Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Quick Comics Reviews

Adventures of Superman; Ultimate Spider-Man; Wolverine

Adventures of Superman #634
by Greg Rucka, Matthew Clark & Andy Lanning
This is the most fun I've had reading a Superman comic in quite a while. Smack in the middle of a story about the new Parasites, Mxyzptlk shows up and tries to help. Mxyzptlk is one of those characters with whom it is very easy to mess up a story, but Rucka handles him quite well, and he and Clark pull off some great gags, verbal and visual. Of course it's not the best Mxyzptlk story ever--that honor belongs to Evan Dorkin's World's Funnest. But it does show why Adventures is the Superman book to be reading right now.
Rating: 3.5 (of 5)


Ultimate Spider-Man #69
by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley & Scott Hanna
Bendis and co. finish off another fun two-parter, this one featuring a team-up between Ultimate Spidey and Ultimate Human Torch. After Johnny accidentally catches on fire he is exposed as a probable mutant and has to leave the school, leaving poor Liz Allen crushed. It was kind of disappointing that Liz didn't show up to meet Johnny, but then she is a teenage girl, and no one ever in the history of the planet has ever been able to figure out how teenage girls think. In the traditional Marvel-U, it's Spider-Man who had the hero worship for the more experienced Fantastic Four, so it's interesting to see the roles switched here int he Ultimate-U (I figure that the previous meeting in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up is going to be ignored.)
Rating: 3 (of 5)


Wolverine #22
by Mark Millar, John Romita, Jr. & Klaus Janson
Part 3 of "Enemy of the State" is a mostly mindless punch-up between the mind-controlled Wolverine and the Fantastic Four, but it is a competantly done punch-up and is not without its charms. Millar has the FF use their powers in some unique ways to fight off the intruder, including one by the Invisible Woman that, while novel, is one of those things that makes you wonder why she has never done it before, and when she doesn't do it in the future it will beg the questio of why not? There seems to be a big reveal on the last page, but are we supposed to recognize who it is? (I'm not nearly as up on the knowledge of obscure Marvel characters as I am with DC.)
Rating: 3 (of 5)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

With the Invisible Woman moment (I'm assuming you mean the bit with Wolverine's lungs) the reason nobody's done it before is that it wouldn't work, at least not in the way that Millar describes it. Human lungs aren't two big airbags, but a number of tiny airbags. You couldn't sit a force field in there without causing massive damage. If you meant the other bit, where she turned his optic nerve invisible to make him go blind, I'm not positive, but I don't think this would work either as the optic nerve doesn't actually receive light. For her to make him go blind she'd have to make his receptors or maybe his whole eye go invisible.

The bald guy on the last page had me wondering too. I flipped back though, and I think he's identified as Baron Strucker earlier in the book, which makes me wonder why he had a full page splash at the end there.

--Dav

Dave Carter said...

I was refering to the optive nerve bit, and you're right--it's the rods and cones that are the light receptors.

Of course, when she turns herself entirely invisible she can still see...