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So, in this day and age when DC are douchebags who mess things up with New 52, and don't believe audiences could accept a female superhero movie, while Marvel have hit a stride that pleases fans and casual folks alike, it's sometimes hard to remember how one came to be more a DC fan and not like Marvel.
And then something like Spiderman: Birth of Venom reminds you of exactly why. Because, back in the 80s when you started getting into proper comics, DC were reinventing the medium with mature writing, and Marvel were producing tales where both the dialogue, the thought bubbles, and the descriptive captions were all repetitively telling you what you were supposed to be seeing in the inferior art.
Yeah, you can tell I just read this collection, right?
Mostly written by Tom DeFalco, I guess I have to blame him for the crap telling us what the panels should be showing us, and the repetition. It might be the Marvel house style of the time, really - though I have some Essential Wolverine and X Men books that don't do this - but even if it were, the last two chapters, by other writers, avoid it.
The penultimate chapter, by Louise Simonson, comes over a bit better, though still has some of that style, and doesn't have as awful dialogue and phrasing as DeFalco's issues.
The last chapter, Amazing Spiderman #300, is by David Micheline, and avoids that style entirely, reading as a decent regular comic. The art by Todd MacFarlane is a bit weird, mind you - MJ suddenly is a Victoria's Secret icon in every panel, and while the story emphasises that Eddie Brock is way more the bodybuilder type than the lean Peter Parker, MacFarlane draws Petey as hugely bulked up as well.
So, a big "meh" for this 80s Spidey collection.
Thankfully there have been great Marvel titles since- Ultimates, 1602, etc. Basically from the end of the 90s they seem to have got their shit together...
And then something like Spiderman: Birth of Venom reminds you of exactly why. Because, back in the 80s when you started getting into proper comics, DC were reinventing the medium with mature writing, and Marvel were producing tales where both the dialogue, the thought bubbles, and the descriptive captions were all repetitively telling you what you were supposed to be seeing in the inferior art.
Yeah, you can tell I just read this collection, right?
Mostly written by Tom DeFalco, I guess I have to blame him for the crap telling us what the panels should be showing us, and the repetition. It might be the Marvel house style of the time, really - though I have some Essential Wolverine and X Men books that don't do this - but even if it were, the last two chapters, by other writers, avoid it.
The penultimate chapter, by Louise Simonson, comes over a bit better, though still has some of that style, and doesn't have as awful dialogue and phrasing as DeFalco's issues.
The last chapter, Amazing Spiderman #300, is by David Micheline, and avoids that style entirely, reading as a decent regular comic. The art by Todd MacFarlane is a bit weird, mind you - MJ suddenly is a Victoria's Secret icon in every panel, and while the story emphasises that Eddie Brock is way more the bodybuilder type than the lean Peter Parker, MacFarlane draws Petey as hugely bulked up as well.
So, a big "meh" for this 80s Spidey collection.
Thankfully there have been great Marvel titles since- Ultimates, 1602, etc. Basically from the end of the 90s they seem to have got their shit together...
