Age of Heroes #1

Short stories show how J. Jonah Jameson, Doctor Voodo, MI-13 and Spider-Man are handling new developments of the Heroic Age.
 

The Good

The short and sweet ones rise to the top, here. I particularly liked Dan Slott's one-page Spidey story for clarifying the nature of Heroic Age in such a tongue-in-cheek way. Superheroes are, of course, defined by larger-than-life conflict, so I've been amused by the implications that Heroic Age is meant to do away with darkness, and by extension conflict. However, Slott finds a funny way to clarify that there are still problems to be fixed and tie it into a joke about how Spidey can never catch a break.
 
I was similarly amused by the short MI-13 story, which demonstrated an appealing range of personalities in only two pages. Kirk renders some very expressive body language that adds up to a great punch-line about how much of a bastard Pete Wisdom can be.
 
The other two stories, about Jameson and Voodoo, are similarly low-key and just as effective. Busiek's short plays (unsurprisingly) like a good Astro City story and I enjoyed seeing how J. Jonah applies his yellow journalism thinking to the mayoral office. The twist at the end smartly thwarts him at the same time as allowing him to spin it to his advantage. Seeing Voodoo, such an otherworldly character, trying to balance his work life with dating like any normal guy was also fun. Samnee's art was able to deftly dance between surreal landscapes and ordinary settings for the dinner date (almost literally) from hell.

The Bad

There's not so much to complain about it here, except to say that there's nothing of earth-shaking importance in these pages. They're just small character pieces. No more, no less.

The Verdict - 4/5

This serves a similar purpose to this week's Enter the Heroic Age in showing how this new era is affecting different heroes throughout the Marvel Universe. I'll compliment Marvel's editorial for organizing this in such a way that there's no "double-dipping" or redundancy between the two books. Although, I think I'll recommend this more of the two, since all its stories are satisfying told-in-ones rather than being intended as teases for other books.