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The Theater #1 Seems like a done in one story with some ongoing horror theme. I dug it and if you are fan of viruses, zombies and The Road you might enjoy it as well.

spid wrote: I can't say I disagree with anything you said, but at the end of the book I felt down. The unrelenting oppression just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I might pick this up in trade, but I am not sure I am monthly dose of this kind of world.

Fair enough. This kind of thing (to a different scale) is why I ultimately dropped Crossed.

My Greatest Adventure #1 - 5/5 - A great follow-on to Weird Worlds. Really fresh take on Robotman, appears to be set in the future. Garbage Man & Tanga are superb, as they were in Weird Worlds. Maguire's Tanga is the star of the book for me, though. I love the widescreen panels.

BobBretall wrote:

Frank Castle wrote:Ult Spider-Man vol 2

I picked one up @ the LCS to see what all the fuzz was about. Typical Bendis....VEEEERY decompressed story-telling. Good for what it is, but I'm getting weary of Bendis' pace of storytelling.

Jim Shooter reviews USM #1 in GREAT detail. He agrees with me:
http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/10/ultim ... man-1.html

So what do we have here?

A bushel of coincidences that would make Thomas Hardy blush.

A series of unlikely events, many related to the movements of spider 42.

A pile of people and things introduced or mentioned that are irrelevant to the issue in hand.

More items devoid of meaning and questions unanswered in the episode in question than one would ever encounter in any professionally written TV show. Even the worst.

A bunch of Lego blocks—not a very big bunch—spilled out onto a table that, with the addition of many, many more blocks might someday become a cute little choo-choo or something. Not enough blocks here even for the cow catcher, though. It’s going to take a lot more blocks. This thing is the decompression gold medal winner. Three pages to get the kid accepted at a high school by random drawing? Which has precious little bearing on whatever the Hell is going on? Three? Of 21? Really?

In the end, it comes down to preference, just like with art.

Some are going to like the more expansive attention to minutiae about the characters helping to establish their personalities and doing a slow roll to play this out over 6 issues.

Personally, I'd like to see a #1 that gets right to the action, then reveal the background info as interstitial scenes over the course of the next 10 action-packed issues.

What we get here is one story idea (The origin of Miles Morales as Spider-Man) played out over some number of issues, I'm guessing 6 or so. That relieves Bendis of the burden of having to come up with 4-6 DIFFERENT story ideas to make his way through those same 6 issues non-decompressed.

BobBretall wrote: Some are going to like the more expansive attention to minutiae about the characters helping to establish their personalities and doing a slow roll to play this out over 6 issues.

In this case, I'm one of them. I initially hated the idea of a new Spider-Man, but after reading two issues I like it a lot. I think devoting 3 pages to that, as you said, helped establish personalities and let you soak everything in before the action comes, just like the original Ultimate Spider-Man ... he didn't put the mask on until what, #4 or 5?

abysslord wrote: just like the original Ultimate Spider-Man ... he didn't put the mask on until what, #4 or 5?

Yes, you're correct. It was the beginning of the long slide into decompressed storytelling as the standard in the industry.

Not one of my favorite things, so I'm voting with my wallet. That said, lots of people love it & buy it.

BobBretall wrote:Personally, I'd like to see a #1 that gets right to the action, then reveal the background info as interstitial scenes over the course of the next 10 action-packed issues.

Agreed. A good example of this for me was the beginning of Invincible. It had action, and started to explain the backstory in little bits, which was spread out amongst many issues. I remember reading Invincible #1 and thinking, "wow, what a fantastic first issue".

I bought Ultimate Spider-Man #1 last night to check it out, and thought it was a waste of money. 21 pages for 4 bucks? And those pages aren't even packed full of awesome story? No thank you.

I felt the frustration I have been having with a lot of comics recently. I like what is there, but there is so little there that it is hard to not let that sway my opinion. I feel like I bought a full-price CD that ended up only having three songs on it.

