6 Things Ben Got Into This Year

Following in Kiel’s mighty footsteps, I wanted to also endorse a half dozen neat things I discovered and found to be rad over these past 12 months as part of our two-year blogiversary. I don’t think any of these will come as any great surprise—or perhaps I am indeed an enigma wrapped in a mystery more than I believe—but maybe my endorsement this time around gives somebody that last little push to give something cool a shot.

MARVEL MASTERWORKS
Silver Age Marvel has always been a big gap in my comic book reading repertoire until quite recently. One reason is simply that I didn’t have access to the material—even at Wizard our Marvel library started a lot later than our DC stuff—and the other was that I’d sampled old school X-Men and Avengers comics as those were my primary franchises and didn’t really fall in love with them (ditto early Justice League). However, over the last couple years over at Marvel we’ve been re-releasing the Masterworks series in paperback, and thus I’ve had the opportunity to sample the classics. This will shock nobody, but wow, those original Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four runs got their reputations for a reason; the fertility of incredible characters and ideas as well as the frankly stunning Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko art is just jaw-dropping. I also really took a shine to the Stan Lee/John Buscema Silver Surfer series and was a bit surprised at how much I enjoyed the Captain America series from Tales of Suspense. Next up for me is giving Doctor Strange a try as well as continuing to wait patiently for the Warlock stuff to come around.
PARENTHOOD
I wasn’t sure what to make of this show when it came on—Rickey loves the original movie but I don’t remember it that well—but it has rapidly become one of my absolute favorites on TV. I’m a sucker for family dramedies with talented big-ass casts, in part because I have a very entertaining extended family myself, and since “Brothers and Sisters” has been running out of steam a bit, this came along at the perfect time. I’m happy to see Peter Krause on a good show (since I suffered through the unevenness of “Dirty Sexy Money”), I’m loving seeing what all the fuss was about in regards to Lauren Graham, I’m shocked at how much I enjoy Dax Shephard’s work, and it’s always nice to see Craig T. Nelson on television. That’s just scratching the surface of the great group of actors on this show, and not even getting into brilliant scripting, the clear improvisation, the heartstring-tugging stuff, and the dynamite chemistry—just a pleasure.

DAYTRIPPER
I’ve spent a good bit of blogging real estate this year talking up Daytripper, but now that the series has wrapped, I think it warrants at least one more solid praising. Credit where credit is due: this book wasn’t on my radar at all, but Ryan Penagos recommended it to me after the first issue came out, I borrowed from Rickey (I believe) and then bought the rest of the series, seriously eagerly anticipating each installment. Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba created something really beautiful here that I feel like is going to be a timeless work and something I personally look forward to putting on my shelf. Death is a very hard subject for me to deal with or even think about, yet these guys had me devoting time to doing just that every month, and ultimately I do believe I made a little bit of peace with how much living a full life and really appreciating those you love ultimately matters more than anything in the end; can’t speak highly enough of this book.

RING OF HONOR WRESTLING
I’ve never stopped watching pro wrestling, but prior to 2010, I think it had been about seven years since I’d been to a live show. My buddy “The Fallen Angel” Christopher Daniels has tried to remedy this fact in recent years, but I always indisposed whenever he came to town. Finally, back in May, I not only had the fun of Chris joining myself and Megan for lunch at the Saddle Brook Diner, that night I went and saw him perform at Ring of Honor’s Supercard of Honor V at the Manhattan Center in New York City. There and then again on September 11 for Glory By Honor IX, I had a real blast rediscovering how awesome live wrestling can be via the great product ROH puts on. There’s just something real cool about watching guys who are awesome at what they do and pretty damn fearless put on an incredible show while surrounded by passionate and vocal fans who are totally into it. Getting to hang with the boys after the shows was really a dream come true for me as well, as I’ve always been totally fascinated by this bizarre fraternity that is pro wrestling, and love getting to be even a fringe part of it every few months.

MARVEL ALL-AGES BOOKS
I’ve been pretty openly complimentary to Thor: The Mighty Avenger in particular recently, but that’s really just the crown jewel in the awesome all-ages empire of titles Nate Cosby and his band of miscreants have carved out at Marvel. I’ll admit I used to chuck away the bulk of my Marvel Adventures books in my comps, but once Paul Tobin took over MA Super Heroes with that killer regular Avengers line-up of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Invisible Woman, Black Widow, Vision and Nova, I was hooked and started gobbling it up. When that got re-launched alongside MA Spider-Man, I gave that a shot as well and it’s more great stuff. Those are seriously three of the most enjoyable comic books on the market right now, and I don’t think it matters how old you are as far as digging them; “all-ages” really does mean for all ages in this case. Beyond that, you’ve got Pet Avengers, Power Pack and so on—all great stuff. Roger Langridge, Paul Tobin, Chris Eliopoulos, Chris Samnee, Ronan Cliquet and the rest of the talented crew Nate has assembled are hard-working dudes (and ladies) who love to have a good time and the fruits of their enthusiasm are some of comics’ true gems right now.

AMY’S SOY CHEESE PIZZA
As a guy who gave up pizza about five years ago when I learned I was lactose intolerant and has suffered without it ever since, I cannot thank whoever Amy is enough for this glorious creation.

