Review: Spider-Noir recaptures the magic of a bygone era

Nicolas Cage was born to play 1930s PI Ben Reilly/The Spider: part Bogey, part Bugs Bunny, 100% Cage-y.

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[TekaroBB]

I'm so with Jen's last point about it not interconnecting. I remember how it felt exciting when the MCU was going to be an actual universe, and all the connections. Now instead of exciting it feels like a slog, and I've tuned out of a lot of it.

This problem is what made me stop reading Marvel and DC comics to almost entirely focus on creator owned stories. It might be fun to check in on what Spiderman is up to, then every like 11 months their stories get crossovers with a bunch of other BS I don't care about and I end up spending too much time wiki diving to figure out what the heck is going on.

One of the reasons I've been recommending Invincible since it was still in publication was that, aside from short unimportant cameos by other Image characters, it was a superhero comic where you didn't need to know anyone who was not already introduced in the book you were reading.

 

[TekaroBB]

Yes, this, so much this. When you need to go online to find a reading order for 12 different titles just to keep up with the events in the one comic you care about it feels bad, and like the gimmick it is to sell more issues.

The last time I was seriously invested in comics was when Vertigo was still around. You could read Fables or 100 Bullets or Hellblazer and just enjoy it for what it was, without having to worry about 20 other writers and their ideas all trying to be crammed into the same sack.

Marvel and DC are so bad for reading order BS. It's almost never "Start with Heroman #1 and go". It's usually "Read Double Sized Annual Special 202X, then Heroman #1-9, then read Crossover Event #1-3, then back to Heroman #10-16..." It would not be so bad if those specials didn't have crucial info in them where you might be lost if you skip them, but...

 

[TekaroBB]

There's a Kurt Busiek quote I think of often: "The stories are the cake, and the shared-universe stuff is frosting. Things tend to go horribly wrong when people start to think the frosting is more important than the cake, and then get better when they remember that it’s about the cake after all."

I do get that, but sometimes you get a cake that's all frosting and it's inedible.

I don't mind the shared universe stuff in general and sometimes it's harmless. But it's undeniable that the big 2 are actively trying to use crossovers to sell more books and it's not uncommon to ruin the flow of an ongoing story-line because the big yearly event has to happen.

I do appreciate a fun gag like Green Arrow going a whole adventure without asking for help from his superhero friends, only to get stranded on a raft at sea and begrudgingly scream "Clark!!!" out loud so Superman can give them a lift home at the end.