The Best Cover of 2024: SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN #37

 

The Best Pages & Panels of 2024

 

ALIENS VS. AVENGERS #1

VOID RIVALS #8

WHAT'S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? #20

ZORRO: MAN OF THE DEAD #3

The Best Art of 2024: SEAN MURPHY & SIMON GOUGH "ZORRO: MAN OF THE DEAD"

 

    I awarded the best art of 2017 to Sean Murphy's Batman: White Knight, so it's really no surprise that his art for Zorro: Man of the Dead was excellent. He wrote and did the art while Simon Gough did the colors. It was a short, 4-issue mini-series for the small press Massive. Murphy is great at drawing action along with making his books look cool as hell. The backgrounds, the style that's totally his own, and the expressive characters...the art in this book was exceptional. 

The Best Writer of 2024: JONATHAN HICKMAN

  

       The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel's flagship book forever, hasn't been that good in a very, very long time. When you read the old, classic issues, there's an evolution of Peter Parker taking place and the soap opera bildungsroman story makes all the superhero drama meaningful. That ended a long time ago, when Marvel decided to deep-freeze Parker in amber and never age, never have kids, never evolve besides maybe changing his employment for a bit. Thankfully, a new Ultimate Spider-Man came out in 2024, and writer Jonathan Hickman decided to showcase what The Amazing Spider-Man could be if it actually evolved. Peter Parker is married to Mary Jane and has two kids. He's still Spider-Man and there's still the Green Goblin and The Kingpin and everything is similar, but it also feels revitalized and fresh and thus exciting to read. A Spider-Man comic...in 2024...is actually a great read! Who knew? Hickman, of course, is something of a master at revitalization. The X-Men books were fairly forgettable until he introduced the epic "Krakatoa" storyline that changed the game and made the book worth reading again. And while Hickman has always kind of been a hit-or-miss writer and often his stories have sometimes been too overly confusing, he really put out some excellent books in 2024. Besides Ultimate Spider-Man, he finished writing his 8 issue G.O.D.S. comic book that was wild and a lot of fun. He co-wrote an entertaining Dr. Doom one-shot. And he also, shockingly, made Aliens vs. Avengers a great book. Surely, in the hands of most writers, that would have been just a stupid book with Captain America and The Hulk fighting Aliens on a spaceship while cracking jokes or something. But Hickman made the book...gulp...interesting. A book featuring Aliens and The Avengers is serious, thought provoking and good. Only a good writer can even attempt to pull that one off. & Jonathan Hickman did. 

The Best Comic Book of 2024: WHAT'S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE?

     My favorite comic books of the year included Absolute Batman, Ultimate Spider-Man, Something is Killing the Children, and Saga. But the best book of the year, and a comic book that has been consistently either the best comic book out there or close to it since it started, is What's the Furthest Place From Here? from Image Comics. Written by Matthew Rosenberg and drawn by Tyler Boss and Dylan Burnett, this book is wild, weird, funny, engaging, entertaining, bonkers, fresh, alive, and totally insane. There were only four issues released in 2024, but we did finally get the revelation of all the big answers to this strange world. The basic premise has teenagers and twentysomethings living in a post-apocalyptic world, and everyone is living in gangs not unlike the gangs from that movie The Warriors. There's also The Strangers, mysterious beings that will swoop in when someone disobeys "the rules." Every issue is sort of a journey to a new place filled with new weirdo's. Danger is everywhere and everyone talks in quips and everything is "off." Finally we found out where the adults are; walled up in a city on an island to prevent a disease that ravaged the world. The book is super dark but very, very funny. Whenever an issue is released, I always read it right away. I can't wait to sink my teeth into this world again, to be immersed in this wild, crazy place full of wonderful, colorful freaks just trying to survive. It's fantastic. 

ABSOLUTE POWER #1

 

