysterio and Otto Octavius?

This series has gotten a great deal of hype mainly for its depiction of a Peter Parker who, unlike his mainstream 616 counterpart, is happily married with two children. To my mind, that feels a little reductionist; there's a lot more to Hickman's take on Spider-Man than this. At the same time though, the character is a little hamstrung by the fact that unlike his 616 counterpart, this Spider-Man picks up his powers in his mid-thirties and basically has to take a crash course in being Spider-Man so that the story can wrap up in two years. While there are admittedly some stories that don't need retreads, it's fairly clear that this particular Spider-Man is quite distinct from his 616 counterpart in that, while he is motivated by a deep sense of responsibility, he is NOT motivated by guilt, because Uncle Ben is very much alive here, with Aunt May having died through no fault of Peter's.  It's a completely different dynamic that makes the character worth exploring, which I'm sure Hickman and Marvel plan to do now that the take on the character is an established success. 

All of that said, I don't agree with all of the narrative choices that were made, such as the notion that Peter knocked up Mary Jane and dropped out of college of be a dad, which doesn't quite feel in keeping with 616 Peter's scholastic dedication. Still, Hickman has managed the difficult task of a truly fresh take on an iconic character.  It's even better still that Marvel has let this iteration of the character grow up with his readership, keeping him relatable.

It's also gratifying to see Hickman's take on Peter's supporting cast, in particular the now living Uncle Ben, who's a touch more Ben Urich than Ben Parker here, and Jonah Jameson, who is much more of a hard-boiled journalist here than he has been throughout a lot of his 616 tenure. MJ is also a markedly different character from her 616 iteration, but these have clearly been shaped by her life's experience as a thirtysomething mother. Also, this is an MJ who clearly loves Peter, and who has, fortunately, not been forced to apart from him by some hamhanded editorial mandate. There's a lot left to explore with these characters so I imagine Hickman's got a few stories left to tell.  Well, with these twenty-four issues, he was off to a very good start. 

It helps, of course, that he Hickman some truly capable artists illustrating his work, namely Marco Checchetto and David Messina.  Checchetto's considerably more experienced when it comes to drawing the webhead, but Messina holds his own whenever he takes over, and even though their art styles are visibly distinct from one another they still manage to complement each other pretty well.

I do confess that I am curious to see where Marvel takes this character next!

9/10

Absolutely Iconic: A Review of Batman and Robin: Year One

written by Mark Waid (plot and script) and Chris Samnee (plot)

drawn by Chris Samnee

colored by Mathew Lopes

One of my absolute favorite creative teams in all of comicdom is the duo of writer Mark Waid and artist Chris Samnee, whose work I first discovered in the pages of Marvel Comics' Daredevil series, on which the duo collaborated from 2011 to 2015.  I've diligently followed their collaborations, from their twelve-issue Black Widow run from 2016 to 2017, to their brief run on Captain America in 2017 and even their work for other companies, like IDW's four-issue miniseries The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom. While some of their stories have inevitably been better than others, their work was almost always engaging, crisp and supremely entertaining, a tragic rarity in modern comics.  They appeared to go their separate ways just before the COVID-19 pandemic, with Waid doing various books and Samnee going on to co-create a comic book for Image with Robert Kirkman. 

Little did I know that they had a truly memorable collaboration still to come, for DC Comics and for arguably one of the most iconic comic book characters in existence. It was to my surprise and delight that I found out last year that they had teamed up, after YEARS apart, on a twelve-issue miniseries titled Batman and Robin: Year One, 

As the title suggests, the series chronicles Bruce Wayne's and Dick Grayson's (untold) early adventures together as Batman and his newly-minted Boy Wonder, Robin. In particular, they have to team up against a formidable threat to Gotham City, the conniving and corrupt General Grimaldi who seeks to upset the tenuous balance of power between the existing crime families in Gotham by pitting them against each other. To help him do this, he has a secret weapon: a man who can change his likeness on a whim, or none other than Clayface. To make matters worse, former District Attorney and now wildcard criminal Harvey Dent, aka, Two-Face wants in on this action. Amidst all this, will Batman and Robin be able to save Gotham City from a brewing gang war, especially since Child Protective Services is watching Bruce Wayne like a hawk to see if he's fit to be a parent for his new ward, Dick Grayson?

As someone who only sporadically reads DC Comics as opposed to my regular Marvel fare, I couldn't say if this story hasn't been told before in some other form, but it seems likely that this is the first time both Batman and Robin have gotten the "Year One" treatment, and to my mind, there's no better creative team to do it. Waid, of course, is a veteran of DC Comics, having written volumes of DC Comics for decades, including seminal work like Kingdom Come, and Samnee, I would argue, is one of his very best collaborators, whose work evokes the Silver Age brilliance of the likes of Bruce Timm and the late Darwyn Cooke. It's almost like these guys were born to tell this story, and they bring every ounce of the creative energy that made their runs on Daredevil so darn memorable.  They have a knack for marrying propulsive narrative, snappy dialogue and visual flair that just makes it impossible to put this book, which is a fairly hefty 264 pages, down until the very last adventure.  Reading this was just pure joy from start to finish.

