My Marvelous Year: 2001

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• Finished off the X-Force books last night. Wasn't expecting to, but did it in one sitting. Good books.
  I found a few things off-putting, specifically the the number of throw-away characters and the incoherence of the over-arching story line. But was still a good read.

  I like Allreds art. He's not a big fav of mine, but still it has an energy and it's fun. But at times the lack of detail in terms of character definition leads me to miss parts of the story. In this case I did not always recognize specific characters, like the trillionaire dude, so it makes it hard to follow the main sub-plots.

  In the same vein. the quick death of main seemingly main characters is jarring. It is an interesting plot choice, but to have so many characters introduced only to die within an issue or two makes it difficult for me to invest myself in the story.

  My overall favorite series this year.was Ultimate Spider-Man, hands down. Even after all these years (and at least my third reading) it still holds up. Art, story, everything.

  What ranks next is hard to chose. I have to say that I enjoyed a lot of stuff, and things I did not expect to enjoy, like X-Force and Exiles. But in the end the one that sticks in my mind is ASM. Great plot, great art, and an impact that gets you 'right there' with issue 36. Then Exiles and X-Force. Exiles was a real eye-opener. Gonna be reading more right away. X-Force is interesting.

  Good year all in all. Marvel is back on top.

• I've been rationing myself...finished most of the reading weeks ago. So have been reading other stuff and coming back to comics time to time.
  This week I read through the Ultimate X-Men and New X-Men.
  Both are series's I read in the past.

  I found that Morrison's take on the X-Men was good. A little heavy handed at times, with too much Morrisonee oddness. I did not like the villain. Introducing Xavier's sister so recently in the book was a little too "deus ex machina" for me. The art is good, though I am not really a big Quitely fan. Frankly, I could stop reading now, and knowing what is coming, really not feel like I've missed anything.

  On the other hand I really enjoyed Ultimate X-Men. The art was great. I especially like how Kubert changes up his style depending on what he wants to convey. The little section by Joe Kubert in issue 11. In a few pages the master shows how a war comic is done. The writing by Millar is bang on. Taking the best aspects of the 616 universe, shaking of some of the excess, and giving us a new take. Some parts were rushed, like the Cyclops time with the Brotherhood, but all in all it was a page turner. I find the more decisive and angry Magneto to be a more realist character, and the way people react to mutants is more in line with how the world is today. I am eager to keep reading into 2002.

  Only thing left on my plate is X-Force...best for last?

  • I think Ultimate X-Men loses attention to USM (understandably), but the Magneto of the Ultimate U is such an excellent villain. Easy to forget now, but Mags is THE villain of the entire Ultimate U for the first 7 years of its existence. Really escalates the threat of mutants in a way that reflects so many modern parallels.

    • I felt that Loeb kinda ruined him with the Ulitimatum story, but he definitely was the big gun. And you make a good point that USM tends to outshine teh X-Men, but it really is a good book. I think USM benefited from having Bendis/Bagley presenting a unified vision for the story. The other Ultimate books started out almost as strong but suffered from changing teams. 2002 will bring The Ultimates, which is perhaps the crown jewel of the universe, but it really lost a lot of luster when Loeb took over.

• OK, I finally made it through everything (having three different universes to keep track of was nuts). Overall, I thought there was a lot of solid material, but not my favorite Marvel year.

  X-Men: This was all over the place. Dream's End, while impactful, was not very well written and kind of a slog, and Search for Cyclops was all right (I enjoyed the artwork more than the writing). I'm in the minority and have never been a big fan of New X-Men (I just find the tone and darkness off-putting), though I haven't made it very far in the series before; in fact, I think #120 is where I stopped before, so hopefully I'll enjoy it more as it goes on. Also, though it was a slog and at times so cluttered that it took me squinting to read everything, I sort of enjoyed X-treme X-Men, certainly much more than I thought I would given that I'm mixed on later-period Claremont.

  Black Widow felt way too short and rushed to me. The artwork was interesting but muddled, and the conspiracy stuff is appropriately hard to keep track of but coherent in the end. Not great, but Yelena is an interesting character and good foil for Widow.

  X-Force was awesome. Such a shocking contrast in tone and art from everything else, and I love the idea of a mutant force influenced heavily by celebrity.

  JMS' Spider-Man, at least the early issues, is one of my favorite Marvel runs. I love everything about it: the dialogue sparkles, the artwork is eye-catching, and the whole idea of totemic enemies and the spider bite not being an accident is still chilling to me. One of the best subversions of an origin story ever. Tangled Web was also surprisingly great, with an amazingly dark and scary Kingpin story, and yes, Flowers for Rhino was terrific and a highlight of the year.

