Strange Tales II #3 – Review

By: Nick Bertozzi, Chris Sinderson, Terry Moore, James Stokoe, Benjamin Marra, Tim Hamilton, Kate Beaton, Bill Crabtree, Dean Haspiel, Toby Cypress, Michael Deforge, Alex Robinson, Eduardo Medeiros, Harvey Pekar, Ty Templeton, KT Smith AND Jody LeHeup (editor)

The Story: An anthology of short stories about Marvel characters told by indy creators.

What’s Good: Are you curious to see a young Thor who keeps losing Mjolnir because it doesn’t have a strap on it yet?  Would you like to see the kinda girls Reed Richards dated in college?  Any interest in watching the Silver Surfer play cards with a bunch of Skrulls as his master devours their planet?  How does Rogue get out of trouble if she breaks one of Professor X’s favorite vases?

If the answer to any of those was “yes” you should make a point to check out Strange Tales 2.  This is the last issue of an anthology series in which Marvel brings in indy creators and let’s them write/draw short stories about Marvel characters.  “Indy” is a confusing word in comic circles and I think a lot of people use that to mean “not Marvel or DC”.  The majority of these creators are doing things like writing comics under their own imprint, doing webcomics, etc.  In my mind, this is what “indy” means.

As with any anthology, some stories are better than others.  It really doesn’t get any better than the three stories to start this issue.  First we get a story by Terry Moore that shows a young, recently exiled Thor who is having some trouble with Mjolnir.  This story is just hysterical.  That is followed by a James Stokoe riff on Silver Surfer playing cards with Skrulls (who look a lot like his Orc Stain orcs) as Galactus ruins their world.  Might as well get in a last game of cards, huh?  Then we get an awesome Benjamin Marra story featuring U.S. Agent at his boastful, womanizing best as he takes down a terrorist “who’s been genetically spliced with the DNA of a velociraptor!! And if that weren’t enough, he has a nuclear warhead strapped to his back!!  We call him Terror-Saur!!” Of course, he lives in Terror-stan and is threatening the American way of life.

If tongue-in-cheek isn’t your thing, there are also somewhat touching stories about Reed Richards, Michael Morbius, The Thing and a few others.

Mostly though, this issue succeeds because it has a few memorable stories in it where you just say, “That was awesome!”.  And hopefully it inspires to check out a few of these really talented people’s other works.