Comics Fondle

Marvel priced the collection of these issues at twelve dollars list, which is kind of nuts because they take about twenty-two minutes to read all together. I’m not complaining because it’s got a high re-read value, but still. I’ll bet if they priced them cheaper or put two trades together, they’d sell (especially with the movie coming. But Jones’s story here is really strong–oddly, I remember one of these issues being a twenty-five cent one I once picked up and ignored because nothing happened in the issue–both in pacing and effectiveness. It’s an action story and he does it really, really well.

There are a couple problems. First, Jones’s female lead for the story–who Banner just comes across on the Manhattan streets practically–is incredibly resourceful. Jones writes female characters pretty well if I remember the last arc correctly, so in this one, he fails because the character is simply a cog in his plot. He needs her to get it to work, when he could have just as easily split the character into two and made one of them… I don’t know, a resourceful cop.

The other problem is Leandro Fernandez’s art. It’s real cartoony here, which occasionally produces inappropriate moments–the ending, meant to be ominous, is really kind of funny, for example. The whole thing looks like an animated filler episode on a DVD collection of live action episodes.

But the writing makes it work.

Though if I’d been buying the issues month-to-month, I can easily understand why I’d want Jones’s head on a pike. He makes Bendis look concise.

B+

Technorati Tags: Bruce Jones, Comic Book, Incredible Hulk, Leandro Fernandez, Marvel Comics, Review

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