Tag: Marvel Publishing

REVIEW: All of the Marvels by Douglas Wolk

REVIEW: All of the Marvels by Douglas Wolk

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Penguin Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

The author read 540,000+ pages of Marvel comics – from 1961’s Fantastic Four #1 to 2017’s Marvel Legacy #1 – to see what the full epic story might say if someone had the tenacity to read it all.

The Marvel collection is not designed to be read that way – something that has always bothered me as a reader. The stories work in such a way that people can drop in almost anywhere and go as deep or as broad into the Marvel universe as they want. Wolk describes his reading experience as, “gorging myself on something made for cherry picking and nibbling,” one of MANY excellent metaphors in the book.

Reading this, I felt seen and understood. From the start, but especially in chapter 2, the author acknowledges the drive to know “where to start” and the desire to take in the whole story in order. And just like in my personal experience, he says that desire is likely to end in frustration. In a format driven by the idea that each issue will be someone’s first, searching for the beginning, and the “whole story” just doesn’t work. But Wolk quickly shows readers how this non-linear reading experience can be better than what I was longing for.

This is the sort of review book I would typically read carefully for a few chapters, and then skim through the rest so I could put together a cogent review. And the author even says his book likely should be read like the Marvel comics universe – dig into the chapters that speak to you. But I couldn’t put this down. While there were a few character explorations that didn’t click for me, much of this was fascinating – from the backstories of characters to the revolving door of writers and artists, and the impacts they had on stories, characters, and Marvel as a whole. The writing is fantastic, and the subject matter is captivating. I immediately ordered a print copy for myself and my family. This is an outstanding resource, and when life slows down enough again, I’d like this book to point me to some great comics and stories to enjoy. I think this would be a great addition to high school libraries and classrooms in addition to regular adult collections. Don’t let a Marvel comics fan in your life miss out on this one. Highly recommend!

Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥*

*♥♥♥♥♥ = Outstanding!

BONUS REVIEW: Shuri by Nic Stone

BONUS REVIEW: Shuri by Nic Stone

Posted on by Jaymie

Summary

When a middle school aged Shuri discovers the Wakandan heart-shaped herb is dying, she throws all of her scientific know-how at the problem. At the current rate of decay, there will be no herb left for T’Challa’s next challenge day. If T’Challa loses and there is a new leader, he or she would not have the herb and therefore not have the powers of the Black Panther.

Despite Shuri’s brilliance, the problem is too big for her to solve on her own. With support from her best friend K’Marah, a Dora in training; someone from the X-Men; and an Avenger, Shuri leaves Wakanda, racing against time to save the future of her nation.

Review

I loved this! This diverges from the Marvel movies in several ways, but Shuri’s love for her home and her brilliance are as I expected. Yes, her adventure may be a bit over the top for a 14-year-old princess, but we don’t watch Marvel movies – or read the books and comics – for their realism.

The story here was fantastic. The outlook for Wakanda’s future is dire. And Shuri is the one with the time and the intellect to pursue a solution. She finds the right support to give her clues to what she’s missing so that she can get to work on a solution.

I adored the relationship between Shuri and K’Marah. This adventure was good for their friendship. Shuri also chooses a good mentor to help her through the story. The tech and gadgets were fun, and the pacing of the story – the risks and dangers as well as the closing confrontations – was terrific!

I hope there will be future adventures for Shuri and K’Marah! (Note: This is NOT a graphic novel.)

Rating: ♥♥♥♥½

REVIEW: The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope by Sam Maggs

REVIEW: The Unstoppable Wasp: Built on Hope by Sam Maggs

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Marvel Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary

Nadia Van Dyne – the Unstoppable Wasp – was stolen from her father, Hank Pym, before she was born. Her mother was kidnapped while pregnant and killed, and Nadia was raised in the Red Room. But now she’s free. She’s with her step-mother, Janet Van Dyne, and she runs a science lab called G.I.R.L. – Genius In action Research Labs. Nadia runs the lab out of Pym Laboratories and hopes it will convince SHIELD to recognize and encourage more female scientists.

Nadia’s training, her personality, and her bipolar disorder make her pretty driven. And when she’s struggling, she can take on too many things at once and become a workaholic. To help, she takes her meds, goes to therapy, and her friends keep an eye on her. Also to help, Janet gives her a virtual assistant – VERA.

