Comic Review -- Scarlet Spider #4: Whoever Finds Me... Will Kill Me! / Christopher Yost, Ryan Stegman, Mike Babinski, Cam Smith, and Edgar Delgado

Heheh.  Backed up against a wall, costume ripped in places, barely dodging a barrage of bullets, arrows, Chinese stars, and so on.  Kaine's dealing with a lot of action here, and that's exactly the situation inside the story, at least metaphorically.  Another fine cover.

Things start off with a flashback in Kaine's life, when he's in Detroit.  He's contacted by Belladonna and the Assassins Guild, informing him that he's been taking kills in their jurisdiction.  Belladonna gives him one chance to join the Guild and work off the tithe she says he owes her.  Kaine, in typical vulgar fashion, tells her and the Guild to screw off.

Jump back to the present, and Kaine is fighting hard against four assassins from the Guild.  They've sent killers after him less than 24 hours after his encounter with the first assassin.  While he manages to get the drop on them, he knows this won't end with them, even if he kills them.  So he calls Belladonna on one of the thugs' phone, with a counter-offer: she calls off her assassins on both him and Dr. Meland, and he will do one assassination job for her.  She picks the time, the place, and the target.  After that, she forgets who he is and leaves him alone.  Otherwise, he'll kill every member of the Assassins Guild, starting with her.  Belladonna accepts, and every assassin in Houston seems to disappear as soon as she says it.  Kaine, however, has issues with his most recent choice, and begins to see the faces of everyone he's killed in the past, and when he arrives home, heads straight for the bathroom to throw up.

Meland, in the meantime, has gone with Wally to Terrence Mitchell's house.  Mitchell is the one who put the hit out on Meland's life last issue, blaming the doctor for his wife and daughter's death in a car accident several weeks previous.  When they get to his house, they are ambushed by more assassins and Mitchell, who is still bitter and resentful at Meland over his loss.  Meland seems to convince Mitchell to drop the hit, as the assassin with him disappears--more likely due to the timing and agreement between Belladonna and Kaine.  Annabelle and Aracely go to the Galleria, looking for clothes and supplies for Aracely, who starts to exhibit several strange abilities.  She is apparently able to speak several languages now, and seems to have a kind of psychic link to Kaine.  When she mentions in front of Annabelle that Kaine is the Scarlet Spider, Annabelle is shocked.

I think what impresses me most about this issue is how much action and development is packed into it.  We see Kaine take on four--four!--assassins from the Guild and come out on top, Meland and Wally meeting Mitchell to get the hit on his life dropped, Aracely exhibiting strange abilities, and Kaine negotiating a gruesome deal with Belladonna and having to deal with the implications of it, all in one issue.  And poor Annabelle, who just seems to be along for the ride and clueless up to this point, gets hit with the knowledge that Kaine is the Scarlet Spider.

Even more impressively, it all feels fluid and fast-paced.  With this much going on, it would be easy for the pacing to get bogged down, or for things to feel glossed over and barely touched upon.  Neither is the case here, and the entire story keeps you turning the page.  I really am impressed with Yost's writing here, and not just because this title is set in Houston.  He really has a good handle on pacing and narrative flow.

I'm also glad that we see Kaine make a bad decision in this issue, and have to deal with what it means to him, particularly with the new direction his life is taking.  He actually feels remorse and guilt for making a deal with Belladonna to kill one mark for her, which means he won't be taking this lightly.  In terms of making you care for the character, this is a big issue, and leaves me wonder what of so many possible things could happen because of this accord.  Needless to say, I'm interested to find out.

Artistically, Stegman continues to impress on this issue.  I particularly liked the zombie Hand ninja, Kaine's cloaking device--it's finally explicitly named--and the way Aracely looks, particularly in the last couple panels of the issue.  She looks cute, quirky, and wide-eyed at everything going on, even if she doesn't seem particularly scared of it yet.  Ah, the innocence of youth...  In any case, by all means, keep it coming.

Overall, I'm really enjoying this series.  The artwork is good, the pacing and characterization is great, and the action is just what you'd expect from a title like this.  If you haven't given this series a go yet, I'd suggest reading this issue.  The pacing and action alone make it worth a look, and everything else is worth reading up on.  Highly recommended.