  Daredevil Yellow was a strange read for me. I've read it before and utterly loved it the first time around, but this time it left me cold and I'm not sure why. I think it felt like the pacing was off to me, with too much time focused on an origin that really wasn't all that different from what we've seen before, but then not resolving what happens to Karen Page, which is the whole frame of the story. Still very worth reading, but not my fave of the year by a long stretch.

  Exiles was awesome. Unlike Excalibur, which left me cold very quickly and felt like an enormous slog, this pops off the page and has a really excellent group of characters. I agree with Claude that this feels more pleasant than Excalibur because the Exiles are actually trying to do good in the worlds they're stuck in, and I think the pacing is much better and breezier than it was in Excalibur. Looking forward to more!

  Elektra was OK. The huge standout was the dialogue-less issue, which was a notable "read" and must have been a huge risk at the time. A lot of the SHIELD stuff felt too over the top to me.

  Yeah, Thor was odd. As Claude said above, this wasn't exactly good but it was compelling to read. And yes, I kept thinking that this was trying to do Simonson level epic storytelling and was not succeeding. Beyond the dialogue and beautiful artwork, what always stood out to me about Simonson's work was how focused it was; much like ancient mythology, it focused aggressively on one battle or enemy at a time and would explore them for at least a whole issue if not several. Here, things felt very rushed and muddled in a way that just didn't work (even Odin mentions that things are utterly crazy).

  The Avengers was all right. The Ultron stuff left me cold, but I do love me some Kang, and while this was mostly setup, it was fine. Hopefully better stuff to come with Kang.

  Celestial Quest was my big unexpected good read of the year. I highly enjoyed it, and thought it was perfectly paced. I'm not always a big Englehardt fan, and I'm not claiming that this is a masterpiece or anything, but I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting it to. I thought the artwork was solid as well.

  Punisher was good, but I admit to having a little bit of Ennis/Dillon fatigue at this point. I wasn't expecting this to be such a direct follow-up to the limited series.

  Good ol Captain Marvel. A very breezy read. I enjoy the early part of the run more than the later part, so this wasn't too notable for me, and Thanos getting involved was just goofy.

  Well, I wasn't expecting Marvel Knights to be a sort of showcase for LMDs, and is likely the inspiration for the current plotline in Agents of SHIELD. Other than that, nothing too memorable for me.

  Black Panther was better for me this time around because of things getting more straightforward in the storytelling, but still not my favorite run. Parts of this were strong (as mentioned above #27-30 were good) but nothing really stood out to me.

  Deadpool was a lot of fun here, and I especially enjoyed Deadpool vs. Punisher. Not the best Deadpool I've ever read, but very solid.

  Alternate universe time! Universe X was disappointing to me after Earth-X. Earth-X was shocking and brilliant, and this felt like it was trying too hard to recapture some of that brilliance. The dialogue between Isaac and Kyle was odd and overly heavy-handed, and didn't make nearly as much sense as the dialogue between Machine-Man and Uatu in Earth-X. I do think the whole thing ended very well, though the Paradise-X teaser was so short and confusing that I don't think it really worked at all. My big disappointment of the year.

  Ultimate Universe was great, with the Team-Ups being the weakest parts of the universe so far (but I still mostly enjoyed them). Ultimate Spider-Man continues to be wonderful, with Issue #13 being an all-timer for me (and my favorite issue of the year). Ultimate X-Men was more of a mixed bag, but it was mostly great and an interesting take on SHIELD and the origins of the X-Men (also, young spunky Jean Gray is a bold choice). I enjoyed the Punisher Team-Up the most out of all of them. Overall, a very good first full year of the Ultimate Universe!

  • I had the same experience with Daredevil Yellow. The color series just doesn't hold up for rereads for me, but I definitely thought highly of them the first time around.

    Excluding Ultimate U, it's a showdown between Exiles and X-Force for series of the year in my book. The Exiles are such a great group, like you say, it's just a pleasant read!

• So, newbie Marvelous Year question here - are the bonus books fair game when it comes time to vote? Because the inclusion of the Ultimate titles is gonna jumble my rankings if they're in the running.

  • In general, bonus books are absolutely available for voting.

    The Ultimate U presents a Unique challenge we haven't really faced to date (some alternate reality books excluded). I'd say for the time being that a vote for Spider-Man for hero of the year reflects both Ultimate Spidey and Earth-616. Obviously there are differences, but I don't want us starting to split the vote by Ultimate (that'll likely let someone else sneak in with a win!).

