One thing you learn not too long after becoming a frequent comics buyer is that the fuckers are inevitably a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month late sometimes. So, I was bound to miss a week eventually. You’ll just have to deal with last weeks comic book column being late. It’s not like they’re paying me.

Comics comics comics comics comics…

So when I first started this gig last year, a friend of mine was like, “Yeah, but it’s all about DC.” Since then I’ve been stranging to open my horizons and make in roads into the fantastical and confuzzling Marvel side of he aisle. As a testament to this, everything I write about this week will be Marvel.

Alright my Picks of the Weeks are as follows:

For last week, we got Mark Millar’s, who used to write the Ultimates when it was good, first issue of his new Fantastic Four story arc “World’s Greatest” (sounds smidgen likes World’s Finest, but we’ll let it slide… duh duh duh). It embodied everything I like about the Fantastic Four: a frothy sense of adventure, Mr. Fantastic being a hyperintelligent, boring douche (don’t get me wrong I love him), The Thing being the likeable character. All that jazz. The high points were the team’s attempt to go on a time travel vacation, The Thing making sexual advances on an elementary school teacher in front of her students, the resurfacing of Mr. Fantastic’s college sweetheart, and the formation of the Invisible Woman’s new all female charity team. Oooh… and a surprise ending that’s like WHOA. My advice for someone whose trying to break into reading monthly books is to go to Newbury Comics right now and buy Fantastic Four # 554. There should still be a bunch of copies lying around.

For this week, it was the Amazing Spider-Man #551. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Spider-Man’s continuity has been ripped to shreds. It all began last year during the Superhero Civil War, when Iron Man convinced Spider-Man to support his superhero registration act by revealing his secret identity on national television. Bad call, Pete. Anyway, Spider-Man decided that Iron Man was wrong and joined the other side, but now was irrevocably revealed as Peter Parker to the world. Then his elderly Aunt May got sick and was dying.—–! OKAY, NOW PAY ATTENTION, BECAUSE THIS IS THE PART THAT MAKES NO SENSE !—–To return to his former state of having a secret identity and to save his aunt’s life, Spider-Man makes a deal with the devil. The terms of this deal, as I understand it, are Aunt May lives and no one knows Peter is Spider-Man, but he is no longer with his hot supermodel wife Mary Jane. While the journey to where Spider-Man is right now was utterly ridiculous and pretty sketchy on the part of Marvel editorial, it has paved the way for the book’s return to its Silver Age grandeur. Peter is once again a single, poor ass photographer trying to make it in the world. And, and this real reason I started picking up the book, they’ve made it a weekly comic. Instead of their being like 30 Spider-Man titles, there’s only one and it comes out every week. Guggenheim’s writing is fun and tongue and cheek, but still sad–just like you want Spider-Man to be and Larroca and Peru’s art leaves nothing to be desired with their semi-realistic style. The book’s really easy to break into and everything you need to know is on the first page catch up panel. Buy it.

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