Why Don't I Review More Marvel?

I've been asked about this, and I know my blog and all of my reviews on our dork show (Metro After Hours, for those of you not watching yet - we do a 10 minute episode every so often and you can see it at www.youtube.com/metrohero ) are very heavily weighted to DC and indie companies - more DC than anything.

The answer is that I talk about what I read, pure and simple.  On After Hours, we have found ourselves talking sadly about Marvel comics, more than anything lately.  And it is kind of a shame - Marvel has some of the most creative minds in the business working for them, yet recently, their books are mostly just not really worth the paper they're printed on.

In my opinion, it's really about glut. Somehow, in Marvel's collective mind, quantity seems to equal quality. They figure if one Deadpool book sells well, they should have... well, they should have this many:

If they were ALL good, that wouldn't be a bad thing, would it?  But they aren't all good.  They aren't all fun.  Some of them are just hack jobs.  The recent Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth was good fun, and a worthwhile, and recommended, read.  These, for the most part, are not.  And they are bizarrely numbered starting at something like #893 - all this to give us an issue #900, presumably to compete with DC's recent Batman and Superman #700 (those, by the way, are legitimate numbers, come by honestly over the past 75 years.  Marvel has only been producing superhero comics since 1963, so they cannot come close to DC's numbering.  They shouldn't try).

The same is true for Avengers.  We have Avengers, Secret Avengers, Avengers Academy, Avengers Prime, and Avengers: The Origin.

Oh my.

Secret Avengers is actually kind of good.  The rest... meh.

The problem is trying to wade through all the drek to get to the good stuff.  Marvel apparently decided that the average comic fan has unlimited wads of disposable dough and wants to spend it ALL on Marvel comics, and that the Avengers or Deadpool or Spider-Man (or whatever) True Believers will just plop down their cash to make sure their collections are complete, even if it bankrupts them - not a stretch to think it could happen what with Marvel's recent move to a standard cover price of $3.99. 

What they fail to realize is this: the average fan does not have infinite money.  But they're right about one thing: the True Believer must have every issue of Avengers.  Or none at all.  See, what happens is that these guys get overwhelmed.  They feel they can no longer afford to keep up.  Rather than continue to buy just the comics they actually read and like, the True Believer will drop them all, rather than go without some.

It's sad to see, actually.  There are a couple of good books.  Runaways has been quite good.  Secret Avengers.  Spider-Girl.  The Hulk books - there are only 2: Hulk and Incredible Hulk.  And actually, the Hulk books are excellent - one is being written by Jeph Loeb, who is a mixed bag at times for me, but the other is being written by the Hulk's most gifted scribe, Peter David.

But except for these few, most of what Marvel has been doing of late is trying to catch DC's fantastic success with Blackest Night and the relaunch of the Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps books (just the 2 titles there, folks), the return of the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, and Blackest Night sequel, Brightest Day.

It all just feels a bit desperate.  Instead of simply doing their thing and agreeing that sometimes DC gets lucky and hits on an inspired idea.  Sometimes, Marvel does.  Marvel's own zombie story, Marvel Zombies, was a great, tongue in cheek, but still very exciting and suspenseful story.  House of M was a great story.  Wolverine - The Origin.  NYX.  These were all really interesting, fresh, original stories.  Civil War - it may not have been completely original, but it was still well told.  But instead of continuing in that vein, Marvel has served up Siege - an utterly misbegotten story on an epic scale.  OK.  Everyone craps out once in awhile, no big deal.  But to keep on frantically grasping at straws by just chucking more and more garbage at the wall in hopes that something - anything - sticks... it's not a great plan.

Meanwhile, DC has been planting the seeds for their year-long epic over the course of several years, patiently waiting for the moment when they can let the flower bloom and reveal all the glory inside.  While DC patiently threaded its story through its entire universe, Marvel just began blowing their universe up and re-starting the whole thing.  Now that the misguided Spider-Man story, "One More Day," (Mephisto offers to save Aunt May in exchange for Spider-Man's marriage to Mary Jane) has resulted in loss of sales and huge tanking all over the world, Marvel plans to rebuild, it seems.  The latest Spider-Man (spoiler here, so just highlight it to see it) shows Spider-Man being killed so that his blood can be used as a sacrifice in order to bring Kraven back from the dead.  Seems that perhaps Spidey will be getting a re-match with Mephisto and seeing about getting his girl back.  Good for him.  Maybe people will care about him once again.

The thing is, the idea was fine - to put Peter Parker back at his beginnings, all alone.  But why is it that writers these days have a hard time just writing the character as he is?  Why the constant need to deconstruct and reconstruct?  It's baffling, and it's become so passe and tiresome.

