Customer Reviews

Spider-Man: Torment!

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

When "Spider-Man #1" was first released in 1990, it sold 2.5 million copies. That number is a bit misleading, since there were about 5,000 different cover variations that collectors just had to snap up. Todd McFarlane, Marvel's Golden Boy, had just been given a plum assignment: Write, pencil and ink his own Spider-Man comic book, far away from the constraints of drawing his pretty pictures over someone else's plots and scripts. It was a match made seemingly in heaven: McFarlane, who had taken "The Amazing Spider-Man" out of the doldrums and turned it into the #1 selling comic, handling the character that had made him the hottest artist around.

To say that McFarlane failed in his first assignment as a writer is an understatement. "Torment", the five-part opening arc to the series, is a disaster of unparalleled magnitude. Gone are the witty musings of previous Spider-Man scribes, replaced by the repetitive rantings of an artist who was ill-equipped to handle the plotting and writing of so complex a character. The book opens with Spider-Man lurking in the shadows and stopping a robbery (in the process calling the robber a punk, like some third-rate Dirty Harry-ripoff). Unfortunately, that can pretty much be considered the highlight. The entire series goes downhill from there. I can describe the entire five-story arc in a few sentences: Calypso raises the Lizard from the bottom of the East River (don't ask what the Lizard was doing there; Todd never bothers to explain it) and conjures some voodoo spells to torment Spider-Man (hence the title). The Lizard scratches Spider-Man with his claws, which are poisoned courtesy of Calypso. A delirious Spider-Man spends the next four issues whining and complaining about Calypso attacking him for no reason. That's it. That's the story. Oh, and Todd also throws in some pages showing Mary Jane club-hopping. Maybe I'm just missing the super-heroic aspects of dancing to '80's nightclub staples, I don't know.

Part of the problem is McFarlane's melodramatic, disjointed and overly redundant writing style. Instead of the happy-go-lucky Spider-Man that preceded, McFarlane's Spider-Man is some weird Batman wannabe, patrolling the melodramatically darkened streets of Gotham Ci.... err, New York. This is probably due to the fact that 90% of the story takes place at night in the shadows. McFarlane seems more content in drawing splash pages that serve no purpose except to show that, wow, Todd has mastered the art of drawing Spider-Man. As such, he seems to consider the story secondary, as he draws out page after page after page of non-action over five issues. The end result is a story that could have been wrappd up in two issues with a better writer. Instead, we get five issues of NOTHING. It gets so absurd that the final issue takes place over the span of five minutes, Marvel time. That's right. FIVE minutes. Todd just had no concept of how to pace and plot a story, and it shows.

The second problem is the choice of villain to kick off the series. Calypso? What happened to Doctor Octopus? The Green Goblin? The Sandman? The Rhino? Heck, I would have even taken Hydro-Man. Instead, we get a third-rate villain in the enigmatic Calypso, and the more fearsome of the villains, the Lizard, is reduced to a mindless lapdog for the scantily-clad voodoo priestess. Editor Jim Salicrup stated that when the time came to pick the villain(s) for the premiere issue, most of Spidey's usual rogue's gallery already had plots sketched out in upcoming issues. But STILL. I'm sure they could have come up with someone better than Calypso. It's obvious from Todd's handling of the character that he just didn't know what to do with her, save for casting a spell on Spidey and drawing it out for five issues. Lame.

Maybe we should have gotten the hint when, in the letter columns of the book, McFarlane admitted that he didn't really feel the story was as important as the artwork, that people picked up a book for the art and not for the story. Unfortunately, he decided to follow his inner muse and put this abomination on paper. To be fair, his writing would improve, and one need look no further than the "Perceptions" storyline to see that Todd finally "got it" and started understanding that, hey, maybe the plot and writing ARE important. And once he left Marvel and formed Image, his writing and artwork on Spawn was light years ahead of anything he did at Marvel.

Anyone who wants to see what the big fuss was about McFarlane's handling of Spider-Man would be wise to pick up the "Spider-Man vs. Venom" trade. David Michelinie does a great job scripting, and Todd's artwork just leaps off the pages, something that was sorely lacking in "Torment". "Torment" is a car-wreck, and is recommended only to those who like to watch the aftermath of such a thing.

I enjoyed this more as a sixth grader than I did as a thirty year old. The artork is beautiful and the idea of a sequel to "Kravens Last Hunt" is cool but it just doesn't come off that well. Calypso and the Lizard are a good pairing of baddies but there needs a little more plot development.

I know I've seen this on some other reviews but seriously, the "DOOM DOOM DOOM" is so annoying. It's a mediocre story that has somehow been propelled into somethingness. Not a necessary Spider-Man read by any means. Michelinie (spelling) did some great writing during this time period on Spider-Man, check those out.

I don't know, just felt like sharing my $.02 and I really HAD to say something in response to the whole "DOOM" thing... annoying!

Adam

The book was aptly named as reading it was indeed a torment. What the heck kind of story was that? Todd McFarlane should just stick to drawing (although the art wasn't all that good in this book either) and not write the stories. It was boring boring and boring... not like Spidey at all. Don't waste your money on this...

