COMICS: Wed. 11/17/04

Only read half the comics I got yesterday.

Marvel Team-Up: The art had an unusual style; it looked good in some places, not so good in others. I like the idea of this comic, but the first issue doesn't hit its potential; it's not awful, but neither is it tremendously promising. Kirkman falls back on the dopey cliche of having superheroes attack each other rather than spend ten seconds explaining the situation. But he gets off a few good lines (such as Wolverine's comment that he can track Spider-Man by following the trail of bad jokes), gives Peter Parker a fun soap opera situation at school, and puts Wolverine into a clever bind. I'll stick around for another issue, at the very least.

The Pulse: Hated the artwork. And... well, Dorian puts it so much better himself:

The Secret War tie-in issue of The Pulse basically consists of Jessica Jones standing around for twenty-two pages looking confused while incomprehensible things happen. So, it's an accurate representation of what it's like for readers trying to figure out what the hell is supposed to be happening in Secret War.

Is this artist change permanent? And is this really gonna be a five-issue arc of nothing happening? I'm going to have to seriously consider dropping this title.

Madrox: I hate David Lloyd's (it's still David Lloyd, right?) cover art -- ugly and muddy -- and the inside art, while growing on me slightly, still doesn't thrill me. I like Strong Guy's scene, and I like that Jamie's facing an apparently bad version of one of his duplicates. But that thing with the card through the guy's throat -- please. Seriously, that's such utter bullshit I still can't believe I actually read it. What, is Madrox Bullseye all of a sudden? I don't care if you shoot a playing card out of a cannon, it's not going to slice a guy's throat (unless those goons were playing with cards made out of razor blades). That scene is so frickin' stupid, it drained away a great deal of my enthusiasm for this series.

Fantastic Four: Still a great big bundle of fun. I loved seeing Johnny and Sue trying to master each other's powers (even though I still think the fact that Reed was able to switch their powers in the first place is kinda dopey), I loved the flashback scenes to Johnny's childhood and to Ben's first date with Alicia, I loved that Reed actually displayed a sense of humor -- this book is relatively lightweight, but the writing and art are tremendously, consistently enjoyable.