Chi-Town’s Breakdown: The Amazing Mary Jane #2

 Comics                          Crawlspace.com 
Leah Williams (Writer)                      Chi-Town Spidey (Review)
Carlos Gomez (Artist)                        Brad Douglas (E.I.C)
Carlos Lopez  (Colors).
Various Artists (Cover Artist)           
Kathleen Wisneski (Asst Editor)
Nick Lowe (Exec. Editor)
C.B. Cebulski (E.I.C)
                                              Recap:  Mary Jane Watson discovers that Cage McKnight is really Quentin Beck aka Mysterio!  The real Cage McKnight is somewhere filming the aggressive behavioral patterns of penguins that will ultimately destroy his directorial reputation.  She decides to follow this movie through, believing that it can jump start her career as an actress.  Not forgetting her Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man back home, she makes a call to Peter assuring him that everything is fine (leaving out an important detail) and playfully flirts over the line with her webbed headed boyfriend.  Everything won’t be fine since the Savage Six has trolled the internet and has decided to pay Mysterio a visit for the film he’s creating.        

Story:  CUT!  The production is at a stand still because Quentin (disguised as Cage McKnight) hasn’t been paying attention to his emails and the rental company that supplies all film equipment is taking back their stuff due to lack of payments.  An enraged Quentin and a sweet Mary Jane go to other producers to ask for funding but get are getting denied left and right.  Quick on the draw,  MJ changes NOT-McKnights image as a “Director Bad Boy” and is able to get about a quarter of the budget that they originally had.  Better than nothing Beck and MJ go with it and get the equipment back, but their lead actor playing Mysterio quits for better gigs and the Savage Six show up and start trashing the set.

Thoughts:  Mary Jane Watson, America’s sweetheart.  This issue pretty much sums up that title.   She’s professional, when the director isn’t, she’s kind and up beat despite the situation her and Beck are positioned in and while Beck is outright loosing it (as supervillains do), she’s supportive, sassy, and flirty while saving what should be a disaster flick.   I like when rental’s foreman loses track on why he’s actually there when Mary Jane introduces herself.  Stunned by beauty, that’s our Mary Jane.  Not only is she a knockout redhead, but she’s driving this movie to succeed when hurdles keep getting to the way, mostly at the fault of Beck, and drives it all with that award winning smile of hers.  Her personality and professionalism seems to have rubbed off on the assistant director Mallorie.  There are various humor moments in this issue and some panels just make you fall in love with her.  Leah Williams seems to be really enjoying writing MJ and having a lot of fun doing it.  I like to think that Williams is channeling her own personality into Mary Jane, but don’t know for sure, since I have never met her personally.  Williams writes Mary Jane as her character is supposed to be written, appealing.  

Poor Beck, man can’t seem to catch a break.  If you been catching up to Spencer’s run on ASM  you know what’s at stake.  Kindred is going to put this man back right where he found him when this movie is complete.  This whole scheme is to keep MJ away from Peter, but for Quieten, it’s so much more.  This is his last hoorah to make something of himself in a positive light and Mary Jane is helping him try to do that.  The panels with Beck freaking out and are very humorous, especially with the cool and calm Mary Jane within the panel.  I have to get props to Williams on this.  You fall in love with Mary Jane and you can’t help feel sorry for Mysterio.

The movie script had to be revised, now there’s loss in budget, no profitable producer is giving him the money he wants, he only got a quarter of it, the actor that was playing Mysterio quit and now the Savage Six have come to demolish his set like a non stop freight train!  I can’t help put feel Kindred may be pulling a few of these strings, but this is Mysterio we are talking about.  A villains ego is their own worst enemy.  The panel where Beck yells “You gonna give me money, or what?!” was hysterical!  Williams sprinkles this mess with humor, like you are watching a really funny Saturday Morning Cartoon!  

Speaking of really good things to watch, how about Carlos Gomez’s art?  It’s like Todd Nauck art style and J Scott Campbell art style came together and said “Let’s have some fun.”  That’s is JUST what these pages do.  His facial expressions are key and really put great emotion in the characters that he’s drawing.  Panel to panel is not stop fun!  Gomez utilizes every space and panel to give you a really good fun experience to see while the story plays on and colorist Carlos Lopez makes those illustrations POP right out of the book.  It’s like eye candy for your eyes!  This is a good creative team for this book and I can’t wait to see more!  It strays away from the usual super hero smack down you would find in a Marvel title but remember Archie comics?  Good fun story telling!  Do yourself a favor and pick it up and don’t worry, you’ll see MORE of that superhero smack down next issue, I’m sure.

 My ONLY concern is how Mary Jane is keeping this from Peter.  Williams ships the Peter/MJ relationship hard, she’s on record for saying that, but MJ hasn’t been too honest with Peter.  Our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man still thinks that it’s ACTUALLY Cage McKnight directing this movie, even after MJ knows it was Mysterio.  Now that the Savage Six is making the scene with some of Spidey’s more deadliest villains, I can’t help this is one thing MJ should bring up to her boyfriend.  Sure she can handle herself, no question there, but I feel that there is a point when things get a little to out of hand.  It’s true she’ll come to terms and admit she should have told him right away and that she just wanted to make this work to kick start here career and Peter can’t really blame her for that.  Remember when he split in two and took him five issue to come clean with her.  She was supportive to him, so with Williams penning this series, I bet you see him being supportive to her.  

GRADE: A