Toby's Profile

A very thoughtful look into midlife crises that comes from a veteran of the comics industry who seems to be putting something of his personal experience with grief over the loss of youth.

Just the starting off point for an analysis of the stages of grief that is no often touched upon in superhero comicbooks. One of those cases where the "professional" critics miss the point.

I have no problem with American authors using Maya culture for their fiction when it shows effort, but this issue makes up names, gods and even symbols for it's plot. It's not that hard to look up Maya glyphs on the internet and just copy them. You want to have the god of the underworld? Use one of the many names it has, don't just make up a foreign sounding word for him. I consider the art to be clumsy. I'm one of those fans who don't like Romita Jr's "style". It just looks bad to me. Other than the repeated "blockiness" criticism, his character's facial proportions look the same and his layout is more basic than a mock up found on google images. The story doesn't really move that much forward towards the promised reveal and the art doesn't justify the action that takes up most of the issue.

I was hoping for a decently reasonable answer for "what did Peter do?", but if he and everyone else keep acting out of character, my expectations will have to be no higher than "shock for the sake of shock". Cap believes Peter but he wouldn't understand the urgency of his problem? Would Captain America not be able to listen and realize that he can't wait for one or two days to settle things? Is he such a boy scout that he would risk someone who's traped in a world where time passes faster just to put things in order? This plot is held together with bubblegum and spit. Also: No. Peter doesn't fight the fantastic four. Only Johnny and the Thing appear. And he just leaves before anyone even throws a punch.

The FF were fun, but everything else remains consistently inconsistent with the characters' personalities and history. Would Peter's friends really not help him save MJ? Ok, the FF were off world, but a line implies that Peter stole from Stark. He wouldn't lend a hand either? MJ was Tony's assistant for a while and we've seen that she's still in contact with him. And even if Reed Richards wouldn't help Peter because it's too dangerous, Stark is the kind of character who would do something reckless to save someone. These are pretty bad excuses to justify Peter's out of character choices.