    • There have been all sorts of alternate time-line, out of continuity books so far. I don't see Ultimate as posing as a problem any more than Earth-X or The Last Avengers Story did. The characters are almost all the same. I don't think the Ultimate U diverges all that much from 616. If I recall correctly, the only real big differences are secondary characters like Galactus or Captain Marvel. I doubt they will ever get a nom for best character. :Later on Reed Richards does go off on his own, but again, not really in contention.
      The stories, individual creators, issues and so on are just that, individual things that should always be in consideration. I have a feeling I will be putting in a lot of votes for Bendis and Bagley in the next few months. I've already read ahead in Ultimate Spidey until the end of 2002, and it is just sooo good. Not sure if even ASM will hold up against it.

• Ok, I've finished up the Thor issues. And they left me thinking:

  I like Thor, and I wanted to like these issues. And generally I did. Even wanted to keep reading into 2002, though i did control myself. Yet I still feel that they are not all that good. The overall plotting seems a bit rushed, with key events being set up then culminating a page later. It is almost Defalco-ish in its childlike pacing.

  Anyway, what I started thinking about was Walt Simonson's Thor run. Jurgens is hitting most of the same Thor tropes as Walt did, but with a much weaker pacing. Thor gets trapped in is human form. Odin interferes. Another character has a hammer and Thor power set. Sutur shows up, an army forms to stop him, and in the end Odin sacrifices himself. It seems like every Thor writer wants to do Ragnarok, but not all do it that well. Lee and Kirby did it, and it was good... until Walt came along. Jurgens tried and it was, as I said, just ok. In the mid-2000s there was another one, maybe with Disassembled? It was pretty unmemorable.

  To my mind, Simonson's run on Thor was so well done that it has essentially ruined Thor for anyone else. I’ve read comics for a long time, since the mid-70s. And Thor was never a big draw to me. But Simonson changed that. I think we've discussed Simonson's Thor in the MMY before, and the consensus seemed to be that it was the epitome of what Thor could be. More than 30 years, and I’m guessing 300 issues, and the run is still tops. This makes me wonder if there is any similar work in mainstream Marvel (or DC) that stands up to that?

  I can't think of any particular story or run that was so good that if defines what a character/comic should and all others pale by comparison. Starlin on Adam Warlock is a good example, but I think he has dipped into that well so often that the impact of the original run has been lessened to a great extent. Miller on Daredevil, specifically "Born Again", is close, but still not as defining, and I think Bendis then Brubaker showed that. Miller on Batman was close, but Dark Knight is an “elseworlds” type deal and Year One is just too short. And while I like the stories, I feel that The Long Halloween is equal. Claremont and Byrne's Phoenix Saga comes close, but then again Astonishing X-Men is considered better. Byrne’s FF was close, for me, but then along came Waid and Wieringo and then Hickman. Right now I think the only one in contention is Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s Captain America. It was better than anything that came before and nothing since stands up.

  Any other ideas?

  • This is a really good question. There aren't many runs that compare. As you mention, I do always think of Starlin with Thanos. The character is just hollow in anyone else's hands (although Hickman's Infinity made me question that for the first time).

    Series that quickly come to mind...

    Kirby's Fourth World. Nobody's really come close. Morrison has likely integrated the most into his work.

    Speaking of... Morrison and Case on Doom Patrol.

    It's maybe too soon to call, but the Abnett / Lanning Guardians of the Galaxy has that status right now. We'll see if it can hold for 30 years (!).

    Smaller scale, but nothing's touched Brubaker / Fraction / Aja on Immortal Iron Fist. Will be interesting with the Netflix series if this gets a push form Marvel.

    • Hmmm. The Fourth World is a quandary. I am a big Kirby fan, and loved all the Fourth World stuff, even had a few original Superman's Pal comics. But Kirby has a weakness in his dialogue. For art and plot, when he is on his game, he is almost untouchable. But the dialogue really is not the best. And coincidentally enough I really liked Byrne and Simonson's runs on the Fourth World late 90's books. And I really liked how the Kirby-verse stuff was integrated into the 'triangle years' of the Superman books.

      I'll have to reserve judgement on Morrison's Doom Patrol as I have not read them since they came out. But now that you mention him, his Animal Man is the definitive version of the character. Morrison comes close a few times, especially with his JLA work. If I wasn't such a big fan of the Justice League International period, I could almost say his JLA is the benchmark.

