Book of Doom:
X-Men and Spider-Man #1

Welcome once again to the Book of Doom. This week we’ll be reviewing X-Men and Spider-Man #1, Marvel’s latest attempt to milk $4 out of it’s readers with a needless mini-series featuring its A-list characters. But y’know, sometimes these needless mini-series turn out to be a good read.

This week there’s four of us trying to decide into which category X-Men and Spider-Man #1 falls. In addition to the regular gang, Jason @ Legend Comics sent us a review, and since I’m such a nice guy I’m going to let him kick things off.

Jason @ Legend Comics: X-Men and Spider-Man #1 is not a book I would normally read given the X-Men and Spider-Man are Marvel’s most overused and tired properties. See the 30 million X-books, of which only Uncanny is even readable. The less said about Spider-Man post-One More Day the better. This is an attempt by Gage and co. to do the “retrofit continuity story”, in this case pre-Gwen Stacy’s death and pre-Amazing Adventures #11.

Spider-Man and the X-Men meet up to fight Kraven, who has been hunting Spider-Man to “bring him to justice”. The problem is that this book doesn’t really know what it wants to be-is it a fun, light hearted romp with Spidey and the original X-Men or is it a set-up to something bigger as suggested by the minor “twist” ending (featuring one of Marvels lamest villains)? It does not succeed at either.

Gage clearly is not on the level of a Brian Bendis when it comes to stories like this-Bendis is the unquestioned master of the “retro fitted story”, especially when it comes to dialogue. The art is passable but not great-like so many pros these days, Mario Alberti is good at backgrounds and action sequences but his faces are average to awful.

This is an average at best comic and like I always say, there are too many great comics out there to buy average ones, especially as prices continue to rise. Pickup Secret Six #3 or House of Mystery #7 instead or better yet grab the Scalped trade paperbacks from Vertigo.

Overall grade: C-.

Fin Fang Doom: Quite frankly, there was no reason to pick up X-Men and Spider-Man #1 other than the art. Christos Gage is a decent enough writer, but he’s yet to prove himself to me as a reason to buy a book. I wasn’t expecting the series to have a cohesive storyline since each issue takes place in a different decade, just like 2005’s Spider-Man/Human Torch did (which, BTW, you should read). But judging by the twist with Mr. Sinister and the “To Be Continued…” caption at the end, that might not be the case.

But enough about the story. No one bought this for the story. This is essentially a showcase for Mario Alberti’s art, which is quite good. His drawing style reminds me a lot of Tim Sale. Alberti also does his own inking and coloring, and the latter is really the highlight of the art.

In the world Alberti created here, most of the backgrounds and background characters are rather neutral, despite having a tremendous amount of detail. That really makes the color included in the featured characters pop off the page. Cyclops’ red glasses, Gwen’s green dress, Warren’s bright red sports car and even Iceman’s bright white ice really leap out in contrast to the muted tones of NYC. There’s one particular panel about halfway through with Spidey and the X-Men in full costume in the Coffee Bean that really stands out (and makes me wish I had a scanner so I could show it).

I’m not sure if Alberti’s art is enough to get me to fork over another $12 for the rest of this series, though. This week Marvel caught a break because I only bought four other comics, so another $3.99 didn’t seem like too much extra. But if the next issue drops on a week where I’m already spending $30, X-Men and Spider-Man might not make the cut. I’ll probably be on board for at least another issue, though, and maybe Gage will be able to hook me with this Sinister subplot.

Doom Deluise: This is a decent enough little beginning to a throwback story of when the X-Men and Spider-Man were both just starting out, and, for what it’s worth, it’s fun enough.

What I probably enjoyed most about it is the art. While the characters themselves aren’t that interesting or remarkable, the attention to detail in regards to the background art is astounding. That always makes me feel like there’s more going on in an issue, since it lets my eyes linger longer than if, say, the backgrounds were just Technicolor mosaics, like some lazy artists rely on (see: Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Strikes Again).

As for the story itself, it definitely has a feel, especially at the start, that we’ve been to these places before, and it’s not all that engaging. Peter Parker is broke and trying to have a night out with Gwen Stacey, while the X-Men are sitting at home watching anti-mutant news reels. Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen that a thousand times.

The fun of the story, though, comes when the elements mix, most pointedly at the very end, when it’s revealed that Mr. Sinister is the guy who’s hired Kraven the Hunter to bring in Spider-Man (and steal the DNA of all the X-Men). Sinister on his own is a relatively boring bad guy (in my opinion), as is Kraven, but when you put the two together, it certainly opens itself up to some interesting possibilities.

I’m looking forward to the next issue.

Jim Doom: Spider-Man and X-Men are two franchises I read nothing about anymore, because both got so saturated with multiple titles that I simply couldn’t keep track of what mattered, if anything, and then lost interest in keeping track. So imagine how excited I was to see that another title has been added, which at least combines the duplication for minimal redundancy. Not only does it seem stupid from the get-go, but it costs $3.99 even though Marvel solicited it at $2.99.

Marvel is going so nuts with these miniseries and spin-off titles that I really don’t know what’s canon and what’s out of continuity, or if Marvel even knows or cares to explain. But this story appears to be taking place back in the early days of both the X-Men and Spider-Man. Given the constantly shifting ages of all characters and the fact that this story appears to happen in the actual 1960s, I’m assuming that this is out-of-continuity so as not to make Spider-Man presently near 60 years old.

I actually found myself really liking the Silver Age feel of the book. Christos Gage did a convincing job of having all the characters speak and act in a sort of Silver Age fashion without seeming too gimmicky, and I was sensitive to the potential for that. So I was pleased that he pulled that off, and I actually really enjoyed the story too. It’s got some of that beautiful simplicity of older comics, only with a little modern twist at the end to bring the story out of the ’60s.

This Mario Alberti cat is apparently some hotshot artist, but this book felt like he was learning to draw as he went along. There was some great artwork in the latter half of the book, but some of the stuff in the early pages was abysmal. Take the group shot at the top of page 3, for example. Those are some of the poorest, most hideous excuses for human faces that I have ever seen. It was seriously like “Okay, 10 pages down … I think I’m getting the hang of this!” By the end of the book, I was really digging his stuff, especially how he nailed the same faces he failed on earlier.

I’m not really sure what it was about this book I liked so much, but I’m actually planning on continuing to read this miniseries. I think maybe the fact that I’m completely oblivious to its continuity implications makes me a little more forgiving for the liberties it takes in style and tone. If Marvel has said “This is the new official secret origin of blah blah whatever,” nobody tell me, because then I might hate it.