The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Spider-Man: Chapter One
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It’s so bad. It’s so bad I’m not even going to go on a super-rant about it because I think Byrne had to know it was terrible and it doesn’t seem sportsmanlike to kick him after such an absurdly bad comic book. It retells the Sandman story from Amazing, but sets it later in Spidey’s…
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Oh, wow. This issue is actually the worst. The dialogue is so unbearably bad, it doesn’t even matter Milgrom’s inks are a little better than last time. Spider-Man gets in a fight with Giant-Man and the Wasp–who Byrne portrays as being entirely narcissistic and without any heroic qualities whatsoever, but still forces the reader to…
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And there you have it… I say something nice and this issue’s my reward. This issue might be the worst. I mean, maybe not in terms of scenic writing, but certainly in terms of plotting and art. Milgrom’s inks here are atrocious. The only panel he doesn’t seem to ruin is a close-up of Johnny…
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This issue might actually be the best one of the series (so far). I mean, the Daredevil appearance at the beginning is awful–actually, wait, the whole beginning is awful. Actually, everything’s awful except the fight in Central Park against Kraven and the Chameleon. And even it has bad art–Al Milgrom is a terrible inker for…
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Artistically speaking, I don’t depend on John Byrne for much. Solid layouts maybe, everyone looking the same definitely, a decided lack of backgrounds as well… but I guess I also depend on him not to do Liefeld-like proportions and he closes the issue on one. It’s hideous. But it’s also a mystery–he draws Norman Osborn…
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This issue–even though it’s got Betty Brant and I doubt Byrne’s going to have a chance to foul up their flirtation–might be the worst so far. Again, I don’t care (does anyone care about Chapter One? I know even Byrne distanced himself from it, though I swear I read he once said “anyone who doesn’t…
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This issue, with Byrne eschewing most of Electro’s origin, not to mention the Lee and Dikto issue featuring him, is maybe more what all of Chapter One should have been. It’s got Byrne’s fingerprints all over it, versus a more direct “retelling.” For example, Byrne adds a huge Human Torch fight sequence this issue–the Torch…
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Wow, it’s worse when Byrne only tries to retell a single Lee and Ditko length issue. He does half the Doctor Doom story (ignoring the initial meeting between Doom and Spider-Man, again, a somewhat interesting omission) and half the Lizard story. The originals probably took fifteen minutes to read. Maybe more. Byrne’s retelling is a…
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Reading the original issues, I noticed how money concerned Peter’s actions often were during the first few issues. Bryne seems to have noticed it too, turning it into something of a plot point–Spider-Man realizes he should be selfless or some such thing. The problem with Byrne’s take is how lousy it suggests Spider-Man was before…
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It’s somewhat interesting to see how Byrne adapts the originals–for example, he sets up a cliffhanger on something from the middle of an original (Spidey’s initial defeat at Doctor Octopus’s hands). But interesting isn’t good. Or worthwhile. Here, Byrne introduces a previously unknown Superman and Jimmy Olsen relationship between Spidey and Flash Thompson. Byrne continues…
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Byrne’s approach to retelling the first “year” of Amazing Spider-Man issues is pretty simple, at least from what’s going on here. Gut the teenage Peter Parker drama and put in all Spider-Man and supervillains. Given how much of the originals Lee spent on the teenage drama, I imagine it had something to do with their…
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It takes Byrne twice as long to tell the Spider-Man origin this issue. Retell, sorry. I’m trying to think if there’s a single thing he does in the comic worth mentioning. He adds black people, he makes Peter’s classmates really vicious, Liz Allen in particular. Otherwise, it’s not much different than a padded retelling of…
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You know, it’s not terrible. I mean, it’s kind of dumb in a nineties rehash kind of way–if Byrne ever got so thorough in his thinking of Superman’s origin, he never showed it in Man of Steel and just let a lot go unmentioned–but it’s nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Maybe because…
The Stop Button 