Welcome to the very FIRST FULL episode of Comic Geek I/O - issue 7, I’m your host, CJ Boat, welcome back. This is the first time I am going to be doing a full show. First, the NEWS!
CJ: Latest Issue Of Digital Comic Saga “Banned” From App Store For Depiction Of Gay Sex
http://blog.comixology.com/2013/04/10/ceo-on-saga-12-controversy/
Next, moving onto this week’s review!
Review:
Iron Man: Season 1
Writer:Howard Chaykin
Artist: Gerald Parel
This is the first of the 3rd wave of Marvel's "Chapter 1" initiate, where you try to catch up new readers to their decades old stories. I did not realize these were a thing really, as I actually just got back into Marvel comics recently (like a couple of issues before Marvel NOW! started), but as a comic geek, I knew Tony Stark's origin. I would have not picked this up, but I happened to go over to the hardcover section for some reason, and I saw a classic Iron Man, and went "oooooh". I do want to preface this by saying, I did NOT buy this book, why you ask? Because it's TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS. So I borrowed it from my friend, who is a Marvel fanatic, and apparently has all of the Season One books (which I am surprised by) and sat down with this relatively fat book.
This is a retelling and a modernizing of Iron Man's origin, which is pretty much the same as before, Tony is a giant shmuck, who gets kidnapped while over seas (this time in China, again) and gets something blown into his chest, that inexplicably inches very slowly toward his heart, and has to have something stop it or he'll die. Instead of helping the terrorist, him and his Obi Wan (who I think changes his name each iteration), they build a Iron Man prototype.
The leader of the terrorists is one of Tony's old college friends, who likes to talk about the "Great Satan" and pretty much talks like a modern Jihadist in the Middle East. When Tony blows up the place, the guy gets to become a broken Iron Man-type. Very similar to the armor from the first Iron Man movie (where my, like most as of late, Iron Man interaction comes from), and he takes it to go beat the crap out of Tony, mainly for blowing the crap out of his terrorist organization, but also because the Great Satan deserves it.
The main thing that I don't get is this kind of quickly jumps from Tony's alcohol, and kind of jumps over the whole Demon in the Bottle arc, where Tony meets his inner demons, and stops drinking. I say this because Tony jumps almost immediately from being Iron Man to going to AA.
All in all, if you're an Iron Man fan, I'd say pick it up, the art is very good, i really liked the looks of the armor, and each person looks unique, if they are meant to. If you're not a huge Iron Man fan, do what I did, and borrow it. It's worth a read, but may not be worth $25 ($20 digital).
6/10
Mega Man # 24
From: Archie Comics
Writer: Ian Flynn
Artist: Jamal Peppers
This issue begins by far the BIGGEST comic crossover ever: Sonic and Mega Man!
I am a *HUGE* fan of this idea, we needed this years ago, and we need a video game of it too! Oh well, onto the comic!
The art in this is pretty great, it's very cartoon-y, and captures the characters very well, and amazingly.
That's where it all goes to shit.
The only thing I can think of is WHAT!? I have no idea what is going on in this book, it does the horrible trope that I hate: start in the middle of a epic fight (Sonic vs Mega Man? WTF!?) and then it scrambles to try to get to the beginning as quickly as possible. I still don't get what is going on fully at this point. Somehow a chaos emerald crosses universes and winds up in Dr. Wily's lap, and then it can somehow communicate with Dr. Eggman!? Ugh… I'm still going to pick up EVERY SINGLE ISSUE of this crossover, but as it right now, I am not a fan of how this story is going.
The heroes are hardly developed at all in this, and the fight is not described at all, the villains are how they are portrayed in this issue. While you get the definition of how frankly obtuse Eggman & Wiley are, you don't get much, and it is all strung together as quickly as possible, and just trying so hard to shovel so much of this not explained plot into one issue.
What I did love were some of the robot masters in the background (Snake Man and Hard Man FTW) working with the Eggbots too, building their "zone" (ugh)
My only thing with things like this are: if you are going to advertise this as your biggest crossover ever, and you draw in people like me, who did not even know a Mega Man comic existed, you need to give some backstory, and NOT do the trope of middle to beginning to middle to end.
I'm in, because you have my 2 favorite characters EVER EVER, but please make it better...
5/10