Marvel 1991: Avengers West Coast #69, Captain America #384, and New Warriors #10

I'm going to run through a bunch of comics this time, in part because I'm behind again, and in part because I managed to pick three comics that are taken up by lengthy fight scenes and little else.

Biff! Pow! Etc!

Hawkeye and US Agent have a fight on the beach. For the entire issue. The cover does not lie.

This shouldn't work, because nothing really happens. It should feel like padding, like "oh crap we've got an issue to put out and we're really late and let's just have a meaningless punch-up", because that does happen sometimes -- spoiler alert -- but Dann and Roy Thomas pull it off.

I think it works for two reasons. First, there are flashbacks throughout that break up the fight and provide context for why it is happening; I wouldn't go as far as saying it's clever, but it is at least more interesting than a strict linear narrative would have been. There's also some nice bits with the rest of the Avengers also having their own low-level disagreements that reflect the main fight, although the motif is perhaps laid on a bit thick and makes the team look somewhat dysfunctional.

The second reason it works, and probably the main one, is that the Thomases put in the effort to characterise Hawkeye and US Agent so their dispute not only makes sense, but has a sense of weight to it. It's not your standard superhero misunderstanding, but a conflict that develops out of the two of them being dickheads. Moreover, they are both dickheads in their own distinct ways, which come across well in the writing.

Less effective is Scarlet Witch at the end saying that "it would take every ounce of power we could muster" to stop US Agent if he "ever turned bad", which seems like a bit of an exaggeration given the Avengers have beaten Korvac and Thanos, but okay Wanda, whatever.

The success of the comic rather depends on how much you care about Hawkeye and US Agent. I admire the Thomases' restraint in not positioning either of the pair as being right, but making them both utter douche canoes makes it a bit difficult to engage, even if the argument is well-written. It's an interesting issue that shouldn't work but somehow does. Three Cables.

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Cap decides to force the Avengers to undergo medical testing, but at least acknowledges that he should lead by example and do so first. Wow, Steve. I'm now so used to Chris Evans' charming everyone's-best-friend portrayal of the character that I'd forgotten how bossy the comics incarnation can be at times.

During the testing it is discovered that Cap may have a weakness to extreme cold, which is something I don't remember seeing anywhere else and doesn't appear on any character profile I can find so I suspect it was dropped at some point. Probably the moment this issue was printed.

As Captain America is a tactical genius, he decides the best way to test this new theory is to go to "the north magnetic pole" to find his missing pal, D-Man. There he fights -- and is defeated by -- a giant snow snake (!), bumps into his old friend Jack Frost -- basically Iceman with hair -- who is dragged underwater by the giant snow snake, and then Thor turns up to deal with the situation but is unable to find the giant snow snake or Jack Frost, so the two Avengers shrug and leave. Is Jack Frost okay? They don't care. Should we have a look around for D-Man, since that's why we're here? Nah, we've fought a giant snow snake, that's enough for one day. Again Steve, wow.

I'm trying to be somewhat charitable with these reviews, because 1991 was a different time, and comics were different, and the pressures of a monthly schedule mean that not every issue can be a perfect work of art, but this is tosh. It feels like filler; most of the issue is a fight with a mindless monster, and you could tell the story with any character. The only specific ties to Cap are Jack Frost and D-Man, one of whom contributes nothing and the other is forgotten. On the plus side, the art is solid with some good storytelling, but the Arctic setting means that there's a lot of empty, white space, which again suggests a rush.

Two Cables, and that's being generous.

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So apparently the theme for April 1991 was "pointless fight issues" because here's another one. Emma Frost's Hellions have a question to ask the New Warriors and decide the best way to get the answer is to smash into the Warriors' headquarters and beat them up. Gah.

(Spoiler: the Warriors don't even know the answer!)

I understand this is a superhero topos dating back to the early days of the genre, but it's also a stupid one and I would have hoped that by 1991 it had gone out of fashion. Unlike Avengers West Coast, there's little attempt to add context or texture to the fight; the characters punch each other until everyone's on the ground then Emma does her passive-aggressive and haughty thing, and that's your lot. Maybe it reads better if you've been following the series, but as a standalone issue it feels either inconsequential and uninspired, or a weird throwback to an earlier era.

I've never been a huge fan of Mark Bagley's art style, which I know puts me in a minority. There's something about the way he draws faces that puts me off, a sort of weird horizontal stretch that gives everyone a sort of batrachian look, but I can't deny that he's a good storyteller and he makes the big, pointless fight at least visually interesting.