      I've not read Brubaker's Iron Fist, but he'll be hard pressed to beat Byrne for me. But I am biased.

      Good points, but still, as you mentioned, these are all second tier or lower characters. Not big guns. Thor is a big gun book.

• I have not finished the whole list yet, but I have made my way through the bulk of the main reading so I wanted to through some comments out there just in case people are struggling for time and need some input to make decisions.

  I have been pleasantly surprised by a few books do far this ‘year’. Mostly by Exiles. I had meant to read the series but never took the plunge. I really did not expect to enjoy it, as I have grown fatigued by the X-stories that involve alternate time lines. Excalibur did it to death back in the day. Then all of those endless “Age of” stories. I am just not a fan of the 90’s X-books in general. But Exiles brings a breath of fresh air to the trope. Maybe having the central theme of trying to fix specific things to get home helps. In those other stories there was never a clear goal, in Exiles having that clearly defined goal helps bring it together. The art is great and the dialogue well written. Two thumbs up on this series. Looking forward to more.

  I almost can say the same about Elektra. It was a decent book. I read the first few issues around 2001 and had completely forgotten them. But I zipped through these while waiting form my son at hockey practice. Pretty good story and the art was fine. If you are having any reluctance to try it out, don’t fret. I thought it was much better than Black Widow. I`l keep reading as I am interested in Rucka these days due to his Star Wars work.

  The real surprise was Tangled Web. Not necessarily the best, but totally out of left field. I read pretty much anything under the Spidey umbrella, but had never seen this series, somehow. Very interesting take on the Spider-man neighborhood. Will be reading more of these for sure.

  Daredevil Yellow was pretty good, too. I`ve said before that Loeb is hit and miss for me, and so far his color books have all been good. I think the key is Tim Sale. When he works with sale he does good work. I actually prefer this to the Frank Miller mini we read back in the 90s.

  On the other hand, Black Widow was weak. The art was acceptable, but unclear. The plot was rushed and hard to follow. And the emotional impact the book was aiming for fell short due to the weak plotting and art. I feel like maybe it needed another issue or two the flesh out what it was aiming to do.
  Thor is also poor. The plot is rushed and illogical. Things just happen without much set up or repercussions. I like it, I admit, but it is badly executed. I do not get why. Jurgens is a solid writer, and his work on Captain America at the same time was great. Maybe it is the lack of regular artist in the first few issues. Things got better with Immonen.

  Best reads so far: Amazing Spider-Man and Ultimate Spider-man. I have to agree with Brandon, you can`t go wrong with any of the Spidey books.

  Not as stand out, but still very good were Daredevil, Avengers and Captain Marvel. Bendis is just finding his footing on Daredevil, but I am looking forward to where he takes it. Busiek on the Avengers is always a good read. Not as good as the first 25 issues, but still a good read. And Captain Marvel is a hoot. Great art and solid plotting and dialogue. I get why it is relegated to the `Bonus Round`, but IMHO it is far far better than Black Widow, Thor or Elektra.

  Still to come: New X-Men and Ultimate X-Men (haven`t read since they came out) and X-Force (never read b4)

  Might Read: Marvel Knights and Black Panther

  Definitely will skip: Punisher (no thank you), Celestial Quest (been there, Englehardt still can`t write), Deadpool (just not my cup of tea)

  • I was really blown away by Exiles the first go. Had a similar feeling entering it, and fell for it hard. Where it really starts to win for me is as a deep dive into all of Marvel Universe history, playing with the full scope rather than just X-titles. Plenty of good stuff still to come!

    I have a copy of those Tangled Web Rhino issues framed in my office. Such an underrated gem, and the Kingpin story by Rucka was an incredibly pleasant surprise this go.

    Awesome comments as always!

• Search for Cyclops and New X-Men: Okay
  Black Widow: Disappointing
  Daredevil #16-19: Okay, interesting but heartbreaking story, art feels pretentious
  X-Force: #120-121 overcome my distaste for Allred's art and are okay
  Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man's Tangled Web: Great stuff here! ASM #36 is Marvel's memorial for the 9/11/01 terrorist attack in NYC, and it is very well done. I give it my pick for issue of the year.
  Daredevil: Yellow: skipping (do not like Loeb)
  Exiles: Okay
  Elektra: skipping (reports are that the art is horrible)
  Thor: skipping (story does not interest me, and it has not been well reviewed)
  Avengers: Mediocre-okay

  Black Panther: It's all at least readable, and #27-30 are great.
  X-Men: Dream's End: Good reading
  X-Treme X-Men: I was expecting the worst, but I was pleasantly surprised. Claremont is wordy, but it almost all adds more to the story. #4 is the best of this lot.
  Ultimate X-Men: Okay, #5 is the best
  Ultimate Marvel Team-Up: Mostly mediocre, #1 and #4 are okay
  Ultimate Spider-Man: Consistently okay-good issues

  If someone were pressed for time, I would say to just read everything with Spider-Man in the title.

