Best of Marvel: Week of May 22nd, 2019

Runner Up: Venom – War of the Realms tie-in #14 (Legacy #179) – Cullen Bunn, Iban Coello, Andres Mossa and Clayton Cowles

Though this issue wasn’t written by Donny Cates, it does help to forward the amazing story he’s laid out and expands on Eddie Brock’s character and his relationship with the symbiote, somehow making him one of the more compelling and deep characters in Marvel today!

Eddie, after having received a new magical suit from a witch serving Malekith, goes after Roxxon and the forces of the dark in an attempt to save his son Dylan and the world from the Dark Elf. The suit is powered by his dark emotions and he lets loose by using his bad memories of Spider-Man and his own father. The rage starts to take him over and makes him kill the Roxxon agent attacking him before he’s set upon by a returned and rejuvenated Jack o’ Lantern. The two tussle throughout the rest of the issue until Lantern burns away most of Eddie’s new suit and transforms him into some kind of Venom Viking.

Coello’s art shines greatly as he never lets up on the amount of action in the issue. From the beginning, Eddie is tossing tanks and later uses an axe to slash and slice as he goes. The book is saturated with orange-reds as fire litters the background in Jack o’ Lanterns wake, giving every scene a beautiful lighting and sense of urgency. Venom himself his amazing to look at because all of his lines are jagged, sharp and contorted a lot of the time. He’s far more animalistic than he was when he was still wearing the actual symbiote and it definitely shows. Coello even manages to make the PG-13 levels of gore seem brutal and horrifying with Cowles help with sound effects; everything is squishy and silhouettes are used amazingly.

The story inside shines as well as Eddie himself realizes how much negative emotion he carries in his heart. He’s angry at his father, The Maker, Knull, the entire situation with the symbiote manipulating his emotions and states of health to keep their relationship going. At the same time, he’s seeing that this anger is still all him and wonders how much of this was his Other’s fault. We also see how he’s able to overcome his more murderous tendencies by wanting to protect the innocent and the lengths he’s willing to go to to do it.

As far as tie-ins go, this one lives up to the quality of storytelling from both Jason Aaron and Donny Cates stories respectively and even makes it more engaging to see how people in the thick of it are handling things. I love Eddie and can’t wait to see where War of the Realms takes him.

Best of Marvel: Week of May 22nd, 2019

Best of this Week: War of the Realms – Land of Giants #1 – Tom Taylor, Jorge Molina, Adriano di Benedetto, David Curiel and Joe Sabino

Leave it to Tom Taylor and Spider-Man to make me almost tear up about horses.

An upside and downside to these one-shot team up books is that they put on very unexpected teams together. The Darkforce Avengers are okay, but the War Avengers are just awful. The team sent out to rescue Thor, consisting of Captain America, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Luke Cage and Iron Fist, however, are perfect. These guys know each other and play off of each other very well, making them an impressively cohesive unit.

Spider-Man sits at the heart of this team, acting as the narrator and the only one that chooses not to kill the Frost Giants. Everyone else does of course, and this even affects their weapon choices later in the book. Cap takes Thor’s axe, Iron Fist takes twin swords, Luke takes a hammer, Wolverine is his weapon and Spider-Man takes a shield and Wolverine gives him a helmet.

Each man mounts a flying horse and with Daredevil’s help, enter Jotunheim, the land of the Frost Giants. Immediately they’re attacked by archers who kill every horse aside from Spider-Man’s, who he has affectionately named Buttercup and protects with fury. After the fight, Spider-Man finds that the helmet allows him to communicate with Buttercup, revealing herself to be named Queen Arctorious, leader of the horses. She sends the group away to find Thor and says a prayer for her fallen comrades.

What Tom Taylor does especially well is weaving these somber moments into this action packed and sometimes jokey story. Spider-Man is written like a goof here, but when he needs to be serious, he’s treated as the most honorable and bravest of the team. The others are also written well enough with Luke and Danny being their monk and hard selves, Logan being the morbidly hilarious one and Cap taking the lead as always.

Coming upon Thor in a Berserker Rage, all of the team, sans Spider-Man, remark of times when they’ve gone into similar states of blind fury. They then help Thor tear through the armies of Frost Giants. Throughout the book, Jorge Molina struts his stuff as an artist alongside Curiel and Benedetto. While hits and falls don’t feel like they have the serious weight that they should, everything is beautiful to look at. Colors are bright and stand out greatly against the mostly white backgrounds and of course every hero is distinct by body type and fighting style. Even the art depicting the deaths of the horses is amazing.

The very end of the book is extremely heartbreaking and really makes this particular one-shot worth reading. While War of the Realms is very expansive and has to give a little bit of focus to everything going on at once, it is nice to have these stories being smaller scale. High recommend!

Best of Marvel: Week of March 15th, 2019

Runner Up: The Amazing Spider-Man: Hunted pt. 5 #21 (Legacy #822) – Nick Spencer, Gerardo Sandoval, Victor Nava, Erick Arciniega and Joe Caramagna

Kraven has always seen Spider-Man as his greatest opponent.

The Spider has thwarted his greatest plots and schemes and proven himself to be the stronger man half of the time. The only time that Kraven has ever felt superior was when he “proved himself better at crime fighting” than Spider-Man in Kraven’s Last Hunt, killing himself soon after. He found peace in the dark only for it to be ripped away years later and surmises that the only way for him to achieve true death was for Spider-Man to kill him.

This Hunt that he set up with the animal themed villains served three purposes. To rid the world of these undeserving hunters, to kill off the more pathetic animal themed villains and to finally push Spider-Man over the edge.

