Monday, April 4, 2011

Avengers #11 & Amazing Spider-Man: You're Hired #1

Two Marvel comics in this post, the latest issue of the Avengers, as well as the Amazing Spider-Man: You're Hired! #1 comic. After reading that Spidey comic I learned a very valuable lesson... If you're not sure what the comic is about, ALWAYS flip through it while at the comic shop before blindly buying it...

Amazing Spider-Man: You're Hired #1:

Summary: This was a weird one... There were actually three stories, a Spider-Man one, a Spider-Girl one and a Power Man tale. I'm only going to talk about the Spidey story because this IS a Spider-Man titled comic! Spidey's story is from back when Spidey had been fired from the Daily Planet by J. Jonah Jameson. While riding the subway with Aunt May, Spidey(as Peter Parker naturally), bumps into NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg, Peter and Aunt May all have a conversation about the many ways NYC was helping people get back to work, all while Peter had to keep ducking out to halt various menaces. Eventually Peter, Aunt May and Mayor Bloomberg get to City Hall and Bloomberg kind of/sort of indicates that he knows Peter was Spidey.

Thoughts: Weird... Just weird... I don't even know what else to say about this comic. It was apparently a part of some sort of initiative between Mayor Bloomberg and Marvel to help residents of New York City learn about Workforce1, some free career counseling service. Now that's all fine and good for people living in one of the five boroughs, but I moved out of NYC 4 years ago! So yeah, this comic was, as I believe I mentioned, weird. So if you're an out of work resident of the Big Apple, google Workforce1. If you're like me and you no longer(or never did) live in NYC, well then you're plumb out of luck!

Score: ? out of 10. Seriously, how can I give this a score?Mayor Bloomberg?!? What are YOU doing in a Spidey comic?!?


Avengers #11:

Summary: We start this one off with the Watcher watching(what would you expect?) Thor(who had the infinity gem controlling time), the Red Hulk and Namor preparing to assault the Hood, who had managed to acquire 3 infinity gems(power, space and reality). Hood easily swats the heroes away, but is continuously attacked by Red Hulk, who manages to grab the power gem out of Hood's hand. Not wanting to face the heroes now that they had the same amount of gems, Hood teleports away, back to the rest of the Avengers, followed by the other three heroes. Hood realizes that this was also another battle he probably couldn't win, so he teleports away again, this time to the former site of X-Mansion, where he meets the group of Avengers(and Prof. X) who were trying to break through Xavier's defenses to get the mind gem. Hood easily defeats the defenses and grabs the mind gem, but is immediately attacked by Xavier. The two have a mental duel, but all of Xavier's mental powers don't match the mind gem and Xavier(and the Avengers) are knocked out, allowing Hood to make yet another escape. Using the three gems he had, Hood teleports to the astral plane, which is where Dr. Strange had hid his gem, the soul gem. However, Hood finds that the gem was already in the clutches of Thanos(!!!)!

Thoughts: Brian Michael Bendis is a strange one... I mean I don't know if I've seen a writer who can go from writing crappy stories, to writing phenomenal ones, all over the span of one issue. This was one of his phenomenal ones. I loved every part of this story. It was really wordy(as are most of Bendis's comics), but it was wordy in the right way, if that makes any sense. Instead of pages of useless dialogue, where Spider-Man and Wolverine would stand around talking about the positives and negatives of Fruit-Loops, most of the dialogue here was said/thought by the Watcher, which helped steer this issue along. For once the dialogue told a story, instead of simply being there as page filler. As a huge fan of Thanos and the original Infinity Gauntlet I both loved the Thanos reveal, as well as wasn't overly fond of it, since I thought Thanos was still trapped in the Cancerverse. Irregardless, this was a great issue that has me dying to see what happens next. Oh, and if you're a fan of John Romita Jr's artwork, you may want to consider picking this one up, because most of the pages were without panels, and were full page spreads of the action... It was REALLY awesome to behold!

