Crowning Moment of Awesome: Amazing Spider-Man #644

Never before have I ever even considered a Crowning Moment of Awesome and a dead baby to be part of the same situation, but life if full of surprises.

In the latest storyline, Origin of the Species, Doc Ock, being a mad scientist, has discovered a genetic gold mine in a newborn baby, who was born of Menace, Harry Osborne's former lover who was forcefully mutated into a Goblin, and Norman Osborne, Harry's Complete Monster father and Green Goblin. After the child is born, Spidey has to keep it safe from almost every villain in his Rogues Gallery, all hired by Ock to capture it, from big names like Sandman, to small timers like Freak.

Spidey is also mistaken for a kidnapper and is hunted by the police as he desperately tries to find a hospital. As Vulture and Freak close in, Spidey sees Harry, who offers to take the child to the hospital while Spider-Man flees with a decoy. It works, but Harry doesn't move during the fight. Why? Because the child is dead. He couldn't handle the excitement of the chaos around him, and despite his best efforts, Spider-Man has yet again lost something. He vows to stop Ock and swings off into the distance, leaving Harry to mourn his illigitimate brother.

Once the Spider is out of sight, Harry removes his face, revealing himself to be Chameleon, cradling the perfectly fine baby in his arm.

This is a genuine CmoA for the book because my jaw literally dropped when Chameleon revealed himself. The series has recently been kind of shocking, having had the Lizard devour Dr. Connor's son, and the brutal rampage of the Kravinoff family. I was very upset to hear that the child didn't make it. Not that being in the hands of the Chameleon is much better, but I genuinely did not see it coming.

And when you consider that this is the story continuing from One Moment in Time (One Moment in Stupid, more like it ), this is especially impressive, and shows us that Spider-Man is a real superhero. Even with the titanic might of oppression that is Joe Quesada hammering down on the series, Spider-Man remains one of the best books I've read.

One Moment in Time: My Thoughts.

I've already been on a tangent in regards to Quesada, so I'll focus on the actual book this time (and by extension, Quesada).

One Moment in Time is an unusual thing. You know how you may play a video game, when suddenly it glitches, causing something that shouldn't happen or exist, like getting stuck in a wall or an enemy turning inside out? Imagine four issues of a comic book like that.

Reading it, I didn't actually have a problem with what I was reading that much. However, there was not one second that I was unaware of what this abomination was.

One aspect of the comic is that the writers 'cleverly' mixed in pages from the issues from the actual Spider-Man wedding issues. This is actually a clever idea, but then it just becomes depressing when you realise that this moment in comic book history is being twisted into the incorrect and warped stage we have now. That seems downright antagonistic towards the fans! It's like "Here's that Teddy Bear you loved when you were little. Now here's a pipe bomb. Guess what happens next!"

Mary Jane comes across as subtley antagonistic considering that she's the one to break off the relationship after Peter goes missing on the wedding night. That's understandable, but Quesada's intention is clearly to paint the image that she's the bad guy and we should stop wanting her and Peter to get back togethor. Well sorry Joe, this is one Mary Jane fan you can't just buff off.

There's also some intense irony in that the story is displayed as a series of flashbacks between Mary Jane and Peter. Almost the whole time Peter is requesting that they stop, but MJ keeps saying that it'll clear things up. There is no way this wasn't intentional.

Of course the absolute worst thing about this story is that Mr. Q actually thought it would be a good idea to continue the infamous One More Day storyline (Considering how much it flopped, it's just mind boggling), but it is seconded by the fact that it could have easily been a mere two issues, but he somehow in his head felt that we needed twice that!

The second issue's flashback ends with Peter and Mary Jane deciding that they won't get married, but they will go out. Really. I have a lot of trouble believing that it was necessary to use up four issues to say 'It was exactly the same except there was no marriage.' But what really grates me is how they handle erasing Spider-Man's secret identity. Here's my opinion: You didn't need to.

Mephisto changed history, you could have easily said that by doing that, he never chose to reveal his identity and avoid this whole thing. But no, you wanted us to read four issues of your crap!

