COMICS WEDNESDAY! READ SOME AND LIVE HAPPY!

This week I picked up:
At the recommendation of Steve down at Comics Headquarters, I grabbed FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #1. My first reaction (knee-jerk to the title) was aww fuck, kid friendly. I hate "Kid friendly" Kid friendly usually means weak, watered down, punches pulled a plenty!
Brief tangent; MOST writers are not wanting to tell stories that are kid harming. I.e. This month Spidey takes on cocaine nose first while discovering his first taste of anonymous cock, getting better money working glory holes than selling Spidey pics. He'll need it now to support his coke habit true believer. Okay, there probably some assholes who want to write that story, and a few more who want to read it. So, never mind, back to the review, and NO that is NOT the plot of this issue or ANY Spidey story ever done by MARVEL... Ok.
It seems like so many fans love Mike Wieringo... I can see why, when the costumes are off and you see characters, I'm sorry my non-spandex loving asses definition of characters... people with faces and emotions, he's damn phat. The panel the red and blue comes on, it looks like the art on those Spider-man stickers my mom bought me at Ben Franklin back when they sold candy cigarettes and stores being open on Sunday was a new thing. Actually, I remember one of those stickers had the same art (that Marvel was always recycling) of a photocopy drawing that I got autographed by "Spider-Man" at an event at Toy Chest, when he was on "The Electric Company". For those who can't remember Ronald Regan, I won't even try to explain. The rest of you get that I think it looks.... RETRO. I wont say it's bad, Hell, it's redeemed by just the acting chops his pics pull off (on like page 8 for example) when a woman is begging for her life. Oh, now you're interested, just a bit. I hadn't even touched on that Peter David's the writer here. Or that this is a crossover arc with Peter David doing 1/3, Reginald Hudlin doing the second act, and J. Michael Straczynski doing the third act... then a fourth act with each of them trading off a little quicker.
Is this like WOW... eh, but I wish all comics were reliably this good. Then you could pick up anything on the shelf and feel this satisfied... well, I read Empire after this... so I'm trying to digress to how I felt after reading Spidey. If you haven't read the wall crawler in a bit, this may be worth a look see.

FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #1 gets a 4 out of 5.

STAR WARS: EMPIRE #36. This book had been a lifeless as this lame duck series is about to be. The last arc was a test of endurance, and at times almost no fun. That arc is over. Where's a smiling emoticon when I need one... those little bastards, so unreliable. Spidey was so good this week that I was beginning to doubt my save Star Wars for last policy. Never doubt! First off... Davide Fabbri is going to be the penciller on the whole arc. He last did an issue of Empire 20 issues ago, the art was... "Hmm, Nice." Now, it's a slow growing pants bulge that will slow you down in reading the book. You'll almost be like those commercials where Bob has wood and a happy missus, for one BIG aspect of this art, you can FEEL the locations. His art isn't photo real, but you get such a good essence of the scene and setting that you feel like you could walk around there.

Go, read the preview.

Those aren't the worst pages in the book, but there are like 17 better pages. Basically, it all get better from there!
Well, it was good to have a good comic week, small for me, but I'll try to make this Wednesday page a habit.

STAR WARS: EMPIRE #36. Gets a hardy and almost unfairly LOW 4 out of 5. seriously, it's more of a 4.85, really, I mean come on 5 out of 5 would be like Sandman: A Season of Mists, Watchmen, Bone, Walking Dead has never been a 5.. wait till next week, I'll probably pick up some crap on accident or on purpose...

Oh, and I rented HHGTTG on DVD, just to see if Redbox at Mickey Dee's included the special features disc... THEY DON'T. So, I'll watch the commentary track hoping for an apology and probably re-crucify the movie tomorrow.