Sunday, October 17, 2010
OMIT: The full review
OMIT, OMIT...I've covered the first issue of OMIT in small detail last time I posted a comic review here, but let me get into detail now that the storyline is finished.
OMIT is a storyline created as a sequel to the godawful One More Day, in which Peter Parker sells his marriage to Mephisto to save his Aunt May because apparently Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, etc. cannot heal a simple gunshot wound. Once that happens, Peter wakes in his Aunt May's house and hangs out with Harry Osborn Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin's son and Peter's best friend and died in the 90's, as well as meet all new characters. He and Mary Jane broke up over some spat in this continuity. This is a prime example on why editors should not write comics or you get crap like One More Day which makes no sense and has an awful storyline to boot.
But let's talk about OMIT. It was made to answer all the questions about One More Day and teased us with the possibility of Mary Jane and Peter getting back together. A four part story, OMIT is long, contrived, and incredibly stupid, contributing nothing to the lore of Spider-Man except confusing knots that make no sense and will probably turn off all comic readers from the book. OMD (One More Day) and OMIT are in the long run poison to the Spider-Man comics, since nobody will want to read them when they hear about what happened, as well as having all the current readers drop off the book in droves.
Anyway, Part One begins with Amazing Spider Man Issue #638, where it opens with Mary Jane talking to Mephisto, saying Peter'll never accept the deal unless she asks him to and that she wants him to leave Peter alone for the rest of his days. Mephisto agrees and says.
"Agreed. As far as I'm concerned, this never happened."
Lampshade Hanging on how the readers are thinking on this moment?
First of all, this is directly contradicting OMD. Peter has guilt tripped Mary Jane into accepting the deal. In fact, he was perfectly happy to do so. What Joe Quesada is doing is deliberately contradicting his own story just to make Mary Jane look bad and Peter look good. The thing is Quesada, the only one here who looks bad is you.
Next page we have Mary Jane come to Peter's apartment with a bottle of wine, asking to talk to him. She wants to come back to his life and they begin discussing about how their marriage never happened.
I might as well touch upon the art here. You see, it's complicated. The series has had several artists, several drawing an issue. The comic is also infamous for reusing art, from the Wedding Annual and One More Day itself. Joe Quesada was one of the multiple artists who drew this comic. I was never very fond of Quesada's art. Sure, he does a good job drawing Daredevil, Hobgoblin and Mysterio, basically he specializes in drawing costumed characters. But unfortunately, he draws people out of the spandex badly. For instance, I hated his Foggy Nelson, his face inconsistent from being thin and fat, as well as making the Black Widow look too much like an anime character, with excessive lipstick. His Peter looks pudgy, his face looking like all punchy and stretched out, his clothes looking like potato sacks. To be fair, Quesada is excellent at drawing Mary Jane but otherwise, he's not that good an artist with actual people.
Anyway, we proceed to cut to pages ripped from Amazing Spider Man Annual #21, aka The Wedding. It starts with Symbiote costumed Spider-Man webslinging, catching Electro breaking out of jail and attacking a costume shop to get his back. Just when you expect the fight to be added in as well, we cut to Electro and his goons being arrested. Then we suddenly cut to an entirely different art style, where one of the thugs named Eddie gets freed by a red pigeon.
Subtle.
Anyway, Peter is having doubts about not getting married, again stealing art from the annual. This is understandable. Every couple has doubts before the wedding, but Quesada wants us to agree with Peter's anti marriage. Flash Thompson wisely tells Peter to shut up and get together and he and Harry manage to somewhat convince Peter to go through with it. Cut to completely different art where Flash and Harry talk about how the bachelor party sucked and they're worried about Peter, blah blah blah. Yes thank you, that was worth giving my eyes whiplash. Cut back to the reused Annual art and we see Peter swing back to the apartment and stare at a picture of Gwen Stacy.
Then we have Mary Jane still have her doubts, using new art, blah blah blah. That's one of the problems with this issue. Repetition. This comic is extremely repetitive, basically repeating the same things over and over. And yeah, I know that I'm cutting out various dialogue and scenes, but trust me, you're not missing much.
