What I Read in 2021, part 1

Fantastic Four – Walt Simonson run (#334–354)

Walt Simonson with occasional other artists
9.4/10 · January 2, 2021

So, overall this era of FF — with the She-Thing & the human Ben Grimm — is not my favorite. I’m cool with titles going through growth & change, and I appreciate the opportunities for character development, but I miss the real Thing. That said, what Simonson does with the book is absolutely awesome. The time-hopping issue (#352) is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in comics, and overall his exploration of time & formal depictions thereof is just sheer brilliance. It doesn’t hold a candle to Byrne (or Lee/Kirby for that matter) when it comes to character, but when it comes to form, Simonson’s FF is TOPS. Just a master class in comic book storytelling. Not to mention, Grimm becomes the Thing again by the end! Woo!

Einstein and the Poet

William Hermanns
3.4/10 · January 7, 2021

Overall this is just not a good book. For one thing, its production values are simply terrible — strewn with typos, and lacking even page numbers! Moreover, Hermanns himself, assuming he’s accurately portrayed in these pages, is a pompous jackass who seems to think he’s much more important to Einstein than he actually is. It’s a bit odd, really, given that he wrote the book himself, but the portrait I got was of somebody who tested Einstein’s patience over and over again, just as he tested mine. In the end, the pieces of Einstein himself that come through in these interviews are interesting and worthwhile, but they’re hardly worth the annoyance of the rest.

Fantastic Four – John Byrne run (#232–295)

John Byrne
9.5/10 · January 29, 2021

Of course, some of this is going to be colored by the fact that I read these comics as a teen in the 80s. But I still think these are great comics. For one thing, Byrne’s art is just gorgeous and perfect. His super-clean version of Thing, Reed, even She-Hulk, goes down so smooth. And the writing is just as good. In both areas, Byrne simply excels at characterization, and at reworking some of the earliest FF tropes. Standout stories are the anniversary issue (“Terror In A Tiny Town”) and the Skrull milk annual. His treatments of Doom are awesome — the Liddleville one being the best, but the Kristoff and cosmic/Terrax storylines are also great, and the follow-up towards the end of the run where he takes over the Latverian embassy as the “Invincible Man”. In general, there was a lot of pleasure to be had from how Byrne revisits FF iconography (Infant Terrible, Galactus, Negative Zone, Mole Man, etc.), though his run was more about looking backward and ringing changes than looking forward and building more foundations.

Fantastic Four – Waid/Wieringo run (v3 #60–70 + 500–524)

Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo, and other artists
9.3/10 · February 3, 2021

This captured my heart from the very first issue — the moments with Reed & Valeria are one of the few times a comic has made me choke up. And “Sentient” was almost a perfect first arc — a brilliant new villain rooted in the FF as a family, with an excellent solution (and twist on the way there.) Wieringo’s art is gorgeous, especially compared to those who fill in for him. I also appreciated the character development on Johnny — giving him more responsibility made him more responsible! I think this tactic of creating a vacuum for a learner to fill rings true to family dynamics. The series remained at a high level, albeit with ups and downs, throughout. One of my more favorite Waid accomplishments.

Marvel Knights 4 #1–30 (complete run)

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and various artists
8.7/10 · February 9, 2021

Coming off the Waid/Wieringo run, this was tonally jarring in both words and images. Steve McNiven’s initial issues made the FF and everyone around them look grotesque, not to mention everybody’s hair looked like it was underwater. Plus, the FF were somehow broke out on the streets in this book at the same time as Johnny was successfully taking over the financial helm in the other. So it was a bumpy start, but my appreciation increased over time, in particular for the psychological explorations. Unsurprisingly, the Psycho-Man arc was strong, with a fantastic twist when Alicia was swapped for Sue. The littler moments were the best part of this run.

Star Wars (2015) #50–67

Kieron Gillen and various artists
8.8/10 · February 17, 2021

This isn’t the start of the Gillen run, but it’s enough. Builds on the strong work of Jason Aaron — more adventures in between episodes 4 and 5. I appreciated getting to spend more time with Han, Leia, Luke, and the gang from episode 4. The new characters added some great color too, especially the drama-queen shapeshifter Tunga, and the Partisans — it makes sense there would be people who are in the Alliance because they hate the Empire, but are not necessarily “good guys.” In fact, these new characters were the highlight of the best arc, a heist-like caper called “The Scourging of Shu-Torun.”

The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

Collected & edited by Alice Calaprice
7.7/10 · February 18, 2021

Ultimately, reading a book of quotations (especially a 500+ page book of quotations) is a bit of an odd way to acquaint oneself with a person. I’m grateful I’d read the Isaacson book before wading into this one, as it provided crucial context for many of these free-floating utterances. There were certainly useful nuggets to be found, given that I’m researching a (wrong) Einstein “quote”, but it felt a bit sloggy much of the time.