  • Distaste for Allred! Why I never :)

    I love this era of Spidey. I think the JMS run gets a bad rep in retrospect for some of the missteps (we'll cover those too), but starting here is where I really fell in love with modern Spidey comics.

• Just finished X-Force and so far 2001 is blowing 2000 out of the water. I struggled to get thru a few of the 2000 books but I'm lovin' everything so far in 2001. Voting is certainly gonna be tough for this year.

• I thought the artist of the year vote from me was going to be a no-brainer, but it's actually going to be a tough choice, but it's quite a welcome change after the ninties.

• I know that there are a lot of quality comics this year and you can't include everything, but given how big the bonus round reading is, I can't believe that Fantastic Four: 1234 isn't in this list. Not only is it written by Grant Morrison, but it has beautiful artwork by Jae Lee. It isn't Morrison's best work, and overall the mood is quite somber, but given some of the other comics on this list (X-Treme X-Men, Celestial Quest, the X-Men Legacy Virus wrap-up), I feel this is very worth reading or at least looking at the art work, which is some of Lee's best work, and that's saying something.

  • It's on the 2002 list :) 3/4 published in 2001, you're right, but I wanted to pair for contrast with Waid & Wieringo.

• Daredevil: Yellow, Elektra, and Exiles...I think Dave is trying to make voting difficult. (Never mind New X-Men, Daredevil, and Black Widow.) Seriously, I think Marvel did a great job barreling into the 2000s, and Dave's selections serve to highlight that fact.

  I'm excited to read the bonus round material. There actually are a few pieces there which I haven't read before.

• I've got some reading to do! Even subtracting issues I've already read and those way outside my areas of interest, there are still 44 issues on my 2001 reading list.

  Most of my recommended issues are included in Dave's list. One that is not is Fantastic Four #39, which features the original quartet, the Avengers, and the Grey Gargoyle.

  • I think the whole year of the FF is worth your time in 2001.

    I hate to dominate the discussion forum (free time) but now that I have seen the "Bonus Round" books I gotta put in my two cents:
    I read the Celestial Quest. Don't. And the Xtreme X-Men is a joke. Like Claremont was making fun of what the X-Men used to be.

    Captain Marvel and the Ultimate books are highly recommended. Highly. Ultimate Spidey is must read. Team Up is fun and has an ice run of cool artists. Plus it is interesting to see how Bendis goes about trying to create the Ultimate Universe, especially when you see what it really becomes.

    • I found Xtreme X-Men absolutely unreadable. It's almost fascinating in that way. If I never see that many word balloons on a page again, I'll die happy.

• Oops. Both the "Vote Here For Your Hero & Villain Of The Year! " and the "2001 Comic Reading List (Click For Full List & Bonus Round!)" links lead to the voting page.

  Looks like a good list this month. I was trying to anticipate what would be included...

  I guessed right with New X-Men, Daredevil and Daredevil:Yellow, ASM, Exiles and Avengers. Nice choices. Already read the 'Devil books, Avengers and ASM. Good stuff. Will give the X-Men a go, again, as I read them years ago and was not all that impressed.

  I had expected Daredevil Spider-Man (Marvel Knights by Jenkins, of course), Banner(the Startling Stories book by Azzarello), Defenders (Larsen and Busiek), Fury(MAX book by Ennis) and Peter Parker: Spider-Man (More Jenkins/Buckingham coolness). I'm already reading the PP:SM stuff (issues 26-37) mostly great reads. I highly recommend number 26.

  I had not anticipated Thor, Elektra, X-Force or Blackwidow. I read most of the "new" Thor leading up to 2001, so I'll be happy to see if it gets better. I'm surprised by the Blackwidow choice as I thought you would go for the Jenkins Knights books. I'll check it out. Elektra is a bit of a surprise as I had forgotten about this series. I read it on-line way back when Marvel first had books on-line. They would put a few issues up for free about 6 months after they were published. It'll be nice to re-visit. And X-Force is completely out of left field. I had no idea that Allred had done Marvel work this early.

  It's gonna be a fun month.

  • Thanks for the note, I updated the link!

    Enjoy the comics!