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Old 11-03-2006, 12:44 AM   #1
bat_collector
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The Good, Bad, Ugly Reviews: 11/02/06

Hey guys, here I am for my bi-monthly review column, though I plan to come back next week for an in-depth review of every 7 Soldiers series!

This week I'm reviewing, per WKTF's recommendation, Fantastic Four Visionaries: George Perez vol 1

First though, the 52 recap! Can you believe we made it through 26 weeks of 52 and not one hiccup on the release schedule. If only Wonder Woman, JLA, and the All Star titles were as consistent.

Week 25
Its a Halloween issue, and Intergang leader, Bruno Mannheim is definately in the spirit. Apparently those crime bosses who don't swear allegiance on the Crime Bible, made out of the stone Cain used to kill Abel (I'm not making this up) are killed and eaten. I think we'll see more of him later.

The Black Adam Family are also doing well, stopping a sinsiter Demon from killing poor trick or treaters. Its obvious Osiris lives for this stuff, and he has the attention of the rest of the Marvel family. In other realms, Dr. Fate's helmet continues his quest to caution Ralph Dibney on his quest to probably resurrect his wife. He takes him on a tour of hell that shows him several examples to learn from, most notably Fenix Faust. Infinity, Inc also makes an appearance, stopping a robbery attempt by Icicle and Tigress. This marks the debut of Matrix, a sexy redhead who seems to have some teleporting powers and makes everyone forget about the "dead girl" Luthor had murdered.

Alan Scott, the newly appointed White King of the new Checkmate also recruits Mr. Terrific as his White Bishop. Finally, its revealed Mannheim (him again???) is behind the evil scientist Island Dr. T.O. Morrow and Dr. Magnus are being held out. His main aim is to create robots tough enough to take care of the Kahndaq problem. The weapons to be created will be called the Four Horseman (run Angel, Run!). Finally, this issue probably has one of the better "Origin" stories, Nightwing done by George Perez. WOOO-HOOOO.

Issue 26
Filler issue. Honestly. Renee Montoya and the Question have the Black Adam family fly them to the Himalayas to train with Richard Dragon. We get Steel going on the "You are Wrong" talk show to have a surprise debate with his niece, Natasha (now Starlight). Can you say BORING? Then the Black Adam family go to visit the Sivana family, who want them to help rescue their kidnapped father, Dr. Sivana. And a woman, Dr. Cale, joins the evil scientist island to help build the Four Horseman (Apocalypse has to be fumming somewhere). Yeah, boring issue.

But the awesome Origin of Hawkman and Hawkgirl with art by Joe Bennett was topnotch!

Jonah Hex #13
The Good: Lucky issue #13 has what I've been looking forward to in a long while, the Origin of my favorite gunslinger. The story starts out like so many classic Hex stories. A group of outlaws with bounties on their heads get taken down one by one by Hex. But this group is different, this group is headed by a former Union Army captain, Captain Fulsome. The Captain makes mention of a Coloner Ackerman, who he served under, as he talks at the campfire right before Hex attacks. Both are the root cause of why Hex's face is so mutiliated. But its revenge time, and Fulsome is first to taste Hex's wrath. I don't want to give everything away, but if you wanted to jump in on this title, this is a great place to start. Jonah is probalby my third favorite comic character, and I'm gonna enjoy this origin arc.
The Bad: This comic would make you believe the Union Army was headed by Satan himself, as it doesn't seem any person from it is presented in a positive light.
The Ugly: The only ugly thing here is Jonah's Ugly mug. While I would have loved another artist, Jordi Bernet's art is very servicable.

Trade Review #1
Showcase Presents . . . Jonah Hex
"He was a hero to some, a villain to others; and wherever he rode, people spoke his names in whispers. He had no friends, this Jonah Hex, but he did have two companions: one was death itself . . . the other . . . the acrid smell of gunsmoke."

That sentence perfectly captures the comics of Jonah Hex, and this trade (think Marvel's Essential line) contains all of Jonah's earliest appearances, from All Star Western #10 to Weird Western Tales #33. Many of these issues are great reads. Take his first appearance in All Star Western #10. In it his first appearance, Jonah's face is shrouded in darkenss for most of the first half of the comic (including the cover), not revealed until you can see it in its full ugly glory mid-way throug the issue, frightening both the villain he's surprised as well as the reader. This issue also showcases his incredible gun-fighting skills as well as his uncanny tracking skills, where no criminal can run far enough away not to be tracked by Jonah. But, it also shows the tragedy of his life. While everyone wants Jonah to hunt down the bad guy, nobody wants him sticking around after he delivers.

