ComicCritic87 Weekly Comic Spotlight
Month of March- 3/7/12
Hey there friends, well this is going to be a much smaller review article this week due to stuff going on with work, I have gained a higher position in my job so my review schedule will be a little off kilter, so whenever I get time or a chance I will doing my reviews. This week was a small week, the stuff I picked up were some pretty good reads, so I’m going to spotlight two examples of comics that are the opposite sides of the spectrum: One is REALLY Good and the other is REALLY Bad.
DC Comics
Swamp Thing #7
Written by Scott Snyder
Artwork by Yanick Paquette
Story: Alec Holland is kept alive to witness the Green being burned alive and killed in front of him; they are keeping him alive only to watch this all go down. Alec tells them the reason why he chose not to become the Swamp Thing and calls out the Green being no different than the Red. He comes to the ultimate truth that he has to become the Swamp Thing to save Abigail from becoming the Rot Queen. He tells the Green to use his bio restorative formula to make the change complete. They agree to it and Alec Holland dies once again and becomes the new warrior king of the Green and flies off, yes flies off, to save Abigail and the world.
Review: As I mentioned prior that the last was one where “S#%*” gets real and this issue is where it all comes together and becomes one of the most perfect issues to date with the new release as well as one of the best story arcs in the DC 52. Alec has truly evolved with this series since he hasn’t been seen in decades. He is one of the more flawed character that doesn’t want to embrace his destiny for anyone or anything at first, he just wants to live a quiet and normal life after being dead and given a second chance at life. Even when Superman came in to chat with him, he wanted nothing to do with the mainstream DC heroes; he cared nothing for the world of heroes. Once the Green returned to his life everything went upside down, he was pushed towards his destiny that he did not want to get caught up in. He never once followed the instructions of the Green; he “fell” in love with Abigail, who was Swamp Things former love, bringing into question whether she loved the man or the monster. With this issue we see a complete change in him, he now wants to embrace the power not for him or for the Green, because of the love he has for Abigail that he doesn’t want to see her torn against her life and will to embrace a destiny and prophecy that she is to fulfill. This series shows that one has a choice in all things, nothing is set in stone, Alec and Abigail allowed the events to take place in a way that didn’t push themselves into embracing their destinies, both want to escape it but ultimately they could not and now Alec wants at least the one he loves to not face an eternal life of being pure evil.
Writing: Scott Snyder is becoming a major powerhouse in DC; he has already created and perfected the art of writing Batman in the best opening arc I have ever read. Now Snyder has taken a character that has had a strange amount of continuity shifts and changes throughout the years and decades, has taken them all into a blender and turned it to puree. Since the beginning of this new series we never see Alec becoming Swamp Thing until now, which to some may be seen as a bad thing, since that should be the draw for the comic reader, but instead we have gotten a story about the man behind the monster, easily one of the best ways to start out, I don’t like a comic to rush into the story leaving the reader confused with what is going down. The way Snyder has written this series is a great contrast to how he writes for Batman, he writes this series with a southern gothic horror style to it whereas Batman is written with a more crime noire style, this gives Snyder a nice range to showcase his talented writing.
Artwork: This artwork is some of the best I have seen around in not just any of the DC titles but some of the best around period. Yanick draws with such great detail and has a style I have rarely seen duplicated. We only have seen Swamp Thing and other beings of the Green here and there but we haven’t seen Alec truly turn into the warrior king he is destined to become. This new version does feature something really awesome. He can fly, that’s right, we see Swamp Thing grown branches and leaves that become angelic like wings for him to fly. Yanick also draws a great contrast between the Rot and the Green really well, the world of the Rot is dark and demonic in style while the Green is done more flourishing and beautiful, and everything is full of life.
Summary: I cannot express at just how pitch perfect this series has become. The story is engaging and ends on great cliffhanger moments. The writing by Snyder is some of the best around. The artwork is totally amazing. This is a must read for anyone, one of the best to follow without prior fandom.
Grade: A+
That was obviously the good next comes both the bad and ugly which in this comic is one and the same.
MARVEL Comics
Venom #14
Written by Rick Remender
Artwork by Tony Moore
Story: The events of the circle of four come to an end. Red Hulk infused with the power of both Venom and Ghost Rider does battle with Black Heart while the other three are getting their butts handed to them by the various demons that are plaguing the area. Red Hulk defeats Black Heart using the mirror used to create the antithesis for Black Heart. The world returns to normal.
Review: I’m going to do my best to not going into a rage like I had done prior with the last issue of Zatanna before the events of Flashpoint changed everything, that issue I went off on and ranted about all the bad things that it got the writer to post a comment, that is something I want to avoid again. So that being said, to me this micro-event was a major waste of time and talent for the various writers and artists. This idea of “Hell on Earth” has been done to death and it really holds no gripping tension since the four “heroes” made a deal with the Devil so they could stop his son from taking over Earth, so you know they are going to overcome the battle and win the day even after realizing the deal they made was a bad idea. The antithesis they had to fight were not very well done, they were boring, the only interesting one was X-666 because she was a crazy looking cheerleader but that alone didn’t make it a good sell. The set-up for all these characters coming together was very tacked on at the last minute and very forced, in fact having X-23 added into this seemed very contrived and makes no sense to the overall plot. To me they came up with the cool poster of all 4 “heroes” in battle action poses first and just threw together an overly complex story that didn’t need to be. I was such a huge fan of this new take of Venom, making him being used more as a weapon early on and slowly the monster side of him coming out more and more due to the growing fear and stress that Flash is having after his father’s death and leaving Betty. This event has taken its toll on me and my love for this series that it has nearly diminished my hopes that issue 15 will go back to it being good, I will have to wait and see.
Writing: Rick Remender does his best to really keep the story going and flowing but you can tell he is working with only so much, like building a Lego Death Star with only half of the blocks needed. I don’t blame him for the story, it’s under mandate since all the .1 .2 .3And .4 issues came out once a week in a row of each other, showing that this was indeed a rushed micro-event. He does deserve an amazing event to do but this one was not as good as it was planned out. Remender is a good writer but even some of the best writers hit a few speed bumps.
Artwork: Tony Moore’s art style is not for me, it’s a very cartoonish and hyper reality that its very distracting considering what is going on around these characters. Its not as bad as Rob Liefeld’s artwork but its just a dull style that contrasts everything we have seen done with this series. I loved the various styles that were used to bring back a sense of the grungy 90s style in the beginning but this is just a whole other level of dull and boring that I rather have Liefeld to laugh at how bad it is.
Summary: Easily one of the weakest events for Marvel to have done, the story has been done before, it lacks passion, the writer does his best and the artwork is just uninspiring.
Grade: E-
Well that’s all I got for this week, next week will a slight return to my weekly reviews. Catch you all later.