Fear Itself: Spider-Man 03
Chris Yost, Mike McKone,
Jeremy Cox, Joe Caramagna,
Ellie Pyle, Stephen Wacker,
Axel Alonso, Joe Quesada,
Dan Buckley, Alan Fine
Something about the core Fear Itself miniseries (or limited series or whatever they call ‘em now) is completely unsatisfying. The book is just too unfocused, you can see effects of fear but no explanation for it, you can see the tron-verse versions of the marvel characters but don’t really have any reason to care about them, and there’s a whole narrative that it’s connected to with Thor and some serpent uber-old-god but again there’s no real depth. This miniseries, however, sort of prevails where that series fails, even though it does almost the same thing. I guess it’s a matter of focus, by focusing in on just Spider-man dealing with this stupid event the reader can actually get something out of it.
We see that the fear is some irrational fear caused by lack of hope (spoiler I guess) and we can see how people react. Superman 713’s issues are even tackled in the pages of this comic with far more conviction. Spider-man shows up at the hospital, brings the danger with him, but helps to save a life, makes people around him strong and willing to fight evil, and does indeed ward off a bit of evil (somehow, in another sort of unexplained moment). Spider-man actually does something in this comic. I don’t know why that’s refreshing.
The artist is pretty capable of keeping up with the writing, too; he brings the depth of feeling necessary to make the reader sort of care what happens. And that’s the hardest part about something like this, making the reader care, because you know going out the gate who your market is for “Fear Itself: Spider-Man 3” and they know who they are before they even pick the comic up, but to make you care a bit about the story is another issue. Anyway, I wish this miniseries were all there were of the entire fear itself thing, it seems like if this were just three issues of Amazing Spider-Man the story would still have the same amount of depth as it currently does (with its millions of tie-ins) but wouldn’t need an excuse for such, it’s just three issues of spider-man coming close to losing all hope, the people around him losing all hope, but all of them finding it again through heroic actions which take place, small actions away from the big picture. Worth reading if you’re interested in the Fear Itself event, possibly the only thing involved that I can say as much about (not that I’m going to read any of the other stuff…).
Defenders: From The Vault 01
Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicienza,
Mark Bagley, Andrew Hennessey
Chris Sotomayer, Chris Eliopoulos,
Rachel Pinnelas, Tom Brevoort,
Axel Alonso, Joe Quesada,
Dan Buckley, Alan Fine
Something’s really enjoyable about this thing. I have to admit I’m one of those guys who reads almost every Defenders comic that comes out, I read the last Defenders, and even check in for instances wherein the defenders only half-assemble (like that fear itself fearsome four thing, which was the first time I’d heard of Betty Ross Red She-Hulk). So there’s a bit of a bias here, something about the Defenders makes me happy just to see ‘em together in some form or another. And this comic did indeed make me happy.
Apparently (according to the post-script) this was a story that Nicienza plotted as a fill-in during Busiek’s run, which Mark Bagley drew and was shelved until now, no one who was originally involved remembers what the story was supposed to be so Busiek just “ad-libbed” it. Maybe more comics should be made like this, but that might leave us with a bunch of Stan Lee bullshit or something, so I take back the first clause of this sentence. Still, this comic works, the main conceit is really interesting, and though the execution doesn’t take the reader there, sort of heartbreaking. Our four most noted Defenders, the Hulk, Namor, the Silver Surfer and Doctor Strange, each finally receive that which would make their lives complete, that which would make them truly happy. But none of them truly experience it. Their bodies are usurped by four random teenagers and the Defenders are left helpless in their own bodies as their greatest desires are accepted (or rejected in one case) by some nobody teenagers from nowhere.
The art is what you’d expect from Mark Bagley, I remember not liking his work when Ultimate Spider-Man first started but reading that shit like no other anyway, way back when. He’s always serviceable to the script and a fast worker (the reason he was tapped to draw this hypothetical-emergency fill-in issue). It’s sort of overly apparent that the coloring is new (what’s with that flash of light when the Hulk hits Namor?) but doesn’t ruin the comforting feel of the comic. I guess that’s what this is, some sort of comfort food for Defenders fans, a one-shot time-traveller. And it does it’s job, I feel pretty comforted by this thing, I guess.
Spontaneous Issue One
Anf this is where the art sort of fails the story. It tries to do the whole ben templesmith color palette thing and the visual aesthetic is thusly much darker than the story needs or requires of it. It’s hard to get that light feeling from the story when everything’s colored dingy piss yellows and browns. Reading through the comic a second time I can’t help but imagine what this thing would look like if it were actually colored, rather than whatever photoshop technique this is that’s become so popular in horror/mystery genre comics. It feels like a cop-out, with proper coloring, there’s some consideration in how the scene is lit, and how the colors create a mood, but here everything looks the same. The mood is absent, or if there is a mood it’s in conflict with the contents of the comic itself.
