'Spider-Man: India' Review

So this exists.

I bought these four issues a really long time ago but didn't get around to reading it for a long time. Now I finally know that...I wasn't missing much. Much like the Mangaverse Spider-Man, this one has all the basic Spidey elements that are given cultural twist. But I feel that it's done in much more clumsy way than the mangaverse version.

Peter Parker is now Pativr Prabhakar. Uncle Ben is Uncle Bhim. Aunt May is Aunt Maya. We're in Mumbai. So on and so forth. I did really like that they use a lot of Indian terms in this comic and they have a glossary in the back explaining these slang terms. It's always fun to learn new words while enjoying a comic. I guess the first thing that I noticed about this comic is that the art is really not up to par with Marvel's standards. After doing some reading online, I found out that this was developed by Gotham Entertainment in India and then just published by Marvel over here. The art is just...not quite there yet.

I probably don't need to even explain the plot. It's just basic Spidey plot in India. Really no surprises at all. The Mangaverse Spider-Man at least had the random Hulk cameo, as strange as that was. This one is formulaic every step of the way. I thought it was pretty awesome that instead of playing Football or Basketball, Flash Thompson is a Cricket star. One moment that cracked me up is during a dramatic cricket match, Pativr has just joined the team and he's up to bat. He hits the ball far with his super strength but it goes towards a no run zone so his team loses the game. As soon as they lose, the coach goes "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, PRABHAKAR?! YOU JUST LOST US THE GAME!" Wow, what an asshole. You'd think a school coach might be a little more supportive, especially to a kid that just joined the team.

There was one scene where the writers tried to tie in some Indian mythology about men vs. demons but it really just had no purpose being in the story and made me forget that I was reading a Spidey comic. There's a random Venom reference towards the end that isn't explained on any level and then leaves it wide open for a new story arc. But that never happened so...there ya have it.

I do really like how Spider-Man himself looks in his Indian costume. But that's about as cool as it gets. This comic suffers from the issue covers being much more cool than anything that happens inside. I personally think that only way a person could really love this comic is if you've got personal ties to India and happen to love Spider-Man. If you're really hardcore into Spidey, maybe give this one a try but that's about it.

I wish I could say more about this but there's not much to tell. It's Spider-Man in India. That's it.


Spider-Man: India - 5.6/10

'Marvel Mangaverse: Spider-Man' #1

Well, this is an interesting beast. The Marvel Mangaverse comics ran from 2000 to 2002 and some of the characters got their own spin-off series, such as Spider-Man. I was a little reluctant about how this would be but I was pleasantly surprised.

Plot Summary: So this is a short and sweet issue 1, it moves quite fast. All of the basic Spider-Man plot elements are there: Peter lives with his aunt and uncle, Mary Jane and Flash and Gwen are all in it, and several other characters from the universe. But everything has been given a Japanese twist. Uncle Ben is Peter's sensei and he is killed by Venom, who is a large...guy in samurai armor. In school, Peter's teacher is Doc Oc, which I thought was kind of funny. Venom takes orders from the Kingpin, who kind of acts as the Yakuza boss stereotype. Now that Peter is the last surviving member of the 'Spider Clan', his life is threatened by the Kingpin. Peter dons his Spider-Man costume and fights Venom and some foot ninjas in a street battle and essentially impresses him quite a bit.

Kaare Andrews did the writing and art for this, which really surprised me. A lot of the panel layout shots are a lot of fun, especially in the action scenes.

There are couple elements that I'm confused about. For starters, how old are these characters? At first, I thought Peter was just a boy, but then when he's in school, it appears to be high school. The art style is great but it makes it a bit confusing as to what age group we're in. There's a moment in the beginning when Peter has a nightmare during class about Uncle Ben's death. When Professor Doc Oc asks him to leave, one kid in the class mutters 'WHATTA FREAK...PROBABLY KILLED HIS SENSEI HIMSELF...' Wow. That was uncalled for. During the final battle, there's a random moment that confuses the hell out of me: Spider-Man knocks down Venom and is about to strike the 'final blow' or what have you. He says 'Any final words, demon?' when suddenly THE HULK comes out of NOWHERE and rips through the entire building...? What? The this isn't a Hulk we're used to, he's literally the size of a building. Why is the Hulk suddenly in this comic with no warning? Why is he tearing through a city? Why is no one REACTING to the Hulk being here? No one even seems to acknowledge it. What the hell. And the final splash page of the comic is Peter deciding to save the city instead of going after Venom, with The Hulk chasing after him and Mary Jane. So the Hulk is evil or something? He doesn't speak. He's just in two panels in the whole comic! I need an explanation or something. I'll have to find issue 2 to figure out what's going on, I guess. Bizarre.