Swarmed by clones of Vermin, Spider-Man monologues internally about how “this is it” and apologizes to Mary Jane, thinking that the Vermin are going to kill him only for Kraven to come to his rescue. He passes out and later wakes up, injuries healed and chained to the floor in a new Black Suit. (Not actually the Symbiote, just what Kraven considers Spider-Man’s most significant costume, unknown how many he’s made)

Doctor Curt Connors is also in there with him. He explains that the collar around Spider-Man’s neck is rigged to explode and that his inhibitor chip won’t let him rip the collar apart as it prevents him from hurting people. Kraven then shows a live feed of his son catching up to Black Cat and Billy Connors, almost certainly with a killing intent.

Dr. Connors says that the only way that he can save his son is by taking the chip off, but given that it’s attached to his spine, Spider-Man thinks it’ll kill him. In a great moment, Connors says that it’s a chance he’s willing to take and hearkens back to Peter’s power and responsibility speeches and that Spider-Man doesn’t know what real responsibility is because he doesn’t have kids yet.

It’s a good character driven moment that brings Connors full circle. When he didn’t have control of the Lizard, he actually killed Billy. After his resurrection, he wondered if his son remembered what happened, but was too fixed on just having his family back to ask. And now he has the chance to make up for his horrible actions by becoming a beast again? It’s good stuff.

Peter begrudgingly agrees to help, but this is what Kraven wanted. He needed to test Spider-Man to see if he could go the extra mile, to see if he was finally ready to face the Hunter. By removing the chip, he’s also removed a part of himself; the part that would have held back, the part that would have found another way, the part that wouldn’t rip Kraven apart.

Garardo Sandoval’s art absolutely smashes this issue. It’s visceral and makes everything look so much more serious while still maintaining an almost 90s look. The thick jagged lines give everything an edge, making you feel when Peter’s being attacked by Vermin. Kraven showing up in his iconic clothing has weight to it as he’s portrayed in ominous shadow and The Lizard looks absolutely horrifying.

This story is almost at its conclusion and I’m so excited. In story time, all of this couldn’t have been more than a few hours, but it will have aged Peter considerably. As much as any story has pushed him to the brink, everytime he has to deal with Kraven at his most dangerous, he loses something major in himself. Honestly at this point, I want to almost say that Kraven is absolutely one of Spider-Man’s arch enemies and Hunted is the cement of that.

Best of Marvel: Week of March 15th, 2019

Best of this Week: Daredevil #5 (Legacy #617) – Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Sunny Gho and Clayton Cowles

The “Man Without Fear” miniseries brought Matt Murdock low, but Chip Zdarsky managed to bring him even lower.

Beginning right after the end of the last issue, Matt goes after The Owl and his crime ring, hoping to put a stop to whatever big plans they have going on. Still wearing Punisher’s shirt, Daredevil takes on all comers. With expertly drawn art by Checchetto, he manages to take down a guy with Iron Man level armor using the momentum of a speeding truck and a hook, sending the truck careening into the air and letting the guns and drugs spill out. Soon after, Matt grabs one of the doors and storms through a hail of gunfire and begins tearing through Owl’s men before getting overwhelmed and being saved by the other Defenders; Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

He passes out and wakes up later in Danny’s apartment and breaks down, saying that he just wanted to do one last good thing as Daredevil before they take him in for accidentally killing a criminal. What I liked best about this is that they’re there for him. Jessica assures him that they’re not going to take him in and they’ve all been in the same position. Jessica’s likely killed people under Killgrave’s influence, Luke’s killed one or two of his villains and Danny’s entire Immortal Iron Fist run by Ed Brubaker and later Matt Fraction was dark. They know what it’s like to work through all of that pain and guilt.

Matt, however, struggles with the idea that they’ve all killed people and runs away from his friends because of it. One of the biggest themes of this run thus far is how Matt is coping with what he did and his religion on top of it. Murder is a cardinal sin to Catholics and Matt Murdock has more Catholic Guilt than any of them have ever had. He dresses as the devil for chrissakes and uses the mask to blind himself to the violence he commits out of his personal sense of justice.

When he returns home, he senses the presence of someone strong. Someone he says has immense power, but doesn’t know it. The best of them. Spider-Man then confronts him in his home, telling him that he can see that Daredevil’s not all there. He wouldn’t have been able to follow Daredevil home if he were and acknowledges everything that Matt’s done up to this point, calling his attack on the Owl a “suicide mission.” He tells Daredevil that he’s done and if anyone sees him out there, they will stop him.

All of this scene was a work of art. When we see Spider-Man he’s shrouded in shadow. Spidey is often considered one of the biggest beacons of light in the Marvel universe and having him stand in the dark drives home the message of how serious things are. Every close-up shot with Daredevil feels even more personal as the weight of his actions are drawn on his also heavily shadowed face. It feels personal, depressing and as he slumps back into his wheelchair – gut wrenching.

It breaks my heart to see Matt like this again. He’s tried so hard to pull himself out of the hole he’s been digging for long, but the whole time we’ve been reading, the hole’s just gotten bigger and bigger. Eventually just engulfing him in darkness as his mistakes catch up to him.

I don’t know where he goes from here. Back to the life of a lawyer? He’s been disgraced and was serving out of a broom closet the last time he tried. Another position in city office? Wilson Fisk would NEVER risk that again. Maybe a position in the church? I don’t know, but whatever the future holds, I know it’s going to be an amazing and somber one.