spider man | the m0vie blog

The Amazing Spider-Man – The Gauntlet: Sandman – Keemia’s Castle (Review)

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Darren

This April, to celebrate the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, we are taking a look at some classic and modern comics featuring Spider-Man (and friends). Check back daily for the latest review.

As much as The Gauntlet might seem to be a single over-arching story stretched across eight months of The Amazing Spider-Man, it really makes more sense a collection of smaller stories grouped together exploring the same core themes and ideas. There’s very little to directly connect Keemia’s Castle to the large plot in The Gauntlet. In many respects, this is just a typical confrontation between Spider-Man and recurring opponent Flint Marko.

On the other hand, it plays beautifully into the themes of the larger event, offering a glimpse at how desperate situations can push people to desperate decisions and how sometimes it’s possible to win without a sense of accomplishing anything. It also manages a pretty clever re-working and reinvention of a classic Spider-Man foe, doing a much better job at re-purposing the Sandman than Power to the People did with Electro.

A cold heart…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Amazing Spider-Man, Comics, flint marko, fred van lente, javier pulido, sandman, spider man, the gauntlet | Leave a comment »

The Amazing Spider-Man – The Gauntlet: Electro – Power to the People (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Darren

Trying to channel Batman while writing Spider-Man is a risky business. The two characters are iconic – each can make a credible claim to be the most iconic character at their publisher, and perhaps the most iconic superhero ever. Both have imprinted themselves on the public consciousness; both have enjoyed multiple iterations across cartoons and movies; both have iconic stories and popular runs, as well as bucket loads of merchandise; both have truly wonderful supporting casts.

However, trying to use Spider-Man to evoke Batman is a risky move. You can end up with a mess like Spider-Man: Reign, demonstrating that the dark cynicism many associate with the Caped Crusader does not translate to the wall-crawling web-head. Alternatively, you get a sense that what makes Peter Parker unique and appealing is being crushed in a desire to fit a round peg in a square hole, like with The Amazing Spider-Man.

Shocking…

That said, The Gauntlet is a pretty spectacular Spider-Man story, one only enhanced by its similarities to the iconic Batman saga Knightfall. It’s a massive sprawling epic that seems to have been written with those comparisons in mind, with the writing staff very cleverly using the story as a springboard to emphasise the differences between Spider-Man and Batman. The Gauntlet, like Knightfall, is fundamentally a story about trying to break the central character a sinister new adversary launches a sustained assault using a collection of classic baddies.

However, The Gauntlet serves as an argument that Peter Parker can never be completely consumed by darkness. Even in his darkest hours, even when the story twists in a way that it really shouldn’t, there is an inherent optimism and reserve of strength and hope that keeps Spider-Man from tipping completely into the abyss. The entire Knightfall saga is about Batman clawing his way back from the abyss. The Gauntlet is about how Spider-Man really can’t be pushed into that abyss in the first place.

Swinging into action…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Comics, electro, mark waid, max dillon, Paul Azaceta, peter parker, spider man, the amazing spider-man, the amazing spider-man 2, the gauntlet | 4 Comments »

Rick Remender’s Venom (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Darren

Venom demonstrates Rick Remender’s talent with nineties comic concepts. Like Remender’s work on Uncanny X-Force, there’s a sense that the author is taking a dysfunctional and somewhat outdated comic book concept and finding a way to make it work. Uncanny X-Force is the best use of the “X-Force” concept ever put on paper, and Remender’s Venom stands out as the best work to feature the Spider-Man baddie as a protagonist.

Venom doesn’t work quite as well as Uncanny X-Force. The run is a bit shorter and less well developed, and gets caught in a couple of crossovers that split focus a little. Still, the twenty-odd-issue run is a fascinating piece of work from Remender, who was one of Marvel’s most promising emerging talents at the time. Like Uncanny X-Force, it is fundamentally a story about fathers and sons. However Venom also feels like an examination of also-rans, a look at those characters who tend to get a little lost in the crossfire.