Anyway, Spider-Man goes patrolling and finds Eddie attacking one of the cops that arrested him. In his own house no less. Spider-Man steps in naturally, since he's a superhero. But after a brief fight scene, Eddie throws a brick at Spidey. In regular good comics, Spidey would easily dodge and beat the crap out of him., because he has spider speed and spider sense. Instead, Spidey get hit in the eye with a brick, and completely misses his target when he fires his webbing. Then, he and Eddie lose their balance, and they fall off, Eddie landing on top of him and KNOCKS SPIDER-MAN OUT! That's right, Spider-Man can stay conscious when several tons of rubble falls on him and can even lift it off his frickin back, but he can't lift a fat dude off him? Eddie's not even that fat.
Meanwhile Peter completely misses his wedding, J. Jonah Jameson, Mrs. Watson and Flash and Harry badmouthing Peter because they think he got cold feet. The real reason is because the thug that fell on Spidey knocked him out long enough to miss his wedding.
I cannot get over this!
Eddie and Spidey wake up, Eddie kicking Spidey in the face and walks away, Spidey moaning and crying like a little girl. Cut back to Joe's art/the present, with MJ and Peter wishing they didn't remember.
This issue is awful. It's lazy, stealing art and cutting to each other for absolutely no good reason at the expense of the reader's immersion and eyes. Basically Joe Quesada wanted a reason for Peter to miss his wedding, but couldn't think of a good reason why, so he just decided to give the readers the middle finger.
Issue #2 has Spidey return to MJ's apartment, showing he was injured. MJ is mad and says she can't handle being Peter being Spider-Man and people getting hurt and blah blah blah. You know, MJ had dated Peter for years and knew he was Spider-Man. She was fine with it! In the Annual, she had every reason not to go through with the marriage and stood by him, not bothered with the danger. Here, MJ suddenly does a complete 180 in personality. She says she wanted to have Peter's baby since she married and that the only point of marriage is baby making. She says that Peter is just as bad as her abusive father because he's Spider-Man and puts her life in danger, blah blah. She and Peter agree to continue living together, but they're not married.
Fun fact. Quesada has a wife and a young girl. You can imagine how the poor woman's feeling if she heard what Quesada's writing.
This is again Quesada throwing MJ under a bus, completely derailing her from a strong, cheerful young woman who is aware of the danger she's in and sticks with her man anyway. Here, she's a weak crybaby who is also inconsistent with her beliefs. In addition, this is just a lazy way of saying everything is canon, though to be fair, there wasn't much he could've done with that part, after OMD.
Then we cut to when Aunt May's shot. Here, everything proceeding the deal happens...except the deal DOESN'T happen. Here, just when Aunt May was about to die, Peter screams and presses her chest trying to restore her heartbeat. Ignoring the fact that one, he has super strength and should be smashing her ribs, and two, even if her heartbeat was restored, it should just fade away again instantly.
And amazingly, it works. Aunt May is saved.
Here's the thing. Why did this require the marriage being retconned? If Peter didn't make the deal with Mephisto now in this new continuity, then what was the point of One More Day? Retconning One More Day and saying, "yeah they just divorced for a bit and got back together" or whatever would be a far more elegant solution. Like OMIT, it renders OMD pointless, but doesn't give fans the middle finger.
Even worse, OMD and OMIT both happened, except they didn't according to Quesada.
Wha?
Anyway, Part three has the Kingpin, who hired the sniper that tried to kill Peter and ended up shooting Aunt May, hires a masked thug to kill Anna Watson, being close to Peter and all. So he breaks in, just as MJ is visiting Anna. The hitman chases MJ and Spidey intervenes, revealing the hitman to be Eddie.
Oh my god! Eddie is going to completely pwn Spiedy now! I mean, he knocked out Spidey before. His powers of breaking all plausibility should make him the most powerful comic book character ever! How can Spidey stand up to him?
Well, Spdiey beats him up and then takes MJ to Doctor Strange to be healed. Well, if Stange couldn't heal Aunt May from a bullet wound, why does Peter expect Strange to be able to heal MJ?
Well NOW he can, and he patches her up. He then goes to Iron Man and Reed Richards, calling them assholes and saying they should feel bad and it's all their fault about what happened. The three decide to erase everyone's memory with a machine that Peter's Spider-Man.
This sucks in so many ways I can't even begin.
