wktf
05-19-2005, 11:23 AM
Continuing from this week's comic book reviews, found http://www.statueforum.com/showthread.php?p=194161#post194161
Classic Trades Reviews
Last week we reviewed some pretty weighty material: X-Men: Mutant Massacre, the huge early crossover event that wreaked mayhem on Marvel’s mutant population, and Maus: A Survivor’s Story, the Pulitzer Prize winning anthropomorphic story of Art Spiegelman’s parents’ actual experiences in Hitler’s death camps during the Holocaust. This week we thought we’d lighten the mood a little but, instead, chose two trades whose subjects actually are death. Next week, though, we’ll be back with some grand, cosmic Marvel fun in our trade reviews. Onward…
Wktf’s Review
The Death of Captain Marvel OGN
Written by: Jim Starlin
Drawn by: Jim Starlin
I distinctly remember the summer of 1977 when I picked up Jim Starlin’s Avengers Annual #7 and being completely blown away by a battle of galactic proportions. The Avengers, Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock struggled valiantly but in vain against Thanos the mad titan in his quest to blow up our sun and kill everyone in our solar system as a sacrifice to Death. The Avengers and Mar-Vel were defeated, Adam Warlock was casually but brutally killed and the sun and our solar system seemed doomed. Doomed, that is, until the second part to Starlin’s epic appeared in the Marvel Two-In-One Annual #2 that hit the stands later that summer. Spider-Man and the Thing joined the fray and Adam Warlock rose in flames from the dead to turn Thanos to stone. The day was saved, but at great cost. A hero had died to save us all. It was a powerful and triumphant, but also sad and touching, story. I’d never read anything like it.
Then came 1982 and, with little-to-no fanfare, Marvel released the first in its new line of Marvel Graphic Novels titled The Death of Captain Marvel, also written and drawn by Jim Starlin. In many ways this book is the follow-up to 1977’s Avengers and Marvel Two-In-One Annuals. Deaths in the Marvel Universe up to that time (Gwen Stacy, Adam Warlock, Jean Grey/Phoenix) came with no publicity or ceremony, unlike the much-publicized Death of Superman and the more recent Avengers Disassembled events. They happened as an integral part of a story line and often surprised the reader who was caught unaware by them. Yet here was the death of a popular, B+ Marvel hero publicized right on the cover. Was this a joke or, more likely, some hoax or trick to draw us in to buy this book? No. It wasn’t. And not only was it real, it was entirely realistic…even, no…especially, for a comic book. Mar-Vel had developed one of the most prevalent diseases, cancer as a result of exposure to nerve gas way back in 1974 in Captain Marvel #34. And he was dying a slow, degenerative, painful death. Incredibly, Jim Starlin was again the author of a Marvel cosmic hero’s demise. Many of us who have either experienced cancer or witnessed friends or loved ones suffer from it will relate all too well and too uneasily to Mar-Vel’s condition. I, myself, have lost both family and friends to cancer since I first read this story back in 1982 and so my perspective on it, by definition, has changed.
As I reread this book I was struck by how fresh and real Mar-Vel’s pain and suffering felt, as well as the anguish and grief his friends and fellow heroes experience, despite having read this book several times over the last 23 years. Mentor of Titan along with the scientific and medical geniuses of the MU (including Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, The Beast, Yellow Jacket, and Thor) work furiously to cure him. But no comic book last minute cures are to be found here. Ironically, the very thing that’s helped Mar-Vel survive his cancer for so long, his photon wrist bands, is inhibiting the research team’s progress. And if he took off the bands he’d die almost instantly. So, the story moves slowly but almost appropriately, lyrically, recounting Mar-Vel’s history and past glories as well as showing us the gathering of nearly every Marvel hero who has come to Titan to pay their last respects to their friend. Elysius, his lover, and Rick Jones, his close friend and former partner, mourn him even while he’s still alive and Spider-Man nearly breaks down from his disbelief that Mar-Vel is dying from something as mundane as cancer. In the end, even though Mar-Vel meets Thanos, his greatest enemy, and Death like a warrior on the field of battle (we do not know if this is a delusion from his disease or an actual spirit plane battle), Mentor pronounces him dead in his hospice bed with his friends and family, heads bowed in grief, around him. This death is not only absolute and final; it is jarringly real and genuinely frightening. Jim Starlin has given us a dramatic and moving tale that, in this case, also touches our hearts. It is a completely satisfying story. I’ve never read anything like it since.
