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subjunctive ([personal profile] subjunctive) wrote2014-09-03 07:52 pm
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Comics Review #1

Trying to do more non-Tumblr, non-exchange letter, non-micro blogging, and figured one of the things I can talk about is what I'm reading. So, recent comics spoilers ahoy:



Spider-Man 2099
Dipping my toes into the Spider-comics recently. I'm almost all the way through Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man (the Morales run) and thought I would check out other Spideys. There's too much stuff out there about Peter for me to want to check it out (so much canon is intimidating!) but I've been recommended Ultimate Peter too, so I might pick that up eventually.

Anyway, ANMN is doing a relaunch of 2099, which was a title about a future Spider-Man named Miguel O'Hara, but with Miguel transported to and stuck in the present day. I have a thing for people out of time, so I picked up #1 on a whim at my LCS after reading the "intro" page with Lyla, and was thoroughly charmed by the first issue (and by Miguel). The art is slick (though there are a lot of plain gradient backgrounds), and I found it genuinely funny (unlike some comics where I can tell they're intended to be funny/clever/witty/quippy but just fall flat for me, like some of the stuff written by DeConnick or Gillen).

I liked #2 too - there's a great scene where his boss comes over and sees his place, which is just a chair in the middle of an empty room - although the way his boss macked on him at the end seemed to come out of nowhere, and the immediate appearance of his super afterward and her interest in the boss's appearance, as well as their earlier interactions, gave me the hint of possible future love triangle shenanigans, but I could be totally wrong about that.

I'm going to pick up a few more issues before deciding whether to add it to my subscriptions, but things look promising. I've also got my hands on the original Spider-Man 2099 run, which is from the early 90s IIRC. I've heard mixed things about it, but I'd like to know more about Miguel's backstory, and I dig stories set in the future, so I'm looking forward to it.



Thor and Loki: The Tenth Realm
Though I knew AOA was going to be put on hold for the Original Sin event, and I knew Thor and Loki were going to have some kind of treatment in it, I totally spaced on picking this comic up. Fortunately, my LCS still had #2 and #3 as well as #4, and 2 starts in a good place in terms of understanding what's happened already.

Bianchi and Garbett's art side-by-side is ... really weird. I honestly would rather have them switch off issues; it's so strange and jarring to go back and forth between them. For the most part, the switch-offs have have been whenever the setting changes, but there are some places in #3 where you have Bianchi for a single page sandwiched between Garbett, and there's no indication of setting change (I think in this case it was a flashback/montage, but still).

Old Future Loki in the background pulling strings everywhere is making me super nervous. Ikol-Loki's pretend betrayal of Thor was straight out of the Kid Loki handbook, which was nice, but that trick is going to lose its sparkle and sense of suspense quick if they don't change it up. The "I already have a family" line was really satisfying, though.



Finally, I cancelled my subscription to Captain Marvel. I was really excited for the ANMN reboot because of space adventures, but it's actually fallen really flat for me. Disappointing. Moon Knight is gone too, because like many people I was really there for Warren Ellis and his particular brand of weird (and to a lesser degree Declan Shalvey). I added Rocket Girl (whose first trade has come out!) because I'm never going to remember when to pick it up now that it's going on a bimonthly schedule. I'm afraid that's going to pretty much kill the comic, although I get why Reeder has to do it - the amount of detail she puts into her work is really evident, and frankly astounding. She does amazing things with perspective. Still, I would be surprised if Rocket Girl makes it to a third volume.

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