Wonder Woman#601 REVIEW (Is this “all-new” Wonder Woman any good?)

Cover art by Don Kramer and Michael Babinski

Wonder Woman#601   

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski   

Artist: Don Kramer with inks by Michael Babinski   

Publisher: DC Comics   

Price: $2.99   

Here we are! New Wonder Woman! New costume! New creative team! After reading Wonder Woman#600 I figured this was as good a time as any to jump on board and start reading Wonder Woman. Mind you, I have read a few issues of Gail Simone and Greg Rucka’s run, but I have yet to fully follow a run of Wonder Woman. I was hoping that this would be a run I would want to continue with the story. With JMS working on the writing chores that increased my hope. I’m interested to see if he can do to Wonder Woman, what he did with Spider-Man. So, I bought this issue with high hopes. Were they met? For the most part yes.   

I knew that JMS had changed Diana’s (Wonder Woman for those who don’t know her real name) origin. I am bit ashamed to admit this since Diana is one of my favorite female fiction characters, but since I had no idea what her origin was this was interesting and new for me. Very quickly into the story you see that amazons are a tough breed of women. Basically they’re the female versions of the Spartans. As usual, JMS does a great job at keeping me interested in the story and has me not wanting to put the book down. The story is fast-paced. Not too fast, but not too slow. The story remains interesting throughout the book. The pacing is perfect for the book. One thing that bothered me was the plane scene. How do you doze off on a plane and not be thrown off? I didn’t get that. I understand that she’s Wonder Woman, but that was a bit too much. Overall the story was great.   

The art was the biggest surprise of the book. I did not expect to like it as much as I did. Don Kramer does a nice job on art chores and he manages to pull of a Nicola Scott (whose are I love, by the way) feel to his art. The art was another factor that played into keeping the story interesting. It worked very well with the feel and pacing of the story. So kudos to you Don for the nice looking art.   

Overall this was a nice package that was worth the price I paid. I will definitely be sticking around for a while in hopes of it staying at this level of quality and possibly beyond that level. I am happy where it’s at now, but it would be cool to see the quality go up. Now that would be a rockin’ comic book!  

Rating: B+

Back Issue Comic Book Review: Amazing Spider-Man#500

Cover art by J. Scott Campbell

Amazing Spider-Man#500

Written by: J. Michael Straczynki

Drawn by: John Romita, Jr. and John Romita, Sr.

Inks by: Scott Hanna

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Price: $3.50 (got my copy for $1)

So last week I ranted about the new issue of Amazing Spider-Man and after that I needed to cleanse my palette, so I read this based on the fact that I’ve liked most of what I’ve read of JMS’ run on ASM. I’m also a sucker for almost anything drawn by John Romita, Jr. I REALLY enjoy his art. So I started reading this and, to me, the story got off to a slow start. Now keep in mind that I haven’t read the issues before this, so that could’ve played into the fact that I thought it started slow. But things quickly moved along quite nicely. Basically Spider-Man, in this issue, is re-fighting his old fights when he first started out. For example, his early fight(s) with Sandman, Doctor Octapus, Electro, Lizard, Vulture and a couple others. He also re-lives that classic scene (and my personal favorite Spider-Man moment) when he lifts the huge piece of machinery to get the ISO-36 to save Aunt May. First of all if you haven’t read that story (in ASM#31-33, don’t worry it’s been reprinted several times) then shame on you. Go read it NOW. Secondly, here is that scene:

Is he strong? Listen bud-- he can lift heavy machinery above his head. But apparently a fat guy can pin him down...

 As someone who grew up reading the reprints of all the classic Spider-Man stories I really enjoyed this book. A lot actually. But to me the best part of the book is the ending. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read it yet, but all I can say is that I started to cry a little. This is a great book, especially if you’ve read the classic stories of Spider-Man. We need more Spider-Man stories like these. Oh, what’s that? Dan Slott’s going to take over ASM? Well, it looks like my prayers have been answered!

Rating: B+

What I’ve Been Reading…

Hey guys! This is a new post where I will be sharing with you what I’m reading. Since I like to include the people who read this post in with the conversation, feel free to share what you are reading by leaving a comment on the post.

– The Best of Spider-Man Volume 5 HardCover featuring the Amazing Spider-Man stories: Skin Deep (by J. Michael Straczynski, Mike Deodato, and Mark Brooks) and New Avengers (by J. Michael Straczynski and Mike Deodato). Skin Deep was alright. To me, JMS’ Amazing Spider-Man issues, good or bad, are captivating and keep my attention. Skin Deep wasn’t as attention grabbing as I’d hoped. I expected a lot more. The New Avengers story however is good. It grabs my attention and it’s very interesting to see how the Avengers live (don’t you find it funny how Bendis never really focuses on that) and how Peter, MJ, and Aunt May respond to their way of living. Overall, this was a nice read and fairly enjoyable.

