New Comix! - Week of 5/9/12

Only came home with 2 comics last week.  One was great and the other one should have stayed at the store.  Let's get to it.

Avenging Spider-Man #7
Avenging Spidey is basically a team-up book pairing Spiderman with various heroes on random missions.  In this one Spidey teams with one of my favorite heroins, SheHulk as they foil a museum heist and end up fighting an Egyptian god.

The story starts off with Spidey and SheHulk teaming up against a monster that has been plaguing the New York sewers.  After wrapping up the monster (literally) SheHulk says she has to rush off to an event her Law Firm is hosting at the museum.  Spidey tries to accompany her but she turns him down.  He ends up following her there anyway.  No sooner has SheHulk arrived than the two heros foil a robbery by two Egyptian god worshippers trying to free their deity from a cat statue.  The robbers are caught but not before awakening the statue.  It picks SheHulk to be it's champion and she grows a cat tail, much to the delight of Peter Parker.  The museum is suddenly overrun with cats who come together and form a 50-foot-tall cat deity out in the street.  SheHulk readies to fight the god thing when Spider-Man (who has spent all issue talking about how much he loves Egyptian mythology) shows up wearing a bull head.  He says he's the servant of some greater Egyptian god and that everything is under control in modern day New York City and that the Cat God can go back to where it came from.  The Cat god concedes to the more powerful god's wishes and disappears.  Spider-man then continues to pick on SheHulk's cat tail even though it has vanished.

This book is so fun.  Most fun I've had reading regular Marvel U Spider-Man in years.  I've really been enjoying these team-ups but him with SheHulk is top notch.  She's usually pretty snarky herself but around Spidey she's got nothin'.  He pretty much cracked wise the whole time and she pretty much threatened his life through the whole ordeal.  Very funny dialog.  Great artwork.  Great job.

 - Pick of the Week!

Avengers Assemble #3
And then there's this.  This book features the creative team behind most of the fantastic Ultimate Spider-Man series so it should be a great book.  But it's not.  The purpose of this book was to be an easy jumping-on point for new or returning comic readers brought into the comic shops by the mind-blowingly awesome Avengers movie.  Knowing this I expected the plot and dialog to be dumbed down but...C'MON BENDIS!  Here's what happened.

A group of lame no-name villains have been given enormous powers based on the signs of the Zodiac.  In the first 2 issues the Avengers had a few run-ins with this group and were outmatched for the most part.  Now the entire Zodiac group has shown up at the Helicarrier and it's fight time.  They fight a lot and there's a lot of lame dialog and then Tony Stark realizes that the villain's powers are being sent to them like a broadcast.  He shoots a gun that shuts down the transfer of power and the Zodiac's are depowered immediately.  Suddenly a huge figure touches down, revealing the power behind this lame super villain group, Thanos.  I was about to get my hopes up about this story when he started talking.  What Thanos says is some of the lamest excuse for SuperVillain dialog I've ever heard.  Something like, "You have angered the Mad Titan, warrior of death.  For this I will kill your planet."  Ugh...

AVENGER'S MOVIE SPOILER ALERT BELOW!!!

The dialog was WAY dumbed down.  The art was similarly uninspired.  The Villains were beyond lame.  The ONLY reason I MIGHT pick up the next issue is because I'm interested in learning more about Thanos since watching the Avenger's movie (stay through the credits).  His dialog was so lame in his one panel appearance though, I can't imagine it will be any good.  Maybe I'll feel less blah about this title in 4 weeks and I'll give it a shot for the sake of the villain.  Maybe.

  - This was not good.  The only reason it got 2 stars is because the Avengers are awesome even in a terrible story.