Good Comics Not Many People Read: Agents Of Atlas HC (Marvel, 2007)

Now that they have their own series, it's about time I give a shout out to what is probably the best comic miniseries that not many people read: Agents of Atlas. Came out two years ago and still available at Amazon, doncha know? AoA introduced me to Jeff Parker and if you click his name at the tag section down there you will know I totally have a platonic guy-love for Jeff Parker and it's all because of this book. Seriously, it's fun, funny, exciting and jam packed with extras if you like that sort of thing in your collected editions. And Leonard Kirk's pencils aren't too shabby either.

I guess it is possible to take a group of obscure characters from a publisher's early days, feature them in a miniseries and not make it suck. Having a talking gorilla as one of the characters also helps.

I honestly don't know how long their ongoing series will last. I'm guessing about 30 issues worth since most of the books I like tend to get cancelled before their 50th issue. I'm a regular Jonah, I am. But check out their miniseries collection first. It has a semi naked love goddess prancing about seducing bad guys, a killer robot shooting rays, a sea queen, a secret agent, a spaceman and the aforementioned talking gorilla.

And a dragon called Mr. Lao. Seriously.

Marvel Girl Hates Flying Monkeys

Because the last thing you need in your hair are flying monkeys. Good to know Marvel Girl has her priorities right.

(From X-Men First Class: Mutant Mayhem by Jeff Parker & Roger Cruz)

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four: Silver Rage

I have mentioned before my platonic man-love for Jeff Parker and everything that he writes. Just click on his name in the 'Labels' below to see me gush like a scary stalker fanboy on two previous reviews (I can link them in this here post but I'm lazy tonight). Anyway, Jeff Parker is known as the guy who writes those fun, not in continuity stories for Marvel and probably the only writer in comics right now whose stuff I have no problems giving to my kids to read without censoring them first. He does it again here with Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four: Silver Rage which collects the four issue limited series of the same name.

The plot: an alien race, the H'moj, has chosen Earth as their new home and the human population as their new host bodies. That is how these alien creatures survive and evolve -- by searching for an inhabited planet and grafting themselves onto the planet's population until they decide the planet is no longer suitable and they move on. The H'moj see their actions as a favour to the local inhabitants of each planet they colonise since they're oh, so advance and just need bodies, that's all.

So naturally the heroes beat the crap out of them. Or at least try to.

Silver Rage is a lighter version of a typical Galactus vs. FF story. The H'moj even have an alien who volunteered to be the H'moj's advance scout in return for sparing his planet but this guy doesn't soliloquise like the Silver Surfer. YAY! There's nothing like a self pitying alien on a surfboard to bore the kids to sleep.

Jeff Parker gives us what we expect from a good Spidey-Fantastic Four team up. Ben Grimm clobberin'? Check. Spider-Man and Johnny Storm interacting with each other? Check. Reed Richards trying to figure things out? Of course. Sue putting up force fields? Yup, it's all there.

And the Impossible Man pops up (heh) early on in the story but gets killed fighting the aliens. To say anything more would be spoilerish....oh, all right...it's the Impossible Man, he can't die. He doesn't turn up again until the last page but his DNA help resolve the crisis.

This is a straightforward action adventure story with aliens and guys in spandex hitting each other. It's fun and a quick read and you don't need to know anything about the characters to enjoy it. Perfect for the kids. Pencils by the late Mike Weiringo is perfect for this book. I was never a big fan of 'Ringo but that's only because I think his style is more suited to fun, breezy stories such as Silver Rage. The first time I saw his stuff was when he debuted in DC's Flash and they were putting Wally West through the meat grinder at the time. Dark, brooding stories and Weiringo's drawing style do not mix. My opinion.

Also, Doom has a cameo and the best two lines in the entire comic:

"The Four! Wretched Curs!"

He doesn't care what century he's in. Doom will always speak like he's in a Renaissance Faire.

X-Men First Class: Tomorrow's Brightest (Marvel, 2007)

As I've stated before, I love Jeff Parker. He writes fun stories. When I see his name in the credits, I can be sure the story between the book's covers will be good, family friendly and fun, fun, fun. Sometimes you just need to get away from all the post-Civil War angst that is currently de riguer at Marvel right now. Sometimes a bitter and cynical comics fan just needs to get away from reading all about the paranoia, the heroes bitch slapping each other and figuring out who the hell else is a shape changing Skrull. What happened to the tried and true tradition of kicking monster and alien butt? We want to read those kind of stories sometimes. Throw in a talking ape as a guest star? Jackpot! That's why I heart Jeff Parker.

