Friday, June 03, 2005

COMICS REVIEW: House of M

Marvel's big cross-over event gets off to a shaky start.

It's not that the writing is bad, Bendis has some spot on character moments, his voice for Spidey that carried over from Ultimate to New Avengers shines here too, and there's a couple great lines from Wolvie. And it's not that the art is lacking, Oliver Coipel is one of the top artists in the game, and he shows that here too. But this book read very light, speaking of light, and reading light, we're treated to a 2 page sequence that features a growing glob of distortion. A rather ugly, unartistic, boring, confusing glob of light effects sprawled across what appear to be meant as key, epic, pages at the end, that are in result, laughable in their failure. Also, there were times I thought I'd skipped a page or two, only to find out I hadn't. Not sure if that's me, the writing, or the intent. Are things jumbled and disjointed, within the framework of the story, and in the telling? I don't know. The way things were presented, I don't particularly care.

I think this lead-off would've benefited from some extra length. It's just too short to really set things up, and for an event book, a limited series, you can't really lead off with a partial story like this, unless this thing is shipping weekly.

I'd hope for better with this.

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