X-Factor #4, concluding a very long day in the life of our team, and FNSM #4, a one-off that spans a good fifty years or so in the life, and after the life, of our hero. Whad’ja think?
PAD
X-Factor #4, concluding a very long day in the life of our team, and FNSM #4, a one-off that spans a good fifty years or so in the life, and after the life, of our hero. Whad’ja think?
PAD
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X-Factor: Best comic I picked up this week. M showing a softer side, and Lalya Miller continues to creep me out.
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: Interesting stand alone issue. Poor Vanna.
Heh, I like the cameo appearence of the Skull plush on the opening page of FNSM, even if he is pink, for some reason.
Heh, I like the cameo appearence of the Skull plush on the opening page of FNSM, even if he is pink, for some reason.
Heh, I like the cameo appearence of the Skull plush on the opening page of FNSM, even if he is pink, for some reason.
Peter, I’m so glad you’re back on X-Factor. I loved your first X-Factor run and this new one blows the old one away… and it’s only been four issues.
I’m especially amazed at how you’ve managed to take a plot device (Layla) and made her into a foil for the team and made her actually enjoyable to read. I’d say I’d be interested in seeing you write X-23 just to see how you’d handle her, but honestly, she doesn’t need to invade more books where she doesn’t belong. 🙂
I also love how you’ve augmented/evolved certain characters’ powers, especially Jamie’s. You’ve made such a beloved character into a character with layers (pardon the quasi-pun). 😉
Keep up the great work with X-Factor! I also picked up FNSM #5, which was quite enjoyable. I can’t wait to see what you’re going to with a Spider-title now that The Other is over with (even if that lame costume is going to be appearing shortly).
Peter, I’m a huge fan (got the signed CM script to prove it!) but the blog thing was horribly distracting and immediately popped me out of the story. The diary-to-blog progression is a much better idea. This reminded me of the tiny little cell phones in Kingpin that were so distracting that I stopped buying the book. Comic book collectors are, in general, highly anal-retentive and OCD-driven – why put those elements in at all, when those comfortable with them won’t care, but those who notice them get turned off?
X-Factor continues to please and although I liked Sook on Zatanna, I’m not sorry to see him leave X-Factor. Imagine Strohman doing this book again!
Hulk/Champions shouldn’t show Carter as President, but neither should it be, say, Clinton. How about the nice generic man with the face in shadows, thus removing topical references?
FA is worth every penny, and one of the many LCS owners I bugged was finally able to find a #1 for me!
“Hulk/Champions shouldn’t show Carter as President, but neither should it be, say, Clinton.”
Actually, I’m thinking that’s exactly who it’s gonna be. I’ve got a great exchange of dialogue all set for it.
PAD
FNSM and x-factor were both great stories!
so tired of hearing about the time/blog issue related to FNSM – bottom line i agree with PAD’s points above, and i just thought this was a great story. with so many 6-8 part stories made for tpb these days, so cool to see a single part story that worked so well. really like that this story was so character driven, rather than spidey fighting the latest bad guy – hope we continue to see more like this in coming issues!
x-factor is by far the best x-book these days and quickly becoming one of my favorite comics. i am new to most of these characters and really like the way you have made the series so accessable to new readers. sorry to hear that Ryan Sook is leaving – i hope that his replacement with have a similar dark tone as i think it fits this book perfectly.
PAD, thanks for the excellent books!
“…sorry to hear that Ryan Sook is leaving – i hope that his replacement with have a similar dark tone as i think it fits this book perfectly.” – chris
Well Dennis Calero has already been penciling/inking parts of the past few issues- if you haven’t noticed this already then you will hardly notice when he takes over full time. His tone is very similar to what Sook has been doing.
I liked both issues.
With X-Factor #4, Layla is starting to grow on me as a character, particularly after she actually made herself useful last issue (by saving Rictor’s life). And I do like the idea that Jamie is nervous about actually using his abilities. Monet is the only character that I still don’t really get, mainly because I’m not familiar with her past appearances, so I was a bit surprised that the letters page said “Speaking of Monet, the Madrox TPB is now out!”, since I don’t remember her being in that mini-series at all.
For F’n Spider-Man, I read the first 5 pages on a preview website a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it was a very clever idea, but that did mean that I just skimmed through them when the actual issue turned up. Since I was going to buy the issue anyway, I think the moral there is just “be patient”.
Regarding the end of that issue, I thought that the widow (MJ?) was Aunt May at first, just due to the artwork, but it also seemed odd that she’d still be around, and the dialogue made it clear who she really was. And personally, I agree with her on the whole “get over it” issue. I’m not a psychologist, but I think there’s a difference between things that are difficult and things that are impossible. I’ve heard the argument that you wouldn’t tell someone with two broken legs to just get up and walk, and stop being such a wimp, and so you should be equally understanding towards someone who really can’t pull themselves together. On the other hand, if you’ve got someone who is really out of shape, and you ask them to run, there will be a temptation to say “That’s uncomfortable, I just can’t go any further”.