Okay, but I will admit there were some okay things involved. They do not help the comic in any way, but I honestly don't think anything could.

1 Quesada has proven that even though he has the brain of a single celled organism (A dumb on) his art is surprisingly bearable. I say bearable and not good because in a few panels you'll notice him getting sloppy.

2 Issue 3 has a funny moment where Peter uses his secret identity to get a nurse to keep an eye on Aunt May.

3 Issue has one of the awesomest letters column I have ever seen in the series, if only it suggests that Stan Lee viciously attacked the editor and took over. That was hilarious.

4 Every issue had a part of Stan Lee's two page spread Amazing Spider-Man issue. Having read a few issues of Stan Lee's run, I can say that the artwork really helps evoke that feeling, so if you were a fan of that era, you might want to check this out. My favorite thing about the series are the two main antagonists, a mad genius named Brain, and his stupid henchmen named Bull. They aren't very interesting characters, but they instantly become hilarious if you start reading their dialogue with Pinky and the Brain in mind.

So, just to recap, Quesada should get a new job, Spider-Man is a good character, and I like Stan Lee...ONE MOMENT IN TIME SUCKS! 1/10 stars!

Sideburns Speculates: Everybody Hates Joe.

There is not a comic geek alive who dosn't know this man. Joe Quesada is responsible for some of the most controversial and negatively recieved decisions in the history of comics. For those of you who are uneducated in such matters, allow me to elaborate with some examples:

*Attempted to kill off Captain America permenantly (it didn't stick).

*Transformed Tony Stark into a jerkass who would gladly throw his best friends in prison.

*Killed Wasp, wife of Hank Pym, to make him more interesting. And by that, I mean turn him batshit insane, and not in the fun way.

*Used a badly written story to wipe out twenty years of beloved Spider-Man history just to get rid of his wife, Mary Jane, make his identity secret again, and because he felt that the character had gotten boring and that his marriage made the book too mature for us.

Yes, it is decisions like this that make people see Quesada as not the Editor in Chief of Marvel, but a satanic being bent on toppling the once great company from within.

The Spider-Man incident, One More Day, is the most infamous. Being one of the most popular superheroes of all time, fans were outraged that two decades worth of continuity woas just thrown out the window. One particuler criticism is that Spider-Man, whose entire character is based around facing responsibility, makes a deal with the Devil to make himself feel better! And ironically, the initial plan failed miserably. Sales went down, and Peter now had a prolific sex life. Yes Mr. Quesada, I can see how two one night stands in three issues is WAY more family friendly than a healthy marriage!

The recent stories, such as Gauntlet and Grim Hunt, have been praised as some of the best we've seen in years, leading some to actually think that Quesada's decision wasn't all that bad. These people are stupid. These awesome stories aren't the result of Quesada's master plan, they're apologies from the company for having to publish the insane ramblings of such a freaking hack!

Quesada refuses to take notice of any of our outcries and has decided that the fans need more One More Day and gave us the story One Moment in Time to explain the new continuity in regards to Peter and Mary Jane's break up. Dude, just leave it! We have gotten by by acting like it didn't happen and just trying to enjoy the stories, but no, you think that we just need to see more of it, to see how brilliant it actually is. You know what Mr. Quesada? We will never see the genius who keep hallucinating, because it isn't there. You are delusional and need to give your position in the company to someone else before you ruin the entire universe forever!

...Moving on.

But one problem he didn't have direct involvement was Rulk, AKA Red Hulk, created by Geof Johns. Rulk was THE new menace. He was stronger than Hulk, he was smarter than hulk, and above all, he was out for a goal that didn't bode well for humanity. It was exciting, and people were all wondering where this beast came from, especially after he killed longtime Hulk enemies Abomination, and General Thunderbolt Ross.

