Good evening or morning or whenever you’re reading this. This week I’m helped out by David Brothers and Space Jawa.
Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #5
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert
Batman Incorporated #4
Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham
On Friday night, I journeyed into New York City to see the show that I was destined to see. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has been the butt of many jokes and it’s hard not to join in. David Uzumeri summed it up for me nicely with the term “spiderfreude”. The whole broadway show concept, the inflated budget, the head-scratching reviews and the laundry list of injuries and mishaps has made it a phenomenon for absurdity-loving comic fans such as myself. The whole thing is too strange to exist and I knew I had to get on the train before it crashes for good.
Lo and behold my amazing, spectacular Christmas gift of tickets to see the show.
And it’s a good thing, too! The show is being closed down in a few weeks for the sake of being retooled. Best case scenario, they’re going to change a lot of stuff and I got to see the rougher draft of the Broadway show. Worst case scenario, they’re going to deep six the entire production and I got to look into God’s eyes before it was too late.
It also makes me feel less bad about going into full spoiler mode. For those who don’t want to muck through the spoilers and want the gist of my experience, I didn’t think it was bad. There are parts that are pretty awful and kind of embarrassing, but it really starts to gain steam. The performances are really good, especially Patrick Page as the Green Goblin and the set designs are so extravagant that at no point do you wonder where all those millions of dollars went. The music… I’m not really qualified to comment on. I’m no theater expert and I’m sure if I listened to them in one more go I’d have more impressions, but my main reaction was mostly, “Yes, that is most certainly something inspired by Bono.”
I should also get the obvious out of the way. No, nobody died or got horribly injured from what I saw. The only mishaps were few:
1) One of the Spider-Man stuntman guys swung around over the crowd, bounced around and ended up on a high platform where the right side of the stage cuts off. Noticed by some, he could be seen momentarily strangled by his cables before getting free.
2) The obligatory “Spider-Man: NO MORE!” scene lost a little oomph when Peter’s tights bounced out of the garbage can and fell on the floor.
3) There was a part in the second act where the curtain wasn’t closed all the way and some could get a pretty good look at one of the actresses during a costume change. Actually, scratch everything I said. This show was awesome.
It’s the ThWiP 75th Week Double-Sized Spectacular! …Okay, it isn’t double-sized. It differs from week to week, so you can’t even define what single-sized is anyway. But I do have Was Taters and Space Jawa helping me out, so that’s neat.
Plus Deadpool Team-Up has the most Gavokian panel in the history of panels.
Avengers #10
Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr.
Captain America #615
Ed Brubaker, Butch Guice, Sean McKeever and Filipe Andrade
“HEY, EVERYBODY!”
Louie!
“WHO’S GOT SOMETHIN’ FOR ME?!”
I do!
“WHAT IS IT?!”
A bunch of panels from comics that that me, David Brothers, Was Taters, Space Jawa and David Uzumeri read this week!
“…eh, what the hell. I WANNA DIP MY BALLS IN IT!”
Amazing Spider-Man #654
Dan Slott, Paulo Siqueira, Ronan Cliquet de Oliveira and others
Batgirl #18
Bryan Q. Miller and Dustin Nguyen
This week I’m joined by Was Taters and Luis. Luis insists on sharing a panel of Amazing Spider-Man, which he most certainly hated.
As for that Avengers Academy panel, I can assure you that that is not Metamorpho.
Amazing Spider-Man #650
Dan Slott, Humberto Ramos and Neil Edwards
Avengers Academy #7
Christos Gage and Tom Raney
Welcome to another great week of ThWiP! Lot of fun comic stuff this week. Bruce Wayne made a major announcement that’s going to shake up the DC status quo. Frank Castle met up with a woman whose unmasking is likely to piss off SO MANY hardcore Punisher fans, more so than the Frankenstein fiasco. And panel contributor Was Taters believes the Red Hood image shows that it’s only a matter of time before some crap writer tries to retcon Damian Wayne’s heritage even further.
Amazing Spider-Man #647
Fred Van Lente, Max Fiumara and Various
Avengers Academy #6
Christos Gage and Mike McKone
Whew! Big week this time around, thanks mostly to TEAMWORK! I got a bunch of panels in, David threw in a couple, as did readers Was Taters and Space Jawa. Even David Uzumeri made me use a damned Superman panel here.
In other news, our very own Esther now has her own Twitter. Start following and she might start Tweeting stuff!
Amazing Spider-Man #645
Mark Waid, Paul Azaceta, Matthew Southworth, Stan Lee and Marcos Martin
B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth: New World #3
Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Guy Davis
It’s a sad week for ThWiP. Not because David, Was Taters and I were only able to scrounge up ten panels collectively due to being such a light week. No, it’s because in one fell swoop, we’ve lost both Atlas and the Punisher being a supremely awesome stitched-up zombie thing. David Wolkin wrote up a good look at the finished status quo, but I’ll try and toss in my two cents sometime in the next couple days.
Action Comics #893
Paul Cornell, Sean Chen, Nick Spencer and RB Silva
Amazing Spider-Man #644
Mark Waid, Paul Azaceta, Stan Lee and Marcos Martin
A year ago I talked to David Brothers about an idea I had for the site. I had tried writing reviews of weekly releases before, but I never got into it. There were a couple reasons and they’re both about redundancies. I can tell you about how great the latest issue of Captain America is, but so will every other site. There are so many other comic sites that will give better reviews of new stuff that I don’t know why anyone would give a damn what I have to say among all that. Then there’s the fact that comic quality doesn’t change so often within the series’ run. If I tell you that Captain America is great one month, chances are it’s going to be just as good the next. Why waste my breath? If I want to give you my opinions, I want it to at least be interesting and hopefully unique.
I thought back to the first issue of the Agents of Atlas miniseries from several years back. The general response of people who read it and tried to push it was to point out that there’s a scene where a 1950’s robot runs down a hallway while carrying a talking gorilla and that gorilla is firing four uzis with his hands and feet. I figured that maybe that could be the unique way to cover the comics of the week. I’d settle on one panel that really pushes what the comic is about, more than often more than the cover does. It’s no longer so much a review as it is giving you a gist on what we all read. At the same time, I would make sure not to have any major spoilers. If the comic has Wolverine beat up Daken in the climax, then I won’t show it. I will, on the other hand, show them about to fight it out.
If anything, it was also an excuse to keep me from straying from doing anything for the site too long at a time. I’d have a deadline of some point every Sunday and I’ve been pretty good on that. I’ve only delayed two weeks and those were because of a lengthy power outage and the loss of my computer.
I didn’t know if it would work, but David said to go for it. Now it’s been a year and I thought it would be fun to do an extra installment in a retrospective form. The idea was to pick one of my favorite panels from the previous 52 weeks, but with the challenge of not double-dipping from the same title at any point. Here we go!
Adventure Comics #4
Geoff Johns, Sterling Gates and Jerry Ordway
Amazing Spider-Man #617
Joe Kelly, Max Fiumara and Javier Pulido
Goddamn. It’s been an entire year of this. I hope you folks have been actually enjoying these. I mean, I do it regardless because it’s fun, but if you’re digging it too, sweet.
It’s just me and Was Taters this time around. Shockingly, we’ve BOTH read Azrael this week, making me wonder if we’re in fact the only two who are keeping up with the series. And yet Azrael is still going to last at least 14 issues. I’m not complaining, but it is rather strange to me. Maybe Didio really likes the guy.
Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #3
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert
Avengers & The Infinity Gauntlet #2
Brian Clevinger, Lee Black and Brian Churilla