Overall, I thought this was a fun issue and I'd like to read more. Some of the Japanese twists were quite fun. On the cover of the issue, they have MARVEL and the writer's name written in Japanese Katakana, (MAABERU and KAARE ANDORYUUZ) which I thought was a really nice touch.

An interesting addition to the Spider-Man library, give it a read if you can!


Marvel Mangaverse: Spider-Man #1 - 7.9/10


Next up, I'm going to check out SPIDER-MAN: INDIA...

'The New Avengers Volume 3' Review

Picked up this volume a while back, it collects issues #16-24 of The New Avengers. While it's quite good, it suffers from a problem I have with some volumes like this. Every single issue is illustrated by the same artists...except one. JUST ONE. So this volume starts off with a pretty unusual art style for current Marvel stuff, kind of a fun 70's style, more cartoon-ish flare to it. And that's fine but as soon as you get used to it, the next issue has a COMPLETELY different, very realistic style with lots of hatching and very thin lines. I wouldn't have a problem with this if I were reading single issues but when something is collected into a volume like this you pretty much expect the style to stay the same throughout.

Plot Summary

 In this volume, our villain is the one and only Norman Osbourne. Even though he's made comebacks an absurd amount of times for so many years it's ridiculous...he's Norman. He's a villain you can't help but enjoy. So Norman has a bunch of villainous friends on the inside and he's managed to escape from his prison. He starts building a dark army with people from A.I.M., Hydra and the Hand. Eventually things escalate to an all out brawl between The New Avengers and...The New...Dark...Avengers...yeah. Not the most original name but alright, we'll take it. All of the members of The Dark Avengers have their own agendas and you're not sure who's going to turn on who, I really enjoyed that. The final issue has some pretty fun twists as well.

The art is fantastic in this volume, Mike Deodato and Will Conrad set up their panels with great drama. Small events are in small panels and when crazy action scenes show up, they have a great use of one and two page spreads. There's a huge amount of characters packed in this volume and it's really enjoyable seeing all the dynamics between them. I really don't have much to say other than great action, great art, great characters.

The New Avengers Volume 3 - 7.6/10 

Couldn't resist posting this...

Quite accurate, I think. Unfortunately, I can't find the original post or artist to credit, found this on facebook.

'Action Comics - New 52' #13 Review

I'm a big fan of Action Comics and I haven't reviewed any on here so let's start with this one! It's a random issue I got at a comic store and it's part of the New 52 reboot that DC did. If you're unfamiliar with Action Comics, most issues are kind of their own episodic adventure, so you don't have to worry about missing the previous issue or anything. And in some cases, this one included, one issue will include multiple stories. This issue has two stories in it, both by different writers and artists.

First thing I have to say is, look at this cover. It's really well done but what is with this annoying Arrow ad taking up the top section?! C'mon DC, are we gonna see this a lot now? As if the back cover and pages throughout the comic aren't enough ads, now the front cover is getting taken over. A bit much, I think.


Anyway, the first story is called The Ghost In The Fortress of Solitude. It's kind of a fun Halloween type story, being that it takes place on Halloween. It starts with the story of Doctor Xa-Du on Kypton who his banished to the PHANTOM ZONE by his superiors. Later, we cut to the present in the fortress where Superman encounters Xa-Du still trapped in the Phantom Zone through a mirror he has. After some events,Kal-El becomes trapped in this realm but soon discovers that Krypto the SUPER DOG is also in the Phantom Zone with him. In a nutshell, a battle ensues and in the end Superman is able to pull Krypto out of the zone. While reading this, I was thinking to myself 'how did Krypto even get in there, how long has he been in there, did Superman even know' and so on. Well, this leads me to comic number two!

Far better in my opinion, the 2nd story, A Boy and His Dog, is much shorter and simpler. With very little dialogue, it's a visual story showing Krypto's life from a pup, how he got in the zone and so on. It answered all the questions I had and I found it to be a very touching little story that's only EIGHT PAGES LONG.

The art for both stories is quite good but not consistently good. The first story's artist, Travel Foreman, is really amazing in some panels but completely unimpressive in others. I think that he was trying to go for a really simplified style in some of the Phantom Zone sequences to articulate this bizarre realm that Superman is stuck in. But I felt that it didn't translate as well as it could have. Sometimes a small figure will be super detailed and a very large figure will have hardly any. I honestly thought there were different artists working on different panels but it says there's only one artist...hmm. The 2nd story's art is great all around, the inks by Andrew Hennessy are particularly great.

After glancing at the cover afterwards I noticed that the hand of Xa-Du is clutching the collar of Krypo, a nice touch!

