Avengerous Tales 1.6 - Avengers #11-#12

To read Avengerous Tales 1.5, go here!

Once again, it’s backstory time!  See all this extra reading I do, just to flesh out these reviews?  That’s how much I love you.  And comic books.  But mostly you.

Okay, so leading up to Tales of Suspense #61, Iron Man’s heart condition took a bit of a nosedive (that’s why you don’t smoke, idiot), so he had to wear the entire armor all the time instead of just the chest plate.  Obviously Tony Stark couldn’t be seen wandering around in Iron Man’s armor, so Stark just kind of disappeared with no good explanation, leaving Iron Man as the prime suspect in his disappearance.  It all came to a head in Tales of Suspense #61, in which Tony stumbled on the idea of being sick and bedridden as an excuse for his absence.  Unfortunately, the Mandarin had to go and complicate things by destroying Tony’s house with a giant energy beam from space, making the world think everyone’s favorite playboy engineer is dead.  Iron Man runs off to find the source of the beam.

Which brings us to today’s tale.

Civil War #5-#6

So far we have seen:

Part One

Part Two

Civil War #3-#4

 

So far we have seen:

Part One

Civil War #1-#2

 

Welcome, nerds and nerdlings, to my review of Civil War, a.k.a. Marvel’s Identity Crisis.  Why yes, yes it is that bad, thanks for asking.

Amazing Spider-Man vs. the Prodigy #1

You know when comic books make good public service announcements?  Never.  Or at least, this comic isn’t an example of one.  It was published in 1976 and is now in the public domain, presumably because Marvel wants nothing more to do with the thing.

Spider-Man 2

Back in June, I devoted an entire entry to ranting about how confused and ridiculous 2002’s Spider-Man is, no matter what the bulk of the critics and movie-goers would have you believe.  I don’t want to drive a stake through it or anything.  It’s just a bad movie.  Surprisingly enough, I was not driven out of the superhero fandom on a rail for expressing this opinion, so here I am, testing my luck again by reviewing the equally stupid 2004 sequel, Spider-Man 2.

Spider-Man

In 2002, among the hottest of hot summer blockbusters was Sam Raimi’s take on Marvel’s wondrous wall-crawler, the spectacular Spider-Man, which earned a whopping 821.7 million dollars at the worldwide box office; was nominated for two Oscars, two Grammies, and a whole slew of other accolades; and spawned two sequels over the next five years.  The film remains popular to this day, scoring an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and many, many devoted fans.

And I don’t like it.

I will now take a short recess to dodge the bushels of rotten vegetables being thrown at my head, and then we shall proceed.