Spider-Man Redemption Parts 3 and 4

Oh hey, did somebody want more irrelevant Spider-Man comics from the 90's nobody cares about?

No? Oh.

Well. Here it is anyway.

Comic Review: Spider-Man: Redemption Parts 3 & 4

As we ended last issue, Ben Reilly's girlfriend Janine was being carted away by the police for the murder of her father, whom she killed in self defense. Maybe by now things have gotten better?

Looks like somebody's got a case of the mondays! Janine is being held in jail, awaiting trial. As she's being transported in a prison van, a mysterious man breaks into the van and frees her, under pretense of taking vigilante justice.

YES! There's the window breakage I need! Doors are for losers!

Anyway turns out it was Ben Reilly in disguise, come to bust her out of the joint so they can go on the run together. Kaine watches from afar, until he falls off a roof.

He's still mad that Ben could ever be happy while Kaine is still a mutated garbage pile of a man. I can relate. His needlessly convoluted plan, however, remains in motion.

We meet back with Ben and Janine, planning for their flight from justice. But Ben won't go on until Janine explains why she left all those years ago. Turns out, it was under threat from Kaine, who, as he does, broke into their house at night and kidnapped Janine. Then he takes her on top of the Golden Gate Bridge, because I guess they were in San Francisco. Oh hey, maybe they'll see Venom! So tell me, why did Kaine take her on this particular field trip?

C'mon Kaine! You don't gotta take nobody on top of a bridge for that! Just quietly resent and wish misfortune upon them until you collapse into a pile of your own spite and cynicism. Like the rest of us!

...But I'll keep the bridge in mind...

So yeah, Kaine makes Janine write a fake suicide note and somehow whips up a fake body for the authorities to fish out. Ben's understanding enough now that they've been reunited, but it doesn't last long!

Doors, Kaine! They're on every building! You just turn a knob! At least with a window you can see where you're going! No wonder you're not accepted by society. Well that and the fact that you put a bomb in the diner.

Wait, come again?

The last issue opens with Kaine saving the other patrons of the diner. See? He's not all bad, though I guess this is the part where he lets Ben and/or Janine perish in the flames. That's what this was all leading up to? He really could've killed either of them at any other point. Blowing up a diner doesn't really connect with the rest of what he's done thusfar, but whatever, at least it led up to something.

OR NOT.

So it looks like Kaine's thrown his whole giant, three issues worth of plan out the window. Man, that must be quite a disappointment. How's he taking it?

These millennials and their suicide jokes, right?

Ben refuses, of course, and urges Kaine to turn himself into the authorities. Instead, they fall back on old habits and start beating the crap out of each other. The police arrive, I'm assuming called because of the diner explosion, and try to break them up. Kaine grabs an officer and flees to a billboard, where cops are ready to shoot to kill. At the last minute Ben shoves Kaine out of the line of fire. Well, now that they both have a chance to calm down, I'm sure Kaine will see where he went wrong.

We've all been there, buddy.

But it turns out Ben's words have had an effect, as Kaine surrenders to the police. Unfortunately for Ben, Janine's come to the same decision, wanting to finally put her past behind her. You know, that's a nice little bow on top of this and all, but really we could've gotten here much earlier if Ben hadn't broken her free. As long as he's not planning anything this time.

WAIT BEN NO YOU'LL START IT ALL OVER AGAIN

Venom: Funeral Pyre

Coming as a complete surprise to me, Venom's the talk of the town! After the recent film, which I didn't think was super great, and a few new series Marvel is putting out, one of which put the symbiote back on Brock, people actually know who he is again. Who would've guessed anyone would still care about a giant buff goo-man with sharp fangs and a slobbery tongue? Well, anyone aside from me. I always cared. Even when he was stupid. Especially when he's stupid. Like this.

Comic Review: Venom: Funeral Pyre

Funeral Pyre is yet another of the Venom limited series that took place after Lethal Protector. These were a bit of a mixed bag. Obviously I love Lethal Protector, but you get stuff like The Madness as well, which... you know. Funeral Pyre falls along the latter side of the spectrum, though it still holds a special place in my heart.

We begin on the rough and tumble streets of Oakland, near Venom's current stomping grounds, as a gang called the... Jadoo are terrorizing people for no reason at all. One of their prospective members seems less than thrilled with the situation.

After they go chasing some old guy and his nephew with no aim in sight, the new guy saves the kid and sends him for help. Who else does the kid go to but somebody no one should ever ask for guidance.

