Hickman and Hitch's Sprawling Epic: A Review of Ultimate Invasion #1

 written by Jonathan Hickman

penciled by Bryan Hitch

inked by Andrew Currie

colored by Alex Sinclair

Jonathan Hickman's plan to rebuild the Ultimate Marvel Universe kicks off in earnest, with evil Reed Richards, aka the Maker escaping from his Damage Control prison and rapidly setting his plan in motion. Will even Marvel's ultra-powerful Illuminati (Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Namor, Black Bolt, Charles Xavier and T'Challa) be able to stop him?

When the first Ultimates issue came out in January 2002, over twenty-one years ago, I was absolutely gobsmacked by Bryan Hitch's astonishing "widescreen" art, which fit Mark Millar's script like a glove.  It was Captain America's World War II origin story told like it never had been before, and in fact, it went on to inspire how the character was depicted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Heck the entire first year of issues was basically what served as the narrative backbone of the MCU. 

Unfortunately, the quality of the entire line declined precipitously after that first big arc, and by the early 2010s the Ultimate line of comics was on its last legs, having been thrown a bit of a lifeline by the introduction of Miles Morales, a new Spider-Man. Then, in 2016, Jonathan Hickman ended it all, with a storyline I hadn't even stuck around for anymore: Secret Wars.  It's fitting, then that Hickman, the man who ended the Ultimate Universe, finally teams up with Hitch, the guy who kicked it into high gear.  So what have they brought us?

Well...it's a forty-eight page first issue that is prohibitively expensive. It starts off with a sixteen-page heist, nine pages of which feature exclusively a bunch of anonymous characters whose significance to the plot ends as soon as the Maker appears, and thereafter features a lot of panoramic dialogue pages featuring Mister Fantastic, Black Panther, members of the Illuminati, and Miles Morales. It's only at the tail-end of the issue that we see what the Maker is up to, and to Hickman's credit he leaves an interesting teaser as to what's to come as he starts changing key events to reshape reality.

Narratively, it's a far cry from the 28-pages of full-blooded, action-packed storytelling that Millar and Hitch delivered in 2002 when they presented a hard hitting adventure evocative of Saving Private Ryan in that very first Ultimates issue.  Hickman is known for his slow-burn storytelling, but to my mind he still burned a little too slowly here.  Apart from the Maker, nobody does anything of significance here, and I truly hope that changes next issue. 

There's still a lot to love here, though; Hitch and his Ultimates inker Andrew Currie bring their absolute A game to this issue, though Alex Sinclair, whose vibrant colors made Jim Lee's work on Batman and Superman look brilliant twenty years ago, presents a surprisingly muted color palette considering the scope of this story.  Still, art this brilliant is, by itself, almost worth the price of admission.

I'm on board until this end of this story, but I really, really hope future issues are not as expensive as this one was, because if I'm honest the cover price was kind of brutal. 

7.5/10

Upgraded Ock vs. Osborn: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #28

 written by Zeb Wells

penciled by Ed McGuinness

inked by Mark Farmer

colored by Marcio Menyz

After the thrashing they endured last issue, Jonah Jameson brings Doc Ock's shattered sentient octo-arms to Norman Osborn's company, which unfortunately also leads Otto Octavius right to their doorstep. Norman and his employee Peter Parker suit up as the Gold Goblin and Spider-Man, but Otto's got some new , seriously upgraded octopus arms, and a couple of other tricks up his sleeve besides that.

As I said when reviewing the last issue, I honestly appreciate that Zeb Wells is building on the past rivalry between Otto Octavius and Norman Osborn that Dan Slott first developed back in Ock's "Superior Spider-Man" days and that Nick Spencer brought to a head two years ago when he purged Norman Osborn of his sins/evil.  It's often a pet peeve of mine that past stories are ignored so I'm glad to see this express acknowledgment of the past.

That said, more than the last several issues of this run (including the ones I hated), this one feels oddly decompressed. I always welcome the chance to see Ed McGuinness' artwork on this book, which looks great in this issue, I can't help but feel like this has been dragged out just a little bit. I know four issues make for a better collected edition than three (as this arc looks like it'll wrap at issue #30), but Wells could have had a little bit more going than this showdown.  Last issue, we caught a glimpse of Ashley Kafka, which is clearly setting up a future storyline, but this issue, apart from a brief walk-on by Kraven the Hunter, is focused purely on the protagonist and antagonist of this storyline.  While a part of me appreciates that, well, again my problem is that it feels like filler.

