When I am bored by a review, it's a bad sign for the comic, and World War Hulk was tiresome before the review ended.

Personally, I love Whedon's Runaways, to my surprise. I wasn't much into the Kingpin, but the Punisher appearance was a'ight...loved when Molly punched Punisher. My s.o., who usually reads none of my superhero books, likes Runaways.

And he liked "Welcome to Tranquility" but was getting bored by the 5th issue, so I definitely disagree with the review. It was plenty drug-out and would have been ruined by any more extension of the story arc. However, now that the story is done, I think it will be difficult to keep this book running for long.

Finally, which is worse? Boring or offensive comics? I never bought Civil War, because I found the heroes' behavior offensive, but I can't deny my interest. I had to willfully resist buying it, because I knew I would hate it. OTOH, I dropped Lucifer and Hellblazer after several months of Carey, because I found his writing to be very dull and uninteresting. (Yes, I know many people like him, and I don't hate him, I'm just not interested). So maybe I do play into the hands of evildoers like Marvel, because from a sales standpoint, it's better to be terrible and offensive than mediocre and boring.

I don't think Tobey Maguire has played another character since SPIDEY 2, at least not in the movies, maybe on stage or something. He might as well be on a TV series. I caught a little of the first movie on basic cable the other night. Maguire actually looked interested in the role he was playing.

Avi Arad and Marvel productions think they know how to make movies but they don't. The first two Spidey's were good because, at the time, Raimi and the real producers had enough clout to ignore "Marvel" productions. But if you look at their HULK, ELEKTRA, THE PUNISHER, THE FANTASTIC FOUR, DAREDEVIL...they don't know what they're doing. GHOST RIDER...not knowing what they're doing paid off, but only because of the visual image. FF:SILVER SURFER may be the same way. It screams, "We don't know what we're doing!" but the Surfer is very powerful visually.

The original Green Goblin finally died in the comic in a very similar manner to the movie. That worked on film. But Doc Ock didn't have to die (and any good comic fan could see several ways that the character might have survived). What happened to sending these goons to jail?

That's what bugged me about the first two BATMAN movies. Sure, they didn't want to have to pay Jack Nicholson and, to a lesser extent, Danny DeVito, again but that set the trend for killing supervillains in the movies.

But even setting jail aside, we know from comics that there's a billion ways a supervillain's reign of terror can end aside from being killed by the hero, which is actually rather boring.

Maguire has become such a lifeless actor, it just seems like he needs something interesting to do between franchise pictures.

Or they could just fire his ass and recast.

I actually pitched it to this artist who was clerking at my LCS. Let me just say that I learned that a talent for artwork is not an indicator of high or even moderate intelligence.

I tried to tell him,"In Marvel Comics, there's all these ridiculous stories where Dr. Doom has done this or that; or Magneto is reinvented every couple of years. What is our heroes in our stories hand permanent defeats to our villains, who would be similar to the great Marvel and DC villains, but different enough to avoid plagiarism suits."

He said,"But people want to see more Dr. Doom and Magneto stories."

I said, "They wouldn't be Dr. Doom and Magneto. They'd be characters we created for our own indie comic and maybe somebody like Image would pick it up."

He said,"They can't publish books with Doom and Magneto. Those are Marvel characters...hey, what're you doing with that Boba Fett helmet? Owww...owwww..."

In a slightly different and darker version of this, perhaps the best handling of a humanized villain or anti-hero was in the Punisher stories Frank Miller did in DAREDEVIL.

DD sees the Punisher strictly as a killer, no different than the other goons running around shooting each other, except that he's more dangerous. The Punisher, whom at that point, has really only encountered a more impressionable Spider-Man (and met Nightcrawler in a weird team up, thinks DD will view him as Spidey has, and proposes a truce. But Daredevil says, "No truce. You're going to jail." And he shoots the Punisher. I guess this was pre-kevlar, and a case of poetic justice...and typical Miller slop because can you imagine what firing a .45 would do to Matt's senses?

and here is a third comment

and thats it.