Four from West Chester...

Well, it's time to see to the finest graphic novels (of the superhero genre and that I hadn't already read) that the West Chester branch of the Middletown library had to offer...

Spider-Man: Down Among the Dead Men is the first collection from what must be the umpteenth new Wallcrawler series Marvel Knights: Spider-Man but if they're going to keep the talent of Mark Millar and the Dodsons and Frank Cho on the book as regulars, it's not going to the last.

The storyline's pretty standard far for Spider-Man. A relative is captured by some villian who knows his secret identity. Spider-man questions whether to give up his life as a hero. Spider-man has to look to other super heroes for help.

Nothing revelatory at all there, but at least it's well done. The artwork's clean and attractice (admittedly, in a bit of a fanboy way for the two female leads). The dialogue's well done between all involved. The characters are strong and well-defined. And the story's engaging, even if the touches of humanziation for the villians is done a little thickly in this - and the below-reviewed - volume.

I don't know that the world needs another Spider-man story in this vein, but it's not a bad vein to mine. The only disappointing bit here is that there's not a resolution to the mystery of who the big bad guy is. Which leads to the next volume.

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Marvel Knights: Spider-Man continues with the Venomous collected arc. More of the above same leads still to no definitive conclusion. Here Spider-man (Peter Parker, in case you're one of the apparently three people left - including Marvel Universe characters - who don't know his secret identity) continues to search for his missing relative while trying to stop other criminals.

Very standard stuff, and the revalation of who the major bad guy is seems to be taking a l...o...n...g time coming...I'm admittedly curious, or would be if I hadn't read some of the sites I'm linking to, about who the major bad guy is, but I'm starting to loose patience. Luckily the artwork and dialogue are well-enough done - particularly for the relationship between Peter and MJ - that I'm willing to hang around for a while longer.

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Super Friends was a crappy cartoon that has spawned dozens of crappy tribute websites. I love it, admittedly, because it's from the golden age of cartoons - which is pretty much whenever the viewer was four or so.

The Super Friends collection gathers together semi-random issues from the all-ages comic that I remember from my childhood. As a novelty act, they're wonderful. I remember two or three of these issues very fondly and probably read them until they absolutely fell apart in my hands as a child. As a comic book - in retrospect - they're not great comics. They're simplistic and enjoyable, but they're not great.

Clearly, this is something printed for people of about my age who have a bunch of disposable income. In which case, why didn't they reprint all the issues? Why just cherry pick some of the issues at seeming random?

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This is what I get for lying around on my back all day long. Four graphic novels to review.

I dig the Ultimate Universe, really do. It's the first truly successful relaunch of either of the major companies, if you ask me. The post-Crisis DC world isn't right, and we're paying the price for it now, but the Marvel Ultimate Universe keeps enough of the traditions while not making any development sacrosanct.

The third volume of Ultimate Fantastic Four N-Zone sees the crew returning to the N-Zone still hoping to undo the transformations of Mr. Fantastic and The Thing (Sue and Johnny like their new powers and don't want to be returned to normal.) In the N-Zone, the Four meet up with a fairly powerful, tricky creature who seeks to return to their universe (the N-Zone universe is near final entropic death). As a science geek, I kinda enjoy that this series admits the weirdnesses inherent in having an invisible girl who can still see yet deals with real scientific ideas like entropic death of a universe.

This series is fun stuff. Good artwork, the right amount of humor balanced with nice action sequences. It's one of the better ones being put forth right now. It's not perfect or marvelous, but it's pretty good stuff.