X-Men First Class: Tomorrow's Brightest collects the eight issue mini series by Parker with pencils by Roger Cruz. It focuses on the original X-Men lineup of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Angel and Beast back in the days when they were still students at Xavier's School for Gifted Children. It's not set in the early '60s though. As far as I can tell, First Class is pretty much non-canon and if it is, it belongs to a whole different canon than the Marvel Universe. But really, who cares? Why should we care why the X-Men here are still in their teens? They're drinking at a coffee place...this cannot be 1964! Is this an Ultimate book? Or a Marvel Adventures book? Seriously, who cares? If you're the kind of person who insist that all superhero comics must belong to a strict, one-universe continuity, then you probably won't enjoy this book. X-Men First Class is for those of us who just want to sit back and waste our time reading crazy stupid fun stories and to hell with the rest. And this book has eight issues of crazy stupid fun stories.

All the stories here are self contained, done-in-one-issue kinda stuff. The mutants meet up with Dr. Strange, they battle the Lizard in the Florida Everglades, have a slight misunderstanding with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch and meet up with Thor among other adventures.

But my favourite is issue 8 with a special appearance by:


GORILLA MAN! I like him so much I must type his name in bold and in capital letters. He's just that kind of character. Besides, it's a given that a comic will increase in quality when there's a talking ape in it. It's just the way it is. The X-Men seek his help to find Professor X who has gone missing somewhere in the Congo.

X-Men First Class: Tomorrow's Brightest. Good stuff.

Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man #4

The Marvel Adventures line of comics are targeted specially towards the kids and I think it's one of the few excellent ideas to come out from the House of Ideas in recent years. If you have a small child who's interested in reading, I suggest you hand him or her something from the Marvel Adventures catalog. The core Marvel titles (or Marvel 616 in geek-speak) are so heavy with continuity and dark gritty stories that they are practically unwelcoming to the new reader regardless of age.

Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man features single issue stories that ignores whatever kind of mess that is going on in the core titles right now. It's all pure, stupid fun. The best kind of fun. In this book, Peter Parker's still a high school going teen who works as a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle. And the best issue so far is issue #4, "GOOM GOT GAME". Best because it's all sorts of funny written by Jeff Parker.

Jeff Parker is quickly becoming my favourite comics writer. He wrote the excellent Agents of Atlas mini series, among other things. He belongs to the school of thought that believes comics should be fun and silly. Sure, he can write hardcore but he prefers the stupid fun route. I Heart Jeff Parker.

In "Goom Got Game", Johnny Storm a.k.a Human Torch of the Fantastic Four finds that a message from an alien called Goom is picked up by the FF's super computer thingamajig in their Baxter Building HQ. Johnny flies off to find Spider-Man after he thinks he accidentally cut off Goom in mid-message. Spidey, Johnny figures, is smart enough to retrieve the message and probably can be trusted not to squeal to the rest of the FF about Johnny's mistake.

It turns out that it was not a message from Goom that Johnny intercepted. It was Goom himself and he's coming to Earth.


Yup, that's right. The big guy speaks Gangsta'. So naturally, Spidey asks Goom where he learned to speak it. I mean, wouldn't you?



Turns out, dawg got his mad props from watching broadcast signals of MTV, NFL and Jerry Springer, yo! And he's hungry. He wants to eat gold. Lots of gold. When Goom can't get dem gold, Goom loses it. Big time. The heroes lead him to the ocean:




"Ahoy! Mind if I blast a monster from the side of your boat?", Spidey asks the Captain. "Knock yourself out...", he answers. Now that's a BWA-HA-HA-HA moment right there. Spidey uses the remote unit he found at the FF's headquarters and zaps Goom back to the Negative Zone from whence he came.

Parker's humourous dialogue coupled with Patrick Scherberger's and Norman Lee's pencils and inks make this my favourite issue of all the Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man issues so far. It's a cute story where everything is just right. This is a comic that can be read by a parent to a child and might just hook the kid to the innovative idea of reading a book. Besides, this is a much better read than the current Spidey adventures in Amazing Spider-Man: "See, son, Aunt May is in a coma because she was shot by a bad guy...Hmm? Oh, that half naked lady is Spidey's wife. No, she's a super-model. Anyway, that's Eddie Brock who used to be Venom. Venom's a bad version of Spider-Man. He has a twelve foot tongue and he wants to eat Spider-Man's brain..." Yeah, that's not gonna happen in the Khairul household.

This issue is included in a hardcover collection of Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man Volume One. Get it from Amazon. Thanks to Jeff Parker et al for giving kids something they can read on a lazy afternoon without all that continuity crap to worry about. Recommended.