Comic Review -- Scarlet Spider #3: Scarlet Fury! / Christopher Yost, Ryan Stegman, Mike Babinski, Marte Gracia, and Wade von Grawbadger

I have to say, I'm really liking the covers for this series so far.  It's like a parade of poster shots for Kaine's new persona, and they all look pretty bad-ass so far.  This one is particularly menacing, with the angry Scarlet Spider glaring at you with the full moon directly behind him.  Excellent posing, excellent composition, and wonderful execution.  This one's a win.

Kaine starts off foiling a mugging of one of Houston's citizens, scaring the hell out of the mugger and telling him to leave town before continuing his quest to take care of Aracely, the young woman he saved last issue.  He asks a local bartender, Annabelle Adams, for help watching over her, which she reluctantly provides after Aracely at first attacks her.  With a little help from Donald Meland, the doctor he spoke to who was treating Aracely, Kaine sneaks into the ruins of the hospital where he fought the Salamander to get medical supplies.

When an assassin tries to kill Meland, Kaine defends him and ambushes the killer.  In the ensuing fight, Kaine is gassed by the assassin, forcing him to remove his mask.  The assassin, who reveals himself to be a member of the Assassins Guild, recognizes Kaine, and escapes before Kaine can recover, leaving Kaine certain that the Guild will be coming for him, in force, very soon.  Apparently, our boy has really ticked off its leader, Belladonna.

This issue, even more than the last one, is establishing Kaine's supporting cast and major players.  Doctor Meland is given both a name and a basic personality; Wally Layton, his husband, is similarly established; Annabelle Adams is introduced; and, of course, there's Aracely, who's been Kaine's focus since things started. More interestingly, we get a glimpse of who his main nemeses are: the Assassins Guild.

Yeah.  The New Orleans-based, take-no-prisoners group of baddies that's given Wolverine, the X-Men, and even the Hand a run for their money.  Those guys.

Even though there are two action scenes in this issue, it still feels more like a breather for Kaine and company while the bigger pieces of the arc are maneuvered into place.  And that's fine by me; cover-to-cover action gets pretty exhausting pretty quickly, and good storytelling develops other areas as well.  One rather serendipitous moment from this issue that confused me was why the hell Kaine asked Annabelle for help.  What was his reason for picking some random, red-headed bartender hottie to ask for help?  All I can think is that, as Peter Parker's genetic clone, maybe he has a predisposition for redheads?  I dunno, it just seemed really random, as he didn't really know her and had no good reason to trust her.

I'm personally very curious to know just what Kaine did to piss off Belladonna to the point that he now knows the Assassins Guild will be coming after him instead of Meland.  I'm sure it'll be mentioned next issue, but I can only imagine it was something both vicious and vulgar, and perhaps a touch hilarious.  In any case, I'll be sticking around to see what it is.

Artistically, this series continues to delight.  Stegman has been really good at including at least one poster-worthy pose for Kaine when he's in costume, and he does both action and dramatic scenes very well.  I'm a little confused about how Kaine looks in a couple of panels, where it looks like his costume is... I dunno... cloaking and un-cloaking?  Is there some tech in that thing that makes him look like that?  Or is the heat in Houston just making the air sweat and swelter that much around him?

Overall, I like this issue and this story arc.  I'm sure it'll get intense as the Guild brings more assassins to town looking for him, and I'm eager to see how he handles it.  If we know one thing by now about Kaine, it's this: he won't handle it anything like Spider-Man would.  Highly recommended.

Comic Review -- Scarlet Spider #2: After Life / Christopher Yost, Ryan Stegman, Mike Babinski, and Marte Gracia

It took me forever to get a copy of Scarlet Spider #2--I hadn't started a pull list by that point.  While I've since corrected that mistake, I still had to wait over a month for a second printing.  Once I got it, I finally allowed myself to read the issues in sequence.  Now, I can finally start reviewing them for you.

