Crypt of Shadows #1

Crypt of Shadows #1 is a one shot comic book published by Marvel Comics that serves as their Halloween book.

The comic tells five stories that feature some of the more macabre characters from the superhero line up.  Each story is introduced by Victor Strange who is standing in a sub basement of the Sanctum Sanctorum where dark rituals are performed.

The first story is a ghost story called Neither Big nor Bad and showcases Brielle, a vampire hunter that comes across some ghost hunters that are performing a ritual to capture a ghost. When the ghost arrives Brielle goes into protection mode and attacks the ghost while the ghost hunters flee. Through a conversation with the ghost, Brielle learns that the ghost might be a victim instead of an aggressor and ends up listening to the ghost’s story.

This is a beautifully written story with great art work to accompany it. It’s a little schmaltsy but the ghost has incredible depth for a very short story.

It’s hard to follow up a great story. I’m not sure the second story lives up to the first. It’s called Werewolf by Moon Knight and features Moon Knight and Warewolf by Night. This story started out strong and is set up very well. A couple is invited to an exclusive Halloween party but when they get there they find they were the only people invited.

There is a surprise in the story that results in some fight scenes. Rather than go into a lot of detail, let’s just say this story was way too short and suffered from me wanting more.

The third story, Skin Crawl, requires background I don’t have. It stars Morbius and requires knowledge of his character to really grasp what’s going on. All I can say about this one is that I wish it had been even creepier. Bugs and Vampires were a good start though

Down come the rain is the penultimate story in this comic and features Elsa Bloodstone, Spider Man and Johnny Storm and we enter the story in the middle of it. Spider-man is the unwitting villain of this story. Elsa’s job is to undo his villainous ways and along the way recruits Johnny Storm to help her. I wasn’t a huge fan of this story because u wanted to see everything that lead up to the story I read.

Endless Slaughter in the Infinite Swamp is the final story and has the most violence and disturbing images for each of the stories. The story is about Laura Kinney and how her sense of smell drives her into a rage that consumes her as she fights Man-Thing across eternity. This is a great conclusion to a book that has great bookend stories and stories that lack greatness in the middle.

This comic book would have been a better 5 issue series so that we could have gotten more depth in each story. Instead, we got snapshots off what would have been great stories.

Poison Ivy #5 review

I have never been a huge fan of books that are either PC or woke, and this iteration of the comic book has tipped its toes into both ponds. However. I am a big fan of comics that feature villains that make you feel like they are more than 2-d cookie cutter versions of what people think villains should be.

The comic gives us the origin of Poison Ivy and its very disturbing. I won’t go into too much detail but there are scenes of torture with needles and a college age girl in agony.

This is not a comic to let your kids read. This is a book about a college age girl that goes through a very traumatic experience that turned her into the villain she is. It is not just about remembering the experience but also about confronting the torturer.

This is a well written comic book but there is a darkness to it that is undeniable. Read it at your own peril.

Captain Marvel #42 A.X E. Judgment Day tie in.

I love it when a comic book doesn’t take itself serious, and Captain Marvel #42 refuses to do that too much. As I mentioned in my previous post, judgment day is largely about a Celestial named The Progenitor and how it has taken it upon itself to judge all of humanity by giving each person 24 hours to justify their existence and then judges them by giving them either a thumbs up( they live) or a thumbs down( they die).

The comic starts with Captain Marvel and her other Super powered friend protecting people in their vicinity by hermetically sealing them in bubbles while an alien virus is killing people. The whole time they are watching the Progenitor in hopes that it will give them a thumbs up.

But that’s not where most of the comic takes place or finds its heart or humor. In order to continue though I need to take a tangent. Carol Danvers has a pet. A cat. Except it’s not a cat. It’s a fleurken. What is a Fleurken? It’s a cat that houses an alien with tentacles that can swallow things whole when it opens its’ mouth. The only difference is that in all other aspects, it acts like a cat. It’s being judged too.

So how do you judge something that shouldn’t give a damn if it is being judged? In a brilliant two page spread we are introduced to all of the people that live in Carol Danver’s apt. complex and her fluerken is asked to interact with each person( including a mouse in her on apartment and a villain at the end of the book) to see if it passes or fails.

This may be one of the stupidest, silliest, comic books I’ve ever read that is schmaltsy but is also fun and heartwarming at the same time. Is it the best thing I’ve ever paid 4 bucks on? No, but at the same time it’s not the worst. Sometimes, it’s just nice to read a book that is sappy, silly and stupid if it makes you feel good about yourself.

A.X.E judgment day review( so far). Don’t read if you don’t want spoilers

As I mentioned in my last post, I missed a lot of Crossover events between the mid-nineties and 2000’s. I’ve read a few of them to make up for lost time, but every year that I’ve read comics since then, there has been a few crossover events each year.

The most recent event is called A.X.E. Judgment Day, and beside it sounding like a really bad Axe scent, it has been an event that has involved The Avengers, X-men, and the Eternals. The premise: When the x-men inhabited Krakoa, they learned that the island had healing properies that allowed the X-men to resurrect any of their dead fellow mutants.

