Open Mike Night: Amazing Spider-Man (2015) #1 & Jughead #1

By Mike Maillaro and Mike Weaver

Amazing Spider-Man (2015) #1

Written by: Dan Slott
Penciled by: Guiseppe Camuncoli
Inked by: Cam Smith
Colored by: Marte Gracia
Lettered by: VC’s Joe Caramagna

Published by: Marvel
Cover Price: $5.99

Maillaro: THE RETURN OF THE SPIDER-MOBILE!  I love the sheer randomness of this comic starting with Spider-Man and Mockingbird in hot pursuit of Zodiac data thieves in Shanghai while everyone is cheering him on.  Both Spider-Man and Peter Parker are actually popular and successful.  At the same time.  Not sure that has ever happened before.  Pretty much right up front they are telling you “This is not quite the Spider-Man comic you’re used to reading.”  

I loved that Parker is using Spider-Man as his bodyguard.  It really does make him like Iron Man (as a character comments in the issue).  I just thought that was kind of clever.  And I was really interested in seeing Hobie Brown stepping up as a decoy Spider-Man.  I’ve always been a fan of the Prowler.  Now I really want to see Miles Morales meet  Prowler.  In the Ultimate universe, Prowler was a bad guy and Miles’ uncle.

Weaver: To me, it felt a little too much like Iron Man.  Yeah, they get the separation where Pete is arguing in favor of pricing everything as little as possible, but...multinational tech firm that’s pushing the boundaries of science, superhero identity as bodyguard, being popular with the ladies (which, granted, Pete has never had serious issues with)...basically, Iron Man with webs.  Even the Uncle Ben charity he founds is similar to the Maria Stark Foundation.

I am pretty interested in the Zodiac angle here, though.  I haven’t seen them in a long time, and I’m as unsure about what they want as Parker is.  There’s some massive plot hook waiting to happen there.  I do like Hobie as much as the next guy, well, more than the next guy, but I feel like forcing him into the Spider-Man webs may not have been the best idea when Pete can theoretically call on a lot of people that could pull it off better after Spiderverse.

Maillaro: One thing that really bugged me about this book is that with the $6 cover price, you get a variety of previews from other Spider-Man related comics.  Uhm...wait...you are paying for the privilege of reading commercials for other books?   Besides, I was already going to read most of these books, and they really didn’t tell us anything that would entice a new reader to check them out.  That is just wrong on every possible level.  After Convergence, DC did free digital previews for all of their titles, which makes a lot more sense than charging the reader to read them.

And perhaps worst of all, the end of the comic reveals that Regent is still alive.  Groan. He was a terribly bland character created for the Secret Wars tie-in RENEW YOUR VOWS, and I don’t have any real enthusiasm of seeing him back.

Weaver: I don’t think this book was worth six bucks either, but this is hardly a new business model.  Back in the day, annuals would be one slightly longer than normal story, sometimes even normal length, and they’d shove a few short stories and pin-ups in there to pad it out to a higher price point.  But let’s face facts. There are still speculators out there, and they buy #1 issues like they’re going out of style.  That’s why there’s been so many reboots.  So I think Marvel would have bumped this up to six bucks one way or another, and at least we got some ministories...although none of them really got me excited.  Regent may be awful, but at least his story tied together several of the previous ones.

Hey, how about random same sex marriage?  I liked that it wasn’t drilled into public consciousness for months.  I really think that not sounding the trumpets is a great idea, because it makes it so that it can at least appear as if it was a casual story idea and not a cash grab.

Maillaro: You know, I was so happy to see Max back, and Peter patch things up, it didn’t even make a splash to me that it was a same sex marriage.  That kind of “normal” is a pretty big deal to me.  They are doing something similar with The Flash TV series.  One of the characters happens to be gay, and the first time we find out, it is mentioned off hand about the terrible lunches his husband packs for him.  

I also love that Peter managed to once again cause trouble for Max.  The line about “the cake was destroyed”  “Yeah, but it’s gluten-free, so no big loss” cracked me up.  

Weaver: I laughed out loud at that line, it was great.  As a person who’s had to endure several gluten free cakes, I definitely agree.

That whole scene was a sequence of unintended consequences for what Pete thought were good choices at the time, including Hobie not being able to hold his own against Pisces.  Hobie’s great as the Prowler, striking from the shadows and such, he’s not so good at being front and center.  Plus, no spider sense. I feel like we’re going to see the same thread...unintended consequences for what Pete thought was a good choice...when we find out what the Zodiac plot is.

Maillaro: Which is at the heart of any good Spider-Man story.  He might have the Iron Man trappings on the outside, but I still think there was plenty here to maintain the connection to the Spider-Man I have loved for as long as I have read comics.

OH!  What about that last page reveal?   Kind of ironic...Open Mike Night started when Doc Ock took over being Spider-Man...

Weaver: We’re all about Octavious here.  As Spidey.  In a robot.  Marrying Aunt May.  I didn’t realize that was our first column, man how time flies.

Maillaro: Dec, 2012.  Wow, I didn’t realize how long ago Doc Ock was Spider-Man, much less how long we’ve been doing this...

Weaver: So, scores.  It’s really hard for me to judge the writing because there were parts I really enjoyed, and parts that felt flat.  I’ll give it a 3.5, which I consider above average.  The art didn’t have a lot of issues, and I liked the new Spider-Mobile, but it didn’t do a lot to wow me either, so I’ll give that a 4.

