Strange Tales (2009) #3

St3

And this indie rendition of Strange Tales goes whimpering into the night.

Even Bertozzi’s Watcher intros have run out of steam and Bagge’s Hulk hits its greatest potential then falters.

Sakai’s samurai Hulk story is filler and contrived to be Marvel related. Lewis’s Longshot story is lame and a little misogynistic. Oddly, Longshot looks like a girl.

Brown’s two page FF gag story is good. Stephens’s Beast vs. Morbius story’s lame, but somewhat inoffensively. Chua’s graffiti as narrative thing is unintelligible. Cannon’s Spider-Man origin retell is lame. Lee’s Punisher story suggests he needs a male role model.

Hornschemeier’s story is depressing, Cloonan’s goes for a quic joke and gets it….

Marvel should have required humor in all the stories; they’re not getting “real” stories out of these creators anyway so funny would be better.

They duped me into getting excited for this series with the first issue’s Pope cover.

Strange Tales (2009) #1

St1

I think Strange Tales is a bad title for this one (I know, it’s a traditional Marvel title), just because they aren’t strange tales, they’re funny ones.

Wait, the Japanese one is strange (Spider-Man in a town of spider-people feeling inferior to Mary Jane).

Anyway, the funniest is Nicholas Gurewitch’s one page Wolverine strip. He’s got an amusing Hulk one too, but the Wolverine one is just awesome.

There’s some great art–the Paul Pope Inhumans tale is cuter, in narrative terms, than funny, but it’s just some amazing work from Pope (big shocker there).

Dash Shaw’s Dr. Strange story’s good, as is Johnny Ryan’s series of absurd Marvel jokes.

The Bagge Hulk story’s all right but nothing … incredible.

The strangest story might be Bertozzi’s somewhat touching romantic Modok story.

It’s a great anthology, just wish it wasn’t a limited series. Marvel needs to laugh at itself more.