First of all, if both Reed and Iron Man can make a machine like that, why can't they build machines like that? What's stopping them from doing so? Why are they able to do so? What's the technology? Why are they even doing it to Peter? Why do they need to be prompted by Strange? This contradicts Civil War too. Iron Man and Reed Richards WANTS the world to know Peter is Spider-Man. That's what they're fighting for. In there, they're ruthless, making no exception for anyone. Why is Peter so special now?
The last part concludes with Doctor Strange telling Peter what's going on and says that MJ will forget too. Peter will be in a magic bubble to protect him from the mindwipe, but at the last minute, Peter drags MJ in. They then have a conversation about how MJ wants her memories erased because she'll be in danger, blah blah blah. And the final kick in the balls is they reuse artwork from One More Day. Yeah, it's the same art, just replaced dialogue. How cheap are these assholes?
Back in the present, MJ says that she wants Peter to move on, and to find someone else. Peter than says that he fells great, like in a Brand New Day.
This comic is as subtle as an elephant doing the can can while painted pink with polka dots, with Ferris Bueller on top singing Twist And Shout.
This comic is hideous. It is loathsome, lazy, fails in logic. It represents everything wrong with the comic book industry today. The art and plot is inconsistent at best, they reuse previous art because they're too cheap to make their own and they have the gall to charge $3-4 dollars an issue. Overall, stay away from this comic. Avoid it like the plague. Avoid Spider-Man books like the plague. Because the current management has no idea what they're doing.
OMIT is a storyline created as a sequel to the godawful One More Day, in which Peter Parker sells his marriage to Mephisto to save his Aunt May because apparently Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, etc. cannot heal a simple gunshot wound. Once that happens, Peter wakes in his Aunt May's house and hangs out with Harry Osborn Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin's son and Peter's best friend and died in the 90's, as well as meet all new characters. He and Mary Jane broke up over some spat in this continuity. This is a prime example on why editors should not write comics or you get crap like One More Day which makes no sense and has an awful storyline to boot.
But let's talk about OMIT. It was made to answer all the questions about One More Day and teased us with the possibility of Mary Jane and Peter getting back together. A four part story, OMIT is long, contrived, and incredibly stupid, contributing nothing to the lore of Spider-Man except confusing knots that make no sense and will probably turn off all comic readers from the book. OMD (One More Day) and OMIT are in the long run poison to the Spider-Man comics, since nobody will want to read them when they hear about what happened, as well as having all the current readers drop off the book in droves.
Anyway, Part One begins with Amazing Spider Man Issue #638, where it opens with Mary Jane talking to Mephisto, saying Peter'll never accept the deal unless she asks him to and that she wants him to leave Peter alone for the rest of his days. Mephisto agrees and says.
"Agreed. As far as I'm concerned, this never happened."
Lampshade Hanging on how the readers are thinking on this moment?
First of all, this is directly contradicting OMD. Peter has guilt tripped Mary Jane into accepting the deal. In fact, he was perfectly happy to do so. What Joe Quesada is doing is deliberately contradicting his own story just to make Mary Jane look bad and Peter look good. The thing is Quesada, the only one here who looks bad is you.
Next page we have Mary Jane come to Peter's apartment with a bottle of wine, asking to talk to him. She wants to come back to his life and they begin discussing about how their marriage never happened.
I might as well touch upon the art here. You see, it's complicated. The series has had several artists, several drawing an issue. The comic is also infamous for reusing art, from the Wedding Annual and One More Day itself. Joe Quesada was one of the multiple artists who drew this comic. I was never very fond of Quesada's art. Sure, he does a good job drawing Daredevil, Hobgoblin and Mysterio, basically he specializes in drawing costumed characters. But unfortunately, he draws people out of the spandex badly. For instance, I hated his Foggy Nelson, his face inconsistent from being thin and fat, as well as making the Black Widow look too much like an anime character, with excessive lipstick. His Peter looks pudgy, his face looking like all punchy and stretched out, his clothes looking like potato sacks. To be fair, Quesada is excellent at drawing Mary Jane but otherwise, he's not that good an artist with actual people.