Maillaro: I will go a little higher on the writing.  I thought it did a great job picking up threads from the last series, and at the same time setting up a new status quo.  I’ll go for a 4.  The art was solid, but yeah, nothing all that memorable. 4 is fair. I was wondering what was up with Mockingbird’s costume?  She looks even more ridiculous than before.  

Weaver: True story, I didn’t recognize her at first, even when she got name checked.  I thought, “No way that’s Bobbi.”  Clearly, she had a fashion emergency.

Jughead #1

Written by: Chip Zdarsky
Art by: Arica Henderson
Lettered by: Jack Morelli

Published by: Archie
Cover Price: $3.99

Weaver: I’m not sure if this is what I expected or not.  We start off with Jughead pulling an all-nighter playing video games, then going to school with Archie. Betty is outside, protesting Lodge Industries’ plans to demolish Fox Forest and put up condos.  Archie quickly signs on to the protest, but Jughead insists that there’s no point, because Lodge is never going to change his mind due to a few kids’ signatures.  Betty knocks him out, which starts a pretty hilarious Game of Thrones parody dream sequence.  When school starts, there is a new principal, Mr. Stanger, who plans on making some changes to the school.  To Jughead’s dismay, one of these changes is to change the lunchroom to only healthy high protein food.  When Jughead wants to protest this, he finds none of his friends share his dismay because they don’t get hot lunch at school.  In the end, he learns how to make hamburgers and sells them in the lunchroom to fund Betty’s original protest, all perfectly in agreement with school rules because of a deal with the student council about fundraising.

 In all, the plot felt pretty vintage Archie/Jughead, but Jughead himself seemed a little off.  He was always smarter than people assumed he was, but in here, he constantly talks down to everyone and comes off as genius level.  However, the story still worked in a ton of gags and helped world build the new Archie universe, so I’m not sure I’m very against this style of Jughead.

Maillaro: Usually we start talking about the art at the end of these reviews.  We’re both writers by nature, so that tends to be the focus, but I was really thrown by the art of this book.  In the Archie relaunch, they had Fiona Staples, who drew an nicely updated version of the Archie style.  This comic was mostly just ugly.  It actually took away from my enjoyment...and that usually takes real bad art for that to happen.

I did like the opening sequence, where Jughead was playing a sandbox video game exactly the same way I do.  KILL EVERYONE!  That solves everything! The Game of Thrones parody sequence was hilarious, though it went on a little too long.

I definitely agree with you that Jughead feels a little off.  I like Jughead as a loveable goofball, but he comes off a little dickish at times, and that definitely took away from my enjoyment of this issue.  Personally, if this book stood alone, I think I would enjoy it more, but I spent a lot of time comparing it to the Archie reboot, and it just fell a little short there.  

Weaver: The art was all over the place.  I usually like sequences like the sandbox videogame one where we have the same character in the same pose over a length of time.  Transmetropolitan, which we discussed last week, made great use of that.  Here, I started getting enthused by the progression, but by the fifth or sixth panel, I was bored with it.  It wasn’t as obvious what was changing, and there wasn’t a good hook at the end.

I didn’t read the Archie reboot, so I’m not comparing it to that, but I still don’t like the look of it.  I like that the characters look more like real people than they used to, but I’m not sure these were the real people they were going for.

Maillaro: Yeah, that was my take on it too.  They just didn’t quite grab me like I wanted them too.  Especially since I typically like Chip Zdarsky’s work so much.  After I read this issue, I had to step back and ask myself, “Would you have enjoyed this book if it didn’t say Jughead on the cover and Chip Zdarsky didn’t write it?”  And if I was honest with myself, I would be challenged to say yes.  It was not a bad book, it just needed to be a lot better to grab me, if it wasn’t riding on name recognition alone.  

Weaver: I don’t have enough experience with Zdarsky to be brought in by his name, so it was all about Jughead for me, and even then, I felt shortchanged since this wasn’t quite what I wanted out of a Jughead reboot.  I’m pretty on the fence about it even with the Jughead marquee, I think I’d be negative if it didn’t have that.  And I hate saying the art was bad because I’ve seen far worse art in comics, but the art didn’t fit with the story.  It’s like having Dark Knight Returns illustrated with chibis.

Maillaro:  Hmmm….I might actually like that better than Frank Miller these days.  Oh no, am I going to bring the wrath of Liefeld down upon us??  

Zdarsky has been doing Howard the Duck, which is one of my favorite series right now.  When it relaunches, we should definitely review it!

Weaver: I saw that there was another DKR coming, and I thought about suggesting it for review, then realized I don’t hate myself that much, much less you. I’m on board with Howard the Duck, though.  So, what are your scores for Juggy?

Maillaro: We don’t get to review enough BAD books, I actually think we should do DKRIII.  If nothing else, we should be able to turn it into a drinking game.

Art I have to go real low.  It just didn’t work for me.  2.5.   The writing I will go a little higher.  It wasn’t quite what I expected, but I did enjoy the story for the most part.  I think a 3.5 is fair.

Weaver: I agree on the art, and I would go lower, but as I said, I think it’s more that the art didn’t work for the book than that the art was bad on its own, so 2.5 seems fair.  I’m willing to give the story a bit more credit because even though it did make Jughead a little more of a dick, it managed to shoehorn in classic Archie plot resolution, while still making the story modern.  I’ll go for a 4 on that.

Maillaro: For next week (well later this week), there are a bunch more Marvel titles relaunching….BUT….I also want to hit up I Hate Fairyland.  This book just looks awesome to me.   And New Avengers stars Sunspot and Songbird.

Weaver: Say no more.  I Hate Fairyland and New Avengers it is.  

Final Scores