Category: 2001
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Yuck, there’s a lot of design work from Hampton this issue. A painter shouldn’t do eighties advertising style design. It just doesn’t work out. Oddly, nothing works in this comic. Well, except some of Hampton’s skies. He has some beautiful upstate New York blue skies with clouds here. Otherwise, his work is just wrong throughout.…
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Well, the second issue—when Rucka and Grayson reveal the plot (Natasha and S.H.I.E.L.D. are out to discover the blond Black Widow’s boss’s plans to sell weapons to a foreign power)—is a whole lot less compelling than the first. More annoying Daredevil running around. Hampton doesn’t even try not to make him look silly around the…
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Now, I generally like Scott Hampton—well, in theory anyway, I remember he’s done some good Vertigo stuff—but who thought he’d be a good fit on a Black Widow book? All of the art, because he’s not doing fully painted backgrounds, looks way too designed and artificial. There’s zero flow to it. It’s like Marvel hired…
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Allen did Sounds from a Town I Love quickly, for the “Concert for New York City” benefit. It’s very short clips—about ten seconds—of (uncredited) people walking around New York on their cellphones. The snippets of conversation are all played for comedic effect, while still maintaining a mild sense of reality (some of the snippets are…
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Hester spent the almost the entire first issue establishing Ahmad as an unlikable person. Dying and being resurrected as a plastic superman has been the best thing for him. But this issue, when Hester’s got to write his dialogue, his narration, as this new good person… he can’t do it convincingly. Instead, he writes all…
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Hester changes it up again this issue, to similarly good results. This time, he doesn’t just spread the issue out, he actually lets time pass off panel, which he didn’t really do in the second issue. This issue, for example, doesn’t open with a resolution to the previous one’s conclusion. Instead, Hester takes a little…
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There’s a scene missing from this issue, the one where Mary Jane and Liz react to Gwen Stacy. Bendis gets in the boys’ reaction, but not the girls. Maybe, as I did, they were admiring her manly physique. Whatever Bagley was trying, he fails on her brief appearance. She looks like an Aryan She-Hulk. Actually,…
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Who made the Mary decision? Not Mary Jane, not MJ, but Mary. Was it Bendis or Jemas? I suppose someone’s said something about it online so I could find it, but I don’t care. I also don’t care about some of Bagley’s worse talking heads in this amazing talking heads comic. It’s the confession issue.…
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Where Lee had Peter do his homework for supervillains–research, science stuff–Bendis has his Peter write jokes. It’s a good scene, Spider-Man taunting the Kingpin with a bunch of jokes (did Ultimate Daredevil ever get mad Spider-Man outsmarted him in getting Kingpin in the most mundane way ever–I mean, security tapes? It’s like getting Capone on…
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Bendis wastes two pages on an advertisement for a security system this issue. It’s kind of important to the story, but something we could have picked up along the way. He’s padding. He’s got a forty-five second conversation over three pages and he’s still padding. It’s kind of frustrating here because he’s skipped something. Mary’s…
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Spider-Man meets the Kingpin… and gets his butt kicked. Amusingly, of course. Bendis makes superhero defeat humiliation amusing like no one else. Whereas Lee had defeat really hit Peter hard, Bendis just lets him roll with it, learn from it. He doesn’t give up, doesn’t even think about giving up. Finally, Aunt May is coming…
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Ultimate Spider-Man is kind of like Death Wish. The movie, I haven’t read the book. Let me explain. When Uncle Ben dies, Peter goes after organized crime, since he’s already got the guy who actually did it. And there’s no connection between organized crime and Uncle Ben’s murder. Peter’s just doing it because he thinks…
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So Uncle Ben’s murder doesn’t have a name? Didn’t they give him… oh, right… Anyway, I didn’t realize we were dealing with the Joker or something here. I guess it never occurred to me (in the Lee issues, the burglar exits, Bendis uses him here as a link to the Kingpin). This issue brings Peter…
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And another half issue. Probably takes about three minutes to read. It’s not like Bagley’s art is something to be examined either, so Bendis and Marvel must have been pretty darn clear about what they were doing with this format. I mean, nothing happens… the fight finishes. Again, some interesting elements, of course. I mean,…
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Oh, man, it’s half the best issue so far. Then it stops. How did people stand reading this comic monthly? It’s so frustrating…. Very amusing is the open at the Bugle, however, with a full Superman: The Movie homage. It immediately softens the reader, maybe so he or she doesn’t realize there isn’t a story,…