And DC isn't lily white in this regard either.  The upcoming Superman story, "Grounded," seems to feature a Superman who, once again, has all this angst about being Superman, so he leaves off patrolling and saving the world and stuff, and instead goes on some sort of de-powered walkabout to meet the "real people" and ... oh for heaven's sake.  If it were anyone but Joe Straczynski writing, I would have some pretty scathing things to write here.  But because it's the great JMS (creator of Babylon 5, Rising Stars, and writer extraordinaire), I am willing to wait and see.

But a little advice to Marvel:  you're starting to look a little like a PC next to DC's Mac.  A little dumpy.  A little desperate.  A little late to the party.  And always saying you were there first.  But the truth is, you don't have to arrive first to be the life of the party - just put out good comics again and we'll have lots to talk about.

Echo ... Batman...

Echo 22

Everyone should read Echo.  It's so much more interesting than any other comic book out there right now.  Written by Terry Moore, the writer of Strangers In Paradise, Runaways, and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, it's a huge departure from what I'd come to expect from him.  The most recent installment begins the run-up to the end - it's a limited series, in 30 parts.  This is part 22.

The story begins with a bang - literally.  Julie Martin is recovering from a divorce, out at Moon Lake (a dry lake bed) with her camera when BLAM!  Something explodes in mid-air, pelting her with drops of silvery metal, which will not come off her skin.  Instead, the drops merge into a kind of breastplate, covering most of her upper body and one arm. 

A doctor tries to touch it, and it takes his fingernail off.  Anyone with violent intent toward Julie is either thrown off or killed, all without Julie being able to control what the suit is doing.  And it's growing - the alloy attracts stray droplets of itself, and the more it attracts, the more Julie hears... an echo.

What Julie doesn't know is that the metal is an alloy from a very special suit created by physicist Annie Trotter for the Phi Project.  The big bang Julie witnessed (and is now wearing the fallout from) was Annie testing the suit.  Boom.  But Annie isn't completely gone.  The alloy bonds with the wearer at the quantum level, bonding DNA to itself.  Somehow, the echo of Annie survives, and the more of the alloy Julie wears, the more strongly Annie is able to come through.  And boy, do they need her to come through.

Turns out that the Phi Project, like so many earthly organizations, doesn't know its own strength.  They are committed to running this alloy through their collider (you know, like the Large Hadron Collider at Cern...?).  Annie knows that when they do this, it will be the last act of man - it will create a wormhole, a black hole, that will swallow up the entire earth, the solar system, maybe the universe itself.  So the race is on to stop that collider - Julie is aided by Dillon, Annie's boyfriend, and Ivy Raven, an agent sent to retrieve her, but who switches sides to help Julie. 

Echo is a book that, while I love Terry Moore's clean, elegant line work, would really benefit from color.  The story is complex and it's sometimes hard to tell one character from another at key moments.  It can be figured out without a lot of brain bending or eyestrain, it's just that with color, I think it would just be a bit more organic to follow.

The book is a fascinating read, combining elements of physics, metaphysics and psychology; it's the Dan Brown equivalent of an analysis of religion.  heh heh.  It's also nominated for an Eisner award, so I'm not the only geek who thinks it's worth a look.  Not only that, but Terry Moore's latest creation has caught the attention of Hollywood - Lloyd Levin, producer of the Watchmen, Hellboy, The Rocketeer and others, has optioned the series for a movie.  Check it out.

Batman 700

Batman #700 - that's a LOT of Batman comics, man.  First of all, the cover is amazing.  Beautiful work by David Finch.  The story by Tony Daniel (first half) and Grant Morrison (second half) is uneven, however. 

Still, "Time and the Batman" - cleverly, this is the answer to the riddle/joke that is posed again and again in the story - is an interesting read, using several different artists, among them Frank Quitely and Adam Kubert, to tell a tale of many Batmen.

I liked the way the characterization of Batman-Dick is progressing.  He smiles.  He asks the cop about his child.  He's a kinder, gentler Batman.  I liked the way the characterization of Batman-Damian shows him to be a different man, and a different Batman altogether.  I loved seeing Terry MacGinnis in continuity for the first time (I think it was the first time, anyhow).  Batman past, present and future - it was a great idea, and some of it worked well.

Some of it was a bit obtuse, however (that's Morrison for you).  I got the ending, I guess, but it really felt a bit disjointed and hyper at the end.  I know they were going for a manic feel, especially in the Damian timeline, but it just got very confusing for me, and the artwork was too busy and felt a bit rushed - anniversary issues sell forever, it's not good to rush them.  Overall, I recommend the book, but with the reservation that if you like a good, clean, readable story, this may not fit the bill in all areas.  But where it works, it's very good, and a fun and worthwhile investment.