There doesn't seem to be as much detail in the second printing variant cover--and explosion seems to have been replaced with simple orange space--but it's still a decent picture.  Kaine is still obviously escaping from a crumbling pile of something, and looking pretty cool doing it.  I'd prefer the full picture for a poster or t-shirt, but this one's not bad for denoting a second printing.

Kaine has done his one good deed, saved a young immigrant girl from a horrible fate, and is ready to leave her in the hospital, washing his hands clean of any further involvement.  He's denied the need to help others, and this isn't his problem.  But when he sees an explosion coming from the direction of the building in which he left her, he flies right back into action, finally donning the Scarlet Spider costume--which looks cool as hell, I might add--and gets into a fight with someone called Salamander, who's hunting the girl down.  Kaine wins the fight, showing during the fight that he's not Spider-Man, pulling a gun and webbing up Salamander after beating him viciously.

When he goes to check on the girl, Aracely, he is asked by her doctor and a local cop to stay in Houston, where a superhero is needed.  They tell him that everyone saw what he did today, and that he'd be a welcome guardian for Houston.  Kaine initially refuses, but then decides otherwise, using some of the money he's come across to take Aracely and keep her in his luxury hotel suite, where he can keep an eye on her.  He finds himself unable to leave Houston yet, seeing a second chance at life and the opportunity to do some good and make amends for his violent past.

It was nice to see Kaine finally put on the costume and throw down with a supervillain.  We can see that, while he's not Peter Parker, he's definitely cut from the same cloth, deep down: he can't abide the suffering of innocent people, no matter what he says.  Despite a much more brutal fighting style and brusque manner, he still has a need to be the good guy, to do the right thing.  It's been his habit to do the opposite up until recently, but he's showing a gradual migration to the side of angels.  We'll have to see how far he gets.

We can also start to see the formation of a supporting cast of characters for Kaine as he starts putting down roots.  People are getting names--Aracely, for instance--and characters like her doctor are getting more exposure than they normally would if they were simply throw-away background characters.  Sure, it feels a bit formulaic, but it does make a certain amount of sense.  Kaine, for all his curtness, is not the Punisher, and will need the help of others, both for superheroing and to help him find and explore his humanity.  I'll be interested to see how this turns out.

Artistically, I very much enjoyed this issue.  The action sequences were intense and fluid, and I just loved the full-page shot of Kaine in the Scarlet Spider costume.  The black and red really works.  Salamander's flames, explosions, and super-heated air made for a visually interesting fight.  Stegman's people look realistic, distinct, and expressive, and his backgrounds nicely complement the main action.

Overall, I'm impressed.  I like the fact that my city, Houston, now has its own "superhero," even if Kaine despises the term.  I'll be interested to see how things progress, and whether the narrative will be able to maintain a compelling story in this new locale.  I like the look and feel of things so far.  Highly recommended.

Comic Review -- Scarlet Spider #1 / Christ Yost and Ryan Stegman

Okay, now I've gone and done it.  I went and shelled out $3.99 for a print comic book, mere days after it was released.  This doesn't happen with me very often these days, for several reasons:

• $3.99 is damned expensive for a comic, and don't start on any talk of inflation.  The current prices for comics are way above the inflation rate for other goods and products.
• I lost my first collection of comic books to time, circumstance, and distance, and don't really want to put a lot of investment in single issues for that reason.
• There aren't a lot of stories that justify it, in my opinion.  I'd rather wait a bit, see them in collected editions, and read the whole story at once.

So why did I go and buy Scarlet Spider #1 today and read it for review?  A few reasons, none of which are particularly powerful by themselves, but together made a confluence of justification for me:

• The action takes place in my town, Houston.
• I find Kaine to be one of the more fascinating characters to come out of the whole Clone Saga mess.
• I think Kaine's assumption of the Scarlet Spider mantle makes for an interesting story, considering that he's succeeding his former nemesis, Ben Reilly.

So, I went and picked it up.  Did I like it?  Oh, heck yes.

Kaine has recently proven himself capable of overcoming a stacked deck in terms of choosing between the dark and light paths.  He sacrificed himself to save Peter's life during The Grim Hunt, and ended up being a force for good in the Spider Island arc in spite of the intent behind his resurrection.  Now that he's on his own, and on the run, he's trying to figure out who he is, without the influence of external forces like Spider-Man or Miles Warren or the Queen.  At first trying to keep to himself and take care of only his own needs, he is repeatedly thrust into circumstances requiring him to make a choice between saving others and staying out of trouble.