Turns out the new member is actually a journalist, investigating old HYDRA labs in California, one of which happens to be the base of Jadoo. Gray, the journalist, decided to join in order to check out the old lab, but now he needs to kill someone to be initiated, or be killed himself. You know, boilerplate gang stuff. Rescuing him is easily within Venom's purview, as long as someone even more unhinged doesn't show up and ruin everything.

Shit.

So instead of everyone fleeing to their homes and calling their mothers, the Punisher's arrival somehow sparks a gang war. In the first of many distractions, Venom briefly fights the Punisher before he remembers he has shit to do. Back with JADOO, Gray explores the hideout and finds the old lab, still operational after all this time.

No time for that though, because there's a gang war on! Back with Venom, he's had no luck finding Gray, but he does find Punisher, who quickly hits him with a sonic beam and traps him in a jail cell. In the next issue, using a tendril of the symbiote, he breaks free and starts punching Punisher's van.

Gray, however, is having a poor go of it.

Having committed murder, Gray falls into despair. But now Venom's free, and with the skills he garnered as an investigative journalist, I'm sure he'll be right on Gray's trail in no time!

So his strategy is to talk to everyone still alive in town and just ask them who has a birthmark. Or just grab people at random and see if they have a birthmark or not.

Given that this is not the best canvassing method, Venom takes longer than the Punisher to find the Jadoo HQ. The Punisher slaughters his way through, forcing Gray into the HYDRA lab, specifically the testing chamber.

He pops out glowing red and real mad. Last at the finish line, Venom finally arrives at the lab, but not to a warm welcome.

As the final issue begins, Pyre, as he's now referring to himself, zaps Venom and Punisher with microwave blasts, which cook Venom like a frozen mac and cheese. They fight for a bit, with Pyre being a little bit unreasonable assigning blame. I mean, he did join a gang with no plan. It's not Venom's fault he's an idiot. The Punisher tries to nullify Pyre's power with "anti-waves" but it doesn't work.

After Venom pins him down with some equipment from the ceiling, Pyre decides to just burn the whole place down. Long story short, Venom and Punisher escape and Gray, after having committed murder and mutated into a superpowered red guy with 80's hair, probably dies. What's Venom's takeaway from all of this?

I think I'd call it more an endless stream of incompetence from everyone involved, but you do you. What's important is: dozens of people have died and nobody is ever going to be held accountable. And Pyre will never be seen again. Great job, Venom!

Spider-Man Redemption Parts 1 and 2

Man, you know who loves clones? I love clones. People always refer to the Clone Saga in Spider-Man is the worst, but there are some parts I can't help but enjoy. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for some clone action!

YOU GET THAT SHIT OUT OF HERE

What I really mean is the sequel to everyone's favorite, the most 90's comic in existence, Spider-Man: The Lost Years, which I've covered previously. This is during the same period of time where Marvel decided Peter Parker was too old and married to be Spider-Man, so they decided he was in fact, the clone, and Ben Reilly was the original. But that doesn't mean Ben gets a family or a home or anything. It just means he has to be Spider-Man. And he has to keep dying his hair blond. What a life.

Comic Review: Spider-Man: Redemption Parts 1 & 2

We open with who else, Kaine, Peter Parker's evil degenerating clone. He's in full-on brood mode, at some random nobody's funeral, so he can think about death. Some cops show up wondering why some weirdo in spandex is caressing a corpse, and he threatens them with the Mark of Kaine, that thing he does where his hand can dissolve someone's face somehow. But instead he does it to himself.

"I FORGOT TO GET PAPER TOWELS AGAIN!"

So after Kaine thinks about how much he wants to die, we cut to the other Peter Parker clone, only not really, (only really) Ben Reilly. He's also thinking about death.

He's sad because Harry Osborn is dead. Well, because Harry died during Ben's years of exile, had a son Ben never met, and all that clone angst. It's almost like they can take a weird subject matter and make a relatable, compelling story about it! Okay, almost. Don't worry, Ben, he'll be back! While that happens, we get narration from some red haired lady on a train. I would say, "I wooonder who!" but considering how many redheads there are in the Marvel universe, this could be anyone.

Back at Ben's apartment, Kaine breaks in and they have a little scuffle which leaves Ben knocked out cold on his floor next to a broken table. I guess this just happens sometimes? Like that's how they hang out, Kaine shows up, smashes Ben's head with a piece of drywall and leaves. After that, Ben's gotta get a drink. At the bar, who else does he run into but Flash Thompson, coincidentally talking about Peter Parker.