X-Men Blue #29–36

Cullen Bunn and various artists
8.0/10 · February 23, 2021

This is the finale of the time-traveling original X-Men saga, winding up with them getting ready to go back to their own time with scrubbed memories and reset powers. Normally this kind of thing would seem like the height of pointlessness to me, between the “everything snaps back to status quo” and the “alternate universe versions of familiar characters”, two of my least favorite comicbook tropes. However, the X-Men were at their height in the 90s, and that meant that they caught the worst of the 90s-ness, with almost everybody taking a turn turning evil, or getting killed then cheaply resurrected, and with a lot of (for many of them) character “development” that felt like grotesque disfigurement and distortion. Consequently, bringing them back as they were to see what had happened to them later yielded some good story moments, though again it’s not as if they’re going to be able to learn anything from the experience. But we can.

Marvel Knights 20th

Donny Cates + various writers and artists
6.6/10 · February 25, 2021

So this is Cates, who I’ve determined I’m not crazy about (thanks to Thanos), writing yet another iteration of “all the heroes have lost their memories and powers, and now must become superheroes again.” This is a pretty well-worn trope, and nothing astonishingly new happens with it here. The arc has to do with them figuring out that they erased their own world and why, then reversing their decision, with final undertones of impending doom. Also, the art changes every issue. Enh, it’s okay — more palatable than the average Cates, but still nothing I’d seek out, recommend, or read again.

Death of the Inhumans

Donny Cates and Ariel Olivetti
2.8/10 · March 1, 2021

More Cates testosterone poisoning, more alternate future bullshit. It’s like he writes “What If?” issues, except they last for 5 or 6 issues instead, and instead of thoughtful explorations about life choices, they’re bloodthirsty, rancid avalanches of existence at its worst. No thank you. (Pretty good art, though, especially the covers.)

Guardians Of The Galaxy (2019)

Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, and Cory Smith
4.8/10 · March 3, 2021

Whyyyyyyy do I keep randomly pulling Cates comics? In fairness, this was far more tolerable than the others have been, but it’s still just full of bloody nonsense, and “awesome” reveals or battles that just make me roll my eyes. The Abnett & Lanning runs get so much praise, and if they spawned the movie version of the Guardians, rightly so. But these issues were full of letters saying that Cates returned to the DNA spirit, which makes me wonder about those runs. So much of this is just thrown-together crap with no apparent point or thought behind it. Repetition passing for theme. So yeah, great for a Cates comic, mediocre at best for a Marvel comic.

Marvels Annotated

Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross
10.0/10 · March 21, 2021

I always loved Marvels, and it was an absolute joy to return to it in this version, with tons of extra notes, full scripts for each issue, and lots of bonuses. Like Watchmen, it rewards the time put into it. Also, it felt remarkably prescient and relevant to me in 2021. Take the mob violence of the mutants issue: “The real story was the people who’d been scared too long. Who’d been wound tight by talk of mutant menaces and hidden conspiracies and shadows under the bed. Who’d been wound tight — and cut loose. The real story was the people who started breaking things.” Sounds familiar, right? Or Phil’s exasperation with people constantly suspicious of those who keep doing nothing but trying to help them: “What do you people need? The world to ACTUALLY END?” I felt those more deeply this time than in any previous reading.

Apocalypse and the X-Tracts (Age of X-Man)

Tim Seeley & Salva Espin
2.4/10 · March 21, 2021

Oh hey, it’s yet another alternate universe, with yet more alternate versions of characters. Yeah, you know that guy you know of as a villain? Well here he’s a HERO! Get that! Except… maybe not REALLY?? Mysterious, right? Oh, and those other characters you like, well here’s some people who are almost exactly like them, but DIFFERENT. Why wouldn’t you care about that? That’s meaningful, right? How about if we do it 100 times in a row? Still meaningful, right? God forbid we try to just tell ongoing stories that enrich characters over time. Screw that! We are WIPING THE SLATE CLEAN for a NEW REALITY where everybody is A LITTLE DIFFERENT!

The Quote Verifier

Ralph Keyes
8.0/10 · March 22, 2021

An impeccably researched book full of little historical nuggets, organized around quotes and determining who really said them. Turns out a whole bunch of them aren’t original to those whom we typically credit for them. Pretty entertaining to read, though it skims the surface of a hundred things rather than diving in deep to one. My favorite parts were the sidebars that collected quotes (or misquotes) around a given person or flavor.

Marvel Masters Of Suspense – Stan Lee & Steve Ditko Omnibus, Volume 1

Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
8.2/10 · April 27, 2021

Including Journey Into Mystery #33 and #38, Strange Tales #46, #50, and #89, Tales To Astonish #1–26, Tales of Suspense #1–24, and Amazing Adventures #1–6. There are lots of other issues in the print omnibus, but these were the ones on Marvel Unlimited. (That turns out to be an ironic name in this case.) On the other hand, I read the entire issues, not just the Ditko stuff. These were quite a hoot, especially Astonish and Suspense.

On the one hand, they were clearly disposable stories — often the same Twilight-Zone-lite plots recycled over and over, and SO many kooky-named monsters & aliens set on either invading or elevating us (the latter of whom are always driven away by our fear and ignorance.) On the other hand, they really illuminate and pave the runway to the Marvel Universe, and recontextualize the first year or two of many classic comics (especially Fantastic Four). And Ditko really is great — an instantly recognizable and wonderfully dramatic style. His pre-superhero stuff is a fantastic prelude to Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.