Anyway, we proceed to cut to pages ripped from Amazing Spider Man Annual #21, aka The Wedding. It starts with Symbiote costumed Spider-Man webslinging, catching Electro breaking out of jail and attacking a costume shop to get his back. Just when you expect the fight to be added in as well, we cut to Electro and his goons being arrested. Then we suddenly cut to an entirely different art style, where one of the thugs named Eddie gets freed by a red pigeon.
Subtle.
Anyway, Peter is having doubts about not getting married, again stealing art from the annual. This is understandable. Every couple has doubts before the wedding, but Quesada wants us to agree with Peter's anti marriage. Flash Thompson wisely tells Peter to shut up and get together and he and Harry manage to somewhat convince Peter to go through with it. Cut to completely different art where Flash and Harry talk about how the bachelor party sucked and they're worried about Peter, blah blah blah. Yes thank you, that was worth giving my eyes whiplash. Cut back to the reused Annual art and we see Peter swing back to the apartment and stare at a picture of Gwen Stacy.
Then we have Mary Jane still have her doubts, using new art, blah blah blah. That's one of the problems with this issue. Repetition. This comic is extremely repetitive, basically repeating the same things over and over. And yeah, I know that I'm cutting out various dialogue and scenes, but trust me, you're not missing much.
Anyway, Spider-Man goes patrolling and finds Eddie attacking one of the cops that arrested him. In his own house no less. Spider-Man steps in naturally, since he's a superhero. But after a brief fight scene, Eddie throws a brick at Spidey. In regular good comics, Spidey would easily dodge and beat the crap out of him., because he has spider speed and spider sense. Instead, Spidey get hit in the eye with a brick, and completely misses his target when he fires his webbing. Then, he and Eddie lose their balance, and they fall off, Eddie landing on top of him and KNOCKS SPIDER-MAN OUT! That's right, Spider-Man can stay conscious when several tons of rubble falls on him and can even lift it off his frickin back, but he can't lift a fat dude off him? Eddie's not even that fat.
Meanwhile Peter completely misses his wedding, J. Jonah Jameson, Mrs. Watson and Flash and Harry badmouthing Peter because they think he got cold feet. The real reason is because the thug that fell on Spidey knocked him out long enough to miss his wedding.
I cannot get over this!
Eddie and Spidey wake up, Eddie kicking Spidey in the face and walks away, Spidey moaning and crying like a little girl. Cut back to Joe's art/the present, with MJ and Peter wishing they didn't remember.
This issue is awful. It's lazy, stealing art and cutting to each other for absolutely no good reason at the expense of the reader's immersion and eyes. Basically Joe Quesada wanted a reason for Peter to miss his wedding, but couldn't think of a good reason why, so he just decided to give the readers the middle finger.
Issue #2 has Spidey return to MJ's apartment, showing he was injured. MJ is mad and says she can't handle being Peter being Spider-Man and people getting hurt and blah blah blah. You know, MJ had dated Peter for years and knew he was Spider-Man. She was fine with it! In the Annual, she had every reason not to go through with the marriage and stood by him, not bothered with the danger. Here, MJ suddenly does a complete 180 in personality. She says she wanted to have Peter's baby since she married and that the only point of marriage is baby making. She says that Peter is just as bad as her abusive father because he's Spider-Man and puts her life in danger, blah blah. She and Peter agree to continue living together, but they're not married.
Fun fact. Quesada has a wife and a young girl. You can imagine how the poor woman's feeling if she heard what Quesada's writing.
This is again Quesada throwing MJ under a bus, completely derailing her from a strong, cheerful young woman who is aware of the danger she's in and sticks with her man anyway. Here, she's a weak crybaby who is also inconsistent with her beliefs. In addition, this is just a lazy way of saying everything is canon, though to be fair, there wasn't much he could've done with that part, after OMD.
Then we cut to when Aunt May's shot. Here, everything proceeding the deal happens...except the deal DOESN'T happen. Here, just when Aunt May was about to die, Peter screams and presses her chest trying to restore her heartbeat. Ignoring the fact that one, he has super strength and should be smashing her ribs, and two, even if her heartbeat was restored, it should just fade away again instantly.
And amazingly, it works. Aunt May is saved.