I'm not going to say this is a bad comic, but it is dull and devoid of ambition and like the Captain America issue doesn't even resolve it's own setup. Perhaps I'm expecting too much of 1991. Two Cables.

Marvel 1991: Marvel Comics Presents #72 (sort of)

Ah.

I did wonder why the digital version of this issue was so cheap.

It turns out that all we're getting here is the Weapon X bit, and not the other three stories, so it's nine pages of a larger story, and moreover it's the prologue, so it's more about setting up the feel and mood and less about character and plot. With all that in mind, I don't think I can give it a fair review.

On the plus side, it does mean that I can move on quickly and at least attempt to catch up with the entire Marvel 1991 project. Ha ha.

What I can say that it looks amazing. These pages don't tell you much about what's going on -- which to be fair is true of the entire nine pages we do get -- but my gosh, just look at them.

(Click to just look at larger versions.)

My introduction to the work of Barry Windsor-Smith was his Machine Man miniseries as reprinted in the Marvel UK Transformers comic in 1985, and I fell in love with the art even if I didn't quite understand the writing. There's nothing quite like it, even today. Sometimes it's clean and simple, and feels a bit like a European artist like Moebius, but then there explosions of noodly detail and an emphasis on mood over plot progression that come across almost like Japanese manga.

You can see elements of all of that in the Weapon X story, and for that reason if nothing else, I will probably pick up the rest of the story at some point, just not in this format.

Zero Cables for you, Marvel Comics Presents #72, but that's only because you've been released into the world in a crippled and incomplete state, you poor thing.

Marvel 1991: Darkhawk #1

By complete coincidence, I'm looking at this a week after Marvel published a Darkhawk 30th anniversary special, which answers one question I had about this comic.

This first issue is very much an origin story, but there is a "created by Tom DeFalco" credit and the issue is written by Danny Fingeroth, all of which implies an earlier appearance. There is a preview in February 1991's Marvel Age #97 but it seems no one counts that, so yes, this is the character's first appearance. Happy 30th, Darkhawk!

I have read other comics featuring the character -- most recently, Infinity Countdown: Darkhawk because Death's Head is in it -- but they have all been later appearances, and I gather the character has had a bit of a conceptual and visual redesign since then, tying him to some of Marvel's cosmic mythos. Which is a good thing, because here at the start he is ill-defined and uninspired.

Part of the problem is that the storytelling is a mess. It manages to be both paced at a breakneck speed, to the extent that it feels like there are missing panels in the way it jumps from scene to scene, but also oddly devoid of actual content, because not much seems to happen. The Darkhawk suit is introduced, that's good. We see it shoot a laser thing. Okay, so that's a thing it can do. What is the helmet about? What does the single Wolverine claw do? What do the wings do? There's a mysterious tramp wandering about who seems to know what Darkhawk is but vanishes and that's a valid bit of mystery storytelling, something I'd expect to be left hanging and explored later. So too with the early appearance of the Hobgoblin. On the other hand, basic functions of the character design should probably be at least hinted at in the first issue, but it feels like they ran out of room and then you look back and realise that they had plenty of time and space, but wasted it somehow. It feels like that awful early-2000s trend of "decompressed storytelling" only a dozen years early.

I don't want the entire backstory in #1, but we can do better than "he is grey and has a laser" can't we?

We don't get much of a feel for Darkhawk's civilian identity either. He is an older brother -- maybe a teenager? -- and he has friends. I think that's about all we get. It's all so vague and again I don't want everything, laid out in the first issue, but there's a vast gulf between "everything" and "nothing" and they somehow manage to miss it.

The visual design is soul-sapping too. He is grey. All over grey. Grey is difficult to make interesting and, well, they don't manage it. There is a chest logo of sorts, but it's tiny and black. Black on grey. Darkhawk does have his helmet, wings and claw thing to break up the block of grey, but it's not enough. Black Widow has a similar colour scheme around this time, with a grey bodysuit and metallic wrist things, but at least with her you've got the vibrant red of her hair to provide some contrast. Not so with Darkhawk, although who knows under that helmet?

(I do know, and no.)

Even the logo is uninspired. They could have got some sort of bird or wing motif in there, but no, let's just do block capitals with a perspective slant. Job done, let's go down the pub.

It's an odd comic. It seems to be going for gritty urban crime in tone, and Mike Manley draws it like that -- and well, to be fair -- but then a teen superhero turns up and shoots lasers out of his nipples. This should be a bit of a clash, but because the superhero has this grey, featureless design, that clash doesn't quite happen. Perhaps that was deliberate, but I don't have any confidence that it is, because it more feels like bored creators going through the motions.

