Yaay, Comics!

I haven't talked about Ultimate Spider-Man on here for some time now. Personally, I thought USM #123 sucked. All the issue did was have Eddie Brock ramble on and on about what he's been doing since we saw him last in USM #38. The symbiote has messed Eddie up, we get it. I don't think I'd felt that bored with an issue of USM for long while.

Anyway, USM #124 was a better read, but I still think this Symbiote War arc could use more steam. Peter is suffering from nasty headaches, brought on by Venom. For those of you that don't know, in USM, not only does Venom trigger Peter's spider-sense, he overloads it so much that Peter gets headaches, which cause him a great deal of pain. In the USM video game, these headaches stopped when the symbiote reattached itself to Peter for a short time. The current story uses story elements from the game and in USM #124, Spidey met and named the Beetle, who didn't say anything the whole fight. Silver Sable and her Wild Pack capture Venom. I'd hope the story would have advanced farther than this but if I heard right, this is a 7 part story arc and this was only the second issue. Again, better than the last issue but still room and time for improvement.

I was a huge fan of the '80s toon Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends. In fact I think it was that show that made me a Spidey fan. There was a single issue comic adaption of the series's first episode, "The Triumph of the Green Goblin." The comic sticks pretty close to the episode its based of off. If anything is slightly different here, it's a few words of dialog and even then, it still matches up to the episode's script. The artwork still looks nice, too. For 95 cents, I figured this one was worth snagging.

Will the series ever get a DVD release? Well let's see, '90s X-Men series isn't on DVD, the '90s Spider-Man DVD series still isn't on DVD at least not in full season sets and both of those properties are owned by Disney as is Spidey and His Amazing Friends. So, I think I just answered my own question. Releasing this series on DVD should be a no-brainer for the company. I mean, it really is a quick buck if I ever saw one. But then, I'm not some fool in a suit, running a company so what do I know? Feh.



Man, I love Marvel Adventures Spider-Man. Done-in-one stories, each issue. If Marvel wants to bring in new readers for any title, they should focus on this type of storytelling from time to time.

Anyhoo, in this issue Peter/Spidey meets the Puma. Now I know I may be in the minority, but I've always dug Puma. The first I'd read about him was in Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide. I was able to read more about him when I picked up a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #257, part of a two-parter of Spidey's first encounter with Puma. But I digress.

Black Cat returns in this issue. She first showed up in MASM #14. She hasn't changed her ways and this time she steals a wooden kitty from Puma, which gets her mixed up with the big guy. She tries to make it look like Spidey stole the wooden cat, which leads to your typical super hero misunderstanding fight, which Spidey even comments on when things are quickly patched up. Spidey & Puma team up to take down Cat, they get the statue back and all is well in MASM world.

The art for this title continues to impress me. Vicenc Villagrasa IMO ranks up there with the artists that have worked on ASM in BND. MASM is very fortunate to have such talent on the book. Anyone that reads my blog knows I'm a fan of Marc Sumerak's work and I hope he stays on MASM for a long time.

Brand New May gets better with every issue. I was thinking "Oh snap!" when I saw the last panel of ASG #22. That's nothing compared to the ending of ASG #23. Here's what happened in this issue:

Peter goes nutso and attacks Kaine, thinking he knew about the May clone, which he is obviously completely in the dark about. Spider-Girl and Darkdevil step into to keep Peter from knocking Kaine's block off.

Gene is still being a whiny, annoying boyfriend. He's so jerkish to Mayday that May ends up telling Wes that she made a mistake in stopping Gene from hitting him. She then brushes him off in the school halls. Not cool, Mayday. It isn't Wes' fault Gene is an S class a-hole. This is high school. Gene needs to grow a pair and a spine or he won't survive (if we're lucky he won't =) )

Speaking of Wes, he over hears that skank Simone telling a friend of hers that she knows Gene sabotaged May's run for student council. He was the one writing "Loser" on her campaign posters just so she'd spend more time with his selfish, lonely hide. This is the guy Mayday is so desperate to keep? Ugh. Wes also hears Simone say that if Gene gets back with May, she'll humiliate them both. Wes will no doubt try to warn May of what could happen but since she's already dissed him, (and with all the other crap going on in her life) that probably won't be easy.

At the end of the issue Mayday comes face-to-face with her clone. Clone Mayday is not happy with Mayday. She thinks she stole her life and it's time for some payback. The stuff has officially hit the fan and it's gonna fly everywhere. When does ASG #24 come out?!