Publisher Marvel Comics - Review

S.H.I.E.L.D. 1

I take it much of this stuff was set up in a previous S.H.I.E.L.D. series – we’re thrown right in the middle here – but the first thing to do is to dismiss all thoughts that it has any discernible connection to S.H.I.E.L.D.. No Nick Fury or helicarriers or secret agents or anything like that. We have instead the Brotherhood of the Shield, a secret mystic/scientific organisation that has existed for thousands of years. We get 20 pages of story, one intro page, and at the back ten pages of mostly Marvel Handbook style background material (useful when I looked back at the otherwise information-free final splash, since the backup material tells me who these people are). I still don’t have much idea of what is going on.

Criminal: The Last of the Innocent 1

I was very slow in getting onto Brubaker, but I’ve become a big admirer in recent months. Criminal tells different stories with different characters with almost every run (apparently a sequel to ‘Coward’ is coming, so this isn’t always true), so it’s easy to jump on here with no prior knowledge. And it’s well worth doing so.

Daken: Dark Wolverine 9.1

Obviously “this works – let’s have some more of it” is commonplace thinking at just about any business, naturally enough, but Marvel have been surely stretching the point in recent years. Multiple Hulks, Spider-clones of various types, a second Thor, two or three Avengers teams at a time. I suppose it derives from the success of the X-franchising of some years ago. Here we have Wolverine’s son, who is a lot like him but a bad guy.

Alpha Flight 0.1

Wait, 0.1? We need a jumping-on point BEFORE the first issue proper? How is a first issue not a good enough jumping on point, exactly? Oh well, let’s read this as if it is a first issue, okay?

Moon Knight 1

I had mixed feelings approaching this one. On the one hand, I love Bendis & Maleev’s run on Daredevil, and will therefore be keen to read anything else they do. On the other hand, Moon Knight. A very Batman-style superhero with more explicitly stated lunacy, often expressed in simpleminded split personality terms, and without an interesting history, strong villains or a supporting cast anyone cares about.

Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine: Another Fine Mess

This is another of Marvel’s Must Have bargain $5 reprints of the first three issues of what is presumably a hot series. I nearly didn’t bother with it, since I hated the last such collection, also with Wolverine, but this isn’t anywhere near that bad.

Avengers 12.1

This is a rarety, a .1 issue that not only stands on its own and makes for a genuine jumping on point but also introduces a big plotline for the future, as well as being a pleasure to read on its own.

Tomb of Dracula Presents Throne of Blood

This one-shot is weird in a few ways. ‘Tomb of Dracula’ is in larger print than the story title, but the Dracula connection is totally irrelevant – two pages at the start and one at the end wherein someone alleged to be Dracula, but bearing no resemblance on any level to the one Marvel have been showing us for decades (unless I am out of date on this), offers a ‘let me tell you about’ framing sequence.

Essential Thor 5

My first article in my first fanzine, almost 30 years ago in World Collide 1, was called ‘Why Is Thor Boring?’ It covered the last decade of the character, i.e. since Kirby left him, and this collection covers a couple of years at the start of that period. I pointed out then a few things that still strike me as true, reading this and that article so long after.

The Mighty Thor 1

Obviously there has been a proliferation of Thor titles lately – we’re getting a bunch of collections of recent mini-series, we’ve just had a fifth Essential volume, and so on, but Marvel must be hoping that a new Thor title out now will really hit big.