However, it soon became apparent that history was repeating itself, and, taking a cue from Clone Saga, Rulk's storyline kept on going...and going...and going, and going until people just didn't care any more. It was repeatedly hammered away how strong he was! He beat up everyone who crossed his path, even using Thor's signature weapon, the Hammer Mjolnir. This caused a bit of an uproar, because only those worthy in strength and soul may weild hero, like Thor or an insanely dedicated paramedic at one stage. However, it was justified by some in that this was in space without any gravity. Oh, and did I mention he actually managed to steal the Silver Surfer's board? What next? He's going to throw a Skrull Ship into Galactus and steal his helmet?

A few times to some of my friends, I jokingly mused that Rulk's identity was Quesada himself. How surprised were the fanbase when it turned out...It was Thunderbolt Ross!...Who...Rulk killed?

No, actually that was an illusion of some kind and Ross was the Jolly Red Giant the whole time. So obviously I was way off with that Quesada joke...

Or was I? They actually have a fair bit in common. Namely, they're both grumpy middle aged men in high seats of authority within their profession. Not only that, but both of them are going out of their way to utterly destroy characters that are beloved worldwide. Wow.

On a side note, I haven't read One Moment in Time yet, but I will soon. I was fully ready to do it when I sat down and realised, 'This is the sequel to One More Day. And I am about to read it.'

Also, my ranking comes off as incredibly harsh. I was not reading Spider-Man before that happened, nor have I even read One More Day. I recognise the princible, though. He really should quit while he's ahead. And by ahead I mean while people are still buying the books.

This is ThatKidWithTheSideburns, sideburning off.

Mental Covers: Cyanide's my Pal.

The reason why remains unknown, but any time Mental and Cyanide are in the same room and are not beating the life out of each other is already bizarre. What could possibly make the two join forces?

Cyanide was another attempt at creating an arch enemy for Mental. Originally created for a fairly well done fight scene in my comic on Flickr, Cyanide was an alien blob who came to Earth to beat shit up, and was met by Captain Mental, my alter ego in this version. I manage to rip his head off, but the slime forms a mutating suit on my body and turns me into his second form. Imagine a full body hoodie with tentacles for arms and large teeth sticking out of the hood. Eventually the old Cyanide shows up again, having regained his old head, and is killed and absorbed by my suit, creating an unstoppable monolithic beast (pictured). It takes a retelling of The Devil Went Down To Georgia (and a falling plane) to remove the suit.

Cyanide's design in my drawings has slowly changed over time, and probably not for the better. Originally his head was much more humanoid in shape and was generally just drawn more intimidating.
Though still probably Mental's strongest opponent, I don't think I could bring him back enough to make him into the arch villain.

And yes, he is inspired by Venom.

Awesome Covers: Amazing Spider-Man Spider-Man 632

This cover isn't particulerly well drawn or impressively thought out (better than anything I could do, but that's not saying much). However, it features a concept so odd that you can't help but be intrigued and pick up the book, 'Spider-Man turning into The Lizard.' This is the sort of thing I love about comic books and the sort of cover I love.

As for the storyline inside, we are unfortunately not treated to the Reptilarachnid featured on the cover. Luckily the story is quite well written, features an art style I can finally enjoy, and is surprisingly brutal. 'Ha, how brutal can Spider-Man possibly be?' Well I'll tell you...The Lizard kills Conners son. Pre teen son.
Much like Savage Dragon 160, this is one of few comics to actually get a true emotional reaction from me.

I hate it when children die in any media. It's slightly better if its offscreen and we get a discretion shot, but I'm still not a fan. In this case, we were given the discretion shot, so things aren't too bad. It has also made me genuinely want Spider-Man to beat the shit out of Lizard. Here's hoping the story concludes as such.

