Comic Book Rant: New Spider-Man Costume

Well, I just finished the new Amazing Spider-man, and I can confidently say that the new costume sucks. It is just repulsive. I understand that Marvel felt the "need" to upgrade Spider-Man's powers. And I have no problem with that. The costume has plenty of cool gadgets like infrared vision, body armor to deflect small caliber bullets and the webs to allow Spider-Man to glide through the air. They are all neat gadgets add to a costume. I'm a big fan of manga, and it is extremely common in Japanese comics for the characters to constantly receive power "upgrades."

Having said that, I don't think there was any reason at all to mess with the design of the costume. Tony Stark could have constructed this fancy new costume with the same or an extremely similar color scheme and design to the original Spider-Man outfit. There was no need to create this rather horrid looking new costume design. I am giving this "Iron Spider" look a huge thumbs down.

There are only a few costumes that are iconic in design and can never be changed. The costumes for Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Fantastic Four, Captain America, Spider-Man and the Hulk (Yeah, the classic purple pants count as a costume). To me, those costumes should come complete with a "No Tampering" rule. They all look great and are classics. I think Marvel screwed up big time with this lousy costume design. I would expect to see the real Spider-Man costume make its return by the end of the year.

Other than the crappy look of the costume, I did enjoy watching Spider-Man show off all of his new gadgets while kicking some criminal butt.

New Marvel and DC Comics

This week was a pretty large haul for me. I had the new issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, astonishing X-Men, X-Men, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Batman, Green Lantern and Legion of Super-Heroes. The first comic I am going to review will be the new Amazing Spider-man. Why? For obvious reasons. That hideous new Spider-Man costume. It looks like something from the Marvel's New Universe line of comics. The other comic that I'm excited to get to is the new Legion. Why? One word, baby: Tyroc!! C'mon, how can you not love an issue that has Blok, Dawnstar and the ever lovable Tyroc on the cover?!

Comic Book Commentary: Ed Brubaker's Captain America

Captain America is a character that I have generally had very little interest in during my years reading comics. He never really appealed to me in the Avengers. His powers were unimpressive. I never bought into his character that he was just a natural born leader and fighter that all these other heroes looked up to. His own title never really interested me. I read it off and on during the mid to late ‘80’s. However, I was never able to really get into the story or the character.

My main issue with Captain America was that he was such a generic white bread straight laced character. Similar to the boring “say your prayers, take your vitamins, truth, justice and the America way” straight laced Superman. Except Captain America didn’t have Superman’s cool powers. So, here was this flat one-dimensional boring character without any really interesting powers. It didn’t make Captain America a compelling read for me. On top of that, Captain America was usually portrayed as a pinko bleeding heart liberal. That portrayal made absolutely no sense to me. This is a career soldier. Most of them are conservatives. On top of that, he is from the 1940’s and fought in WWII. A career soldier from the 1940’s is probably not going to be some bleeding heart liberal. I’m not saying he has to be this massive fascist military nut, but c’mon, he would probably be a conservative guy since he is from the 1940’s and is a career soldier. So, now not only was his character boring and one-dimensional, he was kind of a pussy on top of it. I always thought that Cap should be portrayed as more of a conservative ass kicker who was scarred from fighting in a brutal war here he saw men getting killed all around him. War is a traumatic event and is extremely scarring. Captain America never seemed to show any effects of being in a war.

Now, when Mark Millar (speaking of bleeding heart liberals) came out with Ultimate Avengers, I loved his Ultimate Captain America. This was the version of Captain America that I had been waiting for all these years. He acted like a guy form the 1940’s. He was conservative. He was a career military man who was a serious ass kicker. Ultimate Cap liked to beat the crap out of terrorists. He got pleasure from inflicting pain on them. This version of Captain America was by far more interesting than the regular Captain America. After reading Ultimate Avengers, I wished that Marvel would somehow shift the regular Captain America closer toward the Ultimate version of this character.

Well, last week, a friend of mine persuaded me to check out Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America. He guaranteed that I would like what Brubaker was doing with the character. I was highly skeptical, but I trust his opinion so I went out and bought issues #1-13. I got them all for cover price, so I couldn’t complain.