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A two minute read. I mean, I suppose Lee and Ditko did this part of the story in two or three pages, maybe less, so it’s only appropriate it should read fast…. There’s a big logic hole here. Not really for the characters, but in what Bendis is trying to present. He flashes back to…
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Bendis recovers this issue. Maybe not in terms of pacing (when am I going to get used to “decompressed” narrative again–it’s been way too long since I read mainstream ongoings), but definitely in terms of content. He kills Uncle Ben right after the speech, right after the “great power, great responsibility” speech. Maybe more importantly,…
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How many pages of ads ran in these things? Because I really do not feel like I got a full issue’s worth of story. In Ultimate, Bendis has Peter wrestling as Spider-Man to earn money to pay for Flash Thompson’s hospital bills, anonymously helping Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Bendis juxtaposes this effort with Peter…
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As expected, the series comes to a solid, if unspectacular, conclusion. It seems like Brubaker front-loaded a little, filling the first issue with content and having to pad a little throughout the remainder. There’s not really much memorable about the issue, storytelling wise–it’s never clearly stated why kids can see the ghosts, for example, while…
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And here’s where there’s some more connection to The Sandman series (I think, not really knowing, but they spend some time talking about people who aren’t in this book, so I assume they’re in the Sandman book). Again, I’m not sure how Brubaker’s writing the leads. They’re so naive, even when they’re impaired, it’s hard…
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Ah, perhaps my apprehension comes from this issue… it’s not bad at all, but it’s more focused on the backstory of a supporting cast member than it is on the two leads (who act really silly at one point, playing dress-up with wooden swords, an activity I associate much more with eight year-olds than the…
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I’ve read The Dead Boy Detectives before and I remember it not working out, but this first issue is fantastic. Brubaker brings a fairy tale slash Mark Twain feel to the story and Bryan Talbot’s art is, there’s no other word for it, precious. The two detectives–Charles and Edwin, I think–are adorable in a way…
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I had no idea Heather Graham was ever a lead in such a high profile project. I knew she was in From Hell, but she’s got a lot to do–and with an Irish accent. I suppose it’s the best performance I’ve ever seen her give, maybe because her character isn’t a twit and Graham tends…
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I unintentionally watched the Roger Ebert cut of Kate & Leopold. I originally saw it at a sneak preview with the plot intact. Ebert saw it around the same time and threatened to complain or whatever if they didn’t cut it. It works all right, but the original cut is available on DVD. I thought…
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The Royal Tenenbaums is a profound examination of the human condition. It’s hard to think about Tenenbaums, which Anderson made as a precious object–he tends to put the actors on the right and fill the left side of the frame with exactly placed sundries, sometimes it’s the carefully placed minutiae, but he usually puts those…
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The first Tremors sequel probably used up all the goodwill the first movie created… and the presence of Fred Ward helped quite a bite. Ward was a lead in the first film–not to mention being a highly recognizable character actor. The third movie opens poorly, with Michael Gross doing something silly under the opening titles,…
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No kidding The Mexican has a lot of the same score as The Abyss, Alan Silvestri composed both… oddly, I didn’t even think he was working anymore (or even back when The Mexican came out). Besides the Abyss rips, he turns in a good, funny score. But anyway…. The Mexican is kind of strange and…
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Watching Fighting for Love is frustrating. Rapid-fire dialogue–straight out of a Howard Hawks comedy–is difficult to get in subtitles, especially poorly translated ones. Still, the charm of the actors comes through and Fighting for Love is probably the best mediocre romantic comedy I’ve seen in a long time, at least of the recently-made (since 1998)…
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Sorum’s approach makes the film singular. While the DVD cover certainly suggests a ghost story, the first half of the film does not. Instead, it’s a film about urban apathy, just one with an uncanny style. Director Yun really does know how to make a film–one scene in the film had me ready to proclaim…
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Very cute adaptation of Annie M. G. Schmidt’s children’s novel about a cat who (through a chemical serum) becomes very human Carice van Houten, who then helps aspiring journalist Theo Maassen. She’s still able to talk cat so she gets all her old friends to dig up news around town. Lovely sets–rooftop are very important…
The Stop Button 