Well shit. It would be so weird for a Spider-Man comic now to explore depression and regret like this, where Ben's lost life is mirrored in Flash's squandered one. There's a subtle bit where they both envy Peter, even though one of them is Peter. But Dan Slott doesn't do subtle.

At any rate, after dispensing some life advice, Ben goes back to his apartment to find... Mary Jane?

No no, it's Janine! Who just so happens to look exactly like Mary Jane, but that is never once commented upon. She's back and Ben is incredulous, because apparently she seemed to have died. We cut from their tearful reunion to Kaine, who's having a fun time with friends at a bar.

There's a montage of Ben and Janine together, with So Happy Together by The Turtles playing in the background. Their happiness is cut short when Kaine kidnaps Janine! They have a chase through a closed supermarket, but don't worry, Ben finds Janine!

Oooooooh. I don't think she's taking a nap.

So we open the next issue with Ben confronting some cops who want to know what the hell is going on.

They don't get any more answers.

So turns out Kaine pulled out the ol' switcheroo, putting Janine's clothes and... a mask of her face on a mannequin. Man, he put a lot of effort into this. Did he have a bunch of outfits ready, just in case she wore something different? Anyway, we find Kaine at the "Womb," where the Jackal cloned Ben and Kaine. Typical Friday night for him, just staring at himself naked in a mirror.

After checking on Janine and being super creepy, Kaine meets Ben in the lab. They have another fight, and Ben is knocked out. When Ben wakes up, Kaine is testing out his experimental botox formula.

Ben's knocked unconscious once the cellular degeneration takes effect, and when he comes to, Kaine's brought them both to Peter Parker's house. Kaine jumps through a window, looks at a picture, and leaves. Ben falls unconscious for like the fifth time that day. Geez, I'm having some uncomfortable flashbacks to college. He wakes up on a rooftop, finding that Kaine undid his pain elixer for some reason. Also Janine is back at the apartment and perfectly okay. So... was this just the longform version of beating up Ben and fleeing? Was that it? What was the point?

Whoopsy-doodle! How're they gonna get out of this one?! Find out next time!

Spider-Man Reign

Spider-Man: Reign is one of those things I always thought I wanted to read. The idea of a hero who had given up finding new resolve and purpose appealed to me. That was the Dark Knight Returns' entire conceit, and it revitalized Batman in the public eye. The other factor that reeled me in was seeing an ultimately good character pushed to their limits, suffering such trauma that their ideals were tested and sometimes broken. Again, Dark Knight Returns featured that in spades, but my interest was solidified with Spider-Man: Back in Black, where he hunts down the gunman who shot Aunt May.

What I mean to say is, Spider-Man: Reign looked like it had all the right pieces in place to be a classic story you could point to whenever someone commented that Spider-Man was too childish. Unfortunately, in their zeal to create an "adult" Spider-Man story, their result was childishly grim, somber for the sake of it, and seemingly written by someone who had no idea what Spider-Man was about.

Comic Review: Spider-Man Reign

The basic story is that it's the far future, New York is ruled by some techno-facist regime, called, unironically, the Reign. Peter Parker is an old widower who works at flower shop, for some reason. One day J. Jonah Jameson, now the oldest man in the world, comes back to find Peter and convinces him to be Spider-Man again, while the Mayor of New York sets in motion a protective barrier around the city, called The Web. It all ends up with a bunch of old supervillains fighting Spider-Man again, the corpse of Doc Ock digs up the corpse of Mary Jane, and it was all a plan for Venom to eat everyone in the city.

So it's virtually a play-by-play ripoff of the Dark Knight Returns, but with none of the substance. It's easy to say that DKR was needlessly grim, or had stereotypes of the antagonists, but at least it had a point. One of those points, admittedly, was that liberals are bad. Granted! But the big theme that story centered around was that people don't change. Bruce Wayne could never escape being Batman, The Joker would always be a psychopath, Two-Face would forever feel his scars, and Jim Gordon would always be a good man. Despite what those GODDAMN PINKO COMMIES believe, there's something at the core of someone that doesn't go away. Neither time, nor therapy, nor healing can get rid of it.

Spider-Man Reign, however, does not have this kind of theming. Peter Parker isn't just old, he's crazy. He hallucinates the whole time and when he puts on the Spider-Man suit he acts like a man possessed. Is he at any point lucid during the entire story? There's no character development with him, it just reveals that Mary Jane actually died from cancer from Peter's radioactive "body fluids." It wouldn't have been difficult to cobble together something about "Responsibility" or "Power." Instead this was just empty.