Here's the thing. Why did this require the marriage being retconned? If Peter didn't make the deal with Mephisto now in this new continuity, then what was the point of One More Day? Retconning One More Day and saying, "yeah they just divorced for a bit and got back together" or whatever would be a far more elegant solution. Like OMIT, it renders OMD pointless, but doesn't give fans the middle finger.
Even worse, OMD and OMIT both happened, except they didn't according to Quesada.
Wha?
Anyway, Part three has the Kingpin, who hired the sniper that tried to kill Peter and ended up shooting Aunt May, hires a masked thug to kill Anna Watson, being close to Peter and all. So he breaks in, just as MJ is visiting Anna. The hitman chases MJ and Spidey intervenes, revealing the hitman to be Eddie.
Oh my god! Eddie is going to completely pwn Spiedy now! I mean, he knocked out Spidey before. His powers of breaking all plausibility should make him the most powerful comic book character ever! How can Spidey stand up to him?
Well, Spdiey beats him up and then takes MJ to Doctor Strange to be healed. Well, if Stange couldn't heal Aunt May from a bullet wound, why does Peter expect Strange to be able to heal MJ?
Well NOW he can, and he patches her up. He then goes to Iron Man and Reed Richards, calling them assholes and saying they should feel bad and it's all their fault about what happened. The three decide to erase everyone's memory with a machine that Peter's Spider-Man.
This sucks in so many ways I can't even begin.
First of all, if both Reed and Iron Man can make a machine like that, why can't they build machines like that? What's stopping them from doing so? Why are they able to do so? What's the technology? Why are they even doing it to Peter? Why do they need to be prompted by Strange? This contradicts Civil War too. Iron Man and Reed Richards WANTS the world to know Peter is Spider-Man. That's what they're fighting for. In there, they're ruthless, making no exception for anyone. Why is Peter so special now?
The last part concludes with Doctor Strange telling Peter what's going on and says that MJ will forget too. Peter will be in a magic bubble to protect him from the mindwipe, but at the last minute, Peter drags MJ in. They then have a conversation about how MJ wants her memories erased because she'll be in danger, blah blah blah. And the final kick in the balls is they reuse artwork from One More Day. Yeah, it's the same art, just replaced dialogue. How cheap are these assholes?
Back in the present, MJ says that she wants Peter to move on, and to find someone else. Peter than says that he fells great, like in a Brand New Day.
This comic is as subtle as an elephant doing the can can while painted pink with polka dots, with Ferris Bueller on top singing Twist And Shout.
This comic is hideous. It is loathsome, lazy, fails in logic. It represents everything wrong with the comic book industry today. The art and plot is inconsistent at best, they reuse previous art because they're too cheap to make their own and they have the gall to charge $3-4 dollars an issue. Overall, stay away from this comic. Avoid it like the plague. Avoid Spider-Man books like the plague. Because the current management has no idea what they're doing.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Lord of Azure Flame Problem
Yeah, it's late, but the thing is, the links I gave you can't be viewed by guests to the serenesforest forums.
Sorry. I'll try to post chapter summaries though when I can.
Sorry. I'll try to post chapter summaries though when I can.
Friday, July 23, 2010
One Moment in Time
Ah, Quesada, you have new ways of giving Spider-Man fans the middle finger. You knew we hated One Moment In Time and shook are heads at some of the recent stories, so there you go poking at the sleeping dragon with a sword.
For those uninformed, Joe Quesada is the editor in chief at Marvel Comics. He is considered one of the most prominent examples of a promoted fanboy. His acts include insisting that Cyclops of the X-Men hooking up with a OOC Emma Frost have an affair when his wife's body isn't even cold yet, approving House of M, Avengers Dissassembled, Civil War, and Ultimatum stories, and also putting down older fans and saying their opinions don't matter.
Anyway, he wrote One More Day, a story in which Spider-Man makes a deal with the devil to get erase his marriage and abort his child to save Aunt May from a gun wound (why all the heroes with all the magical and medical resources and knowledge in the world can't help? Because the plot says so shut up). Anyway, this featured a wildly out of character Peter Parker and Mary Jane. This story is so hated, the man forced to write this wanted his name taken off the book. This deal causes Spider-Man to be single, live in his Aunt May's house, and becomes a stud boy. Oh yeah and his identity becomes secret again (he revealed it in Civil War. He and Mary Jane added making his identity secret again because they couldn't handle the responsiblity, another OOC moment). It's secret even to the Green Goblin and Venom, who's stories hinged on knowing Spider-Man is Peter Parker, basically rendering the past 30-40 years of Spider-Man stories null. It doesn't even make logical sense since if they remember their encounters with him, they'd naturally remember that he's Peter Parker. Oh yeah, and the Goblin's son comes back from the dead...for some reason. The only one who remembers is Deadpool because he's just that awesome.
