GIANT SIZE MINI-MARVELS STARRING SPIDEY #1
"Paperboy Blues" plus reprinted strips
Mildly Recommended (6/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer/Artist: Chris Giarrusso
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Price: $3.50 US/$5.25 CAN |
Back when I was a kid, I discovered a little bonus in the back of a number of the DC comics I so enjoyed. On the Daily Planet feature/news page, there would often be a three- or four-panel strip by Fred Hembeck featuring a number of my favorite characters, or even some that were new to me. Those comic strips delighted me, and Chris Giarrusso is carrying on that tradition in Marvel titles these days. This special reprints various tidbits and Bullpen Bits he's done in recent years, and offers up a new feature story as well.
Young Peter Parker, better known as Spidey to his costumed pals in the Marvel Universe, must collect all the overdue payments on his paper route or lose the route to his rival, Eddie Brock. His mission takes him to the headquarters of the L'il Fantastic Four, the X-Men (or is it X-Kids?), the Avengers and even the mountain hideout of the Thunderbolts.
Giarrusso's designs for his child-heroes are a lot of fun. They're simple and colorful. The bright colors reinforce the light, silly tone of the story. The most pleasant surprise for me in the art, though, were the few pages featuring Giarrusso's versions of grown-up Marvel heroes. Those character struck me as a bit more expressive, and I liked that the cutesy-factor was toned down a bit as well.
There were a couple of bits of dialogue in this book that really clicked me for. Most made me smile, but a couple elicited an audible guffaw or two. Perhaps my favorite gag in the book: "That costume isn't affecting your mind, is it Brock?" "I wanna eat your brains." Funny stuff.
Overall, though, the tone of the humor in the main story seems more directly aimed at kids. In fact, I found the Bullpen Bits reprints to be much sharper. I think Giarrusso's humor, or maybe just these characters, works better in the short form of the strip as opposed the longer, more conventional comic-book format.
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