What I Bought, 12/14/05

Marvel Knights Spider-Man #21 - So this is Part 8 of 12 in "The Other: Evolve or Die" story. In part six, Spidey was beaten to a pulp by Morlun. In part 7 Morlun tries to drain his life force at the hospital, MJ interferes, Peter gets off the bed to save her, kills Morlun, and dies. This issue deals with the aftermath. Mary Jane has to tell Aunt May Peter died, gets comforted by various Avengers, and has to discuss preparations with Tony Stark. Apparently they have to figure how to disguise the blunt force trauma Peter sustained, with Tony throwing out ideas like mutilating the body with a boat propeller or burning it. Predictably MJ doesn't handle that too well, and ultimately decides that rather than go through that she'll just tell the world Peter was Spider-Man. Except it's not over, because the body is missing, and all that's left is the skin.

Here's the thing. I like Spider-Man. He's my favorite superhero of all time and it's not close. So I want to like this, and as far as individual issues go, this was pretty good. Tony's discussion of the steps you have to take when identities are secret (as opposed to public like his) to cover up cause of death, and Wolverine's idea to hit on MJ, under the old "give her something to live for, even if it's hatred of me" strategy is believable, although I could have seen Logan going more gentle. This is a man who had to kill the woman he was going to marry, at her request, so a more sympathetic approach would have worked. Even with all that, I can't shake the feeling this story arc is monumental crap, and it's going to make it hard to read Spidey books. What's worse is Stracynski, who I believe is the mastermind behind all this, as it ties into his whole mystic Spider-Man story, is really tainting the memory of his early work on Amazing. So I give it a 2 out of 5.

The Punisher: Silent Night - This book has one serious problem and it's Garth Ennis. Or rather, the lack thereof. Now I'm sure Andy Diggle is a fine writer. Or maybe he isn't. But I can't 'get' with his characterization of Frank Castle. Punisher is trying to kill a criminal who has stayed out of sight for years, and has only emerged now to kill the man who snitched on his father and sent him to jail, where he died. The snitch is having a big Christmas party at the orphanage where he grows up, so Frank shows up, dressed as Santa. He orders the kids to build snowmen, that places claymores inside, so he can blow people up. At the end he leaves a dead body in the snow for the orphans to find. Here's the thing; Frank Castle is cruel to criminals, not the innocent, and certainly not children, which Ennis depicted well in a story where Frank goes to Russia. So this Frank is a little jarring to me, and it hurts the story. 3 dead Santas hidden from orphan eyes out of 5.

Ghost Rider #4 of 6 - So Ghost Rider and Hoss (the demon Hell sent to find Kazann), pull themselves out from under the bus Ruth (the archangel Heaven sent after Kazann) threw at them to find. . . Ruth stole Ghost Rider's bike?! What the? That's just not right, stealing a man's bike. Anyway, Hoss offers to team-up with Ghost Rider to get to Kazann and stop him before Ruth does. On the way, we get much discussion of what Kazann is up to, and how he had some insider in Heaven that enabled them to foil Heaven's plans, including apparently Jesus. It's all kind of hilarious. Meanwhile Kazann reveals his plan to bring Hell on Earth, and Ruth reaches her destination and begins slaughtering human security guards at an impressive rate. It's all pretty fun, and it's still gorgeous (Praise Clayton Crain! Praise him more!), but I was hoping after last issue to see more of Ghost Rider fighting. Still the plot seemed to take a nice jump forward, so 4 out of 5.

Teen Titans #30 - Kalinara and mallet have already discussed their dissatisfaction with this story over at Pretty, Fuzzy Paradise in the comments anyway. They've seen the Raven/Brother Blood/Trigon thing too many times. I'm different in that I haven't. Not in that I can't get enough, just in that I started reading Teen Titans in what was I believe the last issue of the 'Raven comes back to life story' and my collection of Wolfman/Perez works is pretty much the Terra/Deathstroke/Jericho/Nightwing storyline in trade paperback (I've got a post planned about how Slade was said to have lost his eye, but I need to reread it first, and it, like most of my comics, is at my mom's place. Bugger.) Anyway, so this stuff isn't old news to me, and I liked this story on last season of the Teen Titans cartoon. Also I have a little more fondness for Raven than either mallet or kalinara, mainly because she seems to be a type of character I like, the "Ryoko type" (that's another post for another time). Anyway, I'm somewhat intrigued to see who is behind the doorway to the land of the dead being open, and could they possibly hold it open long enough for Stephanie Brown (Spoiler) to make it back? My prediction, the troublemaker is Geoff Johns, but then I blame him for everything going wrong in the DC Universe. Why not, he writes half the books, pratically runs the place. Anyway the art was nice, I'm still picking up the next issue, and it helped repair the damage Liefield did to my eyes. How did he get so bad? He was ok when he drew X-Force in the '90s. I didn't have any problems then. So 4 overused plotlines out of 5.

Another post coming today, on the seeming dominance of DC in the blogosphere.