While he's not above making a threat or physically intimidating someone who's inconveniencing him, in the larger context, Kaine still seems unable to keep himself from interceding when he sees people in danger.  When he says that things aren't his problem, transposed against the costume he apparently stole from Peter, we know it's a lie that won't hold up for too long.

I like the writing so far.  Yost keeps the pace flowing fairly well, and he demonstrates at least a rudimentary knowledge of the Houston area.  So far my favorite piece of dialog involves the heat there: "It's like my sweat is sweating."  We'll see how the rest of it holds up over time, but I got the occasional chuckle out of it.

Art-wise, I've got no complaints.  Stegman's Kaine is menacing, surly, and direct, both in looks and mannerisms, with or without the long hair and beard.  It's pleasant to look at, and definitely worthy of a Spider-family title (I imagine Kaine would take umbrage at my putting it that way).

Overall, a good read, and a worthy start to the reboot of this character.  I'm interested to see where things go, and may even continue buying these issues if the quality stays this high.  As it is, I'm pleased with this inaugural issue and can't wait to see where it goes.  Highly recommended.

GN Review -- X-Force: Sex + Violence / Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost and Gabriele Dell'Otto

If there's a guilty pleasure I have in comics, it's gotta be this story.  It really doesn't offer up much more than its title states, but hey, at least it's honest.  And it's one hell of a fun ride.

I haven't really read X-Force since the days when its membership roster included Cable, Shatterstar and Boom-Boom (among others), and even back then I couldn't escape the vaguely nagging thought that this was a team that was superfluous.  Individually, some of them were cool, but collectively, they didn't even really feel like a team.  So when an X-Force title was announced after years of apparent slumber, I wasn't so enthused.  But if this is a representative sample of what the team is about today, then I can definitely see why this darker, grittier incarnation of the them is getting such rave reviews.

Sex + Violence starts with Wolverine finding out why Domino is suddenly in need of some serious healing from teammate Elixir, which leads to her explaining a job she worked with the Assassins Guild that ended up getting the ninjas of the Hand on their bad side.  Throw in some previously unmentioned slave girls and a stash of hundreds of millions in cash, Domino decided to double-cross her employers, who of course are now trying to kill her.  Wolverine takes her to square things away with the Guild, where they bicker, shed assassin blood, and rip each other's clothes off while they try to stay alive and remove the death sentence hanging over Domino's pretty little head.

One of the things that really grabs me about this story is the sheer amount of blood spilled from the get-go.  I'm not used to seeing this much carnage in a Marvel title, but when it's done this well, I don't mind in the slightest.  Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost may not have picked a particularly imaginative plot, but they executed it extremely well, bringing the two stars into the middle of a conflict involving two of Marvel's deadliest and, likely, bloodiest villain groups, and making full use of the setup.  Using Wolverine's claws and Domino's guns to maximum effect, they make sure they give every bit as good as they get, and it's extremely satisfying to watch.

I also am intrigued by how Domino has changed over the years.  She was on the original X-Force team, and as I recall seemed something of a mother figure.  That's clearly gone out the window by this point, and now that she's free of Cable and the kids, she really shines as a greedy, manipulative, but way too cute and cocky femme fatale.  It really works for her character, as does her "I'm on board with killing our enemies" attitude that, I assume, places her on this team.

I'm very much in love with the art in this story.  Gabriele Dell'Otto's painted work makes every page look like a poster book with words.  They bring all the blood, violence, and lust that permeates the narrative directly to the forefront in an immediate and urgent way that both shocks and titillates.  It kept me reading, and I won't deny I re-read this story a few times to just admire some of the illustrations.

Very suggestive in its premise, and delivering as much as possible on it without tipping into adults-only territory, Sex + Violence is a fun romp through the X-verse, pairing two very entertaining characters who work well together, despite all the bickering.  If you don't mind a bit of lust and blood in your comics diet, I strongly suggest you check it out.  Highly recommended.