What a disaster! This is probably the worst comic I've ever read. I have the non-trade paperback series of this and having read it very recently I can honestly say it's terrible. The fact that they even put this abortion into TBP format is laughable. Todd McFarlane is over-rated. Granted, his writing of the series did get better (Perceptions, Sub-City), but to start the series off with such a lackluster story is criminal. Todd is used to drawing Spider-Man, and I'll give him this, pretty well. But never buy into your own hype. As a previous reviewer said earlier, McFarlane's one-sided, egotistical thought that "people buy this book for the art" exemplifies why the industry almost tanked in the mid-90s. Comics are meant to be read, not eyeballed. The art is a vehicle for the story, not vice-versa. 2.5 million copies of this bird-cage liner were sold over something like 5 different covers (I'm still scratching my head over the "Platinum" cover and the "why would I waste my money?" price tag that goes with it). Comics increase in value because they are rare, and if you flood the market and charge the sky, sooner or later, those issues end up on the $.50 table (where I got mine). As far as the actual story goes, it's a train-wreck. WARNING SPOILERS: Spider-man gets scratched by Lizard who is awoken by Calypso and he gets buried under rubble. That's it! That's the whole story! This could have been done in a single issue, and be forgotten, but no. It's stretched over 5 DOOM filled issues of Spider-man pretending to be Batman, "rising above it all" to bore everyone unfortunate enough to have read and thought "this has to get better". Wrong! Please, to everyone reading this thinking "I'll give it a chance"; don't. Save your money, buy "Kraven's Last Hunt" or Frank Miller's Spider-Man TPB. Leave this forgotten.

This truly was a masterpiece delivered by Todd Mcflarene and the marvel crew. The story and the art kept me entertained and amazed through out the entire book. I recommend to any and all fans.

I can remember being really blown away by McFarlane's style when he was drawing Spider-Man back in the late eighties, and I can recall enjoying his Batman-like take on the character. It made sense... spiders are scary and creepy. My reaction was common, so I at least want to acknowledge that in its time, this series did its job.

Today, however? It's a textbook example of everything that critics of the Image guys and certain 90s trends are always complaining about. All style, zero substance.

The art, for all its energy, is poor. The anatomy is off (and not in the usual Spider-Man way), the composition/storytelling is poor, the figure/ground relationships are unclear (in part due to bad inking technique), and the style simply has not aged well. That said, McFarlane made an honest-to-goodness contribution the character's look with the way he rendered the webbing. I'll give him that.

The writing? Torment, indeed. Five issues, and nothing... NOTHING... happens. And there is a LOT of overwrought narration attempting to obscure the reality that nothing is happening, but this is a badly written single issue stretched waaaaaaay out.

And that's about the most positive thing I can say about this volume. The last time I had read any part of this Spider-Man series was when it was being originally printed, many, many years ago (and when I was still a teenager). When I bought this, I was overwhelmed by the nostalgia associated with loving McFarlane's art as a kid, and at that time I probably cared very little about the writing or knew what constituted a well-told story.

Unfortunately, I'm now a few years wiser and a bit more discerning in my tastes, and this story is just awful. McFarlane's writing really could not get any worse - it is dull, repetitive and predictable. His art remains the high point, but reading this volume reminded me of how far coloring techniques have come in 20 years, and how primitive and shoddy most of the coloring looks from these older stories.

That said, I love the packaging and presentation of this Premiere HC, and it looks great on my shelf next to my other volumes. Probably not enough to justify buying it though.

Wow.

I hadn't read TORMENT since it's initial five issue run in 1990. Having just re-read it, some 13+ years later, all I can say is:

Wow.

Well, that's not ALL I can say, but MAN... wow.

That was bad.

I didn't notice how bad it was back then. Probably because I was 15 and, like everyone else, caught up in the wheels of the hype machine. Whatever the case, time and a bit of maturation have revealed TORMENT to be abysmal on nearly every level.

Art? It's McFarlane in all of his palsied-lines, silly-putty-faced character, pointy-footed Spidey glory.

Story? Little to none-- all of which could have been told in 2 issues.

Like the DOOM-DOOM-DOOM found on nearly every page, the events in torment are a nightmare of repetition: Spidey fights the Lizard, who is "unholy" and mad with bloodlust, MJ pines for Peter, Spidey fights the Lizard, MJ dances, Spidey's costume gets shredded, and so on, etc. For five issues. With lots of exclamation points. And a sea of captions. And unintentionally hilarious lines such as: "Like some blood-crazed vampire, the Lizard means to rip out the Spider's jugular."

Oh, well. It's Todd's first foray into writing, so I should probably cut him some slack.

DOOM-DOOM-DOOM

(For a well-written and intelligent take on the same material, read the story that inspired this mess: KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, the antithesis of this book in every way.)

I read this story arc when it was released, when McFarlane ruled the comic artist scene.
Now after a lot of good writers/artists runs on many books, this story lost freshness(in the art, too)