Phantom Eagle
05-11-2011, 08:56 AM
This trade paperback is an excellent read. Random thoughts follow.
1) First of all, I'd like to say thanks to Marvel for collecting it as a trade.
2) Secondly, thanks to Marvel for including the necessary bits from Age of Heroes issue #3.
3) To Fred Van Lente, I say "Bravo". Nicely done, sir. This book is well-written and well-paced, it's funny, the story is well-constructed, the foreshadowing is restrained and properly placed, and overall this is a very enjoyable Marvel comics reading experience. It moves. Humor, character development, action, meaningful-to-the-story exotic locales, pathos, drama, more humor, surprises, reveals, surprises within reveals, creepy dudes, obscure secret societies: It's all in there. I read the entire thing in one sitting.
4) To Jefte Palo, I say "A Thousand Thank Yous". Lovely. If I may, shades of Chaykin meets Romita the Younger, distilled through Miller, without the things that sometimes bug me about those guys. Very moody, very gritty, sometimes cartoony, overall excellent. Great storytelling. From the script samples in the book, one can note that Fred likes to call his shots, and the book is all the more cinematic for it, from what I can see. Very nice collaborative effort. The device for showing who Taskmaster is "channeling" works wonderfully, especially the way it is built up to be part of the big payoff. Art and story mesh completely. A thousand and first Thank You.
5) Not only did I actually buy it, I even read my own copy. The same week that it came out. You do not know how much of a compliment that is. Normally, I'd read the library's copy of the trade, sometime between a year and a lifetime later. I blame Dan Slott and Christos Gage for making Taskmaster interesting again.
6) This takes the character to the next level. The ultimate inside guy. He's so inside, even he don't know how inside he is. Very Tales of Suspense meets A Scanner Darkly. I get that it's a popular angle, given Sleeper, Incognito, etc. It fits this character, and updates him in the MU.
7) I saw it coming. Nicely done, burying the foreshadowing in the dialogue, but not dragging it out when the story needed to move.
8) Very Marvel ending. Shades of Romita the Elder/Big John Buscema-era Marvel-style pathos, with a slightly upbeat twist.
9) Thanks again to Marvel's Collections Department for the ancillary material. As always, anytime I need to catch up on the characters or the universe, I look to whatever IotMU-type files are at hand. In an espionage/thriller/suspense/noir book like this, it's nice to have some material right there in the volume, for reference. That way, I get to feel like a Hydra gruntling or AIM operative, by reviewing the "files", whenever I need to drop out of the story because I say "huh?" about something in the greater MU. Then I can just resume reading, without having to Google. You had me at Secret Empire. Also, whoever wrote the text for the IotMU section did a great job. Very humorous. Well in keeping with the tone of the piece itself. Was it Fred? After seeing his work in the Origins one-shot, I see he has a facility for this type of thing. There's something about having art next to the dry, wiki-like text that makes the info stay in my head better than if I read it online, too. Really, you had me at Secret Empire.
I give it 5 out of a possible 5 Stolen Fighting Styles. Two severed thumbs, breaking the panel border. Really interesting script sample. Kudos.
1) First of all, I'd like to say thanks to Marvel for collecting it as a trade.
2) Secondly, thanks to Marvel for including the necessary bits from Age of Heroes issue #3.
3) To Fred Van Lente, I say "Bravo". Nicely done, sir. This book is well-written and well-paced, it's funny, the story is well-constructed, the foreshadowing is restrained and properly placed, and overall this is a very enjoyable Marvel comics reading experience. It moves. Humor, character development, action, meaningful-to-the-story exotic locales, pathos, drama, more humor, surprises, reveals, surprises within reveals, creepy dudes, obscure secret societies: It's all in there. I read the entire thing in one sitting.
4) To Jefte Palo, I say "A Thousand Thank Yous". Lovely. If I may, shades of Chaykin meets Romita the Younger, distilled through Miller, without the things that sometimes bug me about those guys. Very moody, very gritty, sometimes cartoony, overall excellent. Great storytelling. From the script samples in the book, one can note that Fred likes to call his shots, and the book is all the more cinematic for it, from what I can see. Very nice collaborative effort. The device for showing who Taskmaster is "channeling" works wonderfully, especially the way it is built up to be part of the big payoff. Art and story mesh completely. A thousand and first Thank You.
5) Not only did I actually buy it, I even read my own copy. The same week that it came out. You do not know how much of a compliment that is. Normally, I'd read the library's copy of the trade, sometime between a year and a lifetime later. I blame Dan Slott and Christos Gage for making Taskmaster interesting again.
6) This takes the character to the next level. The ultimate inside guy. He's so inside, even he don't know how inside he is. Very Tales of Suspense meets A Scanner Darkly. I get that it's a popular angle, given Sleeper, Incognito, etc. It fits this character, and updates him in the MU.
7) I saw it coming. Nicely done, burying the foreshadowing in the dialogue, but not dragging it out when the story needed to move.
8) Very Marvel ending. Shades of Romita the Elder/Big John Buscema-era Marvel-style pathos, with a slightly upbeat twist.
9) Thanks again to Marvel's Collections Department for the ancillary material. As always, anytime I need to catch up on the characters or the universe, I look to whatever IotMU-type files are at hand. In an espionage/thriller/suspense/noir book like this, it's nice to have some material right there in the volume, for reference. That way, I get to feel like a Hydra gruntling or AIM operative, by reviewing the "files", whenever I need to drop out of the story because I say "huh?" about something in the greater MU. Then I can just resume reading, without having to Google. You had me at Secret Empire. Also, whoever wrote the text for the IotMU section did a great job. Very humorous. Well in keeping with the tone of the piece itself. Was it Fred? After seeing his work in the Origins one-shot, I see he has a facility for this type of thing. There's something about having art next to the dry, wiki-like text that makes the info stay in my head better than if I read it online, too. Really, you had me at Secret Empire.
I give it 5 out of a possible 5 Stolen Fighting Styles. Two severed thumbs, breaking the panel border. Really interesting script sample. Kudos.