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Of Embassies and Origins - Justice League International Part 2 (Eaglemoss Collection v77)

  Review: Since we are doing a series of reviews focusing on Booster Gold over his nearly 40-year history, we include this one as a collection of some of his earliest appearances, dating to late 1987. That places the original publish date of these tales while his original solo series was still going strong.  This book is a beautiful, glossy hard-cover with smooth and heavy-stock paper inside, although the sometimes-low print reproduction quality leads to blurred and hard to read word balloons on occasion. It is also a rare book here in North America, as Eaglemoss Collections targeted UK fans with this series. At this point in the history of the 1987-rebooted Justice League, they have gained official United Nations recognition and sanction. To ensure their reach truly is global, they rebrand as Justice League International (as does the title of the series!) and they open new headquarters buildings around the world: New York, Paris and Moscow are included here. As this is a product of 19
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A Wanna-be Map to Battleworld - Spider-Verse: Warzones!

 

Warzones! Spider-verse cover


Review:

Marvel Comics produced dozens of separate stories set in the Battleworld, each in their own planetary sector. Battleworld is a clever idea, giving the story creators ample scope to reimagine well-known Marvel characters in different scenarios, spanning different histories and origins in the multiverse.

One weakness of the approach is that the stories can be almost completely independent of one another, save for the altered-reality, godlike Victor von Doom ruling Battleworld, and the presence of Thors in one form or another.

So this Spider-verse tale stands out from the Warzones! pack by articulating more of an awareness of the strange Battleworld reality. Using the on-point image of a web, it strives to become a nexus of the different threads knit together in Battleworld.

And while it falls short of that ambition, it is still loads of fun. Author Mike Costa brings together six spiders: Spider-Gwen, Spider-man Noir, Spider-man India, Spider-man UK, Spider-girl and Spider-ham. They need to find one another, learn to work together, and figure out whether or not to trust Norman Osborn. A powerless but still alive Peter Parker and brief appearances by Venom and Carnage round out the wide variety of spiders herein.

Their interplay is half the fun, as they all share the classic Spider-man wit and comic outlook on life. 

Andre Araujo's art is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is appropriately chaotic and filled with humorous background elements to watch for and enjoy. On the other, the facial expressions are somewhere between blocky and excessively stylized. They often feel rushed and unfinished. I have not been a fan of his hyper-stylized look elsewhere, and here his work continues to be visually abrasive.

With so many Spiders, the narrative voice shifts several times over the course of the 5 chapters / issues. The use of text-block color changes and subtle logos help distinguish the specific narrator, another clever writing technic that works hand in hand with the art in the exposition.

This is one of the better Warzones! stories, and deserves more care in its visuals, which pull it back down to 3 capes out of 5.



Description:

Spinning out of the SPIDER-VERSE event, a team of Spiders finds themselves face-to-face with Battleworld! Starring SPIDERGWEN, SPIDER-MAN NOIR, SPIDER-MAN: INDIA, MAYDAY PARKER, SPIDER-UK and SPIDER-HAM!

Collects: Spider-Verse (2015) # 1-5

Authors: Mike Costa
Artists: Andre Araujo
Published By: Marvel 
Published When: Dec 22 2015
Parental Rating: Teen
ISBN-10: 0785198873
ISBN-13: 978-0785198871
Language: English
Pages: 120 pages



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