I've given the comic a bit of a kicking here, which isn't quite fair because it's not bad by any means. The only dodgy bit is the pacing and the rest of it is fine, but it all feels so oppressive in its dingy dullness that I can't say it was good either. You want a brand new character to make a splash, but this is about as splashy as a puddle on a rainy day in Peterborough.

I give Darkhawk #1 two Cables.

Marvel 1991: Silver Surfer #46

This should be nice and quick, because nothing happens. Well, sort of.

The Silver Surfer is trapped inside the Soul Gem, meets a bunch of other characters, walks around for a bit, and has an inconclusive chat with Adam Warlock. Meanwhile Gamora fights Drax in order to distract him so he doesn't destroy the Soul gem -- and everyone trapped within -- through sheer force of will. Or something.

At the time the comic was published, the characters the Surfer meets in the Soul Gem had not been seen for over a decade, and after such a long time it would probably be quite exciting to see them again. In 2021, when the same characters -- apart from Pip the Troll -- are, if not household names, at least well known through being the stars of a successful film franchise, the impact is somewhat lessened, and the actual weakness of the story is clear. The big selling point is the return of these characters, and without that there's not much going on.

Ron Lim's artwork is okay. The linework and storytelling are clear, but there's nothing that impresses or surprises. It's a good, solid, functional job, but it's far from exciting.

All in all, it's fine but stripped of its main schtick it just feels flat. Time has not been kind to Silver Surfer #46, and I award it just two Cables.

Marvel 1991: Excalibur #34

Oh dear. We have fallen very far behind with these. The good news is that of the seven issues I picked for February, all but two were either unavailable, or were comics I have read before so have been rejected on the basis that the whole point of this endeavour was to see what 1990s comics were like, which doesn't work if I've already read them.

No such danger here, as the only issue of Excalibur I have read before is the one where they go to the pub -- because Warren Ellis -- and this one is... very different.

This is "School Spirit (or Cheerleaders from Heck)", so called because in the A plot, Kitty Pryde and her school friends travel to London to enter a cheerleading competition at half time in a match between the New York Giants and the British Yeoman -- "Britain's 1st professional 'American' football team" that never appears again, according to every wiki I can find -- because that's something that British schoolgirls do.

(It isn't.)

Although, to be fair, that is the sort of weird plot that would turn up in a British kids' comic -- school hockey team ends up at the Olympics by accident, that sort of thing -- although I rather suspect it is not a deliberate homage to Tammy or Jinty.

There is also a B plot involving the rest of the Excalibur team, Mesmero, and the Fenris twins, but it's somewhat forgettable and doesn't go anywhere interesting before it clashes with the cheerleading stuff later on. In fairness, this is billed as part three of three, so there was probably more of the Mesmero plot in the first two parts, but even so I imagine it's a bit of a limp ending to that story. On the plus side, I love the costume design of the twins, even if it is basically 2000AD's Zenith. Maybe I like it because it's 2000AD's Zenith.

This is Chris Claremont's final issue of Excalibur, which I was surprised to discover, because it feels a bit like a half-hearted fill-in rather than a grand finale. I would not be surprised to find out that Claremont was sacked, or got burned out, or some similar behind-the-scenes drama. The main plot, despite its odd, almost twee, feel, isn't bad but the rest is a bit naff, as if the writer lost all enthusiasm in what he was doing. There is also some... unfortunate scripting here and there; Claremont's attempt at an African-American voice is cringeworthy at best, and a schoolgirl asking Nightcrawler "Is that tail really prehensile?" is not something I imagine would be okay even in 1991.

Art comes from Ron Wagner, who draws in an unexpected style that feels quite retro. Yes, I know the comic is from 1991 so it is, in fact, retro, but there's none of the contemporary not-yet-Image style here. Wagner uses lots of angular lines and sweeping curves, that make characters look almost like architecture than people. That said, there's an element of expressive cartooning in the storytelling and there's a lot of personality in the faces and body language. It feels quite European, which I suppose is appropriate enough, and I like it a lot.

(I wasn't sure I had read any Ron Wagner comics before, although the name was familiar, so I looked him up and discovered that he often got into trouble for "insertion of sexually explicit content into his backgrounds" on Morbius: The Living Vampire, which is quite funny. Oh, and it turns out he pencilled Spitfire and the Troubleshooters #3, which I have read as a back-up in Marvel UK's Transformers, and is probably how I recognise the name.)