Cravin' some Kraven

I swear this post was not born out of any sort of Marvel shill motivation—though if you are a fan of Spider-Man and the villain I’m about to discuss, you should certainly check out the upcoming Grim Hunt storyline in Amazing Spider-Man by the talented creative team of Joe Kelly and Michael Lark kicking off later this month (you’re welcome, Steve Wacker).

No, tonight’s subject actually comes from my recent foray into the original Amazing Spider-Man comics of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, which I have been consuming over the past couple months via the new softcover Marvel Masterworks re-releases (I’ve got one more volume left to go before John Romita takes over on art).

As an aside, this will probably sound redundant to many, but these are really good comics. I have definitely had a stigma against “classic” Silver Age material for much of my post-college years after getting burned by the first couple volumes of Crisis On Multiple Earths (I can’t enjoy stories where Superman and Green Arrow not only have the same voice, but essentially the same powers) and old X-Men and Avengers stuff (both took awhile to find their voice, but this isn’t really news either). However, I put my bias aside to go for it on the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four as well as this Spidey stuff and have been richly rewarded, so I have to really recommend anybody who had my hang-ups does the same. Next up for me is the Captain America stuff from Tales of Suspense and classic Legion of Super-Heroes.

Anyways, aside from the quirkily endearing early persona of Peter Parker and the absolutely dynamic art of Steve Ditko, the thing that really makes those first 30 and change issues of ASM stand out are the truly awesome villains Lee and Ditko cranked out. Their misses were rare (but The Cat was pretty lame) and hits plentiful, but atop the heap of baddies for me from those halcyon days isn’t Doc Ock or The Green Goblin, but instead Kraven the Hunter.

I already had an appreciation for The Hunter having read Kraven’s Last Hunt and recognizing its capacity for rocking like most, but the guy was really a gem from his very first appearance. Here are the things I think put Kraven ahead of the pack…

GREAT MOTIVATION
Too many villains come from the very basic “I want power and/or money and/or to rule the world/this country/my neighborhood” mold. A smaller but still substantial subset just wants revenge on a particular hero because they did them some grievous wrong (though they still also fight other heroes too for some reason). Some villains are just insane. None of these are necessarily bad motivations, indeed many of the very best bad guys in comics spring from these roots, but anytime you see something unique from them, it’s neat.

Kraven fights Spider-Man because he’s a big game hunter who has accomplished everything he has set out to do in his life, and the only challenge remaining for him is to capture/kill a super hero. He didn’t have this idea on his own—The Chameleon prodded him—but it ends up consuming his life. It’s the first thing he has ever failed at and it drives him nuts. If you offer Kraven millions of dollars or his own island, he’ll probably turn you down because neither of those things would allow him to say he beat Spider-Man. And at the end of the day he also doesn’t really truly hate Spider-Man, he actually respects him, he’s just pissed off at him because he prevents him from being able to say he has a perfect record.

There’s a sort of twisted honor to why Kraven does what he does, but it’s also completely nuts, so those two things converge deliciously.

KILLER SKILLS
From his very first appearance in 1964’s Amazing Spider-Man #15, Kraven boasted a skill-set that really separated him from not only Spidey’s other foes, but the majority of comic book bad guys. This was an era where you had the guys who punched real hard, the super geniuses, or the god-like energy wielders. Kraven was strong, he was smart and he had a bag of tricks, and while none of those things on their own really made him a great threat, the way he combined them did.

You check out that first Kraven story and he is so much more deliberate in his plans to immobilize Spider-Man than any other villain to that point. He doesn’t just jump in fists flailing, he scouts his opponent, sets elaborate traps, uses cool toys to gain the advantage (he’s seriously got like the jungle equivalent of Batman’s utility belt) and only then comes in with the physical prowess that allowed him to out-wrestled lions and elephants and shit.

A Spidey-Kraven fight is just fun to follow as there’s as you need to keep up cerebrally instead of just soaking in Ditko’s rad battle sequences.

DYNAMIC LOOK
Kraven’s appearance should be absolutely ridiculous—and I’m sure some people find it so—but I kinda love it. The guy’s wearing a vest with lion eyes that shows up his rippling chest, leopard print pants, and he’s got a truly epic moustache.

He looks like the lost member of the Village People.

But he also looks awesome! Ditko took all these wild, busy elements and pulled them together in just such a way that it looks more fearsome than freaky…but also still pretty freaky. It helps that he was written as enough of a bad ass that you couldn’t imagine anybody (even Spidey) calling him out on his look.

And though I’m no endorser of cruelty to animals, I think there’s a great untold story waiting to be told at where that lion vest came from.

DIFFERENT KIND OF BEAST
Just about every one of Spider-Man’s early villains had some sort of animal theme, be it a vulture, a lizard, an octopus, a scorpion, a rhino, a, um, goblin. The guys like Sandman, Mysterio or Electro already had a leg up to stand out in that regard.

With Kraven, he both opposes and inverts the traditional Spider-Man villain.

On the one hand, he’s a hunter, so he’s the natural enemy of all those animals. On the other, so many of his weapons come from the prey he hunts, so he kinda combines all of them.

So yeah, Kraven just rules.

Amazing Spider-Man #634! June 16! Kraven’s kids are pissed! Buy buy BUY!