Whew, time flies. I blink and I read like well over 7 trades within a few days. Going to bleed through these quick. Anywho, lets get the ball started...
First off, there's the one-two punch of Batman R.I.P.(Special Edition Hardcover) and Final Crisis(Special Edition Hardcover). Again, I have read these previously via single issues, so it was interesting to read it all at once. Batman R.I.P., which was Grant Morrison's opus, was quite amazing. The story revolves around a group of super-evil aristocrats that have figured out Batman's identity, and go about destroying his life completely. When I first read this I thought it was a mess, and too confusing for most readers. After the second go around, it was quite a mind-opener. I say this a lot, but I missed a LOT of things the first time around. For example, what does the phrase "Zurr en Arrh" actually mean? If you didn't actually read into the final page of the last issue of R.I.P., you would miss the fact that it meant Zorro in Arkham. Wierd, right? Same with the revelation of Bat-Mite. Also, since its the special edition, it came with the two issues of Last Rites, which bridges the gap between what happened within the pages of Final Crisis. They were ok, mainly its just two more issues of Morrison explaining how badass Batman is.
Final Crisis, on the other hand, still sucked. It was a mess, the pacing was horrible, and it was generally all-around confusing. I still can't really explain the story. It is about Darkseid being transferred to some human, and then controlling the world, but then it turns out he isn't the main villain and the real bad guy wants to destroy all worlds and all universes by sucking them like a vampire....I'm not sure....Also, if this special edition didn't include the Superman Beyond issues, you wouldn't know who the heck the main villain of the story was! I am serious! If you would just read the main Final Crisis series, you'd get to the final issue and wonder who the heck Mandrakk was! If it wasn't for Superman Beyond, you wouldn't realize this was the true threat, not Darkseid taking over the Earth. Most of the time, thanks to the pacing, things are incredibly confusing. One issue goes. incredibly. slow. Only giving you a small amount of information. Whereas the very next issue goessofastyoucan'tkeepup. Yep. That bad.
I'd say read Batman R.I.P., and read Batman: Last Rites just for the fact that Batman is such the badass in those issues, maybe you should also read Final Crisis #6(again, because it shows how badass Batman is), and skip the rest.
Invincible Iron-Man volumes 1 and 2. This covers The Five Nightmares storyline, and the first part of Tony Stark: Most Wanted. Five Nightmares covers Tony Stark facing the nightmare of Iron-Man technology being used to kill people, whereas Most Wanted deals with the aftershocks of Secret Invasion(more on that later)where Tony is blamed for that crisis, and is now on the run. This is Matt Fraction at his best. The stories are fast, and insane, albeit they get depressing. It seems it is Matt Fraction's job to tear Tony Stark down about thirty pegs....yeah each issue makes it a bit harder for ol' Shellhead. Salvador Larroca does the artwork for this series, and he draws a pretty dang good Iron-Man. His faces, on the other hand, are pretty horrendous at times. One girl goes from being skinny and her face looking good, to the next panel he tries to draw her making a 'stumped' emotion and instead makes her face look completely fat. Also, the colors are a bit wierd sometimes as well. As my girlfriend noticed, sometimes Tony looks so dark that he looks black. She thought at first it was James Rhodes, War Machine. Regardless, the books are good and definitely worth reading. In fact, the second volume looked so interesting that one of my friends, Nicki, actually borrowed it from me!
The Secret Invasion saga was a big read. I had the main series TPB, Mighty Avengers Books 1 and 2, and also New Avengers Books 1 and 2. Of course, this isn't even half of what Marvel brought out, but these were the main ones. This was Marvel's summer event last year, where shape-shifting aliens, called the Skrulls, attack our world by infiltrating every level of world-wide governments and super-hero teams and attack within. While the main series was half decent, Brian Michael Bendis has problems when juggling lots of characters, and his pacing is still bad. Half of the seven issue series had almost all of the heroes in the Savage Land, far away from the main battles in New York City. Regardless of the somewhat lackluster main series, Mighty Avengers and New Avengers truly shine. They are written by the same guy, so continuity is kept really well for a tie-in to the main event. These books focus on how the Skrulls infiltrated us so well. I like how BMB weaves stories around continuity from the past few years, and just shows how much these aliens really hated the heroes of the Marvel Universe. This summer series came out the same time as Final Crisis, and it should be obvious this is a much better summer-event book. It is a definite must read, especially if one is wanting to get into the current continuity books that Marvel produces.
Finally there is Amazing Spider-man Vol 1 and 2 of J. Michael Straczynski's run. For starters, it features the art of John Romita Jr., so this should be a definite MUST-BUY for any Spidey fan. Thankfully, the stories are incredibly good as well. This was back when Spider-man was at it's lowest. Sales were bad, the stories prior were lackluster, so they gave it to the prolific sci-fi writer, JMS. For those that don't know, he was the head-writer for the show Babylon 5. Anywho, these first two volumes covers his first two main arcs, one focusing on Spider-man's powers, and another focusing on May Parker, Peter Parker(Spider-man for those that don't know)'s aunt, finding out that Peter is Spider-man. While the first arc was a tiny bit controversial, as it introduced that Spidey's powers may be mystical and more totemic based than radioactive-spider based, it was a great read. The art, oh goodness the art is amazing, and seeing the big fights between Spidey and the big-bad of the storyarc, Morlun, are like image stills of an animated series. The second arc, which is pretty much just a continuation of the first one, finally does something amazing in Amazing Spider-man, by allowing May Parker to finally know what Peter really is. It creates a better dynamic between the two, and finally allows them to become closer than they have ever been, which was needed. Why was it needed? Well, at the time, unfortunately, Marvel had Peter seperated from Mary Jane, which effectively made Peter a loner. And, while seeing Peter struggle gives good stories, Peter alone makes it too depressing to bear. Giving him that new connection with May helped relieve that depression, which in turn finally made Amazing Spider-man a great comic again...
Which brings me to One More Day......which was the last storyarc made by JMS. I know, its strange skipping all the rest of his run and going straight to this but it is now time to rant..
Ladies and gentlemen, lets get ready to RUMBLE!!!
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