I suspect this isn't considered a classic issue of Excalibur, and it's an underwhelming final issue for one of comics' most prominent writers, but it's not awful. I'll give it three Cables out of five.

Marvel 1991: Uncanny X-Men #272

This is the last of January's picks -- as sort-of-suggested by Calvin -- and we're a week away from the end of February. I am falling behind.

We are in part seven of "X-Tinction Agenda", one of those sprawling X-Men crossovers that seemed to dominate the 90's. The X-Men, plus some other mutants from other teams, are on trial in Genosha for... reasons. We'll get to that in a bit. Their powers have been disabled but even so, some of the mutants escape and begin a fight back. Some people change sides, and there's a gladiatorial fight between Archangel and Wolverine in there too.

Well.

Let's start with the art. There's some dodgy posing here and there, and at least one case of poor Psylocke suffering with a broken back, but for the most part Jim Lee does a great job, and I can see why everyone tried to copy him. His storytelling is dynamic and full of character, but what impresses me most is the level of work Lee puts in. I haven't done a mathematical study, but it looks like there's an average of about six or seven panels per page, and some pages have up to nine. Lee also doesn't skimp on backgrounds and while there are a handful of panels with manga speed lines, they are justified by the action. It's a bit weird to read, because every page is a clear example of what we think of as 90's superhero art, but there are very few of the flaws that are notoriously associated with that style. I'm not a huge fan of the general square-jawed blockiness of Lee's character designs, because I prefer something a bit more loose and wild, but in general this is a good looking comic, and that surprises me.

The writing is... less successful. Chris Claremont has a certain style to his scripting that I can best describe as "tolerable"; I can see why people like it, but it's not to my tastes. The plotting is a bit of a mixed bag; it is clear in the sense that I can follow what's going on, and for the most part event A leads to event B, and so on, but it's opaque in terms of why this stuff is happening. The first page is a series of talking heads about the situation, but it's more a bit of fluff to bring in some cameos from around the Marvel Universe rather than a proper recap. I would have used that to bring new readers up to speed.

(Yes, I know that to a certain extent it's my own fault for coming in at chapter seven of nine, but that's a poor excuse when someone could have picked this off the shelf in 1991 and be similarly confused. Everyone's comic is someone's first, and all that.)

Cyclops also does that annoying "We have escaped because I predicted you would do X, Y, and Z" thing and that's just bad writing. Unless it's played for laughs.

(Yes, that's me with no full-length published comics to my name, criticising a writer with a career spanning decades and millions of sales. Behold my lack of shame.)

Get in the sea, Cyclops, you crimson-eyed gimboid.

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Uncanny X-Men #272 is a pleasant surprise. I've never been much of an X-Men fan and I've always been wary of the wayward crossoveriness of the franchise in the 90's, so I wasn't expecting much from this. Jim Lee does most of the heavy lifting, but all in all it's not bad. I give it three Jim Lee Cables out of five.

Right. So, that's January done. I've got a week left in February to do four comics. Onward!

Marvel 1991: Incredible Hulk #377

Bruce Banner undergoes therapy with Doc Samson and the Ringmaster -- that was a surprise -- and examines his past trauma in an effort to understand the rage within that manifests as the Hulk. The process works, sort of, but Banner is not cured. Instead, a new incarnation of the Hulk emerges.

This issue markes the first appearance of the so-called Professor Hulk, a version of the character that combines Banner's intellect with the Hulk's raw power, in a best of both worlds situation*. Although I only know that from outside knowledge; based on this issue alone it's not clear what this new Hulk is all about, and artist Dale Keown makes him look quite sinister on the final page. I've been spoiled by my knowledge of this run of stories -- more on that in a bit -- but I imagine it would have been a cracker of a cliffhanger at the time.

(By the way, it's quite by chance that I picked the first appearance of the character. Well, sort of. I chose this comic, rather than use my random method, but I based my pick on the cover and had no idea the comic was "important". I didn't even notice the "new" in the title until afterwards.)

Through my involvement in comics fandom and my brief dabbling with comics journalism in the first decade of the 2000s I had somehow absorbed the idea that Peter David's run on Incredible Hulk was considered definitive, up there with Frank Miller's Daredevil or Walt Simonson's Thor, but I never read an issue. This was in the dark days before Comixology, when you actually had to find physical back issues and collected editions were things the publishers tried to put out when they remembered. My only experience of David's writing at the time was a bonkers Star Trek novel about Guinan's sister fighting the Borg which, while entertaining, wasn't sending me to scour back issue bins to find his comics.

