World Comic Book Review

19th March 2024

Edge of Venomverse: War Stories #1 (Review)

Edge of Venomverse: War Stories #1 Marvel Comics, September 2017 Writers: Cullen Bunn, Nnedi Okorafor, Declan Shalvey, Magdalene Vissagio, Aaron Covington Ever have the urge to read the equivalent of something greasy, fried, and contained in a cardboard bucket? Then please read on. “Edge of Venomverse: War Stories” is a new single publication from American … Read more

Spider-Men II #1 (review)

Spider-Men II #1 Marvel Comics, July 2017 Writer: Brian Michael Bendis “Spider-Men II” is a new comic book series from American publisher Marvel Comics. It focuses on the two characters that are currently fighting crime under the Spider-Man alter ego, named Peter Parker and Miles Morales. The former, a character established in 1962, is well-known … Read more

Diversity at Marvel Comics: “Avengers” #6 (Review)

Diversity at Marvel Comics: “Avengers” #6 Marvel Comics, May 2017 Writer: Mark Waid An executive manager of American comic book publisher Marvel Comics was last week reported as blaming the recent shift into gender and ethnic diversity amongst its character properties as the reason for a sharp decline in sales. The observation has been controversial … Read more

Spider-Man #12 (Review)

Spider-Man #12
Marvel Comics, March 2017
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

The cover to this comic book, produced by American comic book publisher Marvel Comics, features two people, upside-down, kissing in a nod to the famous kissing scene between actors Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the motion picture “Spider-Man” (2002). Both of the characters featured on the cover of this comic book, Spider-Man and Spider-Woman (a character in her own title, called “Spider-Gwen”), are irregularly moulded, in a figurative sense. The large American comic book publishers maintain vast but frayed continuities, and use parallel universes as a plot device to allowing various characters to interact, where common sense or the publisher’s continuity itself would otherwise dictate that they should not interact. In this case, Miles Morales, a version of the famous Marvel character Spider-Man by originating from now defunct parallel universe, is kissing Gwen Stacey, a version of Spider-Woman but from yet a separate dimension. This is much like a shell game: it takes concentrating to follow the sleight-of-hand and determine in which universe the characters are operating.

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