Month: September 2018

Amazing Spider-Man Volume 1 Review

Posted MaceLeave a commentPosted in Omnibus Reviews
“With great power, comes great responsibility”
Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus Volume 1 Cover Art

 Is there really any other way to start a blog about Spider-Man than with his most famous quote?! I would think of all marvel characters that Spider-Man has got to be the most well known by the masses and comic fans alike. Chances are if you’re reading this, you know who Spider-Man is. Be it through the comics, toys, movies, cartoons, games and whatever other forms of spider-man media are out there, you’ve probably already at the very least heard of Spider-Man, so this shouldn’t take too much explanation. You’re likely already aware but Spider-Man is a teenage boy named Peter Parker (for now) and that he was bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him his abilities. He didn’t help stop a criminal when given the chance and that same criminal would end up murdering his uncle Ben, resulting in Spider-man devoting using his power for good and to help others! 

For me, much like X-Men it started with the 90’s cartoon on FOX and eventually the early 2000’s Spider-Man movies with Tobey Maguire. I’ve also caught a handful of episodes of the older 60’s cartoon on late night TV but having now read the first two Spider-Man omnibus (Issues 1-67 and some extras) I have to say the comic is my most preferred format! The first omnibus collects Amazing Fantasy #15; The Amazing Spider-Man #1-38 and Annuals #1-2 which naturally includes the first appearances of Peter Parker, Electro, Doctor Octopus, Mysterio, Scorpion, Vulture, Lizard, Kraven and the Green Goblin. I’m sure there is more but these ones stand out!

I will admit this silver age stuff is very very wordy and sometimes a single issue will take me 30+ minutes to read. Amazing Fantasy #15 was a treat to read, the real beginning and origin story of Spider-Man as we know it today. Some other stand out moments from this book are when Spider-Man goes to cash a cheque but can’t because they won’t open a bank account for a masked man. Spider-Man trying to join the Fantastic Four, countless encounters with the human torch trying to one up one another. Everyone seems to love Johnny Storm but they have mixed feelings over Spider-Man, which seems to come with wanting to hide his identity, which is fair. I would trust somebody whose face I could see over a masked person anytime.

Some of the bigger standout stories for me was Spideys first battle with the sinister six, Spider-Man getting hypnotized at the circus and fighting against Daredevil, and a team up annual with Doctor Strange!

I really enjoyed how much Peter avoided ever meeting Mary Jane, it had always seemed to me that MJ had always been Spideys #1 girl, but in this omnibus he is far more interested in Betty Brant whom he works with at the Daily Bugle and Liz Allen who he goes to high school. Aunt May is constantly trying to introduce Peter to MJ but he is always far too busy as Spider-Man or tied up with his other love interests. This first omnibus really was all about Spider-Man in his high school years. He does graduate, go to ESU and eventually meet Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn in this omnibus which gets me excited to see how the Peter and Harry dynamic is going to play out in the comics.

We also get a ton of Flash Thompson in this book, he’s constantly taking jabs at Peter and giving him a hard time all the while being Spider-Mans biggest fan. If only he knew they were the same person! By the time I got to the end of this book I could hardly put it down and would recommend it to anybody who wants to learn more about everybody’s favorite webslinger and his true origin stories. You’ve just got to be prepared for some actual reading and not just all cool art and classic spider-man one liners.

Uncanny X-Men Volume 1-3 Review

Posted MaceLeave a commentPosted in Omnibus Reviews
“Hear me, X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am Fire and Life incarnate! Now and forever – I am PHOENIX!” 
Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volumes 1-3 Cover Art

Before I can give these books a proper review, I should first shed some light on my own knowledge of the X-men as well as Marvel comics. As a child of the 90’s I was lucky enough to be a kid during the peak of super-hero comic popularity. My older brother was into comic books, but me? Not so much. I can only recall two actual issues I owned as a kid, Marvel vs DC #4, and Astonishing X-Men #4 with Rogue on the cover. I did however watch the FOX cartoons for both Spider-Man and X-Men every chance I got, as well as collected the fleer ultra spider-man card sets from ’94 and ’95.