I can't judge the entirety of David's 12 years (!) on the comic by this one issue, of course, but I can say that this one issue is pretty good. The idea of Banner sitting down and talking things through with a therapist may seem a bit twee, maybe even obvious, but back in 1991 it was probably an innovative approach to the character. The important thing is that 30 years later it still works; there's a nice logic to it, and it allows David and Keown to segue into horror as Banner faces his childhood trauma. And it's proper horror too; we see characters being burned alive, we see a literally nightmarish projection of Banner's father -- although it's also Banner himself, because dream logic -- but perhaps the most disturbing, although also most mundane in comparison to the other imagery, is that we see the killing of Banner's mother. A fantastical monster kills her, but the creature is just a stand-in for a man, and it doesn't burn or shred her with its claws, it just hurts her, and that sort of abuse is all too common. I know the Comics Code Authority had become increasingly toothless by 1991, but even so I'm surprised this comic passed.

(There are some other interesting, if sometimes odd, bits and pieces in there too. The Hulks -- there are two of them, green and grey, at this point -- think Banner's mother is beautiful but also that she reminds them of Betty, Banner's love interest. Er... that particular psychological trauma probably needs a follow-up session, lads.)

David does an excellent job of not only showing how messed up Banner is, but also how he got so messed up, or at least what triggered the damage to dominate his personality. It's good, solid character work that sits well alongside the more overt horror imagery. If David was this good for 12 years, then I've been missing out.

I'm not at all familiar with Dale Keown's work. I know him as one of the second wave of Image escapees but I don't think I've ever read one of his comics before. Here, Keown shows a clear John Byrne influence and some static storytelling in the more mundane moments, but you can see sparks of something more interesting when things go a bit more distorted and strange in the dream therapy scenes, and as mentioned, his Professor Hulk is suitably creepy.

Would I Read More of This?

Yes I would! There's an effective building up of horror, which culminates in a chilling final page, and it's got me keen to see how the cliffhanger is resolved and who this new Hulk is, even though I know already. That's pretty good writing.

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Despite the chronic lack of juicy Punisher content, I give Incredible Hulk #377 four Cables.

*Professor Hulk is more or less the Hulk that appears in Avengers: Endgame, if you're only familiar with the film versions.

Marvel 1991: The 'Nam #52

I promise, these aren't all going to be Punisher comics.

Well, I say that, but this is 1991 so there's a fair chance that any Marvel comic I pick is going to feature The Punisher, Ghost Rider, or Wolverine as a guest star.

Anyway.

Welcome to The 'Nam! I had a vague awareness of the existence of this title, although I had no idea that it ran for 84 issues. To my eyes, born four years after the war ended, in a country that -- surprisingly -- wasn't involved, it seems like a very niche subject for a comic from a mainstream publisher. Is this the last great English-language war comic? I can't imagine anything like this running for 84 issues these days, although Garth Ennis is probably up to #187 with something over at Avatar.

The comic makes a great first impression with the cover art, which I adore. Click on it to see a bigger version and have a look at all those chunky lines. Jorge Zaffino's art is jagged and rough, almost untidy, but I think it looks great. It's got a raw, visceral feel, which I suppose is appropriate for a Vietnam War comic. The 'Nam #52 gets one Cable for the cover art alone.

They should have got Zaffino to do the internal art as well. It's not bad, but it doesn't have any of the energy or style of the cover. "Functional" is a good description. Given that The 'Nam was intended to tell realistic -- if not actually real -- stories about an actual historical event, perhaps a more stylistic approach to the visuals would have been seen as inappropriate. It's fine, it does the job, but it's not interesting or memorable.

Which, alas, is also true of the writing. It trots along from A to B to C in a neat linear path, but there's nothing exciting going on. There is a twist of sorts, in which -- SPOILER FOR A COMIC FROM 1991 -- the "villain" is killed and then -- ANOTHER SPOILER FOR A COMIC FROM 1991-- revealed to be a double, but it feels unconvincing and arbitrary.

There's a second attempt at a shocking twist with the cliffhanger ending in which it is revealed that our protagonist is dead! Oh, sorry, A THIRD SPOILER FOR A COMIC FROM 1991. Except there's a second part to this story in the next issue, and said protagonist is the Punisher, so we know he's not dead.

(Although apparently this is the Punisher of Earth-85101, so they could kill him off here, as anticlimactic as that would be.)

