CREDIT: Marvel Comics
Rating: 3/5 – Not Spectacular, but This Particular Sin May Bring Me Back.
by ComicSpectrum reviewer Adam Alamo.
As with most comic events, the ramifications of the Original Sin storyline are being felt throughout a multitude of titles. Many fans despise having their regular titles dragged into a crossover event, and while Marvel has plenty of Original Sin crossovers, they decided to release Original Sin #3.1 to spin the tale of the Hulk and Iron Man. Now readers can choose whether or not they want to read about the sins of the Hulk and Iron Man without having their regular titles interrupted. However, with superstars like Mark Waid and Kieron Gillen on story and Mark Bagley on art, I suspect most will be tempted to check this one out anyway. It may even grab readers like me, who don’t read the regular titles for either character.
Original Sin #3.1 tells the story of Bruce Banner and Tony Stark leading up to the events of the Hulk’s origin. Many people take issue when a publisher or writer retcons a piece of established history, but there’s a difference between contradicting previously established facts and filling in background details. It appears this book falls squarely in the second camp, so it wasn’t much of an issue for me. If there’s anything to take issue with, it’s that this was not the most exciting of books, but it does a decent job of establishing Bruce and Tony’s past relationship before leading into the hook. Bruce has a bit of a temper and Tony is a playboy, so we don’t learn much there. But it’s neat to see that even in the early days, there was a bit of rivalry there. Bagley’s illustrations weren’t very exiting either. Like the story, they were decent, but average. Most of his focus was on the characters and not so much the background. Even then, some of the character work could have been better.
With such notable writers as Mark Waid and Kieron Gillen and an artist like Mark Bagley, I was expecting Original Sin #3.1 to wow me. It was an OK start, but not spectacular. At the end you get the “sin” or hook for this embedded mini-series, and so I may check out the next issue to see how that plays out. But if it doesn’t get more exciting or the plot twist isn’t a winner in 3.2, I may abandon the other issues documenting this particular sin.
Reviewed by: Adam Alamo
(adam@comicspectrum.com)
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