I just finished Captain America #1 and I have to admit that I am totally blown away! This is an excellent comic! I love Brubaker’s style. I really like his version of Captain America. Steve Rogers is much more angry, more violent and more scarred. He still has nightmares of the battles he fought in WWII. Brubaker’s Cap is much more developed and realistic. His version of Cap is also definitely an ass kicker. Steve Epting’s art is perfect for the tone that Brubaker is setting. The dark, grim and realistic look of Epting’s art makes Brubaker’s story just spring from the comic. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this series. I have high hopes for what Brubaker has planned for Steve Rogers. Captain America is finally relevant to me.

Comic Book Rant: Minority Super Heroes In Comics

I realize in my last topic that I pretty much just bashed and criticized comic companies like Marvel and DC for needlessly killing established heroes just to have them replaced with a minority character. I thought that I should put forth my beliefs on how DC or Marvel should go about creating minority heroes.

First, comic companies should be banned from naming the super hero anything that references his race. It is so painfully stereotypical and rather cheesy. Black Lightning. Black Goliath. Yellow Claw. Crap like that.

Second, do not link the super hero with stereotypical powers. An Asian super hero who is a martial arts expert or a ninja. A black super hero who is super strong or super fast. I would love for a black super hero whose special powers were telepathy, telekinesis or becoming intangible. Just something different that the usual powers black super heroes have like Black Panther, Triathlon, Rage, Luke Cage, etc.

Third, and most important, think about the man when creating the character and not the race. The race should be an inconsequential factor. Creating a black super hero, but making all urban and stereotypical is not only uninteresting, but it only appeals to a small portion of your reading population. If you make a “black” hero in a “black” setting and the fact that he is “black” is a main story point then you will probably only appeal to black readers. The black population in this country is about 9%. How much of that 9% actually reads comics? That title will be doomed to fail. The key to any successful title is to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. By focusing on the character rather than his specific race, comic companies will create individuals who stand on their own rather than depend on their race to define them and the title. This will also create much more interesting and more fully developed characters that any person regardless of their race would enjoy reading. Nobody reads Iron Man because Tony Stark is white and it is all about white successful business people. People read it because Tony Stark is a guy who is amazingly intelligent, gets tons of chicks, but still battles alcohol addiction and has problems like the average guy. You read Spider-Man, not because Peter Park is white, but because he is the everyman that people can identify with. You can do with almost all of the major established white super heroes. They are fully fleshed out character independent from their race. No minority super heroes have gotten that same treatment.

Until DC and Marvel follow these three rules, they are going to struggle in creating minority super heroes that interest a broad cross section of comic book readers. They will continue to struggle in creating a minority character that can carry a solo title that gets good sales numbers.

Comic Book Rant: The New Blue Beetle

I was sifting through the new titles that DC is going to be releasing and I saw the new Blue Beetle title by Keith Giffen. I have several thoughts on this new title. First, I wasn’t a big fan of Ted Kord’s death. Honestly, I thought he went out like a bitch. It struck me that his death was rather pointless and was just an excuse to kill off a C-list hero, replace him with a minority character using the old hero’s namesake. Similiar to Firestorm. I am definitely one of those people who strongly dislike killing an established hero just so the comic company can take that established name and hand it over to a minority character. If a comic company wants more minority heroes then I think they should take the time and effort and create new heroes who happen to be minorities. I think it usually creates a much more interesting character than cheaply killing off an established white hero and replace him with a minority hero using the same moniker as the dead hero.

Second, rarely are C-list heroes “re-invented” into anything that is cool. Usually, the re-make is cheesy and doesn’t stand the test of time. Think when Fate replaced Dr. Fate. Horrible. Or when Azreal replaced Batman. Generally, “modern” re-makes of a classic hero absolutely suck. I think that this new Blue Beetle is doomed to fail. I don’t see it being a big hit.

Third, if DC is trying to establish Blue Beetle as a serious hero that commands his own title then I’m not too sure that Keith Giffen is the right guy for the job. He is the writer that made Ted Kord a total joke. I can’t believe that he is going to make this new Blue Beetle anything more than what he did with Ted Kord.

I really think DC should have just decided to make a brand new character and have him Hispanic rather than trash Ted Kord and give his moniker to a Hispanic character just to have more minority heroes. The motivation to create a new super hero should be based on the desire to create an interesting character with a good story to tell. It seems that the death of Ted Kord and the creation of a new Blue Beetle were done just to try and get another minority hero into the mix.