A Few Thoughts on Comic from this week

Yes, Comic. Singular. Oh, there was a magazine or two and I did get a trade paperback but there was but one item that most people would actually refer to as a 'comic'. Thankfully it was enjoyable.

The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36 contains a story that managed to move forward some subplots as well as set a few up. While it does tell a specific story, there's a lot left open and unresolved for those already-announced-future-stories to fill in.

Peter is in Boston for a party of Aunt May's. He gets to meet a number of relatives on his aunt's side of the family for the first time and he ends up having a moment that I'm familiar with experiencing, one that I will refer to as 'ah crap, that attractive lady is related to me'. Lots of entertainment going on until Peter gets attacked by a super-villain of sorts. Not 'Spidey goes to stop a criminal', not 'Peter sees a crime in progress and changes into his costume to stop it', Peter gets attacked because he's Peter, not because he might be Spidey's 'friend' or anything like that. The guy sees Peter, goes 'That guy! I hate that guy!' and attacks. This confuses Peter and finding out the truth of the matter doesn't make it any better: this guy wasn't looking for Peter, he was looking for Ben Reilly, Peter's dead clone.

It's been ages since that period of Spidey's history was dealt with in the main Spidey book. Now there's a story coming about Ben's history and a mini-series that will tell the 'original' version of the Clone Saga. Combining this with the current 'X-Men Forever' series that is supposed to tell Chris Clarmont's plans for the X Books in the early 90s, as if he hadn't left the titles then, it seems like Marvel's trying to reclaim the 90s, as if to 'fix' things left broken.

Or they just like the 'What If?' idea but know it can't support a regular book anymore so they're just playing about with stories because, why not?

Before I get too distracted I liked the art for the Annual as well. It was provided by Pat Olliffe, who's art is one part Sal Buscema, one part realistic, and one part cartoony. I've long liked his art. I like his art so much that it's been enough to talk me into buying DC books and that's not all that easy.

All in all, it was fun. Nothing too deep, and some foreshadowing of tales to come. Good deal.