Taking an example from my own experience, when I was at school we used to do cross-country runs, and I’d always wind up walking most of the way, because I wasn’t much of an athlete. The teacher would run with us, and so if he was running near me then I’d make an effort to run for a brief time, and then when he was satisfied and moved up to check on other people then I’d slow back down to a walk. Anyway, on one occasion he decided that he was going to stick with me for the entire route. I quickly reached the point where I couldn’t run anymore, but he told me to keep going. I really thought that I was going to collapse and die, so my main motivation to keep going was “Right, fine, I’ll do what he says, and then he’ll be sorry when I keel over because that will prove that I was right”. (What can I say? I was a stupid kid with my head up my áršë.) Anyway, I made it to the finish line, much to the surprise of the people who were recording times – I’d done the course in about 22 minutes rather than my usual 1h20m. After that, I realised that I could do more than I thought, and I am still grateful to that teacher for pushing me like that.
Coming back to comics, there’s a scene in “Amazing Spider-Man #391”, just after Peter’s parents turned out to be robots. MJ is talking to Aunt May about it, and May basically says “Yes, well, it’s a shame, but let’s move on – would you like a bagel for breakfast?” MJ goes off on a rant about how May and Peter both hide their feelings, and that they need to deal with them. May then comes back with a good response, that’s stuck with me in the years since I read it:
“I feel, Mary Jane. Believe me, I feel. I felt it when Richard and Mary were taken from us all those years ago … when my husband died, bleeding, in my arms … when poor Gwen was killed … when Nathan … I’ve lived through my share of tragedies, young lady, more than you could ever bear, and the only way I’ve been able to live through them is by not dwelling on them … by pushing the pain aside and moving on. So don’t tell me what I should be feeling, and don’t tell me to face reality! I know full well what reality is! I know!“
She then offers to make some scrambled eggs.
So, even if you don’t agree with MJ, I think it’s a reasonable thing for her character to say, after hanging around with the Parkers for so long.
“So, even if you don’t agree with MJ, I think it’s a reasonable thing for her character to say, after hanging around with the Parkers for so long.”
Thank you, you helped me figure out why I liked the look of future MJ in the F’n Spidey issue. I like the fact that she looked like Aunt May because I like the parallels between them. You’re right, these are the kind of things that MJ would have learned over the years.
One thing that I find interesting about Aunt May is that before he got married, she was his only family. The reason that’s interesting to me is that she’s not a blood relation to Peter. “Parker” is her married name, so Peter is Ben’s nephew. Peter and Aunt May are kind of a bonded family, people who found each other instead of being forced together by blood relation.
What I found particularly fascinating was the part where Mary Jane was saying to Vanna that some people blame their failures on their youthful traumas while others use those traumas to propel them to greatness. Well, the latter part certainly applies to Peter, of course. But soon after reading the story, I realized it also applies to someone else–MJ, herself; the family dysfunction in MJ’s childhood mirrors Vanna’s quite a bit. However, whereas Vanna was stunted by her pain and made Spider-Man a target in her lashing out, MJ did the opposite–she became an extrovert, the life of the party, even a model. In the beginning, her actions were a way for her to hide or forget her pain, but eventually she really elevated herself in the end. Heck, she even married Spider-Man; she’s like the anti-Vanna!
I admit that, at first, I was a little surprised by the seeming cruelty of MJ towards Vanna, but when I realized how Vanna’s background mirrored MJ’s, I could understand how someone like Vanna might piss her off to the core (plus the fact that Vanna has been attacking her husband on her blog for decades), and that MJ would want to give her a piece of her mind. Does what MJ say make her seem like a bitter old woman? Perhaps. But more to the point, MJ is only human, with her own flaws. And characters who have flaws is not a bad thing at all in stories. Thanks, PAD, for a great one-off, an issue that is about MJ as much as it is about Peter.
Great FSNM! This is a great time to be a PAD fan.
As for X-Factor, count me in the group of people now officially creeped out by Layla Miller.
I can relate with Vanna a little bit–but just a little. She is a character who doesn’t realize how very alone she is, and as a result (I suppose) she has become what many of us fear we will become–a person of no consequence.
MJ was right, of course. Spider-man experienced pain and tragedy, and used it to become a better person. But MJ is forgetting one thing: Vanna didn’t have Uncle Ben. So, in a sense, MJ knows Vanna about as well as Vanna knew Spider-man. It’s really unfair for MJ to take a mere glimpse at this person’s life and judge her, just as it was unfair for Vanna to do the same to Spidey. (We don’t know why Vanna’s relationships haven’t worked out–we are only led to assume that it was her fault.)
I suppose you could also say that this story was a metaphor for global conflict. (But then, there is a school of thought saying that all argument is a metaphor for war.) One nation stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the needs and perspectives of other nations, ill will increases, and ironically hostile steps are taken for “peace of mind.”
This book saddened me a little bit. If someone read my blog, would they be able to tell me how worthwhile I am? I’m sorry, but Vanna deserves to be happy as much as any of us do. That’s the real tragedy.