Introduction
We decided to mix things up this week for a couple of reasons. One, the entire family (minus Quinn and plus Aiden’s girlfriend) went to and loved Deadpool and Wolverine. Also, because of anther soft reboot, a mix up in ordering, and shelving the issues related to Blood Hunt, that left only two Marvel comics to review. Even with the TMNT and the main title missing this month, I received three books for Spawniverse August 2024.
Gunslinger 33
Writer: Uncle Todd, Artist: Carlo Barbieri. ONe of my favorite teams in the Uncle Todd stable, Uncle Todd and Barbieri deliver a well told and beautiful story. This must be what Chris meant when he said that he liked this one the best out of the Spawniverse. I saw some of this when I came on a little over a year ago. Then, the entire franchise started to become messy and disjointed. For whatever reason (I take some of the credit), Uncle Todd decided to shake things up and I’m glad he did. I enjoyed this book for the first time in months and look forward to the next few. My verdict: Good bordering on Great.
King Spawn 36
Writer: Uncle Todd, Artist: Jason Shawn Alexander and Yildiray Cinar. I felt like King Spawn suffered the most from the lag in quality in the franchise. When I came in, the story followed one of my favorite Spawn arcs in the last ten years, Dark Horror, and it hit hard. Then, all books got caught up in the war between Heaven and Hell for far too long in my opinion. But, the fallout is good. All Spawn are now human and the stakes are higher. Al finds this out the hard way and needs to go to his old buddy The Tinkerer in order to even the odds with the vamps. He also recruits an old “friend” that shows up in the final reveal. My verdict: Good. As an aside, when searching to see when I picked up Gunslinger, I found a comment from Chris about Jason Shawn Alexander’s art. He’s not a fan. I must say that I love the aesthetic for stories like this one. I think he’d also work on a Sam and Twitch title.
The Scorched 31
Writer: Layman with Uncle Todd on “Additional Script”, Artist: Dtephen Segovia. For my money, The Scorched kept its quality the best throughout. Granted, it dipped some, but for whatever reason, I love the dysfunctional adopted family that Uncle Todd put together for this title. Then, he brought Layman on to help out with this one and I completely geeked. In this one, Jessica works alone to try to take Jason Wynn out. In the process, she also finds an old “friend” and ends up running into the team again. I can’t wait to see how this pays off. My verdict: Good.
The Verdict
Spawniverse August 2024 continues the upward trend of the last few months since the reboot and restructuring of the teams. Uncle Todd took more of a central role in all of the books, which should have theoretically reduced the quality of the books. However, the time off for him and the fact that the books always echo his voice on some level, they actually improved for now. Hopefully he can keep this up for a bit.
Images taken from the mother ship.