Anyway I'm not here to review One More Day, just giving you some background you need to understand this story. Anyway, this story is about how Mephisto made the changes. It's a multi-parter and only part one's out. But so far, it's shifting blame to Mary Jane suggesting she wanted this to happen. That and Spider-Man apparently missed the wedding because he got hit in the head with a flying brick and got beaten up by some fat guy with no superpowers. Yes, that's as stupid as it sounds.
So anyway so far? It sucks ass and I hope a new editor in chief is instated and erases this monstrosity from Spider-Man history.
Linkara, if you read this story, I feel your pain.
For those uninformed, Joe Quesada is the editor in chief at Marvel Comics. He is considered one of the most prominent examples of a promoted fanboy. His acts include insisting that Cyclops of the X-Men hooking up with a OOC Emma Frost have an affair when his wife's body isn't even cold yet, approving House of M, Avengers Dissassembled, Civil War, and Ultimatum stories, and also putting down older fans and saying their opinions don't matter.
Anyway, he wrote One More Day, a story in which Spider-Man makes a deal with the devil to get erase his marriage and abort his child to save Aunt May from a gun wound (why all the heroes with all the magical and medical resources and knowledge in the world can't help? Because the plot says so shut up). Anyway, this featured a wildly out of character Peter Parker and Mary Jane. This story is so hated, the man forced to write this wanted his name taken off the book. This deal causes Spider-Man to be single, live in his Aunt May's house, and becomes a stud boy. Oh yeah and his identity becomes secret again (he revealed it in Civil War. He and Mary Jane added making his identity secret again because they couldn't handle the responsiblity, another OOC moment). It's secret even to the Green Goblin and Venom, who's stories hinged on knowing Spider-Man is Peter Parker, basically rendering the past 30-40 years of Spider-Man stories null. It doesn't even make logical sense since if they remember their encounters with him, they'd naturally remember that he's Peter Parker. Oh yeah, and the Goblin's son comes back from the dead...for some reason. The only one who remembers is Deadpool because he's just that awesome.
Anyway I'm not here to review One More Day, just giving you some background you need to understand this story. Anyway, this story is about how Mephisto made the changes. It's a multi-parter and only part one's out. But so far, it's shifting blame to Mary Jane suggesting she wanted this to happen. That and Spider-Man apparently missed the wedding because he got hit in the head with a flying brick and got beaten up by some fat guy with no superpowers. Yes, that's as stupid as it sounds.
So anyway so far? It sucks ass and I hope a new editor in chief is instated and erases this monstrosity from Spider-Man history.
Linkara, if you read this story, I feel your pain.
Bad Fanfic Theater
A project I'm working on, the name is self explanatory. As a member of the Serenesforest forums, I do my work there, but I'll move all my posts here and update here as well. Note I update infrequently, but I'll improve on that.
Anyway link to my current and only staying project: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=19782&st=0
Yeah, my early posts aren't exactlly...polished
Anyway link to my current and only staying project: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=19782&st=0
Yeah, my early posts aren't exactlly...polished
Lord of Azure Flames
I'm part of an RP and I'll start reviews soon, but for now, I'll show you something good.
Here's an RP called Lord of Azure Flames. I don't appear until Chapter 8 of the RP and I'm under the name Dark Sage.
The Setting is detailed and well thought out and if you want to start an RP, I highly recommend you learn some stuff from the GM Snowy in terms of making a setting.
First Chapter: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=19566
Here's an RP called Lord of Azure Flames. I don't appear until Chapter 8 of the RP and I'm under the name Dark Sage.
The Setting is detailed and well thought out and if you want to start an RP, I highly recommend you learn some stuff from the GM Snowy in terms of making a setting.
First Chapter: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=19566
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