Thursday, April 26, 2007

Marvel Team-Up

I just read Marvel Team-Up #7 (Spider-Man and Moon Knight) and Ultimate Marvel Team-Up #10 (Spider-Man and Man-Thing), which came with my recent Marvel Legends eBay acquisitions of the Moon Knight variant and Man-Thing.

Marvel Team-Up #7 is written by Robert Kirkman, who I really like.

His writing is fun, solid, complex but not convoluted, and he has some fun with Ringmaster, and Spider-Man getting chatty with Moon Knight. I'm not crazy about some of MK's dialogue, but that's probably just me.

It's illustrated by Scott Kolins, with whom I (honestly) go back and forth. I don't know why. Maybe it's just a matter of his style applied to some content that seems not-good disjoint with me. Here, it's fine. I like his Moon Knight, Spider-Man, and Ringmaster; I'm a bit blase on his Mary Jane and Peter Parker. And there are lot of panels with just figures -- no background. Not sure if that's stylistic or lazy (says the guy who can't draw).

My peeve about this issue is it's just about getting to #11 for the "real team-up".

Ultimate Marvel Team-Up #10 is way less interesting to me. Writer Brian Michael Bendis is a superstar, but why recreate a core character (the trademark of the non-continuity "Ultimate" universe) -- in this case, the Lizard -- that's counter to the original character? What, for the sake of recreating them? That's more Glen Murakami than Bruce Timm.

And there's no real team-up between Spider-Man and Man-Thing. Just an incongruent, unimportant same-place meeting that's probably there to further a plot device outside of the issue.

Mheh.

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