Red She-Hulk #67 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (Writer), Carlo Pagulayan, Patrick Olliffe, Wellington Alves (Artists), Guy Major (Colorist)

The Story: Betty, Aaron, Jennifer and Man-Thing deals with the Echelon soldiers and gets to know about the order of the Shield with Nikola Tesla.

The Review: What a pity.

It’s always hard to see a title go, to see that despite all their efforts, the creators could not make the book sell enough to warrant a continuation. God knows that in this market we have seen a lot of cancellation on splendid titles, with the likes of Winter Soldier and Dial H being taken away because sales were low. It’s never a good thing to see such things happen, but there are also worse things that can happen to books that are cancelled. One of these, unfortunately, is to have an unfitting an unrewarding conclusion.

I am sad to say that this is the case here as even though Jeff Parker tries his very best to give us a grand finale and to resolve every plot points he had seeded in his book, he does not succeed. What gives this impression would be the fact that he tries to conclude too many elements at the same time, which gives the issue a very rushed feeling as the action jumbles a bit chaotically, not letting the reader assimilate everything that happens at a pace that feels satisfactory.

Red She-Hulk #66 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (Writer), Carlo Pagulayan, Patrick Olliffe, Joe Bennett, Ruy Jose (Artists), Val Staples (Colorist)

The Story: Betty should really know better than to try to harm Man-Thing. Seriously, the dude pretty much is the protector of various other realities.

The Review: This seems to be some kind of habit at some point. As awesome a writer as he is, capable of bringing enough care and development to characters that would never receive any, it seems he’s always the unlucky one that never has enough readership to maintain a book for a proper period of time.

Case in point, Red She-Hulk, who will see its last issue next month, has to make a point for the long-term storyline that had been running since the title and protagonist switch that happened when Betty Ross took a hold of the book. Despite the care he tried to give to this book, it seems that this book never really took off in a way that made it connect to a larger audience. Is it perhaps the lack of marketing, or maybe the sad fact that most female-lead books aren’t as hot sellers as other books in the superhero industry?

Web of Spider-Man #9 – Review

The Extremist, By: Fred van Lente (writer), Patrick Olliffe, Javier Rodriguez & Nick Dragotta (art), Andres Mossa (colors) & Clayton Cowles (letters)

Jackpot in Reflections, By: Marc Guggenheim (writer), Sana Takeda (art), Dave Sharpe (letters)

The Story: Spider-Man continues to grapple with The Extremist, a mysterious character who aims to eliminate the “shades of grey” and make it a black and white world.  In the backup, Jackpot is caught in a sticky situation having to do with the death of her husband.

What’s Good: Well, Marvel is doing a good job of making Web of Spider-Man worth picking up.  They just have a LOT of good Spider-Man stories to tell right now.  So much so that this week featured FOUR full length Spidey-comics and all were at least pretty good.  I really like the main story in the Extremist.  The “villain” is a dude with possibly mutant powers who can see a person’s essence: are the good, are they wishy-washy, are they bad, etc.  And he is out to eliminate the wishy-washy from the face of the Earth.  This story is just chock full of irony as the Extremist initially likes Spider-Man (who is pure and good) and wants to help him by attacking those people who would tear him down, but Spider-man must oppose him because Spider-Man defends everyone…whether it is in his best interest or not.  Very clever stuff as the Extremist starts to notice the similarities and differences between Peter Parker and Spider-Man.  We even get a decent X-Men cameo in this issue and the tantalizing possibility that the Extremist could be a mutant of sorts.  Isn’t it funny how the possibility of a mutant isn’t so annoying now that we’re years after House of M?  And we get more of Peter’s roommate Michelle!  And….she has a shotgun!  I really like her character and her relationship with Peter.

I also like that this story doesn’t seem to be required Spider-reading.  It isn’t too heavily tied to the major storylines going on in Amazing Spider-Man: The Gauntlet or The Grim Hunt.

For a story with 3 artists, the art was pretty good.  Often when you see that, it means that there was some kind of emergency with one artist not getting their work done on time, but in this case it looks like they proactively split the story apart by having one artist do the story in the past, one do the current story, etc.

Amazing Spider-Man #573 – Review

By Dan Slott, Mark Waid (writers), John Romita Jr., Patrick Olliffe (pencils), Klaus Janson, Serge LaPointe (inks), Dean White, Rain Beredo (colors)

The Story: Anti-Venom and Spidey have their showdown with Green Goblin and the Thunderbolts. When the fight kicks into high gear (within the confides of Oscorp no less), the layers begin to peel back and the connection between the Chinese immigrants (last seen in part 1 of this story arc) and the Osborn family is revealed. You get all this and a surprise back-up story by Mark Waid featuring Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report for $3.99.

What’s Good? Aunt May getting owned by Mr. Negative is ridiculously funny for all the wrong reasons. Besides, she should be dead anyway.

John Romita shows off his dazzling ability to show ferocity with battles taking place on two fronts. We get lots of big panels, lots of action lines, and tons of dynamic action. This is par for Romita, who excels at this kind of stuff, and it’s this effortless storytelling that makes this comic so good. Having Pat Olliffe return to draw a Spider-Man story is a nice touch, too.

Dan Slott writes fun and hammy dialogue and does his best to tie up loose ends while adding to the intrigue of Harry’s disappearance and his “other life”. The Thunderbolts may be wolves in sheeps’ clothing, but there’s a nice honorable moment here that shows that some of these guys aren’t beyond redemption.

What’s Not So Good? Dan Slott’s dialogue is a bit “too hammy” at times. Spidey saying, “You-you-you suck,” is straying into Ultimates 3 territory. There also seems to be more questions created from this arc than answers. It’s frustrating. Spider-Man completely owns the Green Goblin so easily is feels out of place. The guy barely put up a fight! Lily’s sudden feelings for Peter is way too forced.

I love Stephen Colbert, but the back up story isn’t as funny as it should be. It’s not that the story is bad – it’s silly and cheesy, that’s for sure – but completely unnecessary. I’d rather pay $2.99 and not have the back up story than pay a dollar extra for this. This story would be better served in an Amazing Spider-Man Annual than in a regular issue.  

Conclusion: At $3.99, this issue stings. The final chapter does a good job of delivering the goods, but the newer plot points introduced is making Brand New Day feel a bit too convoluted. We need answers before more plot is introduced.

Grade: B

– J. Montes