VERA reminds Nadia to get enough sleep and take her meds. It also helps her do research and track her projects. She even gets to meet VERA’s creator, Margaret Hoff. But despite all of her productivity, Nadia is soon feeling estranged from all of her friends and lost in projects that the others don’t think she should be working on. Nadia’s family is concerned about her, but she doesn’t seem to recognize that she might be in trouble.

Review

I have mixed feelings on this one. There are things I loved and others things I struggled with. My only connection to Wasp before this was the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is not the same timeline/universe, so I had a lot of catching up to do when I started reading this. That added to the lag I felt early on as I tried to find the rhythm of this. Other readers more familiar with Nadia won’t have that issue.

Other places I struggled:

  • VERA, the crux of the plot, was barely present in the first third of the story. While this made for some great character development time, I kept wondering where the plot was.
  • There’s some name dropping early on that didn’t feel essential to the narrative. I get anchoring the book in the larger universe – and characters like Janet and Bobbie and a fun surprise at the end do that. It makes sense that a Marvel author would want to play with the larger palette of Marvel characters, but when a name seems to be there just to be there, I was distracted.
  • I was also distracted by the use of the words “boys” and “girls” when talking about adults in the story. For example, there was one scene in my review copy where Nadia and Margaret are together doing something and the book refers to them together as the “girls.” Nadia is 16; Margaret is at least 23 or 24. I couldn’t find her exact age, but she started her company at 22, and it’s been doing business for at least a little while.  In a story about empowering women and girls, it was jarring to see this pair referred to as “girls” when one of them is an adult.
  • The previous things probably sound minor in the scheme of things, but the one piece that almost drove me to giving up on the book was the intrusive inclusion of “Nadia’s Neat Science Facts” throughout the story.  These are not footnotes (which the book also has, but uses pretty well), but instead they are first person interludes of science information. I found that they interrupted the flow of the story almost every time they were used. And some didn’t even seem necessary at all to explain the science going on in the story. I wish they had been included at the beginning or end of chapters instead, where there’s a natural break, rather then interrupt the narrative of the book.

But it wasn’t not all a struggle. There were also things I loved:

  • I thoroughly enjoy found family stories, and this is a great one.
  • Nadia’s squad has some diversity in race, in sexual orientation (two of the girls are dating), and one team member has cerebral palsy.
  • The action descriptions, especially in the fight scenes, are outstanding. I read a lot of superhero stories, and often the fight scenes lose me, and I skim past them. They get wordy and drag down the story. This was NOT the case in this book. I could actually visualize the scene from the writing. The author did an exceptionally good job with this in my opinion.
  • The mental health and therapy pieces are woven in naturally. Medication and education about her bipolar disorder are normalized, everyday parts of Nadia’s life.
  • Once the VERA story takes off, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t click readily with the team in this because of some of the dynamics in play because of the story, but I did enjoy seeing Nadia and her crew working together.

I might check out a sequel if the storyline sounds compelling. Sadly, I didn’t really click with any of the characters enough here for them to draw me back no matter what, so the plot will be a big factor.

If you enjoy the Unstoppable Wasp already, or if you like superhero stories or STEM stories featuring young women, consider giving this one a go.

Rating: ♥♥♥½

SATURDAY SMORGASBORD: Books from Marvel Publishing

SATURDAY SMORGASBORD: Books from Marvel Publishing

Posted on by Jaymie

Last month we looked at books from DC Comics and DC Publishing. This month I want to do the same for Marvel. I don’t get the same feel from the Marvel collection as I do from DC. Surprisingly, I prefer DC’s books to Marvel’s, which is the opposite of how I feel about their movies. Let’s take a look at what Marvel has for us in the world of publishing (not including graphic novel collections of comic books).

Board Books/Picture Books

Marvel Alpha Block is an alphabet board book with die cut pages. As the Marvel movies have exploded in popularity, Marvel has published a number of picture books, including Little Golden Books for most of the main characters. Baby Groot makes a great character for picture books. I especially loved Spider-Man Swings Through Europe which debuted this summer as the latest Spider-Man movie was released. (Rating: ♥♥♥♥ ) There are also inspirational books and collections that show multiple characters and tells readers about them.

