A Whole Nother New World

I'm going to reiterate that Marvel really does have the top artists working for them. Avengers one is absolutely beautiful. I've followed Opena through Ghost Rider and X-Force and he really keeps improving. Another cool thing is that it has a layout similar to Hickman's Image books which is kind of interesting that a writer has his own recognizable visual aesthetic. The script is solid, but pales in comparison to Hickman's creator-owned work. If I'm going to recommend you buy a book that he's writing, it would be Manhattan Projects. 

The last few pages seem somewhat rushed to move along the plot. Although in today's decompressed era it's a little nice to actually move the plot ,so it's not all bad. My biggest concern with this book is that with it's frequent schedule (every other week for this one and Hickman's  New Avengers will also run every other week so that Avengers will essentially be weekly) they are going to need to change artist for every story arc. Marvel will have other top artists working, but I wonder if it will hurt the consistency of the overall tone.


I wasn't much looking forward to this until I flipped through it. Steve Dillon is another top notch artist great with facial expressions, especially when said faces have bullets running through them. And although I find the Punisher to be one of the most boring popular characters Marvel has, there have been three runs in the past decade or so that I really loved. two of them were drawn by Steve Dillon (with scripts by Ennis and Aaron. In case you were wondering, the third run was Remender's).

Unfortunately the script was lacking. There was very little substance and I felt the humor fell flat (although that's more subjective). They wasted the entire first issue with a team recruiting story. The story focuses around Ross and the Punisher. The other vignettes where the other characters are recruited seems unnecessary and forced in just to remind readers that these characters are on the team (which the cover conveys perfectly).




This series has slowed down a lot since the first issue. The second issue was spent entirely with Wolverine's team and the original X-Men while this issue focuses on Cyclops's team. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I can enjoy a nice slow build (especially when we've already had three issues in the past four weeks it's not that long of a wait at all). The two plots converge at the end of this issue. Let's hope the payoff is big when we get to the next one.













Maybe not as funny as two, but still has a lot of laughs. This is the first Marvel Now book that's officially made my list.

Book of the Week

2-10-10

First off, I'm going to say something that a lot of people don't agree with, and that's The Punisher is a garbage character. He's a psychopath with a lot of guns. I don't get his appeal. I think I'm the only person in the world who didn't like Garth Ennis' Max run (I did very much enjoy his Marvel Knights run, which is hilarious).

That being said, recent months have seemed like a bit of a time warp, being that three of my favorite monthly comics are two Punishers and a Ghost Rider. Well, Ghost Rider just ended. Maybe I'll make my way back to 2010. Although, the way the two Punisher books are going, maybe not.

When I do enjoy The Punisher, I tend to enjoy stories that aren't necessarily realistic or gritty. I watched a lot of Steven Segal movies in my youth and the avenge-family's-death story just seems a little played out to me. However, what I don't tire of is violence, and Punishermax (even the title is barely mediocre) does not fall short in that aspect.

Also, the story is told from the criminals' perspective. The Punisher just kind of shows up like Jason Vorhees every now and again, takes an almost inhuman beating, and offs a bunch of gangsters. There's really more of a pathos with the criminals. Its odd, but I find myself wanting to see the Punisher get killed.

It looks like this series will be about taking classic Marvel villains and rebooting them in the Max universe. This first arc is about the Kingpin and up next is Bullseye. A new character called The Mennonite makes his debut. Oh. And I almost forgot to mention the creative team. It's written by Jason Aaron, drawn by veteran Punisher artist, Steve Dillon, and has these really cool unique covers by Dave Johnson. Check it out.