Star Wars #108

Matthew Rosenberg and various artists
7.7/10 · April 28, 2021

So, I never really read the original run of Marvel Star Wars comics. I liked Star Wars, and LOVED Marvel, but my comicbook attention was pretty fully on superheroes. This comic was clearly a love letter to that run, so a lot of the nostalgia escaped me. Still, it was an enjoyable enough story on its own merits, even if most of its references bounced off me. Not as much fun as the newer runs by Aaron and Gillen, and the rabbit-head character seemed TOTALLY out of place, but a reasonably fun comic read.

Spider-Man: Life Story

Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley
9.2/10 · April 28, 2021

I crack a lot in here on alternate-universe stories and how I find them boring. But this series put me in mind of the old What If? comics, which I loved. It felt like a 6-issue What If? arc — What If Spider-Man Aged In Real Time? — and I really enjoyed it.

So what’s the difference? A couple of things, I think. First, What If? tended to shape its alternate universes on a single inflection point in a hero’s life, and explore what happened from there, while most modern alt-universe stories (

Secondly, What If? (at least the classic run of it that I remember) tended to be shaped around character first, action second, where Cates and his ilk are the other way around, treating the characters like action figures rather than people. (And in Cates’ case, Sid owns all the action figures.) So okay alternate universes, you’re allowed, but only with creators at the level of Zdarsky and Bagley, because Life Story was pretty great.

Hawkeye (2016)

Kelly Thompson, Leonardo Romero, and others
9.3/10 · April 30, 2021

I had read parts of this before, in my big Marvel Legacy read, but the entire 16-issue run was quite charming and loads of fun. Thompson’s writing style with Kate is breezy, genuinely funny (sometimes LOL funny), and also moving when it wants to be. Also, the art trick where she notices a bunch of things at once as she takes in a scene — circled in purple and labeled in her voice — was a fantastic way of capturing how her Hawkeye-ness truly does function as a superpower, and how it could make her an awesome P.I. A real joy, that ends too soon.

Marvel Action Captain Marvel (2019)

Sam Maggs and Sweeney Boo
8.4/10 · April 30, 2021

This was a pretty enjoyable all-ages comic, written with some verve. Not nearly at the level of Kelly Thompson’s Hawkeye, which I just came off reading, but pretty fun. Plus, the whole arc was about flerkens, so there were lots of cats. Yay, cats!

Marvel Action Spider-Man (2018)

Delilah Dawson, Fico Ossio, Erik Burnham, Christopher Jones, Davide Tinto, and others
7.3/10 · May 5, 2021

The interesting thing about this series is that it plops Peter Parker, Miles Morales, and Spider-Gwen together, without any alternate universe shenanigans. They’re just three spider-people — kids, actually — who get thrown together because of an internship or something. There’s a pretty enjoyable riff on Kraven, an okay Black Cat arc, and a meh Venom story (just not a Venom fan.) Lightweight comicbook fun for kids, mostly.

Marvel Action Avengers (2018)

Matthew K. Manning, Jon Sommariva, and Marcio Fiorito
8.3/10 · May 9, 2021

These are pretty good all-ages Avengers comics, though I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the art. I appreciate the psychological engagement with the characters — Tony’s emotional connection with team members even alongside his arrogance, Panther’s vulnerable bond with his father, etc. Good thick story too, interweaving Masque, AIM, Modok, aliens, etc. Lightweight but tasty.

Moon Knight Annual (2019)

Cullen Bunn, Ibrahim Moustafa, and Matt Horak
8.3/10 · May 9, 2021

This was apparently part of something called “Acts of Evil!”, which based on the name and the “Acts Of Vengeance” font seems like it’s going to be more villain-swapping. And indeed, here Moon Knight fights… Kang! This is mostly an excuse to have MK travel through space and time to meet with lots of other historically-bound MK equivalents — a Roman centurion Moon Knight! A minuteman Moon Knight! A Chicago gangster Moon Knight! Given that MK has a very cool design, these are pretty enjoyable visually. The plot itself is something about finding the first MK and then our MK and Khonshu setting the timeline right. So basically time-travel nonsense and the same “restore the status quo by undoing timeline damage” plot we’ve seen many times, but well-drawn and fun.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (2019) #14

Tom Taylor, Marguerite Sauvage, and Ken Lashley
9.5/10 · May 9, 2021

Due to vagaries of randomness, I ended up only reading the final issue of this run, but I thought it was great. A Spider-Man story full of heart and compassion, plus subverting some common Spider-Man (and superhero) tropes. I loved the way he KEEPS his promise to Aunt May despite the superhero shenanigans, rather than having them undo his ability to be reliable. Also, the fact that he confronts the villain without punching, and gets him some help, is fantastic, as is the fact that the villain decides to stand down because “We all owe you.” Lovely composition and emotionally satisfying. Well done!