Mister Amazing

This comic is definitely one of my personal favorites of all time. I'm a very big fan silver age comics, and this is about as close as I have ever seen a modern comic get to that style. It has all the great stuff: comic book science, horrible stereotypes, and colossus. Not to mention, it's a What If? comic, so you know the story line is good and that it features pointless cameos by other people who have been What If?'d. This one includes a cameo by "Lieutenant von Doom", because if the fantastic four were russian, obviously doctor doom would have been too... right?

The comic does have it's downfalls, though. For example, they completely ruin colossus' character over the course of the book. Setting aside that he gets an entirely different origin story, over the course of the issue he get's dumber and dumber. By the end of the issue, he can barely form complete sentences. So, I guess that means that when a Russian version of Ben Grimm goes to space, it gives him brain damage. Thank god for the real Ben Grimm's superior American brain...

If you're hoping to read a good comic about Wolverine becoming bonded with a venom symbiote, don't buy this issue. That picture on the cover? Don't expect to find any of that in the pages of the comic. 95% of this comic is just a bunch of people sitting around in a room talking (the rest is mostly ads). Really, the only thing in the book that is related to the image on the cover is a frame on the last page that shows a TV news feed about the symbiote battle in the city. Other than that, nothing really interesting going on here.

I understand that there has to be some slow points of a comic in order to build the story, but if you're interested in reading a comic with a little action, steer clear. This issue is bad enough to where I'm not even sure i'm going to bother picking up the next issue of this title.

I know Marvel often touts many of it's comics as a 'perfect jumping on point for new readers', but this one is really just that. Brubaker is, in my opinion, one of the greatest writers in the industry when it comes to making a story easy for a new reader to pick up on if they come in halfway. I have been a longtime Daredevil fan since my childhood, but recently gave up reading the stories because I did not like the way the writers worked the characters. Daredevil Annual #1 was good enough to make me go out and pick up the more recent daredevil comics, and they are now one of my top picks.

However, the best part of this comic is not the title character, but the supporting character Black Tarantula. His reinstatement into the Marvel U offers a good dynamic and a lot of potential for a solo series, which I hope Marvel decides to pursue.

Long story short, this is one of the best comics I've read all year.

Well, I practically forced myself to buy this. After the huge disappointment that was New Avengers #35, I had decided not to continue with the series at all. But, I'm a sucker for a symbiote. Luckily, this one was pretty symbiote-packed, which was not handled quite as well as I was hoping it would be. In fact, it still wasn't really a huge plot point in the comic. They could have used any kind of stupid plot twist to make the two teams get together, but they decided to go with some kind of chemical bomb. Color me forgetful, but I don't seem to recall that being how symbiotes worked in all the other times I've ever read a symbiote story.

On the plus side, this issue had a significant lack of "people sitting at a table". However, I officially consider the series to have been Bendis'd. I won't be buying any more of them.

I have to admit, I did not have high hopes for this book. I had picked up issue #0 (which was simply a reprint of a few comics where the characters of this series debuted), and had come to the assumption that the rest of the series was going to be just a boring. Boy, was I wrong! This book is so much a great throw back in the same style as things like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and others along the similar vein. Straczynski does a wonderful job of presenting the characters using mannerisms, dialog, and speech patterns that do a very believable job of mirroring the people of the era these characters hail from.

All in all, the best new book so far this year.