Still, filler illustrated by Ed McGuinness is still worth a whole lot of main stories drawn by a whole lot of other artists. 

7.5/10

Going to Hell: A Review of Daredevil #12

 written by Chip Zdarsky

drawn by Marco Checchetto

colored by Matt Wilson

With Daredevil having defeated the Stromwyns, the money behind the Hand, all that remains is for him to chase the Beast down to Hell and reclaim the souls of his friends. The only problem is that to do it, he has to die, and his wife Elektra isn't about to let Matt, good Catholic that he is, take his own life at the very mouth of the Inferno.

This issue was billed as a duel to the death between Matt and Elektra, in a case of some pretty egregiously misleading marketing. Surprisingly, though I quite preferred what ACTUALLY happened as opposed to what was hyped up to happen, for a number of reasons.

First of all, I really like the fact that Chip Zdarsky is revisiting the storyline involving the Beast that his predecessor Charles Soule wrote during his last year or so on the book. Before he really hit his stride with the "Devil's Reign" miniseries, I kind of thought Zdarsky's writing had gone all over the place, with his advocacy against the penal system being his one bright spot. I felt he meandered a bit to get to this point but I'm also glad he's not pretending to shatter any status quos here.  

Second, on that note, I really like focused this issue feels; we really get a sense of Zdarsky's endgame here, and for the first time in a while I feel really excited about the next issue.

This issue is basically just as setup for the climactic throwdown that will take place over the next issue or two which will close out Zdarsky's run, so I look forward to Zdarsky and Checchetto giving it the full beans, as it were.

8/10

After the Gimmick is Done: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #27

 written by Zeb Wells

penciled by Ed McGuinness

inked by Mark Farmer

colored by Marcio Menyz

In the wake of Kamala Khan's death last issue, Peter Parker aka Spider-Man and Norman Osborn, aka the Gold Goblin, struggle to move forward with their lives. The threat from Wayep and his emissary Rabin may be gone but there are plenty of threats ahead, including Otto Octavius, whose mechanical arms abandoned him the time he fought Spider-Man, but who has new machinations up his sleeves, with Norman Osborn in his sights.  

With Zeb Wells' big mystery box having been opened, he's gotten back to writing interesting stories again, and as much as I despised "What did Peter do?" I am willing to give Wells the benefit of the doubt on the next few issues. After, all giving that I'm spending on these comics, I'm the only one losing out if I insist on grumbling about his bad story choices.

Setting up Doc Ock against Norman Osborn is something I have not seen nearly often enough since Norman was brought back from the dead in 1996. I've seen Mark Millar and Dan Slott pit them against one another in two stories that were nearly a decade apart, and in both cases Otto came off worse. I could be missing on another story here, but it seems Otto has come to hold a grudge against Osborn over these encounters. This story seems interesting enough, though Wells' last big mega arc has left me wary. Call me cautiously optimistic for now.  

Besides, despite my deep disdain for Wells' gimmicky writing, I persevered to see Ed McGuinness back on art duties, and the man does not disappoint in the least. It grates on me that I have had to wait as long as I have to see this guy draw Spider-Man stories on a semi-regular basis, but, hey, better late than never. I still hope to see Jim Lee illustrate tales of the webhead one day. 

8/10

Death in Comics Used to Matter (Spoilers for The Amazing Spider-Man #26)

 I was only five years old when Chris Claremont and John Byrne killed Jean Grey, one of the founding members of the X-Men, at the end of "The Dark Phoenix Saga," but even at the young age when I started reading Marvel Comics in the early 80s, I knew the story of her death was a big deal. I had no idea what the word "audacity" meant back then, but that's definitely how I felt about what Claremont and Byrne had done.  The sheer moxie of these guys to kill off a main character of the book was simply unheard of at the time, and the fan community, years before the internet, apparently knew how to make their displeasure known. So vehement was the reaction to Jean Grey's death that Byrne who had moved on from Uncanny X-Men and who was now writing and drawing Fantastic Four, ended up bringing Jean back in the pages of that book.