Can he swing from a web?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: art, artists, Comics, Crime Master, Flash Thompson, jack-o-lantern, Rick Remender, second tier, spider man, tony moore, venom | Leave a comment »

J. Michael Straczynski’s (and Ron Garney’s) Run on the Amazing Spider-Man – Civil War (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Darren

Spider-Man is a pretty important character in the whole Civil War event. Indeed, he’s probably the event’s third most important character – aside from Captain America and Iron Man. So it makes sense that J. Michael Straczynsi’s extended run on The Amazing Spider-Man would stop and engage with the massive crossover spanning the entire Marvel Universe. And, from a logistical “structuring a comic book crossover tie-in so it makes any sense to a reader picking up the book” point of view, Straczynski does a great job. You can read The Amazing Spider-Man without needing to even pick up the Civil War miniseries.

However, as a piece of writing on its own merits, Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man tie-in is a mess. Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man run has been collecting trouble aspects for quite some time, particularly when Straczynski seemed to brush up against the editorial demands for the book. Sins Past was perhaps the most obvious example, but with Civil War the comic entered a phase where it was pretty much an editorial means to an end. Everything from this point on was pushing towards One More Day, an event that would wipe decades of continuity from the title. (Including Straczynski’s run.)

Civil War really gets the ball rolling on these sweeping editorially-mandated changes, but that’s not the only problem with the story arc. Given Spider-Man’s importance to Civil War, and his role as defector from one side to the other, it seems like Spider-Man would really be the perfect lens through which Straczynski could explore the issue. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear upon which side of the issue Straczynski comes down.

A tangled web…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Civil War, iron man, J. Michael Straczynski, marvel, marvel comics, peter parker, politics, review, spider man, Stark, straczynski, the amazing spider-man, tony stark | 4 Comments »

Spider-Man: Reign (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Darren

Spider-Man is not Batman.

This really should be self-evident, but it doesn’t seem to be. The biggest problem with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man was that it wasted a lot of time telling audiences an origin story they all knew and had last seen a decade earlier. The second biggest problem was that the movie seemed to want to be a Batman film. There are a variety of tropes and conventions that work much better in a Batman story than they ever will in a Spider-Man story, and vice verse.

Unfortunately, The Amazing Spider-Man is far from the only Spider-Man story to make this mistake. Spider-Man: Reign, written and illustrated by Kaare Andrews, is essentially an attempt to use Spider-Man to tell another version of The Dark Knight Returns. It goes about as well as you might expect. (That is: not at all.)

Swinging through the night…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, Comics, dkr, fascism, frank miller, kaare andrews, marvel comics, Mary-Jane, reign, spider man, spider-man: reign, the amazing spider-man, The Dark Knight, the dark knight returns | 6 Comments »

Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto (and Carmine Di Giandomenico’s) Punisher – War Zone (Review)

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Darren

This March, to celebrate the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we’ll be taking a look at some classic and not-so-classic Avengers comic books. Check back daily for the latest updates!

Despite the continuity of character, plot and creator, it’s striking how distinct Punisher: War Zone feels from the sixteen-issue solo series leading into it. After Marvel cancelled Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto’s Punisher series, the company green-lit a five-issue miniseries to allow the duo to wrap up the various plot threads and themes that ran through their earlier work. It is nice to see the pair given a chance to bring closure to their story, to tidy away loose ends on their take on Frank Castle.

At the same time, Punisher: War Zone feels very much like its own thing. The plot is powered by the arrest of Rachel Cole-Alves, Frank Castle’s accomplice who accidentally murdered a police officer during a botched raid. At the end of the series, the New York City Police Department had taken Cole into custody while Castle escaped into the night. In a way, the story could just has effectively ended there – the Punisher disappearing back into the woodwork, the characters all squared away.

While Punisher: War Zone does resolve the Cole-Alves subplot, it feels like it is primarily an accuse to pit Frank Castle against the Avengers. It’s a rather demented comic book idea – allowing a guy with lots of guns to face off against “Earth’s mightiest heroes” – but it plays into the larger themes of Rucka’s run about what tolerance of Castle says about the people who share this world with him.