Score: 9 1/2 out of 10.A Bendis comic where the art tells the story?! What the HELL is going on here!?!?

11 comments:

  1. This is SO lame. Lol. I was looking forward to a review of ASM: You're Hired. Lol...but the fact that it's nothing more than some type of bad marketing type scheme....upsets me. The title itself had so much potentional... Sorry you had to read it X! I think that riot monster is making noise in the back of my head. Lol...a riot is needed for this type of thing!

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  2. I was just dumbfounded when I read that Spidey comic, Lisha! I just... I mean... What the hell was it?!? Weird... Needless to say that was the first time a comic book got a ? for a score! :P

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  3. Lol, I originally just scrolled to the score since i had planned on picking this up if you gave it a good score and I saw the "?" I'm like what, wait! Scrolled up and read and was like Wow, literally. Since this was #1, does this mean there will be a #2 and are they going to continue on this road for this comic? Lol.

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  4. "Since this was #1, does this mean there will be a #2 and are they going to continue on this road for this comic?" HA! God, I hope not! Will Spidey meet the mayor of LA or something in the second issue? I guess he could just go around the country meeting politicians! How fun is that!!! :/

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  5. That would seriously...suck. That sounds like the most boring run of a comic ever. Well maybe not, Morrison is pretty boring. Lol.

    But, I hope either that was just some gimmick or mess up and the next issue is actually worth reading.

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  6. Nah, luckily this was just a one-shot, so we won't have to worry about Spidey travelling the country speaking to the resident politicians! Man would that be awful!

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  7. Wow, did Marvel charge money for that Spider-Man comic? It sounds like something that should be given away for free...or maybe they should even be paying people to take it. So strange...it reminds of some weird "Teachers Count" promo comic they did a few years ago, where a bunch of real-life teachers were drawn into a comic book and helped defeat Doctor Doom or something. It was horrible!

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  8. $3.99!!!!!! Like I said, I learned my lesson there, Marc. Never again will I just blindly pick something up at the CB shop if I'm unsure what's in it. From now on, comics where I have no clue as to the content ALWAYS get flipped through before I buy 'em!

    That teachers thing sounds horrible! I've never heard of that actually. But then again I know both companies do stuff like that. Marvel had Cap and the New Warriors battle drug pushing aliens, while Superman dealt with animal cruelty. But those were both giveaways, NOT $4 comics!!

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  9. Yeah, stuff like that should always be a giveaway. As stupid as the teacher thing was, at least it was free. And the point of You're Hired, ostensibly, is to advertise an organization that will help people get work. Do they really think the unemployed are going to spend a whopping FOUR DOLLARS on a comic book promoting a website they could just go to for free??

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  10. I thought this issues was just horrible. First I have already seen the Infinity Gauntlet done a couple of times. Second Bendis has to describe everything over and over. "Parker doesn't know how to use the gems yet so he doesn't know he can easily just make them disappear". Bendis has to throw in his little stupid humor when Thor says something and Hood mocks him and he says "That is the way I talk." I just thought it was bad.

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  11. Cool, I can respect that. For me, this issue seemed like Bendis WAS showing some restraint with his normally out of control dialogue. Usually Bendis will have like 10 different characters on a page carrying on like 5 different conversations at once, but that seemed to have been kept to a minimum in this issue(to me anyway). As for the Infinity Gauntlet/gems, they're the type of big threat that the Avengers should be dealing with. Granted, I'm not fond of the Hood being the guy in control of them(he'll always be a common street thug in my eyes, not a cosmic level threat), but when you have a team with the likes of Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, etc, you need a major threat, and the gems fit the bill. Sure I'd rather Ultron(the male version!), Kang or the Grim Reaper was the main villain here as opposed to the Hood, but Bendis seems to have taken a real liking to the Hood, or at least HIS version of the Hood, so yeah.

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