You know what? Absolute Carnage #1 by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman is, actually, really pretty good. Why the qualifiers? Because I’ve never been a big fan of the character, and what little interest I did have in Spider-Man’s stable of symbiotic super-villains dropped off considerably as the ultra-violent aesthetic swallowed up the 80’s anti-hero boom and suddenly, painfully, took precedence over any kind of decent comic book storytelling or artistry. Subconsciously I think I’ve somehow equated the Punisher/Deadpool/Venom-Carnage fanbase with the same people who can’t stand seeing a Black Captain America or a Jane Foster swinging Mjolnir. I don’t have time to waste on that nonsense. So, coupled with my disinterest in the characters, I also assume any new books featuring those guys would therefore target that audience. Pass.
Despite developing an appreciation for the work of Donny Cates, if it hadn’t been for our “Fresh Start” focus group project, I probably wouldn’t have bothered reading the first issue of the new Venom series (see above). And then I would have missed out on arguably the hottest team in comics right now. Ryan Stegman’s work is a revelation, and the storyline involving new, unexpected layers to the symbiote lore has been everything you want from comic book fantasy. Primordial cosmic chaos, terrifying cultish machinations, and millennia-spanning mystery. And, again, totally unexpected (particularly given how terrible the most recent attempt at de-mystifying the symbiotes had been during Bendis’s Guardians of the Galaxy run).
To cut to the chase: Absolute Carnage #1 is a fantastic horror comic. Coupled with Ewing and Bennett’s Immortal Hulk, these are the kind of books that, I’d argue, we’ve never seen dressed up in cape n’ tights veneer and haven’t been worth a damn since the EC heyday.
I’m not lazy by any means. I’m swamped. “Idle time” isn’t what it once was and finding shit to write about every week has its challenges. That said, my experimental effort at a blog entry title that, much like a spontaneous tweet accompanied by an image or two, can communicate everything I need should, also, force me to blather on introspectively in the most blog-like of fashions. Which is what I just did.
For some time now I’d been trying to transition from straightforward weekly new release bulletins to something a little more bloggy (read: pathetically self-indulgent), but related to comics all the same. That War of the Realms rundown really burned me out. Not just with writing brief four-color reviews either — I was worried that I needed a real break from superhero books. I’ve been reading and collecting comics pretty much nonstop for over thirty years and, for whatever reason, these last few months had seen my unread stacks pile up to unprecedented heights (save for the stupid WotR tie-ins, given my stubborn insistence that I read every damn page in order and on time) and my enthusiasm for reading the latest installments of some of my favorite capes n’ tights books had stalled considerably.
Avengers #21 – Mondo Variant (Marvel)
Blade Runner 2019 #1 – Artgerm Exclusive Virgin Variant (Titan Entertainment)
This book shouldn’t be this good. It also shouldn’t only be three issues. Every year Marvel does one of these anthology tie-ins for its summer event and they’re usually a hodgepodge of tangential short stories by aspiring writers and artists that add very little to the overall storyline… and are largely forgettable to boot.
What I probably should be doing is talking about the incredible Silver Surfer: Black by Donny Cates and Tradd Moore. Or at the very least, my initial impressions of DC’s Event Leviathan by Bendis and Maleev. But instead I’m rolling ahead with more quick hits on everything remotely related to Marvel’s War of the Realms. After perusing this list of crossovers and tie-ins, however, my hope is that the casual fan will forego all this tangential crap and read one of the two aforementioned books instead. I’m getting ready to bury the hammer, Marvel. Let’s wrap this shit up, yeah?
When I started this earnest effort at charting Marvel’s big summer event, my goal was to tackle, first and foremost, the readability of War of the Realms and all of its associated crossovers, tie-ins, and supplements. The idea was to see whether or not I could recapture the wonderful anticipation I used to feel with these types of stories (Civil War comes to mind most immediately), or if disjointed and confusing narratives were going to be the new norm. I haven’t always read all the tangential crap, but I’ve felt like, in most cases, I’ve consumed the majority. Despite that, gaps in storytelling from forced compression or publishing delays have really affected that experience (Civil War II, by contrast, stands out in this regard).
Originally, my thinking regarding these weekly War of the Realms updates was to focus in on the crossovers and tie-ins that were important to properly enjoying the overall event. I (almost) always enjoy a good Marvel summer shebang, but in recent years I’ve been frustrated with the confusing continuity of some of these mini-series. Despite reading — or trying to read — every comic remotely related to a given story, I invariably feel that I’ve missed something, resulting in an event experience that feels fragmented and unsatisfying. But given how invested I’ve been in Jason Aaron’s fantastic Thor saga, and how much I love his partnership with Russell Dauterman, I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. I was going to properly enjoy this g-d event, even if it meant buying and reading every one-shot (e.g., Strikeforce), amusing albeit tangential diversion (like Squirrel-Girl), or half-assed shitrag of a limited series (the gawdawful Journey into Mystery).
An impressive stack of books on the new releases rack with that War of the Realms trade dress: eight books in all for week eight of Marvel’s summer event. Thus far, Malekith’s epic invasion of Midgard, the last holdout against his ten-realm conquest, has been a fun and colorful culmination of Jason Aaron’s Thor opus. Some hits and misses this week. Let’s navigate.
We’re less than two months in to Marvel’s big summer event, and the main title just passed its halfway point. This is usually the time when things start to go off the rails, in terms of chronology and flow, or when we start earnestly anticipating each new chapter, tie-in, and side story that develops. Or sometimes both. Secret Empire, Marvel’s wonderfully controversial event of two summers back, suffered from conflated plot events, often making the reader feel as though he or she had missed something, but still managed to push things forward in an exciting fashion. I’m still a little confused by the periphery crapola that surrounded last summer’s Infinity Countdown/Wars, but the main book was a fun, good-looking read.
