For all its mistakes and strokes of genius I like Marvel comics. Sure I have my complaints about Spiderman's clone saga and poor choices made by Queseda and company but on a whole it's still enjoyable. One thing I've always liked is that Marvel doesn't have a strong Multiverse like DC does after Infinite Crisis but that's another rant altogether. What Marvel does have is a series of off shoots of their primary universe such as Marvel Zombies, Marvel Apes, Marvel 1604, and what I've come to talk about today the Mangaverse.
It should be stated that I love Manga and I hold no standing on whether western comics or eastern manga are better than the other, this is a debate for another day. This is simply my understanding of how this first volume stands up over all.
The Mangaverse was authored by many people from the American comic book industry so right there we have a problem. Manga is used in English colloquialism to describe comics from Japan so when you have no Japanese artists working on the story or art it already loses its meaning. However that isn't to say the artists are bad as Ben Dunn (Ninja High School) whose work I enjoyed, authored two of the issues we'll look at today.
The whole of the TPB is split into two different sections, The "New Dawn" storyline is a crossover event which brings many of the Marvel heroes together against a common foe while the rest of the chapters are a pseudo origins and tie-in to the "New Dawn" story line. This is where the book has the most problem is where the focus is and the continuity established in other chapters.
Let's start with "New Dawn" where our focus is brought to a very young looking Dr. Banner who is on an island owned by Stark Industries. As he wanders around he runs into many of the other Avengers members including Wasp, Antman, Ironman, and Captain America. Ironman, Captain America, and Nick Fury hold a meeting which gives us our exposition to a whole other story that happened before issue 1. Now, why would they do that? Ben Dunn wrote this whole story and is now establishing that something happened before we even started reading the first page? I look back on the wise words of Stan Lee "Every comic is someone's first" especially when it's Issue 1 which should be an origin story or at least have a story summed up as to the origins of these characters. The story continues with an evil plan by Hydra to capture Dr. Banner whose plan goes awry as Dr. Banner discovers his new power to become the incredible Hulk.
So what did this first chapter do right/wrong? Well, I like the idea of the Hulk being a large Godzilla like monster it seems to fit hand in hand as the beast of rage sort of speak wreaks havoc on the city of New York. the story seems like such a good start and if you know your marvel characters it may not take much for you to connect the dots for what happened in flash backs. However that's just as much the problem, there are so many characters to follow that it becomes difficult to keep track of the story's progress. It establishes a world already in progress so it feels like as if you are a new reader to the Marvel continuity all over again which may give Marvel fans an idea what it's like on the other side of the fandom. To illustrate the story starts it's focus on Dr. Banner then shifts to Tony Stark, then Baron Strucker, Mordo, Dr. Strange, then intersecting into a mish mash of confusion.
The next chapter is the Avengers by the U-Don Crew who's work I like for their Street Fighter comics. The Avengers are brought together in order to decide how to defeat the Hulk and come up with the assembly of the Ultimate Ironman (not to be confused with the Ironman of the Ultimate universe) a giant robot the likes of which has never been seen. Apocalypse wants that power for himself so now the Avengers must defeat Apocalypse before they move on to the Hulk.
First thing, why are the Avengers fighting the X-men villains? I know the name Apocalypse could be a general villain name that can be passed down easily but there are some things you don't change about story continuity when taking it into your own hands. The Art here is nice and to be expected from U-Don's great workforce but I think one thing that could have been improved on is the Avenger's costumes. They aren't as iconic as the villains and they missed the potential for giving them uniforms similar to the Power Ranger/ Super Sentai.The story is very basic with no real personality displayed but a fun to read story none the less.
Fantastic Four by Adam Warren is probably the most original interpretation of the FF since it's conception. The Fantastic Four are recruits for a science experiment and are given super suits to channel their psychic energy in order to defeat the monster Annihilus.
