Welcome to another edition of The Marvel Rundown, where The Beat looks at each week’s new release from Marvel Comics. This week we have rapid rundowns for four new books from Marvel. The Thing gets a new ongoing book! Weapon X-Men heads towards its finale! Spider-Man and Wolverine once again team up! Finally, we check in on the current Amazing Spider-Man run.
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- The Thing #1
- Right now Marvel books trade hard in nostalgia and events. While The Thing #1 by Tony Fleecs, Justin Mason, and Alex Sinclair certainly isn’t an event book, it does definitely play the nostalgia card. The opening a story arc is about Ben Grimm during the 80s/early 90s era of the book and it definitely dives deep into that era of Marvel. Really, there’s not much of a reason in the story so far why it shouldn’t take place during the current Ryan North era. Thankfully, though writer Fleecs navigates readers through this specific era in a way that it never seems overwhelming. The only clues that it’s not the present are costumes and Ben clearly isn’t married to Alicia Masters. For readers of that era, seeing The Thing explore 80s/90s era Marvel New York becomes a fun trip down memory lane with surprising characters showing up from that period in time. Fleecs clearly loves this era where criminals sit around in bars and heroes go find them there. And while it doesn’t get too into the set up of the The Thing fighting his way through that criminal underworld like in the cult flick The Warriors, it offers such a fun premise for the character. The art by Justin Mason, who relevantly drew the Sentinels series, though doesn’t trap itself in nostalgia for the era. His rendition of Grimm always makes him the largest figure on the page. He puts such weight and scale into this stalwart character. For book that’s mostly fight scenes though, the action never gets boring. Mason makes each one dynamic and plays with the size relationships between each of his opponents whether it’s a giant space alien in the opening or Melvin Potter, The Gladiator. Occasionally the book treads too familiar ground such as his guilt over his brother’s death and his own sense of self worth. Still if the greatest character Marvel comics ever produced is gonna get his own solo book again, this is a fun way to do it. – D. Morris
- Weapon X-Men #4
- I’m not sure what this book is supposed to be with its team of “loner badasses” but you can clearly see that writer Joe Casey, penciler ChrisCross and inker Mark Morales are in their lane having fun with a remixed version of the X-Force concept in their Weapon X-Men group. For me, this issue is all about the nostalgia factor, which is a big part of the draw for this title, and nothing is more X-Men than fighting giant killer robots. A bonus is having a manga-styled artist like Cross bring back a bit of my youth with the mecha Red Ronin. This title might be for readers like me who enjoyed the books of that bygone era. To their credit, it still seems fresh, and with Yen Nitro’s bright bold color pallet the art pops. If you need a fun, action filled one off, you’re in luck. From jump Casey moves the story at a pace that Cross and Morales can run with. Where this book is going as it wraps up is anyone’s guess. – GC3
- Spider-Man and Wolverine #1
- When the Janus Directory, a secret database of all of the double agents in Marvel, surfaces Wolverine recruits Spider-Man to help recover the files before they fall into the wrong hands. However, Wolverine may regret recruiting Spider-man for the mission as it becomes clear that Wolverine and Peter Parker’s past intersect in more ways than previously thought. Let’s get this out of the way first. Writer Marc Guggenheim has decided to pull on the less talked about 90’s Spider-Man plot—Peter’s parents actually being secret agents—for this series. One of my earliest Spider-Man comic memories was of the cover to Spider-Man #366. It touts to know the truth about Spidey’s parents! The Secret Agent Parkers plot was a weird one and to see it resurface in 2025 was a shock, to say the least. The Parkers do fit in with the spy action comic Guggenheim is building up and the big reveal sets the stage for Spider-man vs Wolverine in the next issue. The real interesting moment here is the sequence where Mysterio causes Spider-Man and Wolverine to live each other’s lives with Spider-man going through Weapon X, Wolverine in Japan, and much more and Wolverine living though Kraven’s Last Hunt and Venom. It is a great showcase for the main draw of this series, superstar artist Kaare Andrews. Andrews draws the hell out of the book with his signature kinetic style. It is a visual delight to see play out on the comic page. The only real issue I have with the comic is that Guggenheim keeps writing dialog and never allows for a quite moment. He really leans into the chatterbox Parker angle and I don’t think that is as successful as he wants it to be. Overall, I found this issue to be really enjoyable and a blast to read. Highly recommend checking this one out. –Jordan Jennings
- Amazing Spider-Man #4
- In my review of the first issue of Joe Kelly and Pepe Larraz’s new volume of The Amazing Spider-Man, I came down on it pretty hard for being too familiar and too safe. Kelly’s script, for as breathtaking as the art was from Larraz, did not convince me this was a book that gave us any new or compelling insight into Peter Parker. The intervening issues have been an improvement, with this one being the strongest of the new series so far. Kelly’s script explores Peter’s pubescent years before the spider bite in a way we’ve not seen before, and focuses in on Peter as an orphan and his relationship to Aunt May and Uncle Ben without making them all caricatures. He humanizes that idylized moment of Amazing Spider-Man 15 and raises both of Peter’s adoptive parents beyond mere caricature and sloganizing. The use of the poison/drug to disorient Spider-Man and throw him back and forth between past and present is intentionally jarring—how much is real, how much is hallucination?—but it never takes away from the urgency of the action. Spider-Man is swept up in his own head, and it is causing him issues both in and out of costume. I hope we see more of these flashbacks playing into the story going forward. How do these glimpses of young Peter’s fear of loss play out in the present? I appreciate this comic is not trying to set Peter up to save all of reality or deal with mystical maguffins, instead forcing him to face his own issues. Larraz’s art is as stunning as ever and there is a sequence here where he has Peter flash through the many people he has let down and lost and it is jaw dropping. Shout out to letterer Joe Caramagna who plays with the shape of word balloons here and in previous issues to add tone and voice to characters. I’m not fully won over yet, Kelly’s script is still too heavy on quips and pop culture references even where they don’t make sense (why is Hobgoblin talking about Star Wars Stormtroopers?) but this is solid superhero comics with sublime art. If the flashbacks and visions here play into Peter’s journey moving forward, there is a whole lot of potential. But that track record of longterm success isn’t very reliable in the last few years. -Tim Rooney
Come back next week for more reviews or go through our archives to read past reviews from the Rundown team!