This death marked the first time that a leading character, and not a supporting character like Gwen Stacy or even Bucky, had died in the pages of a mainstream comic book. Unlike Gwen Stacy, the love interest, or Bucky, the sidekick, Jean Grey, was an actual leading character, and in her guise as the Phoenix, she was one of the book's central characters. Not long thereafter, Marvel upped the ante by killing another of its characters, Mar-Vell, in a graphic novel just dedicated to telling that story.  Marvel's rivals at DC followed suit, with hard-hitting deaths like Supergirl and the Flash taking place in Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Spanning the first half of the 80s, these stories all hit pretty hard for those of us old enough to remember.

When Marvel succumbed to fan pressure and brought Jean Grey back from the dead about five years after they had killed her, this marked the beginning of the end of death having any real meaning in comics, at least as far as main characters were concerned. Sure, characters continued to die in the years that followed, but suddenly, resurrecting them, regardless of the storytelling device used, was a real option that neither of the "Big Two" hesitated to shy away from. 

In the early 90s, DC Comics, whose Superman comics were not selling all that well, made what was arguably the most successful use of the whole "death" of a character in comics history: they killed off Superman, and then resurrected him. That basically blew the doors off the whole death and resurrection of a main character: it was no longer just a gimmick to boost sales on a flagging book, it was the gimmick.  It became a running joke that a character had not really arrived until they got to die. High profile comic book deaths since then have included Batman, Wolverine and Captain America, all of which were heavily marketed by DC's and Marvel's respective hype machines. These came with tie-in titles galore, big build-ups and epilogues and, of course, the inevitable return of the character.  To my mind, with each death and resurrection, the concept honestly felt less and less meaningful as a storytelling device, and more and more crass.

With the death of the popular Gen Z character Kamala Khan, aka the current Ms. Marvel, I'd argue that the concept has hit a new low.  

Only the folks at Marvel know how it was decided that Ms. Marvel would die in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, but however this process may have taken place, this was easily one of the worst-conceived "deaths" that I could possibly think of since Marvel started the ball rolling on this forty three years ago. Rather than die in her own book, which, incidentally is missing in action, Kamala Khan dies as a bit player in someone else's story, and as a "twist" death. It's no secret that Marvel was hyping up The Amazing Spider-Man #26 to be the title's most shocking issue since the death of Gwen Stacy, and so all eyes were on Mary Jane Watson. Even allowing for a twist death, though, a more likely candidate would have been someone from Peter's supporting cast like Norman Osborn.  Kamala was an outside choice, especially since she barely showed up in the book, so it would have been a surprising twist, if nothing else. 

Except, thanks to Marvel's marketing department, it wasn't even that; apparently deciding at the last minute that it would be better to hype up the death than surprise readers, Marvel plastered her death all over the entertainment press weeks before it actually happened, robbing the story of any impact whatsoever, and highlighting how sad Kamala Khan's plight actually was; she didn't even have her own book, even just a miniseries, to die in.  Pretty much anyone who's ever read a comic book knows she'll be back, but there is something especially pathetic about how Marvel has packaged this particular death gimmick. 

Kamala's return will most likely coincide with her feature film debut in November's The Marvels, possibly in a miniseries, followed by the return of her own monthly book. If and when that happens, I hope Marvel has the decency to put it in the hands of creators that will treat her better than Zeb Wells and the rest of Spider-Man editorial have.

And maybe...just maybe...Marvel can lay off the gimmick deaths for a while after so clearly botching this one.  

Too Numb to Care: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #26

 written by Zeb Wells

penciled by John Romita, Jr.

inked by Scott Hanna

colored by Marcio Menyz

So, the comic book which Marvel had been hyping as the most shocking issue of The Amazing Spider-Man in 50 years (their words, not mine) finally hit shops last week, and they could not have set their fans up for more disappointment if they had tried. 

