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Covers like this:
and solicits like this...:
MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES #4
Written by PAUL TOBIN
Penciled by ALVIN LEE
Cover by ROGER CRUZ
KLAW'S GOOD OL' COUNTRY REVIVAL: When Klaw, the master of sound, forms a country and western band, Iron Man, Spider-Man and the Hulk decide to investigate. Unfortunately, the Hulk gets hooked on Klaw's mournful music and, wanting to solve those cliché-ridden problems Klaw so beauuutifully sings about, starts returning every lost (and not so lost) dog to its owner, insists on driving a pickup truck, and goes in for some very extreme "Hulk-style" relationship counseling. While this draws a lot of media attention to Klaw's band, it's the Hulk (dang it!) getting
all the press, making an irritated Klaw VERY jealous. The fight is ON!
32 PGS./All Ages …$2.99
...are reasons why I sometimes feel that I should go back to collecting monthly comics. The heart shouts "YES!" but the brain whispers "Dude, No!" and wouldn't you know it, the brain wins.
I just wish Marvel would hurry up and collect their Marvel Adventures line of comics in hardcover format like they do with practically all their other books that are more than two weeks old. Surprisingly, only Marvel Adventures Spider-Man has received this treatment (and it has that cute Goom speaking gangsta story) and even then it's just the one volume. Where's the rest, Marvel? Come on! I, for one, am not gonna pick up the digests. Please don't ignore your "I'll-just-wait-for-the-trade" customers. We need loving too!
Still no reviews today, sorry. It's not that I don't have trades to write about. Far from it. It's just that stuff happens at work and life in general that by the end of the day, I couldn't be bothered to stare at the computer (again) and write about a comic trade I just read. Reviews soon, I promise.
In the meantime, here's a page from Marvel Adventures Hulk #7 by Paul Benjamin and David Nakayama. I've mentioned before why I like the Marvel Adventures line and this issue doesn't disappoint. The MA comics are the only Marvel comics worth reading nowadays...oh, except for Immortal Iron Fist and Runaways and uhm...X-Men First Class.
The monkey! The monkey did it! Hurt the monkey!
From the Marvel Masterworks Message Board:
"I know someone was asking about the Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four Hardcover a short while back. But in the latest Shipping/Product Update from Marvel both of the above Hardcover Collections were cancelled. No further information was offered along with the cancellations. Sorry folks.
The Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four Vol. 1 HC (SEP072265, $24.99) has been cancelled.
Power Pack HC Vol. 1 (OCT072174D, $24.99) has been cancelled."
I was looking forward to the Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four HC collection. I have the Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man hardcover collection volume 1 (and even reviewed one of the issues here) and thought it was a good fun read and truly an all-ages comic. I guess the numbers weren't good enough for the FF or Power Pack to be solicited in hardcover format. Disappointed, I am.
I hope this doesn't mean the end for the hardcover collections of the other Marvel Adventures titles because I'm not gonna pick up the digests. Ya hear me, Marvel? I like 'em big and hard.....uhm, the books! I'm referring to the books! BIG sized and preferably with a HARD cover.
Screw dem digests. I wanna be able to see what I'm reading.
EDITED 27/11/07 TO ADD: It may not suck after all. It could be a postponement rather than a cancellation. These books could be re-solicited sometime in '08. Here's hoping.
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.
