I bought a book I don't normally buy, lured in by the collection of characters on the cover. I know, never a solid reason to buy a book
In addition to normally not buying it, I'd also pretty much avoid reviewing it for reasons that you're either aware of or you're not, but I'm not going into here. Suffice to say you can find that story elsewhere on the blog.
But when I read this Hannibal Tabu mini-review of the book, I had to comment:
Hank Pym's role in "Mighty Avengers" #30 was one of the most insultingly stupid things to happen in comics in years. No question. He has a conversation ... let's just say that he chats with somebody who he should have no right to chat with, gets ascribed a title that makes no sense given that he was kidnapped and hidden away by the Skrulls for years, leaving the alleged role undone and untended. So even while Hercules has some fun lines ("As the Argonauts used to say to the ladies of Crete, welcome aboard!") the pathetic attempt at building Hank Pym up into being somebody past the whiny, identity-switching, wife-beating, wackjob he's been for years just fails.
Yeah, I don't know that I could add too much more to it other than it read EXACTLY like a fanfic by someone who has thought Hank Pym was just the bestest and favoritest of all Staggerin' Stan Lee's creations. You don't see this kind of four-color funny-book fellatio every day.
It's the laziest kind of "let me build up this character in an instant" garbage only seen in the aforementioned fanfic and the shittiest Silver Age books ever scene (particularly a Super Powers mini-series where they had to introduce a character that needed to impress all of the JLA).
It's an idea that was completely flawed from the start. The only thing Christos Gage could have done was just refused to be involved with it so he wouldn't be associated with such an amateur premise. But since Marvel seems to give him a lot of work substitute-scripting on books, I can't blame him for trudging through it.
But wow...other than having a talented Greek writer put a great line in the mouth of a Greek character...there was really nothing redeeming about this book.
(all of this the fault of the Wildstorm twitter account for linking to Tabu giving Ex Machina a "meh")
Posts
Yeah. Well, while I certainly don't think Pym is the "greatest of all Stan's creations", I liked reading Tales To Astonish-era Giant-Man stories as a kid and have always deplored seeing him portrayed as a jerk and worse. This does seem like an awfully contrived and hamfisted way to do it, though.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm with you on the jerk portrayal. It had run its course (if it ever really had one). I can, also, see undertaking the task of rehabilitating the character.
ReplyDeleteBut, if you're going to do it, you have to do it right. Character rehab is a crockpot recipe, not a microwave meal. You don't shove it all into a few pages because you don't think you'll be given enough time to do it right or because you just want to get to your "he's super awesome now" stories. (yeah, I know that didn't follow the crock/micro thing, but I had nothing...)
I think given the comments on CBR that the recent "Avengers Summit" did not include Slott, I'm leaning towards "didn't think he'd have time to fully do his rehab" portrayal. I think building up Pym is something that is really a multi-year sort of process, but no one has runs like that on titles anymore...
ReplyDelete