Awesome Covers: Amazing Spider-Man 625

This one I just love! The Gauntlet saga has brought back most of Spidey's more famous enemies, and they have all taken a level in badass. For some this is a bit different, they have become legacy characters. Namley, Vulture and Rhino. The New Vulture is a snarling mutant out for revenge, and the new Rhino is a technological warrior who must defeat the old Rhino to gain his title. Here we have a somewhat basic image of the two Rhinos going head to head, but it just looks kick ass! This wouldn't look nearly as good if it were other villains, but Rhino's main attack plan is to charge at his opponents, so having to Rhinos doing that is pretty cool. And it's also Old vs. New, which is almost always good.
We also see that the New Rhino is much larger than the Old, giving him an advantage, but the Old Rhino dosn't seem detered from the fight by it, that is how you draw a still image of a badass.

This is the sort of cover that grabs you and drags you in and makes you want to read the story inside. This is why I like these sort of covers, I often don't care for basic group shots, or extreme face close ups.
As for the story inside, it's pretty damn good, which makes the mission of the cover a massive success. It even gets a little tear jerking. My only complaint is that it gives us an example of that lifelong comic book cliche, that heroes villains always have to come back. They retire, they return, they die, they're revived. This is also a problem when you kill them off for good, because then you don't get to enjoy the character being around any more, it's a freaking paradox.

Oh, that and I don't really like the art that much.

Interesting.

Huh, I never noticed that before.

This Months Haul.

Today I thought I'd talk about the hoard of comics I bought yesturday. This probably won't take too long, but meh I thought I'd share some feelings. I can't be bothered putting up the covers, so heres a random picture. I'll mainly be talking about stuff that bothers me, but on a whole I'd say that this was a good month.



Deadpool.
Deadpool is still very much awesome as usual. The storyline at the moment of the main series is pretty good, and longtime Butt Monkey Weasel gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome. Unfortunatley this storyline has somewhat confused me in regards to Deadpool's current motivation. The last eight or so issues focussed on him deciding to help people, and now he's turned into a jerkass again. It is awesome, so I won't actually hold it against the series.
Merc with a Mouth has also been pretty good, but the zombie universe is getting a bit boring. Well maybe boring isn't the right word, but I'm not a fan of Marvel Zombies, and while I am definatley a fan of Headpool I guess I prefer my zombies Angry Mob style.
Finally, I like how Deadpool's been growing in popularity, but I have to say that I'm almost experiencing the same problem that we get with Superman and Batman. DP has yet another miniseries going on, which makes like what? Six series? And I'm buying all of them! They're good, but if I hadn't been in from the early days, I'd be lost as all hell!

Gotham City Sirens.
This is everything you'd want from a series staring Catwoman, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. It's technically not a Villain Protagonist story, but more of a...Reformed but not friendly Villain Protagonist story. Okay, basically they're villains, but they don't do evil things any more,but neither do they activley fight crime.
This is going to put me in a very small minority but Ivy is really starting to bug me. She uses her seduction powers to get a high class job at S.T.A.R. Labs, then fires half the staff to show she means business. An employee tries to take revenge upon discovering her identity, but it dosn't quite work and now Ivy is working on threatening her for some purpose. This is the sort of thing I'd expect from the villainous side of a comic, which makes perfect sense, but I just want to punch her! Which would then get me killed, so it's a lose-lose situation!
And also, for some of The Goddamned Batman's greatest enemies, they sure get their asses kicked a lot. A while back they get their asses handed to them by a midget clown disguised as the Joker, they were just over equally matched by an old man with a walking stick, and in this issue they get the snot beaten out of them by Catwoman's Batshit crazy nun sister.
Also, it's not portrayed as such, but robbing a Church is what I'd use for a Kick the Dog moment Ms. Kyle.
Harley's doing fine though.

Savage Dragon.
This month's release is nowhere near as depressing as last months. It's pretty clever, especially how Larsen subverts the Big Bad status of Overlord. He's insanley powerful and actually managed to finally kill off the hero for good, but he's not really doing too well with the evil scheming and stuff. He also feels terrible about sending the mooks to their deaths in the previous issue. Larsen continues to make this a turning point by killing OpenFace, one of Dragon's more memorable villains, and a guy whose been with us since pretty much the start. At least he died trying todo something awesome. But I already said I'd be discussing the negatives, so here we go.
There's a major squick factor in the suggestion that Angel should hook up with her brother Malcolm. Granted, Angel recognises the squick and has no interest, and her dumb friends are he ones who suggested it, and it is pointed out that they aren't blood related, but good god this is Chicago, not a stereotypical Redneck town.
Speaking of Malcolm, good god when did he start taking steroids? I understand that it's Larsen's intention to have him take up the mantle of Savage Dragon, but I think he should have remained sort of lanky. I mean...dude! That does not look natural. I swear a few issues ago he actually looked like he was 13. If I saw him I'd assume his early twenties!