Leveled Readers and Early Chapter Books

Most of the Marvel movies have released along side leveled readers for kids. There’s usually a “Meet the Team” title that introduces the characters as well as some that include adventures based on the movies. There have also been some early chapter books like these from the Super Hero Adventures line. I couldn’t find any recent releases in these categories.

Middle Grade Novels

Marvel usually publishes a “Junior Novel” for all of the movies (like the one for Thor Ragnarok pictured above – I couldn’t find one for Spider-Man Far From Home). These usually mirror the beginnings of the movies, but stop before giving the whole movie plot away. They have also published novelizations of the movies. You can now get the whole “First Ten Years” collection in a box set. Otherwise, their middle grade books play close to the movies but usually more by filling-in-backstory or with a sideways shift.

In Black Panther: Young Prince, we get a childhood story for T’Challa. (♥♥♥♥) In the Cosmic Quest duology, the Collector and the Grand Master square off in a bit of sibling rivalry as they also retell the stories of the Infinity Stones. Peter and Ned’s Ultimate Travel Journal is styled like a pass-around journal for the characters from Spider-Man Far from Home. The Pirate Angel, the Talking Tree, and Captain Rabbit stars Thor, Groot and Rocket as they head to Nidavellir in Endgame, and Groot reads Rocket’s journal about a previous adventure. Marvel released two Unbeatable Squirrel Girl books in 2017 and 2018. You can read my review of Squirrel Meets World here. (♥♥♥♥♥) Starforce on the Rise tells the story of Captain Marvel when she was fighting with the Kree in Starforce before her adventures in the 2019 movie.

 

Teen and Young Adult Novels

While DC has been actively cultivating their Teen/YA market, Marvel hasn’t done as well there. There were two books in the Black Widow series (published in 2015 and 2016). I enjoyed the first one, Forever Red (♥♥♥♥), but didn’t read the second. Higher, Further, Faster tells the story of Carol Danvers before she ever meets the Kree. (♥♥♥♥½) The Gauntlet is an Iron Man story from 2016 for the middle grade/middle school crowd that seems to stand in a timeline outside the MCU. (♥♥♥½) Loki: Where Mischief Lies just released this fall. You can read my full review here. (♥♥♥½). Jason Reynolds gave us a Miles Morales story before the animated Into the Spiderverse released last year to critical acclaim. You can read my review here. (♥♥♥♥) Thanos: Titan Consumed is an original novel telling the origin story of Thanos.

Adult Novels and Other Books

Marvel has done a far better job than DC on novels for adults. They have a line of novelizations of some of their top comic/graphic novel story lines that are a lot of fun for prose readers. Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World is a novel about many Marvel characters but doesn’t tie specifically into the MCU or a specific comic book series. Avengers: Infinty is a Thanos story, but separate from the one in the MCU.  Captain Marvel: Liberation Run is an original Marvel story starring Captain Marvel. Civil War is a novelization of the comic series as is Planet Hulk. You can read my Planet Hulk review here. (♥♥♥♥♥) Spider-Man Hostile Takeover is actually a prequel to the Spider-Man PS4 game. Thanos: Death Sentence is an original Marvel novel. X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga is a novelization of the comics storyline. Marvel also does a fantastic job with their Art of books for each movie in the MCU.

Coming Soon from Marvel

While DC has been shouting from the rooftops about their publishing plans for kids and teens for the next year, Marvel has a much quieter list. These are the ones I was able to find. Black Widow gets to star in a Little Golden Book. (January 2020) Captain Marvel will star in a Flerken story for middle grade readers. (March 2020) Shuri will kick off an upper middle grade series (May 2020). The as-yet untitled Unstoppable Wasp book for teens (staring Nadia Van Dyne from the Unstoppable Wasp comic series) will release in May as well. And I found reference to a book called Orientation which will be the first in an illustrated middle grade series called Avengers Assembly, which is currently scheduled to release in August of 2020.

REVIEW: Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee

REVIEW: Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Marvel Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary

Loki knows he doesn’t fit in in Asgard. He might be a prince, but Asgardians are warriors, not sorcerers.

Odin has a royal sorceress, Karnilla, Queen of Norns. Even though she is training an apprentice, Amora, she is officially the only magic-wielder for Odin’s court. Even Odin’s wife, Frigga, mostly kept her magic small and to herself.