In DKR, you had a lot of characters return to show how the progress of time had affected them. Harvey Dent was crazier than ever, Green Arrow became an underground dissident missing an arm, and Superman was a government crony. You could see the steps between the present day and these versions of the characters. Events in the past still affected them greatly, with the superhero ban causing Bruce Wayne to retire and Superman to end up an employee of Ronald Reagan. There was more under the surface of that book, where events you weren't around to witness had altered these people, all you could see was the echo of things that took place.

In Reign, there's none of that. Why are there no other superheros in New York? Why did a fascist regime take hold? Is it just New York? None of these questions are answered, or even really alluded to. Hell, this regime hardly affects Peter Parker at all, the only reason he had to retire was Mary Jane's death, from his... "love"

Nobody else from modern Marvel is around. No Iron Man, no Fantastic 4, and there's not even an excuse to explain their absence. They just stopped existing. Jameson returns, but instead of the brash newspaperman he used to be, he's a raving crackpot who brings kids to an old church and yells at them. Why did he go crazy? I dunno. The Sinister Six returns, only now they're the Sinner Six, and they aren't different at all. They don't even look like they've aged. Why put a story in the future if you're going to ignore the passage of time?!

No bland facsimile for DKR would be complete without the young girl viewpoint character. Dark Knight had Carrie Kelly, who became Robin, that... spunky chick? To be honest, she didn't really have that much agency, she just seemed to be there to show how STUPID her LIBTARD PARENTS are, and provide some hero worship for Batman. I'll give Reign some points here, because the female protagonist here, who's name is... Wait, what's her name?

Okay, so she's never given a name. She's mostly a viewpoint character so you can see what Jameson's doing, but near the end she leads resistence against the symbiotes. Then it's revealed she's Sandman's daughter, and then she's shot and dies. Okay, maybe I'm just cutting her some slack because she's not ruining an old character, they just made a new one that's mediocre.

So yeah, it's derivative of Dark Knight Returns, we all know that, they even marketed it as such. But how does it compare to a similar Spider-Man story, Back In Black?

Back in Black takes place after the first Marvel Civil War, when Spider-Man revealed his identity, but betrayed Iron Man once he found out Tony became a monster. Peter, now a criminal for breaking the Superhero Registration Act, is targeted by a hitman, who ends up missing Peter and shooting Aunt May instead. Spider-Man goes on a rampage, finding out who's responsible while trying to save May's life despite being a wanted man. I love it.

Back In Black is an example of a Spider-Man story that trends towards a darker tone, but doesn't feel childish or stupid. Reign ain't that. In BIB, Peter doesn't joke at anyone. He's pushed to his emotional limit and is willing to do things he's never done before to get revenge. In Reign, he jokes, but not what you're thinking. It's as if Kaare Andrews heard that Spider-Man tells jokes while he's fighting villains, but didn't quite understand what that meant. We all know Spider-Man does little quips and makes fun of his villains, but in Reign he just... tells jokes.

The big difference is, BIB Peter still feels like Peter Parker, in Reign we not only missed the character development in the past, we don't get any during the book itself. It's as if they tried to make it cosmetically similar to Spider-Man, without the heart. At one point, he quotes the old Spider-Man cartoon theme.

It mixes things like a graffiti artist being beaten half to death with somebody quoting the Beverly Hillbillies theme. It's not making some kind of statement about finding light in times of darkness, it's just slapdash writing. It doesn't quite reach the level of puerile cynicism as Millar's stuff, like Kick-Ass, but it's certainly close. There's no subtlety about the drama, it more or less just runs down the laundry list of Peter's dead loved ones, multiple times. They literally shove a dead Mary Jane in your face.

Back in Black took itself very seriously, presenting the things Spider-Man did as skirting the line of morality and absolutely crossing that line legally. Reign doesn't know if it wants to play it seriously or not, trying to show serious drama but breaking the tone a scene later. At least if it were more campy, like the 90's clone stuff, it could be enjoyable in some way.

That's really the sum of it, Spider-Man Reign was never sure about what it wanted to be. It didn't harken back to the old days of Spider-Man, nor did it try to develop the character in a different direction. It's a shame, really. I'm sure they could've done something with this story, instead of this paint-by-numbers ripoff. Was there a vision for this? Did anybody in the process for creating this have an actual inspired moment? Creating a Dark Knight Returns for Spider-Man could be a cool jumping-off point, but you have to do something different! Give it a core of optimism, make the characters seem like real people! As it is, this comic is just aimless, and it seems to me, a huge waste of potential.