Invincible.
I bough the Invincible One-Shot 'Invincible Returns,' which is actually the real issue 71, but it's longr, while Issue 71 is technically issue 72, but lets not enter a loop here.
Okay, I don't actually have any complaints about this issue. Well, that's a lie actually. There's a few odd bits of dialogue, but that's more likley my opinion, I mean they have to get their exposition from somewhere, right? Next up is that it's shaking up the status quo so much. We're going to be spending like six or so issues in the Viltrumite War, which is set in space. I'm sure it'll be good, but I was liking what we had on Earth. Besides, I know it's been about ten months, but we're still recovering from the Invincible War. And finally Invincible switches back to his classic yellow costume. Man, I liked your blue costume! It kicked ass! This one makes your head look long. There's an instory explanation that I find hard to disagree with. Invincible recently stepped over the Moral Event Horizon by killing an innocent man possessed by the aliens known as Sequids. He's decided to not kill any more full stop, and switched to his old costume because blue one reminded him of the incident and made him feel disgusted with himself.
All on all, I'd say it was an excellent jumping point for new readers.

Booster Gold.
I stopped buying Booster for a while because I thought the series ended. As it turns out, I was wrong, so I started up again. You can't blame me, the current storyline concluded, it had a somewhat finalistic tone and it was issue 30, which would be a good number to end on. Anyway, complaints...during a fight with Skull Agents, Booster reflects a laser blast and kills a little girls dog. It leads to a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming at the end, but the way they react to it. You killed a dog. Not the Little Girl, the dog. You didn't mean to. The Dog didn't explode into a gory mess. And you have a Heroic BSOD about it, and they start hurling abuse at him. Seriously? There were evil super villains running around causing havoc, putting hundreds of people in danger, and you start telling the hero he's compleley worthless because of something like that? He stopped all the Agents, I mean come on! Yes, you should be upset, but you need to get your priorities straight!

I also bought five issues of Amazing Spider-Man (and I'm still behind). I'm going to read one weekly until my next comic Store Trip, so I haven't read them yet. However,I hear that they are awesome. Nevertheless, Deviling away twenty years of continuity cannot be patched up one very awesome storyline.

Crowning Moment of Awesome: Adelaide Comic Centre.

I heard about this a while ago, but only found out the details recently.

I regularly attend the Adelaide Comic Centre. It's a great place, it's pretty easy to find what you want, the staff are friendly, and it's just set up really well.

As part of an Open Day promotion, the staff were dressed in superhero suits. One of the owners, Michael Baulderstone was dressed as Spider-Man. You can tell they're enthusiastic about the whole thing, since he was jumping around the store making the sound of web shooting. I salute you, my geeky superior. But here's the weird bit. He happened to see someone trying to sneak off with an expensive X-Men collection, and, without even removing his mask, he walked over and asked him to return it.

That.

Is.

AWESOME!

I heard about this and thought, 'That Guy's seen Kick-Ass too many times,' cos I thought it was actually a guy in a Spider-Man suit maybe going to a party and seeing someone with a stolen thing, but then I went to the website and realised it was actually him. I gotta say, that's pretty damn hilarious. Annoying since all technically I could have been there when it happened, that would've been funny.

I'm gonna bet you anything people came into the store for the following weak just to mention that. Youtube hooooooooo!

Check out the video at their Website (if you live in the area, check out the website in general) here: http://www.dynamicduocomics.net/
Don't worry, his voice is much more understandable in real life.