Has to be Astonishing X-Men #25 for me. I love Ellis but was unsure of how he would handle the X-Men. I was never a Buffy, Angel or Firefly fan so wasn't sure what to expect Whedon would do, but for the most part I really enjoyed his run (And loved the art anyway as I was already a Cassaday fan). If #25 didn't have Ellis's name attached I probably wouldn't have know the writer had changed, he grasped the voices of all the characters perfectly. I even love the fact he threw in little bits like Beast's comment about Brand from SWORD. I wasn't actually expecting any follow up on her flirting with Hank, but I'm glad Ellis didn't overlook a small detail like that. While the artwork was excellent, I felt it a bit dark, especially after the "openness" of Cassadays art in the previous issues. Only thing I didn't like was the "car", looked rubbish! Liked the new X-Jet though. One thing though, I get the feeling X-Men #500 will be set before this issue.
I've no idea how Ellis fits all his work into one day, or maybe it's just most of the rest of the comic industry is lazy and he just brings out a normal days workload. He's even writing a new GI Joe cartoon, which brings me to my second comic of the week:
GI Joe #36. I'm probably the only person here that cares about this title, but it was one of the things that got me into comics as a kid (when it was Action force in the UK) along with Transformers. I followed the Marvel run right to the end, was ecstatic when Devils Due brought it back and carried on the same continuity, and now I'm gutted it's all come to an end. Devils Due never reached the high points of the Marvel series (highest selling comic in the US at one point I believe), and the big 12 part World War III story that they went out with could have been a lot better, but I'm still sad to see it go. I'll be giving the IDW series a chance, but since it's a total reboot it's hard to try and care about characters all over again. It's not like the Ultimate comics where you still have the "real" Marvel Universe characters to follow.
Oh folks, predictability is my middle name. The latest issue of The Goon is out this week. Features consistently great art combined with a wicked sense of humour this is a title that deserves more recognition.
Just got round to reading last weeks Amazing Spider-Man, I'm probably gonna have to make it joint comic of the week as it was the perfect done in one Spidey story.
To balance it then, I'm really getting bored with Spidey.
Astonishing X-Men was great, though, as I'd also been worried that it would tail off without Whedon and Cassaday. I also used to get the Action Force comic - my fave stories were the one that revealed Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes' mutual history and, obviously, the classic silent issue.
I'm enjoying Secret Invasion but am preferring the Avengers titles to the actual SI book itself.
I've loved Spidey since the start of BND. OMD was rubbish, but BND has been great for the most part, and certainly better than any of that Spider-Totem nonsense.
Action Force/GI Joe has always been great when written by Larry Hama, and I stuck with the Devil's Due stuff through the good and bad but they never came anywhere close to Hama's stuff (aside from the few issues Hama wrote himself for them). It's a shame the comic just gets written off as a "toy tie-in" comic by most, cos Larry's character driven stories are up there with the best X-Men soap opera issues. As mush as I'm sad to see the old continuity come to a close, it'll be great to see Larry starting from scratch and having total control, not having to feature the "toy of the month" like in the old days.
I've been a big Spidey fan, on and off, since I was about 4. I've read the Amazing Spider-Man comic, on and off, for about 18 years and haven't missed an issue for the last 10. I feel that this current run is the worst it's ever been. I think the whole reboot was a bad idea (that's been well covered elsewhere on these boards) but all that would have been forgiven if the stories that followed were exciting, interesting, fun or at the very least held my attention. But they're weak. I've found myself skim reading issues just to get them out of the way. It's gone from the 'must read first' comic on the top of my pile to a comic I'll get round to eventually. Obviously, I'm going to stick with it. I'm quite looking forward to the upcoming John Romita JR and Adi Granov stuff. But even JRJR doesn't seem very excited about the series. I think the reboot has proved to be a big step backwards. And I miss Mary Jane.
The main reason I've stayed away was the basic premise of the re-boot, i.e. take Spidey back to how he was in the 60's and 70's, the geeky single guy, with girl troubles and trying keep his secret identity secret. I felt that we'd had all the stories you could do with that set up already - that's why the character evolved and changed in the first place surely?
I haven't read Brand New Day, but basically my worry was that the stories would just be rehashes of the old stuff, and given the old stuff is classic I doubted it would be matched regardless of the writers/artists on the title.
Strange thing is, since BND started there hasn't been much girl troubles or much problem hiding his identity, which makes that half of the reboot a bit pointless, although I'm guessing that side will kick in more now Peter is sharing a flat with a copper.
My favourite Spidey period is the 80's ASM stuff with the Hobgoblin and the early 90's Spectacular stories with Harry as the Goblin, and to me BND has that same feel expect with all new baddies (some of which have been better than others). I expect to enjoy it even more once they bring in some of the classic rogues gallery.
(All my opinions should be viewed knowing the fact that I liked the clone saga for the most part and think people bash it just for the sake of it ;-) )
That's the other thing - the new bad guys. If Jackpot and Menace were never in another issue, would anyone care? Really? And Freak - what a waste of four issues or so. They read like a monster-of-the-week filler issue, to me anyway. The only thing keeping me reading (other than my mental, 'must buy almost everything I ever see with Marvel on it' illness) is the quickly rotating creative teams which makes you hope that the next arc will be better.
All characters were new at one point. Fighting the same old baddies over and over gets boring. I like the fact they introduced a character like Mr Negative and then he keeps popping up in the background.
In fact it's always annoyed me that when Ben Reilly became Spidey they introduced load sof new baddies only for them to never be seen again.
You're right. All the villains had to start somewhere, but most of Spider-Mans best villains impacted on Peter/Spidey's life in some other way than just showing up and waiting to be punched (Goblin's his mate/mates dad, Lizard is his teacher etc). The rotating creator team is a good idea in theory, and does always give you hope that the next one story will be better. But I get the feeling that each writer is expecting the others to write the main forward moving storyline, while they just have fun writing spidey. In reality nobody is moving the story forward.
