Avenging Spider-Man #2 – Review

By: Zeb Wells (writer), Joe Madureira (art), Ferran Daniel (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Ellie Pyle (assistant editor) & Stephen Wacker (editor)

The Story: Spidey, Rulk & J. Jonah Jameson are underground trying to save the Mole Man (kinda).

Five Things: 

1. Again with the great art! – The main reason to buy this is if you love Joe Madureira’s art and he really hasn’t missed a step in all these years since he was last working for Marvel.  That’s a real treat because some artists just kinda lose “it” and there’s no bigger bummer than a beloved artist returning only to see that his style has complete changed or that he just doesn’t have “it” anymore (see: John Byrne in 90% of the stuff he does now).  There are so many advantages to Joe Mad’s cartoony style.  Of course, it works great for showing Rulk and Spidey hopping around, but he’s able to even make boring scenes pop.  Like the one showing just Jameson talking to the Mole Man.  Jameson is standing (which is usually kinda a no-no), but just little things like hands on his hips (check that… FISTS on his hips), a slight shift of his weight indicated by the folds in his pants and a slight cock of the head…. It tells you he’s pissed off and looking for whoever is in charge down here.  A artist rooted in realism would have to handle this panel very differently because they couldn’t pull off that pose very well.  And….Ferran Daniel’s coloring is great!  Marvel has really upgraded their coloring recently.  So nice to see artists who aren’t treating the pages like a coloring book and actually putting some thought and color theory to work!

2. Funny & quick paced. – The story is so simple, but Wells shows that he knows how to write scenes in a way that feels quick and lively.  Too much exposition would have dragged this issue into quicksand.  And, this issue is funny in places too (especially relating to Spidey and how they escape from a giant worm).

3. Fewer double-pagers this time, but… – I know Joe Mad likes to do double-pagers, but this needs to stop.  Unless you can convince me that comics are different from all other forms of media, these things are going to be largely digital in the very near future and these double-pagers just don’t work nicely on the iPad and you can FORGET it on the Kindle Fire.  From here on, there needs to be a good reason for a double-pager and neither of the ones in this issue qualify.  There could’ve been some other way to show the moleoid’s destroyed city; it isn’t so dramatic that it needs a double-pager.  And then the first 2 pages show something that needs to stop immediately: the image that is spilling onto ~1/3 of the other page which is otherwise populated with standard panels.  True, the image looks more impressive being slightly larger on paper, but it’s going to look like hell on an iPad.  These things are true for all comics, but I’m emphasizing them here because Avenging Spider-Man is one of those issues where Marvel is giving away the free digital code in the back.

Avenging Spider-Man #1 – Review

By: Zeb Wells (writer), Joe Madureira (art), Ferran Daniel (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Ellie Pyle (assistant editor) & Stephen Wacker (editor)

The Story: Spidey and Red Hulk team up to fight a subterranean threat.

Five Things:

1. The team-up is BACK!  How is it that Marvel can publish ~100 titles a month an none of them is the spiritual successor of Marvel Team Up?  MTU was such a treasure back in the old days.  It gave you a way to sample various heroes from the Marvel Universe and it featured some great creative teams.  So, it’s nice to see the team-up come back.  The back matter explains that this title is to explore Spidey’s adventures mostly with his Avengers teammates, but might dip into other areas of the Marvel Universe.  Wonderful!  The only negative is that they ditched the done-in-one format that made MTU special.  MTU exposed you to 12 different heroes in a year.  If they do ongoing stories in this title, we’re going to get 6 or fewer.  Fix that and you’ve got a great concept!

2. Joe Mad is back!  Beyond the fact that this was a Spidey book, the big draw was seeing Joe Maduriera’s name on the cover.  He’s been away from comics for awhile after a great run on Uncanny X-Men back in the 90’s, but there probably isn’t a better place for his stylized art than on Spider-Man.  If you like Humberto Ramos… I think Joe Mad is like Ramos on speed.  Now…..I will say that I’ll be highly surprised if this title can maintain a monthly schedule for long because this art is too complex for that, but given that these stories aren’t vital to the ongoing Spider-stories being told in Amazing, that really won’t matter.  Joe Mad is one of those rare artists who gets the “Take all the time you need.  Just let us know when it is finished.” treatment.

3. Very poor digital implementation.  Marvel made a big deal out of giving away a free digital copy of this issue with a print copy.  I’m a huge fan of digital comics on my iPad, so I was curious to see how Marvel implemented this.  Part of what makes Marvel’s iOS app so beautiful is it’s simplicity: You tap the “buy” button, input your App Store password, confirm that you want to buy and you’re reading your comic.  The whole process takes ~5 seconds.  What Marvel did here really sucked.  You had to go to a special webpage, log into Marvel.com (trying to remember my Marvel password), input a ~15 character code (“Is that a 0 or an O?”), say what comic shop you bought your comic at, agree to accept emails from your comic shop and then go to your device to read the comic.  This is not a process that will win many converts to digital comics because the beauty of digital it its simplicity!