I haven’t touched a lot of the old school comics before when it comes to Marvel and DC (and those I’ve read are because of SuperMOOC). So when the opportunity came via the library system to check out the Marvel Season One books – the updated origin graphic novels retelling the origin stories of some of the better known heroes I was game.
I really picked up the titles in order of interested and was able to touch the first few pretty quickly so the reviews are in that order as opposed to some kind of chronological one. This time I checked out Spider-man and The Avengers.
Spider-man Season One by Cullen Bunn and Neil Edwards
Cullen Bunn has usually been a hit or miss writer for me so I was interested in checking out the Spider-man Season One book especially after the preview that he had done for Free Comic Book Day two years ago and Bunn does an excellent job writing Spider-man.
The book is a fast paced recap that keeps the right number of elements from the origin story in while giving a new-er enemy in The Vulture (and Bugle reporter Katy Kiernan), while building onto the Marvel Universe and while making a fun Peter Parker.
Joining Bunn on the art is Neil Edwards whose work I’ve been equally mixed on in the past. Herc’s art was problematic as was some of his work on Dark Avengers but here everything comes off well and reads quickly and lightly which is important if you’re telling a story that has been told over and over again.
As far as Spider-man origin stories go I don’t really have issues with this one. It goes fast, the art works and it is fun. It’s hard to complain about that so if you need a Spider-man origin, check out this one.
The Avengers Season One by Peter David, Andrea DiVito, John Buran, Nigel Raynor and Mike Bowden
The Avengers Season One was a troubled and predictable book and I know these are all origin stories to some degree but here is was painful. Written by Peter David and illustrated by Andrea DiVito, John Buran, Nigel Raynor and Mike Bowden, the book had issues are part of me wants to put in a dig about this being something that came free with a Blu-Ray.
The Avengers, who’d already defeated Loki once, are starting to have doubts about one another and Loki who is suffering from the least punishing sentence ever where he decides he’ll try to set the Avengers against each other – the Avengers in this case being Cap, Iron Man and Thor (with Hulk getting ignored while Hank and Janet are on vacation).
Loki uses his magic and minions to get them to think another member of the team has tricked them so they all meet up to go head to head until Hulk is like “no this is stupid what are you even doing (not verbatim)”. The gang realizes they were tricked and then Thor is like “I guess Loki was behind it”.
Along the way the art changes between a few artists and none of them are too distinct – more along the lines of the standard Marvel stye and none of them really wowed all that much which was disappointing. The book failed to bring tension or drama since so much was explained ahead of time which was frustrating because as far as individual voices go, Peter David did a solid jon giving each avenger their own voice.
It’s far from the the worst Avengers comic but it could be a lot better.
