Comic Review: John Carter-The Gods of Mars #4

The second comic book review this weekend. That's all I got.

I'll spare recounting the basic premise and note the changes writer Sam Humphries has made. In this case when we last left off Zat Arras had just unleashed a hungry plantman on John Carter and Carthoris. Luckily for them Tars Tarkas and Thuvia show up to save the day-yep she isn't in the Valley Dor. Carter also faces off with Zat and there's a different fate for our Zodangan. After that John rallies the troops and heads off for the final showdown with Issus and the First Born.

Reviewing these things issue by issue I've begun to realize leads to certain problems. How many times can you give the same praise or criticism to a series? I was thinking this when reviewing this issue. It's not a bad issue-in fact this series has been a vast improvement over Marvel's previous John Carter-A Princess of Mars series-but there is still some issues with the storytelling I'm not thrilled with. Having John refer to the Plant Man as "uglier than a sack full of armpits" or calling Tars "greenskin" seems at odds with Carter's southern gentleman background. As for the rest of the issue some of the changes I could understood and do work, especially John's final face off with Zat Arras.

Also reviewing these things you run out of ways to talk about the artwork. So I'll just make it short and brief: it's nice, bright and colorful.

I know this is really short but as I mentioned before reviewing two series that are telling the same story at the same time makes it hard to come up with a way to praise or criticize one with seeming unfair to the other. Marvel's doing a good job with this one so if you enjoyed the other issues it's worth picking up. Until next time...