Smith's Shorter Sagas

Date Completed: 26 June, 2025 Grade: A- This volume collects Amazing Spider-Man #361-3, 378-80, Web of Spider-Man #101-3, Spider-Man #35-7, Spectacular Spider-Mn #201-3, and material from Spider-Man Unlimited #1-2, and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #28. In terms of content, this is nearly identical to Amazing Spider-Man Epic vol. 25 because they both carry the Maximum Carnage Storyline. This is also why I chose to read the Carnage line now, because I plan on reading the Spider-Man line after finishing the Fantastic Four line (which I will be starting after this line), and I wanted to give some space between this symbiote stuff and the Spider-Man comics. I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of this volume when I started reading it. The main story is Maximum Carnage, which I bought and read as the issues came out; which was tough to keep up with for a Middle Schooler. I remember at the time thinking this was one of the greatest events in Comics, but I also remember the success of the stor...

Date Completed: 24 June, 2025 Grade: B While these are meant to be kids books, this is a fun little volume, and a quick read. I’m not the biggest fan of Star Wars, but I remember watching the Ewoks cartoon show as a kid. I can remember little of that show (and have intentionally not gone back to watch it so it doesn’t take away from my impressions of this book), but as far as I can tell, the comics are original stories, and not retellings from the cartoon. I say this because I distinctly remember a stone that had a light and a dark side that was being fought over by the Ewoks and the witch Mogray which is never depicted here; even though the character Mogray does show up. The art for Ewoks is surprising detailed for a kids book. The backgrounds build an interesting world, and there is a judicious use of characters breaking the panels in an interesting way. The stories are rather generic and often rely on some magic spell to solve problems, but they’re fun and harmless, and usually have...

Date Completed: 20 June, 2025 Grade: C This is a fairly strange volume, and little of it actually feels like it was meant to be Thor’s story. The main story, and what is the subject of the title, is the Eternals Saga, but frankly this feels like an attempt to pull together Kirby’s work from the canceled Eternals comic into a more cohesive narrative, while at the same time bringing the Eternals into the Marvel Universe. I’m glad I read the Eternals Complete Collection before I read this, because otherwise I think I would have been very lost while reading this volume, and likewise would have thought less of it.  I would encourage anyone to read Kirby’s Eternals just for the art alone, but from reading that I got the impression that Jack Kirby, in addition to being an amazing artist, had fantastically unique ideas, but he fumbled to maintain a coherent plot. I also suspect that while Kirby can be given credit for inventing a lot of the Marvel Universe, he needed Stan Lee to basically ...

Date Completed: 14 June, 2025 Grade: B- This volume collects The Giant-Man portions of Tales to Astonish #60-69, Power Man #24-25, Black Goliath #1-5, Champions #11-13, Marvel Premiere #47-48, and a back-up story from Iron Man #44. Covering so many different books makes this appear to be another hodgepodge Epic volume on the surface. However, it actually breaks down easily into four different parts which chronicle some major changes for the Ant-Man and Giant-Man characters. Part I are the Tales to Astonish issues. I've always had a soft spot for these shorter stories and the Marvel comics that put two heroes together in one book. I do think it is a little weird that these last issues were not in the first volume, since Marvel had crammed them all into a single volume for the Essentials line. Perhaps splitting them up is due to the extra cost of having them in color and trying to keep these volumes at a semi-reasonable price. Anyway, this issues are fine, but honestly a little borin...

Date Completed: 9 June, 2025 Grade: C+ This was a weird one. This volume collects Journey into Mystery  #503-13, & -1; Valkyrie #1; and Hercules and the Heart of Chaos #1-3. I generally like Tom DeFalco's work, and I enjoyed the concept of this volume, but it felt a little stretched out. The basic premise of the Journey into Mystery issues is that following the Worldengine storyline from the previous volume , and the death of Thor from the Onslaught event, the Asgardians had become mortals and placed on Earth without any knowledge of their godhood. Red Norvell (Odin's back-up Thor) attempts to find and reassemble the gods. So given where Marvel was at the time, post-Onslaught, this is an interesting and intriguing idea. I think the problem for me was that the Asgardians were in their mortal guises for so much of the run, again with no knowledge of their true background, that their being together and fighting against the main villain just felt forced. It was also weird that...

Completed: Jan. 29, 2025 Grade: A This game was hilarious. It is a point and click adventure game using Baroque paintings for the art, and music from the same era. Like any adventure game, some of the puzzles are a little obscure, and I needed to look up some of the answers (particularly after having started over the weekend then having to put it down as the work week started - I had forgotten what I was doing when I picked it back up). There is a cheat where you can stab your way through the game, and I started down that path, but decided to restart and play without murder. It has a highly satisfying ending, and even more satisfying credit scene - probably one of the most brilliant ways to handle credits that I could imagine in the context of the game. All in all, it was a lot of fun!

Date Completed: 7 June, 2025 Grade: A I remember when I first saw an ad for the CrossGen Universe comics. It was in an issue of Knights of the Dinner Table , and it was a comic strip of the characters from KODT discussing the premise of the sigil and shared universe (known as the Sigilverse). I thought it sounded stupid. One of the things I loved about Marvel was its shared universe, but it felt like that was something which grew organically into being; but this CrossGen thing felt forced. At the time I was working at a Barnes and Noble, and so I began seeing some of the trade paperbacks come out, and I was impressed with the artwork and the colors. I eventually decided to give the book Sojourn a chance because I had read good things about it, and Greg Land seemed to be the hottest penciler in the industry (if the accusations of his simply tracing were widely made at this point, I was unaware). Boy was I impressed. So, I decided to try another CrossGen book. I don't remember what t...

Date Completed: 3 June 2025 Grade: B+ This was a treat. I was a little worried after the last volume of Thor that this would be more excessively 90s in tone. A frankly it is in a way, but in a fresh new way. The volume begins with a four-part story by Warren Ellis that keeps Thor grounded on Earth, but still maintains elements of Norse mythology in the background (a threat to the world tree Yggdrasil). The art by Mike Deodato Jr. is showing that bridge that occurred in the 90s between classic comics and the more modern age we are in now, with bigger, unusual panels, and a greater detail (without the oddities of proportion that were the trademarks of Liefeld and McFarlane in the 90s). Sure, Thor has a chest the size of Manhattan and hair reminiscent of Medusa (both the mythological character and the Marvel Inhuman...), but it was over the top in a fun way. I think seeing the "Computer Color" credit given to Malibu (the once-publisher was bought my Marvel in 1994) also provide...

Date Completed: 1 June, 2025 Grade: A- I was very worried this was going to be another Black Widow volume 1 situation. Hawkeye as a character started as a villain for Iron Man, and eventually joined the Avengers, which is where most of his character development occurred. But a volume about Hawkeye surely couldn't be just a bunch of Avengers reprints, and yet these issues couldn't be ignored either. I was very pleased to see that rather than the short mish-mosh of parts of books (like in Black Widow), this volume contained whole stories, and for those early Avengers issues, kept only issues which led to major character developments. There are the occasional weird one-shot issues (like Marvel Tales #100) which are necessary for completing Hawkeye's non-Avengers appearances, but those are fine. It does seem that the goal was to include stories necessary for the Hawkeye mini-series of 1983, and to this point, the volume also contains stories which are specific to the character...