Quarter Bin 88 "Marvel's All New, All Different"

Back issues of the recent past this edition: All-New All-Different Avengers #1, the Uncanny Inhumans #2, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1, Secret Wars #5, Secret Wars Too, Spider-Woman #1, Star Wars: Darth Vader #11, and Web-Warriors #2.

All-New All-Different Avengers #1 (Marvel)
From January 2016.
The Alex Ross cover doesn't exactly scream the same "youth" as the lineup and interior of this revamped team, featuring characters from the Ms. Marvel generation.  Written by Mark Waid and drawn by Adam Kubert (the brother who worked on Action Comics with Geoff Johns, not the one who worked on Batman with Grant Morrison), this is exactly an updated version of the kind of stuff Marvel has been doing since the '60s, and hey, it seems to be working quite well for them, right? 

The Uncanny Inhumans #2 (Marvel)
From January 2016.
With the heavy role the Inhumans are playing lately, not just in Civil War II but generally speaking (Marvel is kind of desperate for them to replace the X-Men, whose movies are not currently controlled by Dr. Disney), it was kind of crucial for the comics to be good.  I knew Charles Soule had it in him, and Steve McNiven has been a heavy-hitter (collaborations with Mark Millar on the first Civil War and the original "Old Man Logan," for instance) for years, so creatively, I have nothing to complain about.  The comic is good, too, with Black Bolt falling out with his lady Medusa, and their son Ahura falling under the influence of Kang, an arc that accelerates giddily throughout this issue.  I have plenty of evidence that Soule knows how to write great comics (his Secret Wars version of Civil War, for instance, in case you thought I'd referenced that title for the last time), so it's good to see that he started out well here, too.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 (Marvel)
From March 2016.
This is stuff adapted from the TV series, which I've never particularly made a habit of watching (I'm a Flash guy, with some real effort toward DC's Legends of Tomorrow tossed in), but I knew Agent Coulson had a flying car he calls Lola.  Apparently he named it in honor of his ex-wife.

Secret Wars #5 (Marvel)
From October 2015.
As A DC guy, I tend to be amused at the way fans and creators alike treat Dr. Doom like a god.  I just never understood it.  In this entry of Jonathan Hickman's ultimate Fantastic Four (sendoff) saga, Doom literally has become a god, and the entire issue is just kind of Doom complaining about it with a lackey, because he recently offed Dr. Strange and no longer feels challenged.  You know what?  I'm not even going to talk about this issue.  Let's just move on, because Hickman's got better material in:

Secret Wars, Too (Marvel)
From January 2016.
This is literally Hickman and Marvel joking around about the whole Secret Wars concept.  Marvel has gotten to the point where it either publishes straight-out humor titles, titles obviously inspired by successful movies, or the handful of serious stuff it allows itself to do, so it's not at all surprising that something like Hickman literally laughing about his apparent inability to finish his story happens in something Marvel itself published.  Marvel has become the House Wizard Created.  All throughout the '90s, Wizard was a massive Marvel fan service, and introduced the cartoony approach to fandom that has since gone mainstream.  Hickman's piece is brilliant, in which he imagines a conversation with Dr. Doom about what the conclusion should be.  Then there's some middling stuff that's just kind of there, and then indy creators Rob Guillory (Chew) and Eric Powell (The Goon) provide some of their trademark wit.  I actually have to give Marvel props for releasing this.  In another era, this would've been a jump-the-shark moment, but this one's all about that kind of irreverence.

Spider-Woman #1 (Marvel)
From January 2016.
This one's famously the cover advance solicits spoiled as feature the pregnant Jessica Drew.  Dennis Hopeless somewhat hopefully assumes readers would be familiar with Spider-Woman's somewhat odd supporting cast (the guy who's dressed up as a porcupine), so he spends the entire issue presenting the awkward situation of superhero being unable to superhero while pregnant.  It's bold in an era where it's kind of anathema to be pregnant (or something) to have a pregnant superhero, but one wonders if this latest calculated move to corner every market didn't miscalculate.