I will avoid spoilers for anyone still living under a rock, but in broad strokes, suffice it to say that with this story, writer Zeb Wells finally wraps up the major story arc with which he had started this new iteration of this book, with the fanatical Rabin, loyal, murderous disciple of the equally murderous Mayan god Wayep, having his big showdown with Peter Parker aka Spider-Man, his ex-girlfriend Mary Jane Watson, and their allies.  Rabin seeks to kill Mary Jane as a ritual sacrifice and attain godhood. He can be stopped...but at what cost?

As the payoff of the last year's worth of issues, this issue is, quite sadly, flaccid. It's supposed to hit hard with its "shocking" revelations and a payoff that nobody was supposed to be expecting until Marvel's marketing department took things into their own hands. In the end, though, none of the big twists, reveals or developments in this issue has any real resonance because it's all played for some kind of shock value. None of the supposed shock that Wells is going for feels earned, and so I put down the issue feeling sadly indifferent. Last issue filled me with hate, which I think has, by and large, been editorial's goal for the last year or so, but with this issue I really couldn't bring myself to care about anything anymore. 

If there's any consolation to be had here, it's that John Romita Jr. turns in genuinely strong work here.  Maybe now that Wells has wrapped up his big mystery box story, he can move onto something a little more imaginative than his fantasy of cuckolding Peter Parker. 

I'd love to call it quits for the remainder of Wells' run, honestly, but darn it, Ed McGuinness is back next issue and will stick around for the next four, so it looks like I'm not going anywhere for the time being. 

5/10

Quiet Exit: A (Very, Very Late) Review of Champions: Killer App

written by Danny Lore

drawn by Luciano Vecchio

colored by Federico Blee

One could say Kamala Khan, the Paskistani-American superhero known as Ms. Marvel has finally arrived, given that Marvel Comics has recently revealed that they are about to subject her to a fate reserved only for the most elite of superheroes, i.e. those who get their own movies: she is destined to "die."  She's in the big leagues, it would seem. 

Sadly enough, though, one of the books she top-billed, the teen team book Champions, was canceled nearly two years ago, and had such a low-key exit that it took me nearly two years to track down its final collected edition, Killer App.

This slim volume, which collects issues #6 to #10 of the last series of Champions that Marvel published up until 2021, sees the Champions composed of Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Nova (Sam Alexander), Viv Vision and Ironheart (Riri Williams) once again going toe-to-toe with the evil corporation Roxxon, who has, in the Marvel universe, served for decades as the stand-in for nearly every blatantly capitalist, greed-motivated corporation that exists in the real world. This story follows up the last one in which the Champions exposed the abuses involved in implementing the Underage Superhuman Welfare Act or "Kamala's Law" which  regulated adolescent superheroes.  Roxxon's role in this abuses was also exposed, and, still reeling from this, Roxxon is seeking to rehabilitate its image with a new youth-oriented app, "Roxx-On!" while the Champions are determined to prove that Roxxon hasn't changed its ways and, more importantly, seek to have Kamala's Law repealed once and for all. To do so, they will have to do the one thing none of them had ever thought they'd do: infiltrate Roxxon.  

If I'm perfectly honest, as much as I loved the first few volumes of Champions as written by Mark Waid and drawn by teen team book specialist Humberto Ramos (whose credits include Out There and Strange Academy) I can understand why this book simply couldn't sustain its readership; there's only so much pontification that the obviously teenage target audience can take.  This book was "woke" before it was even really a thing, and while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, the reality is that it just wasn't attractive to enough readers to sustain the book.

That's really a shame, because with this volume, the book looked better than it had since Waid and Ramos left to do other things. While Danny Lore's script was serviceable and, if nothing else, an improvement over Jim Zub's so-so writing, the real highlight for me was Luciano Vecchio's anime-inspired, ultra-clean art which was evocative of both Gurihiru and Ed McGuinness. I am really glad that the New Warriors reboot this guy was scheduled to work on got canceled; the previews for characters like "Snowflake" and "Safespace" drew such widespread derision from fans of all political persuasions that it could have been truly damaging to Vecchio's career had that book seen the light of day, and this guy deserves to get all the work Marvel can think of to give him.  This guy (Vecchio) should have been the guy to illustrate Kamala's demise. That'd be worth checking out. 

7.5/10