Spider-Woman #1 (Comics Review)

Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman has faced quite an uphill battle in recent years. There was the whole “boob-window” controversy last year during the Infinity event, when her space-suit had a boob window for some inexplicable reason. And then there was the utterly horrible Milo Manara variant cover a few weeks back for her debut issue, released this week. Despite being an Avengers stalwart for a number of years, she has had a tougher time in recent years with her own books than many other characters, though she has still come out on top with others like Black Widow and Ms. Marvel and others in getting a brand-new series this year.

Spider-Woman I had quite high expectations for, I’ll admit. I love Jess as a character, thanks largely to some of Brian Michael Bendis’ work with her and what Ales Kot has been doing this year in Secret Avengers. Despite the controversy, I was really looking forward to this book, but unfortunately, things just don’t work out at all. Writer Dennis Hopeless dumps you straight into the middle of Spider-Verse without any kind of context at all and it is more an ensemble title rather than a Spider-Woman title. Most disappointing.

Arrow Season 3 Ep 7 (TV Show Review)

Last week we got to see something spectacular in Arrow. Ted Grant embraced his history as a vigilante, known as the Wildcat, and we learned that he was taking care of the Glades before Oliver Queen ever came back and started taking on the villains of Starling City. It was a pretty emotionally-charged episode with lots of action as well that also segued into the growing relationship between Ollie and Roy as mentor and apprentice, mirroring that of other character pairs on the shows such as Ted-Laurel and Malcolm-Thea. It was a great episode, and it only left me wanting more.

In the new episode, “Draw Back Your Bow“, we see the debut of Cupid, a woman super-obsessed with the Arrow who wants to become his lover, someone who can take care of him since he takes care of all of Starling. She made her debut by killing of Isaac Stanzler, who used to be the Arsenal to Ted Grant’s Wildcat a few years ago and who was the villain last week. As is usual on the show, we got to see some real-time commentary on how things are with Team Arrow, and we also see that Ray Palmer has some really big designs for what he is going to do with Queen Consolidated and its tech resources. Not a mind-blowing episode per se, but this one can easily fly under the radar, and I’d caution you against dismissing this one off-hand.

Comics Picks For 12.11.2014

Getting on a roll again, this week I managed to repeat the “Magic 40” with 2 graphic novels and 38 singles, with many of the latter being absolutely new series, so that was a lot of fun for the most part.

My top picks for the surprise hits of the week would be Archer & Armstrong: One Percent #1  from Valiant Comics, Deep State #1 from Boom Studios, Django/Zorro #1 from Dynamite Entertainment and Vertigo Comics, and The Kitchen #1 from Vertigo Comics also. The most disappointing comics of this week were  Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1 and Death of Wolverine: Logan Legacy #4 both from Marvel Comics, New 52 – Batman #36 from DC Comics and Grimm Fairy Tales: Cfinderella #1 from Zenescope Entertainment. Other than that, the regularly great titles like Hexed, Fables, New Suicide Squad, Red Sonja and Unity all proved to be immensely fun.

The graphic novels for this week were King Conan: The Hour of The Dragon by Timothy Truman, Tomás Giorello and Jose Villarrubia, and Fables Volume 5 by Bill Willingham, Tony Akins, Jimmy Palmiotti, Daniel Vozzo, Todd Klein, James Jean, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha.

Anyway, here’s another edition of “Comics Picks For…”. Full reading list, as always, is available here and all my comics reviews are available here.