In Amora, Loki found a peer. They did magic together and understood each other. (And he thought she had the most magnificent high heeled boots!) But an act of magic – desperation on Loki’s part – left a magical artifact destroyed and Amora banished to Midgard where her magic would dry up completely. And Loki was left in Asgard, without the one friend who understood him and with Odin’s constant disapproval, living in Thor’s everpresent shadow.

Years later, after a disastrous diplomatic mission, Loki himself is sent to Midgard. It’s supposed to be an important task for Odin, but Loki knows when he is being dumped somewhere. Something magical, though, is going on on Midgard, a place where there should be no magic. People are dying. This is Loki’s chance to redeem himself by helping some allies look into these deaths in 19th century London.

Review

I wanted to love this. I love the MCU version of Loki played by Tom Hiddleston. And there are some great moments early in the book where I could “hear” that Loki. It’s mostly in the interplay with Thor. But that’s lost in the second part of the book when those characters aren’t together.

Fans were promised a Loki from the comics in terms of sexuality. And it’s here. This Loki is genderfluid (although that’s mostly stated in a single line in the book). He also kisses both a male character and a female character in the book. This sexuality piece, though, wasn’t a huge part of the story, so it felt “there” rather than integrated. Readers who have strong feelings about this aspect of the character’s history will have a better take on this than me. For me, it felt tacked on, but with no emotional weight or punch.

I think antiheroes must be hard to write. A character like Loki is beloved, but he isn’t the hero. And as a young man here, part of Loki WANTS to be the hero. He wants to earn real praise from Odin. He wants the choice of successor to at least demand some thought and debate. This could have been a much stronger exploration of identity; I would have loved that. But it never went as far in that direction as I wanted.

I wanted to get to the end of the book and believe it couldn’t have worked out any other way – that Loki HAD to give in to his darker side and become the villain. But I didn’t feel the story here was compelling on that piece. There’s more “I’m a trickster, I guess I have to just lean all the way in” than circumstances that drive him there. There’s a bit of the Odin situation that didn’t leave Loki some of the options he wants, but he lets that eliminate everything else, too. I was disappointed by this. If this piece had been stronger, I would have liked the book a lot more.

The story was solid. I had plenty of questions so I kept turning pages, waiting for it all to become clear. And it did. It was more violent and gruesome in parts than I generally prefer. But none of the story grabbed me emotionally. I wasn’t in suspense or connected to any character other than Loki for the Earth-bound portions of the book. It was fine but it wasn’t fantastic. I wanted fantastic.

Fans of the character should check this out for themselves and see what they think. And readers who enjoy historical fiction might enjoy that angle on the story as well. (Violence; some language; some horror features – zombies; LGBTQ+)

Rating: ♥♥♥

REVIEW: Miles Morales Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds

REVIEW: Miles Morales Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds

Posted on by Jaymie

Summary

Miles is an exceedingly bright kid on scholarship to a pricey prep school. He longs to overcome his family history of crime and hustling. And this school is his way to accomplish that.

But his spider-sense is jacking up his opportunity. It keeps going off in history, and Miles can only make up so many bathroom excuses before he gets in trouble and is suspended. So Miles is DONE with Spider-Man. He’s just going to be Miles for now and try to stay out of trouble.

Just being “Miles,” though, isn’t as easy as it sounds. He has horrifying nightmares. He feels tremendous guilt about his uncle Aaron. There’s a cousin in juvenile he never knew existed. Folks in his neighborhood seem to be disappearing. There’s a girl he likes, but he keeps blowing his chances to let her know. And his history teacher seems to think the South was right on the issue of slavery in the Civil War and takes every opportunity to point that out to Miles, who is half black and half Puerto Rican. Just being Miles is a lot more intense than he thought it would be.

Review

I am not familiar with the Miles Morales iteration of Spider-Man from the comics. So I approached this book with no preconceived notions or comic book story lines in mind. I knew the name Miles Morales and nothing else. And I enjoyed this story!

Miles is an awesome character. He’s bright and determined. He’s haunted by his past. He has superpowers but they are more of a burden than a blessing. When should he draw the line between taking care of his responsibilities and his own life and trying to save  the neighborhood around him?

Diversity and race issues are primary in the story which makes this a timely read. The villain and “mystery” of the story was really interesting. While it is resolved on one level in the book, there are many questions still open, too. Hopefully those will be addressed in a future book. Give this to your young superhero fans in 5th grade or older. I think they will love it!

Rating: ♥♥♥♥