Comics Review 03.01.2021

Hey y’all. We’re back!  The hiatus lasted much longer than I anticipated, but oh well. It was a crazy couple months to start 2021. You will notice there are no DC comics here as I did not want to just cover the final issues of a couple Future State series. Those series ae very mixed in quality, but overall good. DC will return Sunday with the resumption of the Featured Review column, likely covering Infinite Frontier #0. That should be very exciting.

Anyway, let’s get to the reviews!

Spoilers For: Amazing Spider-Man #60, X-Men #18

Amazing Spider-Man #60

Writer: Nick Spencer

Artist: Mark Bagley

Inkers: John Dell and Andrew Hennessey

Colors: Rachelle Rosenberg

Letters: VC’s Joe Carmagna

Cover: Bagley, Dell, and Nathan Fairbairn

 

When last I reviewed Amazing Spider-Man, it was the finale of the Last Remains story and I was…not pleased. The following issues, while better, were still not quite as good as they could have been despite providing significantly more progression in both plot and character. This issue though? My favorite in quite some time.

Most this issue is a single scene in which Peter monologues his relationship with Harry and how he worries that Spider-Man causes more bad than good. Typically, this kind of issue would irk me as there are certainly more elegant ways to convey the same information and Spencer has now spent 60 issues investigating these themes.

Luckily, Mark Bagley is here to save the day. His strength has always been in the expressiveness of his characters, both facially and in body language. There are few artists I would rather see here. His focus on the anguish and uncertainty within Peter combines with Spencer’s excellent dialogue to truly sell the scene. This culminates in a beautiful splash page that had me—an admittedly easy crier—tearing up. It was a powerful sequence.

Elsewhere, Doctor Strange is slowly advancing the other (related) through line of this series: confronting the effects of One More Day. He has realized there is something wrong with Peter’s soul and has gone to interrogate Mephisto. This has been a long running plot thread and the origin point of many of the last 60 issues’ conflicts as Peter’s deal with Mephisto seems to be the mistake Harry wants his best friend to admit.

This was easily the best issue of Amazing Spider-Man since #850 and has me once again excited to see where this tale is headed. Plus, I believe next issue is the debut of the Spidey suit and I am curious what attributes will make it so useful for a showdown with Kingpin.

 

X-Men #18

Writer: Jonathon Hickman

Artist: Mahmud Asrar

Colors: Sunny Gho

Letters: VC's Clayton Cowles

Designer: Tom Muller

Cover: Leinil Francis Yu and Gho

 

The Children of the Vault rule. This is a position I have held since about 2010 or so when I first read Mike Carrey’s X-Men run. When they were first brought back last year, I was incredibly excited. It was a neat way to tie in a preexisting foe to Moira’s past lives of fighting various post-human threats to mutants. Unfortunately, that was still in ‘We’re setting up the various threats to Krakoa’ stage of this series so it was a single issue.

They are back and Wolverine, Synch, and Darwin are inside the vault. It seems the Children keep a tight control of the population size despite the unbelievably large space inside the Vault. This issue is largely a fight between our protagonists and a group of Children. But we do learn some important things. Something about the rebirth process actually improves the powers of mutants. This is evidenced by Synch being able to copy a Child’s abilities despite having only been able to do so from mutants in the past.

There is also the revelation that the Children (or the Vault; it is unclear) have deemed the mutants too big a threat to confront now. So, they plan to lock the Vault and evolve for an indeterminate amount of time. My guess would be a few months as time functions differently in there.

This issue did make me realize how many time displaced simulated worlds have appeared in X-Men comics, most notably the World, which has also featured in Hickman’s time with the line. I am sure that through line is going somewhere and am intrigued.

I would be remiss to not mention the art team. Asrar’s art is a great fit for this comic. He draws great action scenes. He also creates fun page layouts that draw the eye smoothly within each panel and from panel to panel. Gho’s colors have been a huge star of these 18 issues as he has kept multiple artists tonally connected to each other and the story. It is an impressive feat that I want to celebrate. Overall, the comic is a joy to look at.

As always, feel free to give your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter. And if you like what you read here, consider throwing a couple bucks my way on Patreon to help cover costs.