Pilot Season: City Of Refuge #1 (Image Comics) When I buy these Pilot Season books I look for something between a One-Shot and a #1 for an ongoing series. This book is about a city that for some reason adopts an initiative to implant chips in every one's brain to stop violent thoughts.

Overall I felt I got a complete story with world that was fully realized. They do not explain everything, but I did not think they had to. The book ends on sort of a cliffhanger. There was enough in the story for me to feel satisfied with the ending. Take away the sci-fi trappings and what you get is a straight forward detective/thriller story. The art would not set the world on fire, but it serves the story.

BobBretall wrote:My Greatest Adventure #1 - 5/5 - A great follow-on to Weird Worlds. Really fresh take on Robotman, appears to be set in the future. Garbage Man & Tanga are superb, as they were in Weird Worlds. Maguire's Tanga is the star of the book for me, though. I love the widescreen panels.

The Robotman story made this a 5/5 for me. Awesome take on Robotman.

Haunted City #1 (Aspen) - The story while not bad just didn't interest me. It's all about different religous references commingling and it didn't work for me. Also the story was really choppy and a bit hard to follow. The art was pretty good as it usually is with Aspen. While this didn't work me it may work for someone else who's interests are different.

IanG wrote:Haunted City #1 (Aspen) - The story while not bad just didn't interest me. It's all about different religous references commingling and it didn't work for me. Also the story was really choppy and a bit hard to follow. The art was pretty good as it usually is with Aspen. While this didn't work me it may work for someone else who's interests are different.

Did you read #0? I don't know if that would have helped, but I enjoyed #0 and #1 as well. For myself, I thought the religious stuff wasn't too heavy and I like the premise. So you're right, it worked for someone who's interests were different

abysslord wrote:Did you read #0? I don't know if that would have helped, but I enjoyed #0 and #1 as well. For myself, I thought the religious stuff wasn't too heavy and I like the premise. So you're right, it worked for someone who's interests were different

I tend to skip zero issues and wait for the #1. I don't have a good reason for not getting zero issues. I get the premise of the comic but I didn't understand enough about the players within that story. It was certainly not a bad comic and I'm not suprised that someone else enjoyed it. That's why I like to read other people's opinions on this forum.

Key of Z #1 (BOOM) - This story is basically like all the other zombie stories ... apocalypse, survivors grouping together in clans, zombies walking around, etc. I like Walking Dead, and I like Crossed ... and I like this. There are enough things that happen that make me want to know more, and it is slightly different than those other two titles in that right away we have two clans in stadiums ... so we kind of skip the setup so to speak.

Broken Pieces #1 (Aspen) - Well, I like this one a lot more than Haunted City #1 from Aspen. This is like a Frankenstein story set in the future. There's a lot more set-up than action is this issue. There's one quick action scene that's really well done. The art is really nice to look at. It's in the same style as a Phil Noto or Ryan Sook. I'm really looking foward to the next issue so we can learn more about the Frakenstein like creature. I'm hoping Aspen can get this series out on a somewhat regular schedule. Their track record hasn't been great for releasing comics in a timely fashion.

BobBretall wrote:

Frank Castle wrote:The Test - I'm a little bias as Rahsan is my boy but I friggin loved this Pilot issue. I'm going to vote for it as many times as I can and I hope there is more to come.

While I like Rahsan's art, and Josh's setup, I didn't like this as a Pilot Season book.

It was all set-up and tease. It's bad enough when I get that in a book that is part one of a 4 or 6 part story arc. It's unacceptable to me in a Pilot Season book where I have no guarantee that I'll ever see #2.

Heck, Genius won a few years ago & I still have not seen issue #2 (that one did a much better job of telling me a complete story fragment in the 1st issue, though).

While I'd love to see more, The Test absolutely did not stand on it's own, so I'd have to give it a 3/5 as a "Pilot" issue.

To continue the Pilot Season analogy this book felt like the first 30 minutes of an hour long show.