Now, if only Marvel could lure these guys back to do a run on Spider-Man...

10/10

Meaty: A Review of Batman/Deadpool

written by Grant Morrison (main story), Scott Snyder, Tom Taylor, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, Tom Taylor, Mariko Tamaki and G. Willow Wilson (back-up stories)

drawn by Dan Mora (main story) Hayden Sherman, Bruno Redondo, Amanda Conner and Denys Cowan (back-up stories)

After my distinctly unpleasant experience purchasing and reading the Deadpool/Batman crossover as published by Marvel Comics, I took my sweet time in buying its counterpart published by DC Comics, Batman/Deadpool.  I was loath to spend the premium that the crossover special would inevitably exact if it meant putting up with another anthology of stories whose creators basically sleepwalked through creating them. However, the excerpts popping up on social media showed promise, especially in terms of what they showcased of Grant Morrison's dialogue and Dan Mora's art, so about a full month after the comic book's release, I took the plunge.

Boy, I am glad I did.

To get this out of the way right now, this book, like its Marvel-published counterpart, consists of one main story and several shorter, back-up stories. The difference, however, is that, each of them is head and shoulders above the stories contained in that book.

The main story features Batman and Deadpool, whose universes collide as a result of a dalliance between Marvel's Eternity and DC's Kismet, fighting (of course) and then teaming up to investigate a mysterious presence in Greece, which may prove to be too much for either of them acting alone. The threat is so great, in fact that for all of Batman's skill and preparation and Deadpool's near immortality thanks to his healing factor, the pair of them will need help from a most unlikely source.

I have read quite a few of Grant Morrison's stories, including the breakthrough graphic novel Arkham Asylum, a good chunk of their remarkable run on New X-Men in the early 2000s, the landmark 12-issue series All Star Superman, and the brief but memorable original work WE3. This work actually showed a new side to the writer that I hadn't seen before: they have a good handle on the humor needed for a Deadpool comic books. Unlike Zeb Wells' clunky script, Morrison's jokes are actually funny, and they don't shy away from Deadpool's dubious origins as a thinly-veiled parody/ripoff of Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke.  Unlike Wells, Morrison actually bothers to come up with an explanation of how Batman's and Deadpool's universes have managed to collide, with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek framing device involving cosmic entities Eternity and Kismet having a one-night stand. The villain, whose identity I will not spoil, is a real treat as well. 

As much as I enjoyed Greg Capullo's work on the Marvel version of this book, I absolutely adored Dan Mora's work here, and I desperately want to see him work on a flagship Marvel book sometime soon, preferably Spider-Man or Daredevil.   Mora is a bona fide superstar, and I can really see why Morrison was keen to work with him after they collaborated on a graphic novel featuring an alt-version of Santa Claus several years ago. His work is gloriously dynamic and slick in its detail at the same time. He's got a flair for visual storytelling akin to the likes of John Romita Jr., but I daresay, he draws considerably prettier pictures. 

Unfortunately, however, as with Deadpool/Batman, the page count for the main story is distressingly short at 27 pages. Given how good these collaborators are, I would have loved a few extra pages, like a nice, round thirty or forty, but it is what it is.

Fortunately, though, the slew of backup stories here, which feature crossovers between Constantine and Doctor Strange, Nightwing and the Wolverine formerly known as X-23, Harley Quinn and the Hulk (!) and Static Shock and Ms. Marvel, come surprisingly close to making me forget that this is an anthology because each one is remarkably well-done. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them, because the creators involved, writers AND artists, are very obviously firing on all cylinders. Each of these stories made me yearn to see these artists strut their stuff on Marvel books. 

These anthology books, for me, are always a compromise in storytelling quality, but to draw a food analogy, if a proper story is a full-course meal, Marvel's Deadpool/Batman was the equivalent of a bag of chips, whereas DC's Batman/Deadpool was at least the equivalent of a couple of good burger sliders. Still not a fully satisfying meal, but a definite step up from the last crossover book featuring these characters.

This was worth my money; I'm just sorry there weren't more pages of crossover goodness.

8.5/10 

Crossover Craze: A Review of Deadpool and Batman (Spoiler Alert)

(Main story)

written by Zeb Wells

drawn by Greg Capullo (pencils) and Tim Townsend (inks)

colored by Alex Sinclair

25 pages. That's the most important thing readers need to know about this overpriced monstrosity of a "special edition." The story that was used to hype the first intercompany crossover between Marvel and DC in over 20 years only comes to a paltry 25 pages, despite the comic book itself sporting a hefty 7 dollar cover price, which comes to even more when it's sold overseas, like here in the Philippines.

