Marvel Pick Of The Week – November 5, 2014

Pick Of The Week:

Amazing Spider-Man 9, by Dan Slott and Olivier Coipel

This book is going to make a lot of people very happy. Though there’s a lot to the story, it’s actually fairly straightforward. A family of powerful vampire-types are bouncing among the alternate Earths eating different versions of Spider-Man, so a group of Spider-Men get together to fight back. Though the rules of this have been explained for the past few months in the Spider-titles and the tie-in miniseries, a person could still pick this issue up and get it. I will often accept a flimsy plot as long as I get some pleasure out of the execution – I really enjoyed House of M, and that was little more than a portfolio review of alternate costume ideas. But the plot to this crossover is solid. The villains are credible and scary, and even though I wasn’t reading Spider-Man books when Morlun first appeared, he has been extensively re-introduced. The single issue sets up a battle to show the stakes of this story, and it introduces the home base dimension from which the heroes will launch their attacks. It’s a satisfying read as a chapter and promises even better to follow.

As good as the story is, though, the crossover is not about what happens so much as whom it’s happening to, and that means lots and lots of alternate Spider-Men. In this issue, we get a lunar pioneer Spider-Man, a Captain Britain Spider-Man, Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, Spider-Gwen, and a Captain Universe Spider-Man. As if that wasn’t enough, new readers will be introduced to teammates like Spider-Woman, two Spider-Girls, Silk, and Spider-Man 2099, and long-time readers will meet twisted nightmare versions of Silver Sable, Kraven the Hunter, and the Puma. Though the characters spin onto the page in rapid succession, each is clearly identified, gratifying fans and welcoming the uninitiated. I can’t think of anyone who would have a bad time reading this comic book.

Honorable Mentions:

Avengers & X-Men: AXIS 4, for this amazing scene where Captain America decides that perhaps he does not like the way Nick Fury is addressing him. It’s the right kind of over-the-top silliness that a good event should have. The rest of the book is having a tough time making a case for its continued existence. The end of last issue was supposed to be inverting the world on an axis, but all we get here are people kind of being the same grouches they were when the Red Skull sent racist psychic waves around the planet, plus a villain making a decision to be good (decisions that he could have made using story logic without any magic motivation). If we’re going to change the world, let’s see Remender do an Age Of Apocalypse thing – his “new” world is about as reinvented as the New 52 Batman.

All-New X-Factor 16, for making good on Peter David’s promise that an old team member will lay siege to the team’s headquarters. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s awesome.

Death Of Wolverine: The Weapon X Program 1, for showing us that Charles Soule can still come up with a compelling team of five brand-new empowered Weapon X survivors even after birthing a dozen or so new Inhumans in his other team title. At the rate he’s going, characters created by Charles Soule will have eaten all preexisting Marvel characters out of house and home by the end of 2016, according to BamSmackPow.com’s team of scientists. But there will still be plenty of good stuff to read.

Death Of Wolverine: Life After Logan 1, for Cyclops’s delightfully ludicrous and honest opening line, “I’ve dated two psychics, my father is an emotionally distant space pirate, my time-traveling son from the future is older than me, my younger self hates me, and yet still, somehow, you were the most complicated relationship in my life.” Own it, Cyclops. Yet another great anthology issue from Marvel, finding new ways to express the universal grief while still honoring a specific and beloved character’s passing.

Rocket Raccoon 5, for a joke that shouldn’t work and yet works so, so hard. Groot decides to tell a story, so we see Skottie Young illustrations of an insane high-adventure tale, but every word bubble has a certain consistency. By the fourth page of this gag, I was laughing out loud in my office, and by the end of the book, I was still enjoying it.

Legendary Star-Lord 5, for introducing the Black Vortex which will set off the crossover with the X-Men, but more importantly, for introducing The Slaughter Squad, a bunch of mean representatives of Marvel’s cosmic races. Basically, if the Guardians of the Galaxy are the New Warriors, the Slaughter Squad is Psionex. And if that reference doesn’t excite you, I’m not sure we’ve got much more to say to each other, and we should probably part while it’s civil.