Seeing red…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: avengers, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Frank Castle, greg rucka, marco checchetto, punisher war zone, spider man, war zone | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Kick-Ass 2

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Darren

Kick-Ass was a rare treat, a movie that managed to perfectly balance wry cynicism with an almost surreal optimism. It was the story of a kid with a crazy and reckless idea that somehow managed to do some genuine good. It was also arguably a movie that benefited from the fact that it wasn’t a franchise or a brand – it was cheekier and freer than most superhero films. While still an enjoyable ride, Kick-Ass 2 loses a lot of that edge.

“Right, so everybody has watched the Avengers, right?”

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, hit girl, Jeff Wadlow, jim carrey, kick-ass, Kick-Ass 2, mark millar, matthew vaughn, spider man, stan lee, Steve Ditko | 7 Comments »

Digging the Claws In: The Wolverine, Superman/Batman, World Building and the Future of Blockbusters…

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Darren

When you produce one of the most successful movies of all time, you change the rules of the game. The Avengers was the biggest box office hit of 2012, narrowly edging out The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall for the privilege. That means that all the other major film studies were taking note of what Disney and Marvel had done. So it’s no surprise that the majority of announcements trickling out of this year’s Comic Con feel heavily influenced by the success of that blockbuster.

Most notably, it seems like DC and Warners will be fully investing in their superhero world-building, with the sequel to Man of Steel broadening its focus from the Man of Tomorrow, announced as a Superman/Batman team-up feature that will build towards the inevitable Justice League film. It seems like The Wolverine might just be the most major stand-alone superhero feature film we’ll be seeing for quite some time.

The future is now…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Amazing Spider-Man, Avenger, avengers, batman, brian michael bendis, Christopher Nolan, Dark Knight Rises, dc comics, jamie foxx, Justice League in other media, man of steel, marvel, marvel comics, spider man, zack snyder | 7 Comments »

Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost’s Run on X-Force – X-Necrosha (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Wolverine later in the month, we’re taking a look at some classic X-Men and Wolverine comics every Monday, Wednesday and Friday here. I’m also writing a series of reviews of the classic X-Men television show at comicbuzz every weekday, so feel free to check those out.

I have a bit of a soft-spot for Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost’s X-Force. It’s nowhere near as good as Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force, and I’m not even sure that it’s good comics. However, it does capture the mood of the X-Men comics between House of M and Second Coming remarkably well.

Being frank, I think that the editorial direction of the X-Men line between House of M and Second Coming was a disaster. In fact, the work of Kieron Gillen on Uncanny X-Men and Jason Aaron on Wolverine & The X-Men following Schism demonstrates that the franchise spent six long years running in a gigantic circle to get back to where Grant Morrison’s New X-Men and Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men had left it.

However, Yost and Kyle’s X-Force captures the mood of the line a lot better than Ed Brubaker or Matt Fraction’s work on Uncanny X-Men, willing to embrace the cynically and nihilitistically nineties vibe of the entire line.

Country of the dead…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Bastion, business, Christopher Yost, Craig Kyle, joss whedon, magneto, marvel, Necrosha, new mutants, Recreation, retrospective, Rick Remender, Selene, spider man, uncanny x-men, United States, wolverine, x-force | 1 Comment »

Civil War: X-Men (Review)

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Darren

Ugh. There’s nothing like Civil War: X-Men to remind you just how unkind the middle part of the last decade was to Marvel’s merry mutants. It’s a soulless cash-in the worst sense of the word, a four-issue miniseries branded with the title of the gigantic universe-spanning crossover that was going on at the moment. One would imagine that the whole Civil War crossover would provide a multitude of compelling storytelling opportunities for the X-Men as a franchise.

After all, these are superheroes whose entire schtick is based around being hated and feared by the world they try to protect. You’d imagine that they’d have a few choice words for all the superheroes finding themselves suddenly confronted by the idea that the public isn’t too keen on people with superpowers just wandering around. Instead, we get a messy jumble of a plot that doesn’t make sense on its own terms, let alone as an attempt to contextualise the involvement of the X-Men in Marvel’s Civil War crossover.