Sam Wilson’s Review
Wizard Masterpiece Edition: Spider-Man
Wizard Entertainment/Marvel Comics
Written By: Various Writers
Drawn By: Various Artists
Wizard Magazine’s Spider-Man hardcover collects several interesting stories in the Spider-Man mythos, Spidey’s encounter with the Juggernaut, Mr. Hyde, a rematch with Venom and the much acclaimed “Death of Jean Dewolff”, written by Peter David and drawn by Rich Buckler. The “Death of Jean Dewolff is what I’ll be focusing on in this review. Okay, fine, you all know I’m not a Spider-Man regular. I’ve read him off and on, but nothing more than a couple issues here and there, and yes, I read Ultimate Spider-Man, and yes, I know it’s not the same thing. So what’s my point? The “Death of Jean Dewolff” is a fantastic story. It’s the first story I ever read that brought Peter David to my attention, and it showed a Spider-Man not seen often (at least to me), someone other than the wisecracker clown prince of superheroics.
Jean Dewolff was a police captain for the NYPD who was more or less Spidey’s “Jim Gordon”. She became acquainted with Spidey on a case, and encountered him every now and then while she was on the job. Spidey wasn’t used to friendship from the police, so his relationship with Dewolff was important. One day the unthinkable happened, while handing a couple of muggers off to the police, Spidey finds out Dewolff was shotgunned to death in her own apartment. At first Spidey is in shock, he teams up (sorta) with detective Stan Carter to help track down this brazen assassin. On the side, we see attorney Matt Murdock (if you don’t know who he is, I aint saying) see, no watch, no, okay, well anyway he was in the same room of a judge friend of his only to “witness” him being gunned down by a crazed individual calling himself the “Sin Eater”. This of course, brings Daredevil into our story, because soon we found out this “Sin Eater” also killed Captain Dewolff (after a ballistics are matched on both shootings).
Okay, so we got Spidey, DD, and a psycho shotgunning dude who calls himself the Sin Eater. So they team up, find the bad guy, and all is well right? Of course not. As Spidey digs deeper into Capt. Dewolff’s murder, he find out she might have had romantic feelings for him. Spidey is without a chica right now, and he realizes if they both would have explored those feelings, it coulda led to something. When Spidey finally catches up with our bad guy, they duke it out in a crowded street, an innocent civilian takes a shotgun blast and ends up dying. This pushes Spidey over the edge. He goes looking for the Sin Eater with a fury, beating information out of skells and cutting a swath through NYC like he never has before. On the side, Daredevil carefully conducts his own investigation, and eventually teams up with Spidey. They find the Sin Eater, and then everything hits the fan.
I’m not going to say what happens next, because if you haven’t read this story, it’ll take away the shock. Sometimes acting out of character, especially when it’s done by such a well-established character like Spider-Man, can rub fans the wrong way and seems contrived. I did not feel this way with this story. Peter David gives hints of this story’s climax from the beginning. That’s why it’s so realistic, and shocking. Sure, Peter has experienced loss before, but no one illustrated what it can do to the psyche as well as Peter David did. For a minute Spidey isn’t larger than life, he’s just another guy feeling a human emotion, and his friends have to help him through his pain. The “Death of Jean Dewolff” has been reprinted before in tbp form, but has been long out of print. For $29.99, you can pick up the Wizard Masterpiece Edition: Spider Man and get that story, plus a few more. It’s definitely worth it.