    DC's big summer event this year is Absolute Power. The basic premise is that Amanda Waller, the head of the Suicide Squad, decides to de-power all of Earth's superheroes. She's working with Failsafe, who I'm pretty sure was killed off in the last issue of Batman, and Queen Braniac, a new villainess. Why is Amanda Waller doing this? Who knows? She hates superheroes, I guess. Marvel did pretty much the same thing in the House of M event years ago. The Marvel superheroes all lost their powers. I never read that, so I'm not entirely sure how similar it is. DC did a good thing with putting the World's Finest team on Absolute Power. Writer Mark Wait and artist Dan Mora are definitely two of the better creative teams working at DC. All the critics and fans seem to always say that World's Finest is DC's best superhero book. World's Finest is basically Batman and Superman together. World's Finest is good, but nothing spectacular or anything. And I guess it won't be coming out anytime soon. That, or maybe they're putting a different writer and artist on it. Absolute Power is only 4 issues, which is good. They don't even have a checklist in the book showing all of the tie-ins. That probably means there are like a thousand. In this first issue, Superman attempts to stop a bank robbery and is shot because he doesn't realize he's lost his powers. The way they de-powered all the heroes is by using some villain robot guy named Amazo. Must be a retro villain or something, because I've never heard of him. They also mention in the book that all of the superheroes' powers are never coming back. Yeah, sure. Like in a year, Superman won't have powers. Good luck getting anyone to read that book. While the art is really good and the colors by Alejandro Sanchez are dynamic, the story is actually kind of dull. I don't usually enjoy these big event books and reading this #1 issue just reinforces that. There's always just too much going on and you know nothing is actually going to change in the long term, so what's the point? Be entertained? I think the plot is actually too dark and depressing for entertainment purposes, actually. Eh, maybe #2 will be better. *1/2

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #50

  

   After reading the latest The Amazing Spider-Man #50, I was curious how many #50's there have been. The first one was published in October 1967. In that issue, Peter Parker quits being Spider-Man and throws out his costume but remembers he's fighting for Uncle Ben and resumes being the hero. Stan Lee and John Romita did that issue. The Kingpin makes his debut in that issue as well. The next #50 was in February 2003. Straczynski and John Romita, Jr. did that issue. The last one, during Nick Spencer's run, was published on October 14th, 2020. So this is only the 4th #50. There were a few re-boots that never even made it to #50, though. The first re-boot and new #1 was in January 2003, when Dan Slott was writing the book. Then April 2014 there was a new #1. Then in October 2015 there was another re-boot and #1. Then July 2018 had another re-boot and #1. And then we get to the current Zeb Wells run, which started in April 2022 with a new #1. So there's been 6 re-boots and 6 #1's. Hard to make sense of all this ridiculousness. It's pretty crazy that there was a #1 in 2014 and then another #1 in 2015. And when Zeb Wells leaves, in a year or so, there'll surely be another #1. I guess I was curious about all of this because in this new #50 issue, Norman Osbourne as The Green Goblin fights Peter Parker as Spider-Man. If you remember, this is a feud started in the 1960's, culminating in Spider-Man killing Norman Osbourne/The Green Goblin. That happened in May 1973. They actually kept Norman Osbourne dead for 23 years. So much for that! It's June 2024...so Norman Osbourne/The Green Goblin was killed off 50 years ago. 50 fucking years ago! You gotta kind of wonder why they have no new ideas anymore. I suppose Marvel's excuse is that Norman as The Goblin was great back then; a cool character, a fan favorite...and kids reading comic books now weren't reading them in the 60's and early 70's. Why not show them what they were missing? Eh. I can't even think of any new, cool villains they've created for Spider-Man since Venom...and that was in 1988. What the hell are these writers doing, anyway? Nick Spencer attempted to create a new villain with Kindred. I guess he was at least trying. Zeb Wells hasn't created anyone. Wells has used Tombstone a lot for whatever reason. And #51 has The Sinister 6 on the cover. It does seem like the writers have very limited leeway at writing this book. It seemed like Spencer was attempting to get MJ and Pete back together, but that never happened, probably because the editors and bosses have the final say. Spider-Man is such a great character that it's really a shame the book feels like it can't be fresh, exciting, bold, or new. It just constantly feels stale, like it's running in place constantly. The big, new idea in this new #50 is that Norman gives Parker the Goblin serum, turning him into Spider-Goblin...or whatever the heck they're going to call him. They seem to do that a lot in the Batman books with the Joker serum, too, don't they? I wonder who was first with that? I will admit that this issue was a lot more entertaining than the last dozen or so issues Zeb Wells has written. Last Fall they had a big crime epic where a bunch of crime families were battling for control of NYC. That was a total bore. And the last couple of issues were totally forgettable and weird. So Goblin vs. Spider-Man is back to basics. And they got Ed McGuniess to draw the pretty cool cover and main story, which is a giant plus. There's a few terrible back-ups I skimmed through. I guess I can't really complain about The Green Goblin still being around after dying 50 years ago...because it's pretty hard to mess up a comic book involving The Green Goblin battling Spider-Man. I wish this book was better, though, and I really am starting to wonder if it'll ever be really good ever again. **1/2