Why do I say this is the most original? Well none of the characters are at all like the classic dysfunctional family we know and love today they have completely different personalities and quite an amazing author to show it off. Though the color seems bland as sometimes the blue tone of the fights and shadows makes the overall blend together and hard to differentiate figures. The writing is great thanks to Adam Warren's method of dialogue, where this could have been a general origin or introduction chapter is put together because of the great moments the characters the characters speak their mind.
Ghost Rider by Chuck Austen...Jonny Blaze fights demons as Ghost rider.
Obviously from my unenthusiastic description I really don't like this and no one should. The writing's alright and makes me chuckle here and there but over all a bad initial story. This is lazy illustration and writing at it's worst. Most of the panels are the same shot with a slight change in facial expressions and the colors just run together alot of the time. More to the point is that that Jonny Blaze is PLAGIARIZED from Ryoji Kaji from Evangelion. I think a better Title for this would be Ghost Rider by artist Copy Paste. Everything I could say from this point on would just be a rant so let's move on.
The Punisher by Peter David and Lea Hernandez. This one was...awkward. The Punisher is known for being violent and dark and this is like a pathetic parody. The Punisher is a geisha in black and white who's taking down the yakuza but keeps a secret identity as a prep school principal...and hold a secret cursed sword to fight demons...and a nosy sister...ugh.
This is pretty different and is a pretty difficult one to call. It doesn't remind me of the quality I expect of Marvel and reminds me too much of a web comic. The characters are flat, the backgrounds are either too loud or non existent and whats worse I feel like this could have been better based on the people working on this story. The story it's self is an alright start but the inclusion of the Punisher's sister just takes away the attention where it needs to be which is on the main character.
Spiderman by Kaare Andrews. I've wanted to review this one for a while especial Linkara's review on Atop the Fouth Wall. So Peter Parker is a ninja and is trained by his uncle/sensei Ben who is killed by his nemesis/cousin Venom. Thus begins a story of revenge and action as Spiderman protects the city and seeks payback.
This was actually a pretty good one, sure there is alot of bad dialogue and some grammatical errors but in the end I wanted to see this story fleshed out. Now Linkara has a gripe with the art but I like the art it's a style similar to Shaman King author Hiroyuki Takei and urban graffiti which is a matter of style over realism. Also it should be noted that instead of a theme of responsibility it should have gone for a theme of revenge which is a theme more common to Japanese literature. The author continues to express the idea of responsibility which feels misguided in order to keep Spiderman on track to being Spiderman. The art is never dull with some very nice composition that almost feels like each panel could have been it's own poster.
X-Men by C.B. Cebulski and Jeff Matsuda. Umm...so Rogue is possessed by Magneto's ghost and needs a new body. So, the X-Men try to save her and defeat Magneto's ghost? This one threw me for a loop. The story feels like a good test run but in the end I feel like they to convey too much continuity into one story. This should have been our introduction into who or what the X-Men are to their world but for the life of me I don't understand if they are still mutants, witches, or what?
The art is good maybe decent but the colors are all over the place. I feel like each page spread you can find every color of the rainbow and then some. Also there is a constant continuity problem regarding Wolverine's right hand where sometimes it's a robot hand and others it's just a regular hand which needs a bit of explaining.
Now, the final story Eternity Twilight by Ben Dunn. I don't know how to tell this. This is the conclusion to the "New Dawn" storyline and that's all I can say. It fits way too much continuity into this little story. So I'll try and explain the villains just to give you an idea. At first they wanted Bruce Banner to unlock a power source to rule the world but that turns out just to be a plan for the Atlantians to rule the world but then it turns out to be a plot by Hydra to take over Atlantis but then it turns out to be a plot to summon Dormamu to take over the world...see what I mean? Add to that all the previously mentioned superheroes to save the day plus more and mess up their already previously established continuity and got an official CLUSTER FUCK.
Too much was just too much and this was one of the reasons this series of comics was not very well reputed. In addition the continuity was never consistent and as far as telling a long lasting story none were given a strong chance...except there's five volumes released in TPB. (and yes I'm going to review them all)
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