Hello friends and readers, happy June! We’ve got an amuse bouche of reviews for you today as Spider Correspondent Tony Thornley brings us thoughts on Miles Morales: Spider-Man #17 by Ahmed, Carnero, and Curiel. Also, while I step into the ring to definitely say some very good words about Daredevil #20 by Zdarsky, Chechetto, and Iacono.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man #17
There are two completely different comics here.
The first half of this issue is a fantastic slice of life story that is a highlight of every Spider-Man run. Miles runs into a young fashionista whose eccentric designs attract bullies. We get about 12 pages of a heartwarming heart-to-heart between Miles and this boy. It reminds me a lot of classics like The Boy Who Collected Spider-Man or the fantastic slower issues from Paul Jenkins and Mark Buckingham from the early 2000’s. Even though at times Ahmed seems to struggle with getting a modern teenager’s voice on the page, he gets Spider-Man’s perfectly.
The second half of the book falls apart a bit. Tying into the Outlawed plot, Miles finds himself public enemy number one (at least in Brooklyn). This fight feels like nothing more a tie-in for the sake of getting a stamp on the cover and a fight scene just for getting in the quota of punching.
However, Carmen Carnero joins the book with this issue, and she nails it. I was incredibly disappointed that X-Corp didn’t happen (remember that non-announcement last year?), but that did mean she was free to join this book. Even with the struggles the story has, she makes it look great. She’s inventive in her layouts and camera angles. Her character acting is expressive. It’s a great looking book.
So hey, let’s hope that the series stays closer to the first half of the issue than the second. Especially that bizarre cliffhanger…
Daredevil #20
So I asked all of my staff, who were universally in awe of this issue, who wanted to review it. I couldn’t get anyone to agree to it, since they thought they would just spew a bunch of excited profanity. I decided that as the editor of this column, I had to hop in and show them how it’s done, so here goes.
Daredevil is ███████████████ and holy as █████████ █████████████████████. Fisk as ███████████████ and Rhino ███████. An amazing ███████████████████ ██ ██████ ████████████ ██████ and I can’t believe ██████████ █████ Frankly Zdarsky is too ███████████ ██████████ █████████ And the art team ███████████████ If you pick up ████████ █████████████████ ████████████ ████████████ ████████ ██████████████ ██████ █████████ ███ █████████████ █████████████████ █████ ████████████ █████████████ An incredible work of ██████████████████ ███████████████ ███████████████ █████████ █████████████████████████ ████████ ██████████ █████████████████ █████ ███████ █████████████████████.
Well anyway, it’s an incredible comic and you should pick it up. And look! Not a review filled with profanity. I’m calling it a win.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
Chris Eddleman is a biologist and co-host of Chrises On Infinite Earths.
