Comic Book Reviews: 04/30/2014

All-New X-Men #26
Marvel | Brian Michael Bendis | Stuart Immonen

After the Trial of Jean Grey, the team status shifted with the loss of young-Cyclops. Jean is processing his departure and the new powerset she discovered in space. There has been a slow burn between present-Cyclops and Jean throughout the series and it comes to a pitch perfect situation. Nothing creepy happens and Cyclops handles their interaction as would be expected from the older and wiser mutant, which makes Kitty’s unwarranted accusations that much more out of place. Readers understand, Kitty is the mother hen to these kids (despite not protecting them or training them). Jean isn’t the only character upset by young-Cyclops’s departure and we see the team deal with the hole he left. Iceman continues to be a background character, a funny background character but lacking substance. I haven’t paid attention to future solicitations, and was genuinely surprised with the villain reveal at the end of this issue. It isn’t who readers, and the team, originally and I fell for the red herring until the reveal. This issue serves as a great epilogue to the previous arc and springboards the next story with significant momentum.

Score: 9.0 /10

Amazing Spider-Man #1
Marvel | Dan Slott | Humberto Ramos

Peter Parker is back, but the aftershocks of Otto-Spidey are still felt in his life. This issue’s primary story shows snippets of the supporting cast realizing that Peter is behaving differently than he was previously. Parker is hit with his trademark luck and makes the best of a revealing situation. With Peter in the driving seat this is a fun read. Amazing is tonally very different from Superior, the book contains light-hearted and jovial moments throughout and the art captures the feeling. The pacing is fast and every status shift that Otto left Parker is covered, and some new ones previously unrevealed. At first I thought the main story was shortened because of the backups, but I was wrong. These are a quick and gorgeous twenty pages. The backups raise the price of the book to $5.99 and don’t add much. Two of the stories remind readers how Otto treated specific villains and setup their return to ruin Peter’s life. The remaining three serve more as previews for other books; New Warriors, Spider-Man 2099 and Amazing Spider-Man 1.1. They don’t detract from this issue, but they don’t really add anything either.

Score: 8.0 /10

The weekly schedule caught up to Batman Eternal. Nguyen’s art style does a good job with Batman and Batgirl fighting goons on rooftops and crashing through skylights, but fails to deliver in the remaining scenes. There are sections where the face is literally not finished; little details like nose and mouth are completely missing. This could be considered stylistic but it comes across sloppy. The plot is okay but retreads a lot of ground. When releasing a weekly comic it should be 52 issues worth of content, not 12 issues spread out over the year. Readers are treated to not one, not two but three scenes to depict how outraged Batgirl is regarding her dad’s imprisonment. There are a few out of character moments from Bruce, to the point where it’s hard to think that Snyder writes this and the regular Batman ongoing. I was surprised that he allowed himself to be hit (twice…continuing the theme of repetition) and his visit to a character served no real purpose but to remind readers of who the players involved are. The cliffhanger ending is the obvious direction this journey would take.

Score: 3.0 /10

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