Classic Trades Reviews
Last week we reviewed some pretty weighty material: X-Men: Mutant Massacre, the huge early crossover event that wreaked mayhem on Marvel’s mutant population, and Maus: A Survivor’s Story, the Pulitzer Prize winning anthropomorphic story of Art Spiegelman’s parents’ actual experiences in Hitler’s death camps during the Holocaust. This week we thought we’d lighten the mood a little but, instead, chose two trades whose subjects actually are death. Next week, though, we’ll be back with some grand, cosmic Marvel fun in our trade reviews. Onward…
Wktf’s Review
The Death of Captain Marvel OGN
Written by: Jim Starlin
Drawn by: Jim Starlin
I distinctly remember the summer of 1977 when I picked up Jim Starlin’s Avengers Annual #7 and being completely blown away by a battle of galactic proportions. The Avengers, Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock struggled valiantly but in vain against Thanos the mad titan in his quest to blow up our sun and kill everyone in our solar system as a sacrifice to Death. The Avengers and Mar-Vel were defeated, Adam Warlock was casually but brutally killed and the sun and our solar system seemed doomed. Doomed, that is, until the second part to Starlin’s epic appeared in the Marvel Two-In-One Annual #2 that hit the stands later that summer. Spider-Man and the Thing joined the fray and Adam Warlock rose in flames from the dead to turn Thanos to stone. The day was saved, but at great cost. A hero had died to save us all. It was a powerful and triumphant, but also sad and touching, story. I’d never read anything like it.
Then came 1982 and, with little-to-no fanfare, Marvel released the first in its new line of Marvel Graphic Novels titled The Death of Captain Marvel, also written and drawn by Jim Starlin. In many ways this book is the follow-up to 1977’s Avengers and Marvel Two-In-One Annuals. Deaths in the Marvel Universe up to that time (Gwen Stacy, Adam Warlock, Jean Grey/Phoenix) came with no publicity or ceremony, unlike the much-publicized Death of Superman and the more recent Avengers Disassembled events. They happened as an integral part of a story line and often surprised the reader who was caught unaware by them. Yet here was the death of a popular, B+ Marvel hero publicized right on the cover. Was this a joke or, more likely, some hoax or trick to draw us in to buy this book? No. It wasn’t. And not only was it real, it was entirely realistic…even, no…especially, for a comic book. Mar-Vel had developed one of the most prevalent diseases, cancer as a result of exposure to nerve gas way back in 1974 in Captain Marvel #34. And he was dying a slow, degenerative, painful death. Incredibly, Jim Starlin was again the author of a Marvel cosmic hero’s demise. Many of us who have either experienced cancer or witnessed friends or loved ones suffer from it will relate all too well and too uneasily to Mar-Vel’s condition. I, myself, have lost both family and friends to cancer since I first read this story back in 1982 and so my perspective on it, by definition, has changed.
As I reread this book I was struck by how fresh and real Mar-Vel’s pain and suffering felt, as well as the anguish and grief his friends and fellow heroes experience, despite having read this book several times over the last 23 years. Mentor of Titan along with the scientific and medical geniuses of the MU (including Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, The Beast, Yellow Jacket, and Thor) work furiously to cure him. But no comic book last minute cures are to be found here. Ironically, the very thing that’s helped Mar-Vel survive his cancer for so long, his photon wrist bands, is inhibiting the research team’s progress. And if he took off the bands he’d die almost instantly. So, the story moves slowly but almost appropriately, lyrically, recounting Mar-Vel’s history and past glories as well as showing us the gathering of nearly every Marvel hero who has come to Titan to pay their last respects to their friend. Elysius, his lover, and Rick Jones, his close friend and former partner, mourn him even while he’s still alive and Spider-Man nearly breaks down from his disbelief that Mar-Vel is dying from something as mundane as cancer. In the end, even though Mar-Vel meets Thanos, his greatest enemy, and Death like a warrior on the field of battle (we do not know if this is a delusion from his disease or an actual spirit plane battle), Mentor pronounces him dead in his hospice bed with his friends and family, heads bowed in grief, around him. This death is not only absolute and final; it is jarringly real and genuinely frightening. Jim Starlin has given us a dramatic and moving tale that, in this case, also touches our hearts. It is a completely satisfying story. I’ve never read anything like it since.