The characterisation isn't any better. The NVA sniper the Punisher is sent to kill is a caricature at best, coming across like the "Achtung! Pigdog!" Germans in the old WWII comics I read as a child, and with more than a hint of Yellow Peril at times. I'm not naïve enough to expect a balanced portrayal of "the enemy", but I would have expected something a bit more nuanced by 1991. Not that the "goodies" come across any better; if the other characters didn't refer to him by name, you wouldn't have any idea that the Punisher was even in this comic, as he is as generic as the rest. Which is not to say that I want this comic to be a full-blooded appearance by 90's Punisher, because that would be, to say the least, a significant clash of tone, but it seems a bit pointless to stick a specific character in and then write them in such a way that they could be literally anyone.

Would I Read More of This?

In fairness, I do feel a slight urge to find out how the cliffhanger is resolved, but I am confident that it will be a cheat to some extent, and I am not confident at all that the second half of the story will be any better than the first. So, no, I would not read more of this.

I would read an issue drawn by Jorge Zaffino though.

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Based on the main story I would The 'Nam #52 a score of one Cable, because while it's not awful, it is naff and uninspired. I did promise to give it one Cable for the cover art, so it gets a slightly undeserved two Cables out of five.

I am pleased to say that the next comic does not, as far as I know, feature the Punisher. I hope I like it, because I like what I've read of the writer's other work, and I know his run on this particular comic is considered definitive.

Marvel 1991: Punisher: Return to Big Nothing

Well this is a good start.

The first two of my random picks were unavailable in digital form, and it turns out that the third was in fact published in 1989, and only re-published in 1991, but I've got to start somewhere or this project will never get going.

Punisher: Return to Big Nothing is, in terms of plot, the comics equivalent of a straight-to-VHS 80's thriller. The Punisher is for some reason wandering about the desert somewhere in the south west US and breaks up an FBI drugs sting, gets everyone killed, then finds out -- by the sort of staggering coincidence that only happens in comics -- that he's got a historical connection to the case, so this time it is quite literally personal. Perhaps in 1989/1991 it was a bit more impressive in terms of plotting, but I somehow doubt it. The drugs ring is Cambodian rather than full of generic Central Americans, which is something different, I suppose.

On the plus side, Steven Grant writes a great Punisher, where "great" means completely bananas. One panel might show the Punisher shooting some dude through the throat, and in the same panel you get some very wordy captions in which he waffles on about what criminals really want is death, and he is death, and so on. There are also a couple of fun moments when the Punisher ponders a merciful response but then decides that no, that's what "Castle" would do, as if he's the Hulk or something. It all makes the character come across as utterly deranged, which I hope was the point.

Mike Zeck has this way of drawing characters with a shadowy, haunted look in their eyes, which helps convey the sense that the Punisher has lost it. He also draws the character as huge, filling every panel he's in, while almost everyone else is drawn in a more mundane and realistic way, creating an odd contrast, like a murderous Roger Rabbit.

(The weird contrast is made all the more vivid by this being first published by Marvel's Epic imprint, so there are overt references to sex and drugs, and the book is full of graphic violence, but the Punisher is still striding about in his Marvel costume. Moreover, the twist at the end depends on the costume!)

Would I Read More of This?

Ah, well this is a bit of a cheat because Return to Big Nothing was published as a standalone graphic novel, so there isn't any more to read. That said, I'm not sure Grant's crazed Punisher is enough to keep me reading if the stories would be as generic as this, and I could see it becoming a bit tiring if he -- the character, not the writer -- was this mental all the time.

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I give Punisher: Return to Big Nothing a score of two Cables out of five.

I'm Gonna Party Like It's 1991

I thought it might be fun to do some writing about comics again, and so I decided I would review every comic Marvel published in 1991. I chose 1991 because the 90's have a bad reputation among comics fans, but I was out of the loop as far as superhero comics go -- with a few exceptions -- at the time, so it would be new to me. Maybe it wasn't all as bad as popular wisdom says it was, and even if it was all terrible, at least I would be seeing for myself.

A little bit of fun to break up all the gaming and drawing posts. That's what I thought.

Then, when I started researching for my first post, I found out that Marvel published over 70 comics in January 1991 alone! Oh dear.

So having underestimated the size of the project to an absurd extent, I'm going to limit it to one comic a week. I will either pick one that jumps out as interesting, or I will let a random number generator decide what I read. If any of you have a favourite Marvel comic from 1991 that you want me to look at, let me know and I will add it to the list.

Oh, and wish me luck, because this may be the stupidest idea I've had in 18 years of the blog.