– Secret War (by Brian Michael Bendis and Gabrielle Dell’Otto). No this is not the original Secret War series (which was good, by the way). This is the recent one. I should’ve know this from the get-go, but… the dialogue is typical Bendis dialogue nowadays. It’s boring, everyone has the same voice, it has little to do with anything, and is annoying sometimes. A few times throughout the story I just wanted to say, “Seriously, shut up!” to some of the characters. But I managed to pull through. The only cool scenes were the fight scenes. While Dell’Otto’s art was gorgeous to look at most of the time, there were a handful of times where I didn’t know who was who because he changed the costume of the character. It got to the point where I had to use the back matter in the book to clarify or remind myself who was who. Example, the heroes fight a goblin guy and it was at the end of the issue where I was flipping through the back matter and I thought, “Holy crap! That guy was Hobgoblin?!?!?” He wasn’t wearing the classic orange and black suit. Instead he was wearing… something else. There were other instances like that, but I don’t want to waste time with them. I’m sure you get my point.

– Battle Chasers (by Joe Madureira and others). Wow. This series is great. Too bad Joe Mad dropped it after issue#9. I really have quickly fallen in love with this series. The characters are great and the art is beautiful. These just adds to the long list of great titles that the creators have just dropped for other things that tend not to be as good.

– Secret Six (by Gail Simone, Nicola Scott, and Doug Hazlewood). This is what Dark Avengers should’ve been.

That’s all for now! Please leave a comment about what you’re reading or anything else! I look forward to reading them! Thanks for reading!

my thoughts on Sins Past

Yes, this is that story. I read it recently read it and would like to share my thoughts about it. Here we go.

This is the story where two siblings named Sarah and Gabriel threaten Peter Parker and his family’s life. It is soon revealed that these two are Gwen Stacy’s kids. The father is then revealed to be non-other than Norman Osborn. So MJ tells Peter the story how Gwen and Norman… y’know and why Norman really wanted to kill her. You then find out that after Gwen gave birth to the kids in France, the kids stay in France and after Osborn “raises from the dead” he goes to Europe to train the kids to kill and hate Peter (who the kids believe is their father and that he killed Gwen and abandoned them). Here is my problems with that:

1. Those who’ve read Marvel Comics in the past year or two know that Norman Osborn has been ruling the USA (not anymore, yay!). My problem is that Spider-Man wouldn’t sit on his ass with the Avengers eating Chinese food and standing around watching T.V. The Spider-man I know would’ve stormed into Norman’s “Avengers” Tower and beat the crap out of Osborn. I find it hard to believe that Spidey would let the man who slept with his girlfriend, got her pregnant, then murdered her, ruined Peter’s best friend Harry Osborn’s life numerous times, and raised Gwen’s kids to ruin Spidey’s life, would let him walk away with all the power that he had been given.
2. The given reason why Gwen slept with Norman was that his presence “overwhelmed” her and that he felt lonely. Bullcrap. If that’s true that means that Gwen didn’t love Peter. I’m sorry. I know that’s harsh, but it’s the truth.
3. The original pitch for the story was that Peter was the father (I would’ve been ok with that), but then Joe Quesada had to taint get his stink all over the story and have Norman be the story. I don’t know about you but having Norman being the father is a million times worse than Peter being the father.

 

Ok, that aside…. I actually kinda liked the story. The first half was great, but the last half was alright. The story held my interest. I finished Part 4 of the story, then looked at the clock and realized it was 1:30 AM. The Deodato artwork was nice to look at. Maybe that’s why I liked the story… because I’m a big fan of Mike Deodato (his Dark Avengers art was terrible, though). J. Michael Straczynski did a great job getting me to feel sorry for Spidey and Gwen’s kids. Towards the end of the story Sarah is shot and needs a blood transfer, so Spidey sacrifices some of his own blood to save her life. The end was kinda stupid and clichéd. Gabriel gets Green Goblin garb and tries to kill Spidey, but his glider explodes and he falls into the river and is carried to a beach where some people rescue him, but he doesn’t remember who he is. Will we ever see from him again? I doubt it.

Well that’s what I thought of it. I’m just going to ignore to that Gwen slept with Norman, so my love of Gwen’s character doesn’t get poo-poo’ed on. (I should make a list of characters that Quesada, Millar, and Bendis ruined my liking for).

Feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment! I look forward to them!