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!