Overall, this comic is an interesting example of how less is more. 'A Boy and His Dog' is more touching and entertaining than 'The Ghost in the Fortress of Solitude' and it does so in less than half the pages used.



Action Comics #13 - 7.4/10

'Slam Dunk' #1 Review

Slam Dunk. Classic. It's awesome. Let's discuss.

Plot Summary:

Hanamachi Sakuragi is a freakishly tall freshman who's constantly being shot down by the ladies. After seeing the beautiful Haruko Akagi in the hallway, Sakuragi is instantly head-over-heels. He discovers that she has a passion for basketball and decides he's gonna become a SPORTS GUY and win her heart. He tries out for the team but basketball ends up becoming a far more intense endeavor than he planned.

This comic is just great. It falls into that fantastic category of manga that starts off quite funny and absurd and slowly builds up the seriousness over time. After a couple volumes in, you'll find yourself deeply caring about these characters and reading some really powerful scenes that bring a tear to the eye.

But I don't want to get into the main story, this is just discussing volume one. This first book has by far the most comedy; the first few chapters are a riot. Takehiko Inoue doesn't focus on instantly throwing out basketball action, he focuses on introducing and developing plenty of characters in this high school. For me, this series reminds me of Hikaru no Go: a sports manga that has a huge amount of characters that are all ridiculously likeable. Once the 'protagonists' of the series are introduced, the other teams in the area, you'll find yourself enjoying those characters just as much.

The relationships and dialogue between everyone is hilarious, Sakuragi's "posse" in particular (on the left) really crack me up. Everyone makes fun of everyone else in this comic. 

The art is obviously great. You get to see Inoue's earlier style gradually develop into his fluid, realism. Reading this manga just makes you want to run outside and play some ball, it's really inspirational at times. If you're interested in basketball, comedy, shonen, action, slice of life, any of that good stuff, Slam Dunk is for you.

Slam Dunk #1 - 8.7/10

'Showcase Presents Green Arrow' #1 Review

Time for a change of pace! Old DC comics. Really old. Showcase Presents Green Arrow features over 500 pages of comics from 1958 to 1969. DC has released these showcases with almost all of their major titles and I wanted to check one out so I picked up Green Arrow. They're all printed in black and white so they could make them much cheaper and it really doesn't take away from the art at all. I think this is really only for intense comic nerds, these issues are old and dated as hell. If you've recently gotten into DC comics and you want to check more out, I suggest something a little more...recent. All of the dialogue in this volume is so ridiculously bad, it's good. Every single character speaks like 'HEY THERE FELLA, THAT'S JUST SWELL, WHAT THE BLUE BLAZES, WATCH IT BUSTER' and so on. I swear almost every issue in here has at least one character yelling GREAT GUNS! The amount of puns and one-liners in this volume will astound you. If you can look past how corny everything is, you might be able to really enjoy it!

Plot Summary


Almost every issue in here is six pages long. Most of them are from World's Finest Comics and Adventure Comics so they're short and sweet. There's so real surprises on the stories, usually some dastardly crook has made some evil play to steal something, Green Arrow and Speedy use their wits and gadgets to save the day. For me, the most enjoyable parts are just the absurd dialogue and situations that occur. There are some cameos in certain comics from Superboy, Superman, Batman, Martian Manhunter and so on. About halfway through the volume, there's a full issue of Justice League about Green Arrow joining the team. It was surprisingly good and my personal favorite comic featured in here. The strangest thing for me was that every comic looks and feels very similar except out of NOWHERE the last comic in here is completely different. It's suddenly has the look of 1970's comics and shows the transition from the earlier style. The panels are large and poses more dynamic, there's much more inking work going on with lots of crosshatching, the faces are large and dramatic, Green Arrow suddenly has a goatee. It was a very sudden shift in style and it felt very out of place, even though it was still good!

I couldn't help but notice that early Green Arrow is LITERALLY a copy of Bruce Wayne. Oliver Queen is a millionaire playboy with no actual superpowers. He's a detective who's created all of these wild gadgets to help him fight crime. He has a sidekick who's basically with him at all times. He has an Arrow-mobile, an Arrow-plane, even an Arrow-cave! Sounds pretty familiar...

I've noticed that there are quite of few of these showcase volumes for Batman, Justice League, etc, but Green Arrow only has one?? I'd definitely like to read more where it goes into the 70's and 80's, hopefully DC will put out another one. All in all, cheesy as it gets but an enjoyable read!

"You sure turned the tables on them, Green Arrow!"
"Yes...The Camouflage King and his men will have a tough time camouflaging themselves now - behind bars!"

Showcase Presents Green Arrow #1 - 7/10