Around the late 90’s live-action X-Men and Spider-Man movies were becoming a thing. I recall my father taking me to see the first X-Men in theaters as well as seeing the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy but this still didn’t interest me enough to start reading the comics and getting to know the true roots and lore behind these characters.

When Marvel Studios’ Iron Man hit theaters in 2008, superhero movies had become stale and to be fair, weren’t that great to begin with. I had totally skipped over the MCU until the first Avengers movie in 2012, and despite seeing it and genuinely enjoying it. Marvel still hadn’t won me over.

Finally in 2016 I saw Captain America: Civil War. It was incredible to see all these heroes come together on the big screen, but even more so, fighting with and against each other. This left me wanting more, to learn how things got to this point and left me questioning where they could go. I went back and watched all of the MCU movies and Netflix shows but still found myself wanting more. It was common knowledge Infinity War was going to be the next Avengers film so I decided to pick up some trade paperbacks of Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity War from the bookstore Chapters. I then found out about Marvel Unlimited where I could easily read over 20,000 comics from the Marvel Library digitally.

I asked a friend for some recommendations on more storylines or comics to read and he told me that to him, comics were like boobs. They are nice to look at but even better to touch. The more I thought about it the more I would agree that it was much more satisfying to read a book start to finish, then to flip through some panels on a tablet. 

Being able to remove myself from technology and lose myself within the pages of a book is truly a lost art in society today. With that, I decided I wanted to get into either Spider-Man or X-Men, two of the best cartoons I had the privilege of watching in my youth and headed to my local comic shop.

Single issues didn’t really interest me because I knew there was a bigger story going on and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of finding specific issues, especially seeing how high key issues can go for. As I was on my way out the shop empty handed thats when I saw it. ‘Uncanny X-Men Volume 1 by Claremont, Cockrum, and Byrne. It was out of my reach and I had to ask an employee to pull it down so I could check it out. As soon as I looked at the back cover and saw the cover gallery and that it included Giant Size X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #94 – #131. In my recent research of what comics I should be reading I knew this was the start of the Claremont run I had read so much about. I just had to have this book, I had to rekindle that love for the X-Men from my childhood. When the cashier went to scan it, it didn’t register in the system and he had to call the store owner to find out what to charge me. I paid cover price (never again!) and thus began my journey into comics and one of the most expensive hobbies I’ve ever had.

Whew, now if you made it through all that we can get back to the review of these 3 omnibus. Fair warning this and probably all of my reviews will have spoilers. I also think each one of these books could stand on their own, I read them over 6 months ago and my memory of where one ended and the next picked up is all kind of merged now, hence my decision to review all 3 together instead of as individuals.

Before reading these books, to me the X-Men were the team that opened up the show; Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast, Gambit, Jean Grey, Storm, Rogue, Jubilee and Professor X. So I was shocked to find out Beast had actually left the X-Men to become an Avenger, and that Gambit, Rogue and Jubilee didn’t even exist yet. If you know the history of X-Men comics please feel free to correct anything I mention in the comics below. If you don’t know about X-Men comics you may find it interesting that issues #1-66 were the original run by Stan Lee, however issues #67-93 due to a decline in sales are actually just reprints of some of the more popular X-Men stories. In 1975 the title relaunched with Giant Size X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #94 was the first main line issue with new content in over 5 years. The original X-Men team only consisted of 5 members; Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Beast, Angel and Iceman and was lead by Professor X. With the mid 70’s relaunch the team added some new faces such us Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm and Colossus. This new team also included members such as Banshee, Sunfire and Thunderbird though their memberships didn’t last too long.