Sam Wilson’s Review
Wizard Masterpiece Edition: Spider-Man
Wizard Entertainment/Marvel Comics
Written By: Various Writers
Drawn By: Various Artists
Wizard Magazine’s Spider-Man hardcover collects several interesting stories in the Spider-Man mythos, Spidey’s encounter with the Juggernaut, Mr. Hyde, a rematch with Venom and the much acclaimed “Death of Jean Dewolff”, written by Peter David and drawn by Rich Buckler. The “Death of Jean Dewolff is what I’ll be focusing on in this review. Okay, fine, you all know I’m not a Spider-Man regular. I’ve read him off and on, but nothing more than a couple issues here and there, and yes, I read Ultimate Spider-Man, and yes, I know it’s not the same thing. So what’s my point? The “Death of Jean Dewolff” is a fantastic story. It’s the first story I ever read that brought Peter David to my attention, and it showed a Spider-Man not seen often (at least to me), someone other than the wisecracker clown prince of superheroics.
Jean Dewolff was a police captain for the NYPD who was more or less Spidey’s “Jim Gordon”. She became acquainted with Spidey on a case, and encountered him every now and then while she was on the job. Spidey wasn’t used to friendship from the police, so his relationship with Dewolff was important. One day the unthinkable happened, while handing a couple of muggers off to the police, Spidey finds out Dewolff was shotgunned to death in her own apartment. At first Spidey is in shock, he teams up (sorta) with detective Stan Carter to help track down this brazen assassin. On the side, we see attorney Matt Murdock (if you don’t know who he is, I aint saying) see, no watch, no, okay, well anyway he was in the same room of a judge friend of his only to “witness” him being gunned down by a crazed individual calling himself the “Sin Eater”. This of course, brings Daredevil into our story, because soon we found out this “Sin Eater” also killed Captain Dewolff (after a ballistics are matched on both shootings).
Okay, so we got Spidey, DD, and a psycho shotgunning dude who calls himself the Sin Eater. So they team up, find the bad guy, and all is well right? Of course not. As Spidey digs deeper into Capt. Dewolff’s murder, he find out she might have had romantic feelings for him. Spidey is without a chica right now, and he realizes if they both would have explored those feelings, it coulda led to something. When Spidey finally catches up with our bad guy, they duke it out in a crowded street, an innocent civilian takes a shotgun blast and ends up dying. This pushes Spidey over the edge. He goes looking for the Sin Eater with a fury, beating information out of skells and cutting a swath through NYC like he never has before. On the side, Daredevil carefully conducts his own investigation, and eventually teams up with Spidey. They find the Sin Eater, and then everything hits the fan.
I’m not going to say what happens next, because if you haven’t read this story, it’ll take away the shock. Sometimes acting out of character, especially when it’s done by such a well-established character like Spider-Man, can rub fans the wrong way and seems contrived. I did not feel this way with this story. Peter David gives hints of this story’s climax from the beginning. That’s why it’s so realistic, and shocking. Sure, Peter has experienced loss before, but no one illustrated what it can do to the psyche as well as Peter David did. For a minute Spidey isn’t larger than life, he’s just another guy feeling a human emotion, and his friends have to help him through his pain. The “Death of Jean Dewolff” has been reprinted before in tbp form, but has been long out of print. For $29.99, you can pick up the Wizard Masterpiece Edition: Spider Man and get that story, plus a few more. It’s definitely worth it.