That’s where the eternals come in. I don’t know too much about the eternals, but based on the Marvel movie, the Eternals are God like creatures that work behind the scene to see that humanity progresses and survives.

In this crossover event, the Eternals are lead by Druig, the Prime Eternal. He has decided that The X-men’s ability to resurrect themselves is an “excess deviation” and that all of the mutants need to be destroyed. He sends a number of giant Eternals called The Hex to destroy Kraokoa.

A number of Eternals that disagree with Druig have aligned themselves with the Avengers to protect the X-men . They decide, with the help of Mr. Sinister, to resurrect a Celestial to fight the Eternals. They call The Celestial the Progenitor but their plan backfires when the Progenitor begins acting like a vengeful god and tells all of earth that the people of earth have 24 hours to prove they are worthy to exist. They test each individual by imitating a loved one( that has usually passed) to test their reactions to them and delivering either a thumbs up( they passed) or a thumbs down( they failed). If you get a thumbs down, you die.

There are a number of conversations that should come out of this event. The first is whether or not we should have heroes that are immortal( or at the very least be able to resurrect themselves). Truth is: I’ve never been too comfortable with the resurrection plot line for the mutants universe. Most comic book readers know that heroes can easily be turned into villains. The idea that evil can rise from the dead and try their plans a second time is disturbing. But is that grounds for killing mutants? No.

But there’s another question I’ve been asking myself while reading this crossover . Why don’t our heroes ever learn from their mistakes? In past events the Avengers created an A.I. that practically destroyed earth( Ultron) and now they have the hubris to create a god and believe that it won’t do what a vengeful god would do and judge others. So are our heroes really being heroes or are they narcissistic assholes that play gods at the expense of the rest of us?

As I mentioned above a good portion of this event focuses on the experience of being judged by The Progenitor. It sometimes is a very repetitive event because each characters story of judgment is the same. If I’m being honest, this event has not been my favorite.

That being said, there have been a couple shining moments in the event so far. Mauraders 6 does a great job of showing just how judgment effects the mutants. The writing is top notch and does a great job of showing us how emotional being judged can be.

The second of the moments is a multi page conversation between Storm and Magneto that is both surprising and heart felt. Other than those two moments, the event has been just okay.

There is still anout six weeks left to the event, and I have no idea how this will end, but I have hope it will end well

Until next time….

The rest

Re-introduction to my blog

It’s been such a long time since I wrote anything about comic books so I thought I’d try to re-introduce myself to anyone that might have found this blog.

My name is Martin and there aren’t too many things in life that I enjoy more than reading books and listening to music. Reading comic books comes very close to feeling that same joy.

I started reading.comic books as a young kid, mostly reading horror comic books from the 70s found on magazine racks in dime stores.  I graduated to reading Conan the barbarian when it was in magazine form.  The voluptuous women, sword play and magic ignited my prepubescent imagination.

My first introduction to Superheroes came through the campy Batman television series and the equally cheesy Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve. I didn’t start reading the comics until I got to High School.

Reading about the heroes didn’t come until the early to mid 80’s when I started going to One Stop Comics on Harlem Avenue in Oak Park, illinois. It has since moved to Ridgeland in the same town. Rick will be glad to sell you some comics..

Rick introduced me to the world of Marvel and DC.  I really just took to Marvel.  DC came much later.  My favorite was The Incredible Hulk.  The story of a mild mannered scientist who survived a gamma bomb explosion and turned mean and green when he got angry. 

I started reading the series as Bruce Banner and Doc Sampson were trying to figure out how to separate Bruce from his hulk personae.  Ultimately, it would fail and lead to the death of Betty Ross’s dad.  The hulk had other iterations too.  Joe Fixit was my favorite.  A sort of casino pit boss of sorts.

The 80s brought me a lot of epic stories from the introduction to venom to storied of the x-men and their struggles.

When high school ended I spent some time away from comic books. My first two years of college I went to a small Christian college and I didn’t really put a ton of thought into buying any books.

In 1990 that all changed when I transferred to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and found Campus Comics. I collected x-force( when Strong Guy was introduced) and The Death of Superman and witnessed the birth of Image Comics, a company that only seemed to release books when they really wanted to. I collected for about a year or two. But my interest in Comics waned. For a very long time I stopped reading comics.

I didn’t start reading again until the 2010’s. When i think of all the events I missed in 90s and 2000’s, it sends shivers down my spine. Everything from Civil War to Secret invasion to World War Hulk to House of M and more. I even missed the death of Professor X at the hands of Cyclops. That’s where I picked things up again. With the help of Rembert and Readers Copies comic book store in Anderson, I started back up again and have been going strong since.

In the next few weeks I’ll be writing out synopsis of books and reviews because I love doing it but also because I’m 52 and it’ll help me remember what I’ve forgotten. Welcome to my blog. Enjoy your stay.