Star Wars: Darth Vader #11 (Marvel)
From December 2015.
Kieron Gillen normally gets pretty high marks from fans, but he apparently is somewhat uninterested in featuring Darth Vader as the lead of his own comic...

Web-Warriors #2 (Marvel)
From February 2016.
This series was recently cancelled, and Mike Costa announced to be moving on with a new Venom series, which I think will be right up his alley.  I've been a vocal of supporter of Costa for years, and long for the day he'll be a major player at the Big Two (I can't believe he's gotten less than the Greg Rucka treatment).  It may be that he simply finds it hard to use his Cobra style outside of his IDW work.  Not in this issue, though.  This one reads like a straight-up Web-Warriors edition of Cobra, detailing Electro's romp through the Spider-Verse, with Spider-Gwen (this is what Marvel thinks of as witty) filling in for the good guy Costa frequently traps in his webs (phrasing it that way totally helps make sense of Marvel thinking of him as a Spider-Man guy).  Maybe I'm just as guilty as anyone else in not giving Costa's non-Cobra work a fair shot, but it's always nice to come across work that rings so true to what I know best, because Costa's best is among the all-time best.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #1 (Marvel)

writer: Dan Slott

artist: Adam Kubert

To call this disappointing would be an insult to disappointment.  One of the many spin-off titles from Secret Wars that in no way ape what DC just did with Convergence, Renew Your Vows seemed like Spider-Man I actually wanted to read again.  Because it hearkened back to the era where I most wanted to read Spider-Man, the bi-weekly period where a team of writers wrote one excellent story after another, culminating in "O.M.I.T.," the sequel to "One More Day," the story that kicked it off.  Otherwise known as the end of the Peter Parker/Mary Jane marriange.  Which Renew Your Vows is supposed to correct.

Yeah, so that doesn't really happen.  And I don't know, but does this pretty much mean the whole Dan Slott era that succeeded the bi-weeklies really wasn't for me?  Because Slott's time with Spidey continued the arc-heavy period that he succeeded, but at the cost of distancing the wall-crawler from most of what he had once been.  This was the period where Peter finally got the hi-tech job that made him stop having to mope around all the time because things never work out for him (even though the greatest success from this career turn seems owed to Doctor Octopus from the Doctor Spider-Man era that was...much more of a Doc Ock story than it was a Spider-Man story).

Slott's the writer of Renew Your Vows.  He seems to have been absolutely the wrong choice.

This happy return to the marriage era is immediately presented as less than ideal, MJ depicted as a nagging wife.  And so why are we even doing this?  I have no idea.  Then we find out Spider-Man is doing a lot of overtime because other superheroes aren't doing their part to catch bad guys.  Then we find out why.  Then we meet Amazo Regent.  And for some reason, Venom is the villain who threatens everything Spider-Man holds dear.  Again, I have no idea why.  What does Venom have to do with Spider-Man's secret identity?  Slott doesn't explain.  It would make far more sense if, say, Norman Osborn or any villain remotely related to "One More Day" or anything from the "Big Time" (bi-weekly) era were involved...But no, Venom.  For some reason.

Then Spidey resolves this by killing Venom.  Then we fast-forward a bit and the bouncing baby Adam Kubert can't quite pull off early on is older, and we learn that Peter has consciously decided to let Regent rule New York...And on the cover for next issue?  Apparently...Venom.

It's a nightmare!  And I will not be bothering to check back in.  I've seen people complaining about the overall quality of the Convergence spin-offs.  I personally questioned the value of Convergence: Superman, which finally gave us a story with Lois and Clark having a baby.  I mean, a little late, right?  (Except that's a trio that might show up again if DC ever follows up on their role in helping sort out Crisis On Infinite Earths as suggested in Convergence #8.)  Renew Your Vows ends up like a bad rephrasing of "Old Man Logan," a Wolverine arc that has also been revived for Secret Wars.  (I nearly decided to buy that first issue from last week after all.  I could still do so.  We'll see.)  I have fellow bloggers gushing over Secret Wars so far.  But if the rest of its spin-offs are like this...