Ka-Zar the Savage 32 (June 1984)

Reading Carlin’s Ka-Zar is watching a series collapse on itself. This issue does have Marie Severin doing these wonderful imaginings of Ka-Zar and Shanna as a sitcom married couple. Those scenes, totally pointless and unbelievable, are awesome.

Otherwise… it’s awful.

Carlin turns Shanna into a ninny and a little of a harpy. She doesn’t trust Ka-Zar’s judgement because Ka-Zar’s dumb, remember? Carlin just amplifies all the textures of her personality (under Bruce Jones’s writing) until she becomes unbelievable.

The major incident with this unbelievable behavior regards Ka-Zar’s brother, who’s a villain and has a goofy mustache and dumb name. But he’s got an accent so Shanna’s going to believe him? It doesn’t seem likely.

But the plot also requires Ka-Zar to be really stupid and unobservant.

Carlin’s whole approach seems to be making the protagonists morons so they’ll fall for his bad plot ideas.

Neary’s bad art doesn’t help anything.

Ka-Zar the Savage (1981) #31

With this issue, from the opening page actually, Ka-Zar the Savage has devolved into complete nonsense. Carlin even manages to make the strong supporting cast useless against his Machiavellian pterodactyl man. Except the pterodactyl man is an inept idiot too, so it’s kind of a comedy.

Paul Neary and John Beatty take over the art. I feel like I’ve liked Neary, but I’m not sure… Ka-Zar doesn’t suggest he’s any good. His figures are stiff and blocky and his faces are worse.

Again, good art isn’t going to help Carlin’s script. He keeps with the series’s high level of conversation, but he can’t come up with a decent reason for the characters to be saying their lines. Shanna probably calls Ka-Zar stubborn seven times in the issue. It’s about all she has to say to him.

Apparently, now married, their other character traits have disappeared.

It’s terrible.

Ka-Zar the Savage 31 (April 1984)

Apparently, now married, their other character traits have disappeared.

It’s terrible.

Marvel Team-Up Annual (1976) #7

Did Louise Simonson get paid by the word? Ten pages into this issue and I was already ready for a nap. It’s the most boring comic book I can remember reading–Spidey and Marrina (from Alpha Flight) get kidnapped by an alien collecting lifeforms, including some Superman might want in his zoo, and Alpha Flight shows up to help them.

Actually, Alpha Flight shows up to bicker. According to John Byrne, Northstar was always supposed to be gay but Byrne isn’t writing this issue so one has to wonder if another possibility was he was supposed to have the hots for his sister, Aurora.

Most of the issue is spent with Northstar acting like a perv in regards to her.

If I never read another Alpha Flight comic again, it’ll be way too soon. What a miserable time.

Amusingly, Simonson seems to get it–Spidey comments on their lame behavior.

Marvel Team-Up Annual 7 (1984)

Most of the issue is spent with Northstar acting like a perv in regards to her.

If I never read another Alpha Flight comic again, it’ll be way too soon. What a miserable time.

Amusingly, Simonson seems to get it–Spidey comments on their lame behavior.

CREDITS

The Collected Spider-Man; writer, Louise Simonson; penciller, Paul Neary; inker, Sam de la Rosa; colorist, Joe Rosen; letterer, Christie Scheele; editor, Danny Fingeroth; publisher, Marvel Comics.

The Ultimates (2002) #13

So all Millar needs is a double issue and he’ll take time?

Well, he doesn’t exactly take time. He writes an epilogue… lots of epilogues.

It’s a decent issue, a good popcorn read… though, wouldn’t eating popcorn while reading a comic book get your fingers greasy and damage the comic, reducing the value.

The positives come from the characters; again, Captain America doesn’t qualify yet and the Wasp does a turnaround on him and the end suggests some nooky (I guess he doesn’t know she’s a mutant yet… again, the hospital didn’t notice the little eggs?), so maybe next series he’ll have a character.

Great stuff with Thor and Iron Man, at least during the battle scene. However, Tony hitting on Laura Bush is, not surprisingly, weak. Millar really forces his “real world” humor and it almost always fails.

The Hulk saving the day, while neat, is way too easy.

The Ultimates (2002) #12

And Millar brings it around… relatively. It’s a big huge fight scene with the fate of the solar system in the balance so maybe he gets some easy melodramatic points (he sure doesn’t score anything with the Captain America versus Nazi Skrull punch-out, not until the whole “A for America” thing, which doesn’t really sit well figuring Captain America’s from the 1940s and not a Neo-Con, but whatever… no one ever said Millar thought before he wrote).

The best moments of the comic–when the soldiers mock Iron Man’s sacrifice, for example–are sometimes quiet, sometimes loud. Thor, again, has the best lines in the comic. Millar never doing an Ultimate Thor series is his undoing, creatively speaking. For whatever reason, he writes him leagues better than anyone else.

I’m having some trouble with Captain America as a brilliant strategist too… shouldn’t have he won WWII earlier then?

The Ultimates (2002) #11

Oh, good grief….

Have you seen Independence Day? Or any of the millions of Body Snatchers type movies?

Millar has.

I know I’m reading way too much into The Ultimates, but come on… Millar’s got thirteen issues and he doesn’t do anything with this one. Seriously, I don’t think Marvel can say anything bad about Jim Shooter, because Millar’s not much different (I do absolutely love how they’re Skrulls though, which means all Bendis did was recycle Ultimates for Secret Invasion). There’s nary an honest moment to be seen in this issue.

The end, the rallying speech from Captain America, is about as well written as Bill Pullman’s Independence Day rallying speech.

I think some of my… hostility comes from Ultimates being a decent concept–at least as far as an Ultimate Universe team book goes–and Millar faking “real world” with soap opera histrionics and mean-spiritedness.

Two left.

The Ultimates (2002) #10

Sigh. An all-action issue. Not even an action-packed all-action issue. It’s a non-action-packed all-action double cross issue.

The Wasp’s twenty-six? Really? She’d have been nine when St. Elmo’s Fire came out, which makes it an awkward pop culture reference. It’s funny, but it doesn’t hold up to any thought whatsoever. Oh, wait, I just summed up the series.

The big shocker at the end of the issue is the Nazi villain Captain America used to fight is back. It’s weird how Millar doesn’t really give Captain America a character here, he just lets him be defined by his actions, never really having any thoughts.

Lots of vehicles for Hitch to draw this time. I think he digs drawing vehicles. It’s a decent scene, the sky full of S.H.I.E.L.D. ships. I don’t know… I can’t get excited at this point.

Nice Thor moments though.

The Ultimates (2002) #9

When did the Soviet Union fall?

Let’s check wikipedia. Ah, 1991.

So Hawkeye has been in S.H.I.E.L.D. for over eleven years, putting him in his thirties somewhere, I assume. Shame Hitch draws him in his mid-twenties.

Actually, if it hadn’t been for that last line about the Soviet Union, I was going to open with how unpleasant it is to read Hawkeye in Ultimates, since (I think) he just ends up getting tortured and killed anyway.

I don’t know what happens this issue. They get ready to go attack the aliens, Captain America strikes out with Janet. Oh, the fight. Captain America versus Giant Man. Once it becomes clear Captain America’s going to kick ass, the fight’s over. Boring.

Millar’s playful approach to Tony’s alcoholism is cute. It’s funny how that problem’s a joke, but spousal abuse isn’t (if Millar was really thinking, he’d have Janet beat up Hank).