Oh, sure, there are a whole bunch of supporting stories featuring other crossovers, like Captain America and Wonder Woman, and Daredevil and Green Arrow, but let's be frank, none of those are what people paid a small fortune of their hard-earned money for.  Truth be told, I won't even bother reviewing any of the backup stories because it's kind of insulting that they even threw them in here. Throwaway stories like that used to serve as teasers for full-sized comic books, but now they're patched together into an anthology to justify a bloated cover price. This only works, however if there's a good, solid main story anchoring everything. The question is: is there?

No.

Short version: The Joker hires Deadpool to capture Batman so that he can take part in another of his death traps. Batman outsmarts Deadpool and Joker, but it seems that he can't disable Joker's death trap, set to poison all of Gotham, without dying. Luckily, the basically unkillable Deadpool, who has turned against the Joker, triggers the trap, saving Gotham and defeating the Joker. Pretty standard stuff, and in truth, as stories go, it's not even that bad.

What's egregious, for me, is the execution.  It's been a while since I've read a script that has felt this perfunctory, this by-the-numbers. This isn't even bare-minimum stuff.  Deadpool doesn't even break the fourth wall here, even though there were a wealth of opportunities. His wisecracking is painfully unfunny, and he even manages to fumble the open-goal jokes about Batman and his succession of strapping young male sidekicks. Who wrote this crap, anyway? Oh, right, Zeb Wells, the ***hat who took Marvel editorial's assignment of splitting up Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson to new low by having his self-insert stick his d**k inside her.  For creating a character as universally-loathed as Paul Rabin has become, Wells has apparently been awarded the plum assignment of writing the first DC-Marvel crossover in over two decades...and this is what he gives us.

The only good news is that Greg Capullo's art is sensational...but then...twenty-five pages.

Save your money, folks. 

5/10 (and ONLY for Capullo's art). 

Refreshed and Rejuvenated: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #1 to #5

 written by Joe Kelly

drawn by Pepe Larraz

colored by Marte Gracia

As someone who has collected  comic books off and on for the better part of four decades, most of them from Marvel Comics, I have resigned myself to the reality of the periodic reboot.  I get that it's done to rekindle interest in the book, after by launching a new significant storyline or a new creative team, and while I'm generally not a fan of it, sometimes, a relaunch works pretty well for the character, and this particular relaunch just happens to be one of those times that worked.

So, following his "Eight Deaths of Spider-Man" storyline that closed out the last volume of this series, writer Joe Kelly is back with an all-new five part story pitting Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man against his old nemesis, Roderick Kingsley, aka the Hobgoblin, who has a new scheme up his sleeve involving hallucinogens, and a particularly nasty henchwoman in Itsy Bitsy.  These drugs are no joke, either; they prove to be enough to give no less than the Rhino a heart attack.  Will the help of the still-not-evil-again Norman Osborn and a newly introduced character, Pete's old friend from middle school Brian Nehring be enough to help Peter save the day, or does the Hobby really have his number this time?

 Just to be clear; though the numbers of the book have been reset, unfortunately, Peter's status quo has not been.  He ended the last volume out of work, having left his job at Oscorp, and tries out a new job at Rand Enterprises (though notably, Danny Rand doesn't show up at any point), but he still hasn't gotten back together with Mary Jane Watson, from whom he was forcibly and clumsily separated by editorial mandate during the book's last relaunch. Heck, even his current love interest Shay Marken, who was introduced during the last run, has him on "probationary status."  Fortunately, the clunky legacy of Zeb Wells' run doesn't stop Kelly from turning in a surprisingly decent and complete story that delivers both a satisfying narrative and manages to tease more ahead, which is what any truly good comic book story is supposed to do.  There's not status-quo shattering going on here, but some pretty solid character work involving Peter's childhood that manages to enrich his relationship to Aunt May and carry on the one decent thing about Zeb Wells' run; Peter's tenuous alliance with the rehabilitated Norman Osborn. 

As much as I appreciated Kelly's writing this time around, though, for me the real draw his was artist Larraz, whose work I actually remember from a few issues of Ultimate Spider-Man some years ago, but whose work has grown exponentially in quality since then.  I know this book only just had A-list artist Ed McGuinness turn in an impressive body of work, so bringing on another top-tier talent on board so soon feels almost too good to be true. I am really glad I stuck around for the post-Zeb Wells era because Larraz has blossomed into a truly sensational artist whose work is both distinct and original and yet evocative of all time Spider-Man legends like John Romita Sr.  I was particularly happy that Larraz delivered an entire, uninterrupted five-issue storyline.  If we have yet another situation of rotating artists, I think Marvel are off to a really good start this time around. 

This new run of the book, while not without its problems, is off to a rock-solid start, and I am really excited to see what Kelly and his rotating team of artists has to offer in the issues to come.  

9/10