Fear Itself, Monkey King

Fear Itself: The Monkey King

Someone at Marvel (Nick Spencer and Ariel Olivetti are listed as the character creators) decided that bringing the Monkey King over from Chinese mythology to the Marvel universe was a good idea.  It wasn’t. This half-baked origin story contributes nothing of interest to the world. It’s not even bad, it’s just plain boring. Easiest cut ever.

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? No

Rating: Boring

Fear Itself 5-7

My critique of the first four issues continue though the last three.  Things that I want to know about, like Tony Stark’s creation of the enchanted weapons, happen off-panel, and that infuriates me.  Standing on its own without any of the ancillary titles, Fear Itself reads like a collection of barely connected scenes. I left completely unsatisfied.  

Even worse, Stuart Immonen bears some of the blame for the series’ failure as well.  I can’t explain it well, only that the power wasn’t there.  Even a splash page like this felt like it was lacking oomph:

All the characters and actions feels receded and removed from the reader.

I don’t know who did the concept art for the weaponed up versions of these characters, but the results disappointed me.

Boring.

And why, oh why, would you melt the weapons after the fight?  Would it really be so bad to let the good guys keep them?

Because I can’t stay mad at Immonen for long, here are two pages that he crushed, and justify the price of admission:

Thor gets the best in-battle lines.

I legitimately got tingles.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Fear Itself 7.1-7.3

An epilogue issue apiece for the Big Three Avengers.  Another money-grabbing waste of time, setting up three ongoing titles.  The Iron Man one isn’t bad, seeing as how it probably fits in with the concurrent Matt Fraction run.  I’m only keeping them because they actually tell a full story and somewhat tie up the main plot.

And there’s a pretty shot of Natasha in the Cap issue:

Regret buying? Yes

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck

That’s the end of Marvel Box 4!  Stat time.

Time spent reading: 25 hours, 18 minutes

Issues read: 164

Issues cut: 1

Good or better issues: FF 242-244 (Byrne’s Galactus arc), FF 68-73 (Waid’s Doom arc)

Project stats:

Time spent reading: 103 hours, 27 minutes

Issues read: 721

Issues cut: 80