Hex himself is a compelling character. Having grown very accustomed to be thought of as a monster, he usually acts in a way that only reinforces that belief. He advertise freely his only motivation is money, and will hear any proposition anyone has as long as they pay for a good steak dinner. He also seems to always be able to survive any encounter no matter how bad the odds are stacked against him. His own skill, and often times luck, comes into play. Unfortantely, those who choose to help him usually find themselves dead (he is named Hex after all).

Though Hex's friend's be few, his enemies are many. His reputation is large, and it seems many outlaws want to kill him as revenge for him killing their friends. But, as the story progresses a mysterious man with a cane will prove to be the most interested in killing Hex. He sends wave after wave of other assasins to kill Jonah as revenge for his son's death (which is fully explained in an origin issue here) only to see failure. Hex will also face rebelious native americans, greedy landowners, and resourceful train robbers in these pages. While the stories sometimes get a bit repetative (Jonah finds bad guy, gets cornered, kills bad guy), most of them are quite compelling reads.

The art is also quite good, with DeZuniga, Gil Kane, and Jim Aparo all providing the art. As a bonus, they throw in the complete adventures of the Outlaw (admittingly, I didn't care to read these). While Jonah Hex is not for everyone, if you like western comics pick this up!

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Old 11-03-2006, 01:12 AM   #2
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Fantastic Four Visionaries: George Perez vol 1

Fantastic Four Visionaries: George Perez vol 1
Written by: Roy Thomas/Len Wein
Art by: George Perez

Let me say this first before I give my review of this series. I am a George Perez fan. His work on Crisis on Infinite Earth's is awe-inspiring. I love his work.

However, it was a chore to read most of this volume. I don't blame Perez at all. His renditions of Frankie Ray (making her first appearance), Tigra, Thundara, the Thing, and Hulk, among others, are great (though, surprisingly, his Sue Storm is NOT nearly as good). While is art indeed got better (especially as WKTf advised he was shackled by a bad penciller apparently in these early days), its a pleasure to see his earlier stuff. Art-wise these stories are pretty good

But story wise? Some of these are some of the most-mindnumbly bad stories I have ever read. It isn't all the plots that are so bad (but most were not good either), I had a big problem with the characters themselves. I really couldn't stand any of them for very long. Poor Sue is tied down with being the good, supportive wife (who seeminly never questions Reed, thank god those days are over) and over-bearing mother figure to Johnny. Example of typical Sue dialogue, "Johnny, Reed is the Leader of this team, I'm sure he knows what he is doing." Sheesh. Johnny is the young hot head who dress in bad clothing while going out on dates and is always whining about Frankie. Reed is as interesing as a blank sheet of paper. And Ben? Whining all the time. And is it just me or are these guys always losing their power and getting it back? It seems there is always someone crying because they don't have their power anymore and can't help the team.

Now for the stories, I think FF #176 easily takest he cake as the worst of the lot. Impossible Man returns, and they FF have to stop him at . . . Marvel headquarters??? Yes, nothing like reading about Stan Lee meeting the Impossible Man and the rest of the FF. Worse yet, we get a letter printed on how Roy Thomas thought up of this mess and thought it was the greatest idea ever. We also get a super-villain try out as Frightful Four take over the Baxter Building to recruit their newest member (at least I know who Paste Pot Pete is), the FF fight a group of witches, and the Crusader returns.

I'd say none of these issues are worthwhile, but then again, one very much is. FF #166, which shows just how much in character everyone is during Civil War. The governement wants to help Hulk and enlists the FF to stop him to use some equipment Reed came up with. The head of this group is too similar to Maria Hill, and Reed once again is more caught up on the ideas of capturing Hulk and curing him then really thinking of the morality of what he is doing. When Hulk is turned to Bruce, the government makes it clear they have no plan to let him go, and Thing, feeling sympathetic and very much like the Hulk, frees him. i just found the issue fascinating in light of events with Reed, Thing, and the banishment of the Hulk.

So, I don't htink this has the greatest stories in the world. I'm still not a huge FF fan. But, it had great art and had its moments. I'm glad WKTF told me to pick this up. I wonder of all those Bryne editions have better stories . . .
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Old 11-03-2006, 10:16 AM   #3
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BC, you're right-on about the George Perez FF Visionaries trade. What makes it even worse is how these stories are tighly tied together, yet it skips issues that were not pencilled by Perez, so there are numerous references to major events that happened between stories - you're on your own trying to figure it out.