The Giant Size X-Men #1 introduces us to the new team, and shows us how Professor X found them and recruited them to the X-Men. We also find out the original X-Men team has been captured and the first mission of the new team is to rescue the original 5 members. The beast which captured the original team was feeding off the mutants energy and allowed Cyclops to escape, knowing he would return with help to rescue his fellow X-Men. Long story short they save the original X-Men and end up having 13 members on the team. This doesn’t last long as the original members start to feel as if they have outgrown the X-Men. The first omnibus shows us Cyclops struggles to lead the new group and really make them work as a team. Thunderbird gets killed, Banshee loses his voice and quits the team. The sentinels return and take some of the X-Men to space which plants the seeds for the phoenix saga, where Jean Grey presumed dead is brought back to life as the Phoenix.

The second omnibus begins with issue #132, the X-Men are trying to recruit Kitty Pryde to join Xaviers school for the gifted but so is Emma Frost of the Hellfire club, ultimately the X-Men get captured and brain washed by the hellfire club, Phoenix then spirals out of control leading us into the Dark Phoenix saga where Jean would make the ultimate sacrifice and kill herself in order to prevent herself from causing further harm. Within this second omnibus is also the famous two-issue story ‘Days of Future Past’ where a future Kitty Pryde takes over her younger body to help the present day X-Men prevent an apocalyptic future. Cyclops leaves the team, moves to Alaska and meets Madelyne Pryor. It also includes Avengers Annual #10 which introduced us to Rogue and her ability to nullify others abilities. All in all this omnibus was a great read.

The third omnibus picks up right on the heels of the second with issue #154. Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel) is an interim member of the X-Men after being touched by Rogue in Avengers Annual #10 and hasn’t regained all of her memories or abilities. Storm becomes a punk girl, Cyclops gets to know his father Corsair better, Wolverine goes to Japan to get married, and Colossus sister Illyana spends some time in limbo with Belasco. This omnibus has the God Loves Man Kills graphic novel where the government plans to exterminate mutant-kind and the X-Men are forced to team up with Magneto in order to rescue Xavier.

This wasn’t the X-Men I remembered from the 90’s cartoons, this was their origins. Some of the stories within are some of the most popular and retold X-Men stories of all time and I cannot recommend these 3 books enough to any X-Men fan or anybody looking to get into Marvel comics. I am excited to continue reading X-Men and see how characters like Gambit, Psylocke, and Jubilee come into the fold. But for now, this is exactly what I was looking for, and far more entertaining then I ever imagined reading comics would ever be.

Pokemon GO – Kanto Dex Complete

Posted MaceLeave a commentPosted in Gaming, News

After just over two years, yesterday I was finally able to complete the original Kanto pokedex in Pokemon GO. It took me a lot longer than some but I do like to think I am quite casual when it comes to Pokemon games in general. I completed 150/151 and received the certificate when I was in the 5th and 6th grade on my blue and yellow versions, and also completed 721/721 several years later in pokemon Y. I haven’t got huge into Gen 7 yet. I played through moon and currently playing through UltraSun but haven’t begun migrating my Gen 6 guys over due to the lack of a national pokedex.

Anyways, back to Pokemon GO. I had been sitting on 148/151 for a while. Only needing #115 Kangaskhan, #122 Mr. Mime, and #150 Mewtwo. If you are familiar with Pokemon GO you may already know that Kangaskhan is regional to Australia and Mr. Mime to Europe, and up until recently Mewtwo was only available through EX Raids which required an invite to. Well thanks to the Professor Willow’s Global Research Challenge Ultra Bonus Event, for a limited time regional pokemon are able to be hatched in 7km eggs and Mewtwo is a standard Raid boss.

As soon as Mewtwo went live on September 20th my local raid group chat had people to group with and since Thursday, Ashley and I have caught 4 out of 5 Mewtwos each.

It took roughly 15 super incubators (which hatch 3 eggs each, so 45 or so hatches) but I was able to get 4 Mr. Mimes and a Kangaskhan that finally hatched yesterday which completed the Kanto pokedex.

 

Hopefully we will see the addition of Generation 4 soon, as well as future events which will allow us to get regional pokemon without actually travelling the globe.