This is a major problem with the entire "Visionaries" line. When they highlight writer/artists, like Miller on Daredevil, or Simonson on Thor, or Byrne on FF, they hit the nail on the head. But to highlight only an artist? Well, for one, a good artist doesn't equal a good story (as is the unfortunate case here). For another, if it's a multi-part storyline by different artists, Marvel only includes the issues featuring that artist. This was a problem in the Todd McFarlane Spider-Man Visionaries trade, where a 5-part storyline had an issue left out because it was illustrated by Erik Larsen. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Better to have just left these for the Essential treatment and reprinted the complete run.

What's even worse is how volume 2 includes some non-Perez work to bulk up the page count. Seems they didn't have enough FF work from him to make it as big as volume 1, so they included some additional random bits from the Annuals.
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Old 11-03-2006, 11:08 AM   #4
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It is unfortunate about skipping the fill in issues by John Buscema. You miss alot of the continuity that way.

But I totally disagree about the Impossible Man story. I think that one's alot of fun.
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Old 11-03-2006, 11:18 AM   #5
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Originally Posted by wktf View Post
It is unfortunate about skipping the fill in issues by John Buscema. You miss alot of the continuity that way.

But I totally disagree about the Impossible Man story. I think that one's alot of fun.
Ok, a LOT of things were left out of this trade. Like, why did Ben Grimm turn back into the Thing, what happened to the whole Mr. Fantastic double, and other stuff.

Joe, I really felt we would disagree on the impossible man story. It just has this smugness to it. If I'm reading a comic book, I really don't want them visiting any creators (now that I think about it, BendizZZZ did the same thing, only worse, with the Sentry). "Look, there's Stan! Look ,there's an editor!" Just not my cup of tea.
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Old 11-03-2006, 10:29 PM   #6
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Ok, a LOT of things were left out of this trade. Like, why did Ben Grimm turn back into the Thing, what happened to the whole Mr. Fantastic double, and other stuff.

Joe, I really felt we would disagree on the impossible man story. It just has this smugness to it. If I'm reading a comic book, I really don't want them visiting any creators (now that I think about it, BendizZZZ did the same thing, only worse, with the Sentry). "Look, there's Stan! Look ,there's an editor!" Just not my cup of tea.
Well, to answer your question, Galactus turned Ben back into The Thing as penance for going up against Big G. It was kind of funny because Galactus hit Ben with this ray and nothing happened except, as Ben noted, his costume felt like it was getting tight. Actually, he was turning back into The Thing!

The Mr. Fantastic double turned out to be The Brute, a Hulk like creature who was Mr. Fantastic from a parallel dimension of sorts. He dispatched with Reed and played his part in the FF for a while. There even was some indication that he slept with Sue and, in doing that, she finally figured out it wasn't the real Reed.

In today's world I can see why you'd think The Impossible Man was a smug story but if you'd only read it back in the 70s like I did I think you'd think it was fun and cool as well, to be taken into the Marvel Bullpen one of those rare times in comics. I loved that story as a teenage kid.
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Old 11-09-2006, 01:06 PM   #7
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Originally Posted by bat_collector View Post
Fantastic Four Visionaries: George Perez vol 1
Written by: Roy Thomas/Len Wein
Art by: George Perez

So, I don't htink this has the greatest stories in the world. I'm still not a huge FF fan. But, it had great art and had its moments. I'm glad WKTF told me to pick this up. I wonder if all those Bryne editions have better stories . . .

Oh my... The Byrne run contains some of my favorite FF stories of all time...
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Old 11-09-2006, 02:41 PM   #8
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Well, to answer your question, Galactus turned Ben back into The Thing as penance for going up against Big G. It was kind of funny because Galactus hit Ben with this ray and nothing happened except, as Ben noted, his costume felt like it was getting tight. Actually, he was turning back into The Thing!
Bat, you must have missed most of the Counter-Earth Galactus story, which I always thought was really good. However, I did read it as a child, so I do look at it through rose colored glasses. By the same token, nothing beats the Byrne run of FF.
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Old 11-09-2006, 03:09 PM   #9
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Yeah, those counter earth stories were NOT reprinted.

I may just have to read my essential FF up to where it leaves off. But, I honestly gotta say I'm loving my Phantom Stranger Showcase too much to put that off hold.
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